Who will pay for the photo session?

Apparently, Patricia Ferguson, the plain looking Labour Party hack, MSP and culture minister in the Scottish Parliament, is going to have her photograph taken by Albert Watson during the forthcoming Tartan Day celebrations in the US.

FirstFoot is curious to know who is going to be paying for this. Is Albert Watson so blown away by the as yet undiscovered beauty of Ms Ferguson that he is going to do the shoot for free and gratis? Or, is the taxpayer going to foot the bill? We think we should be told.

Watson cannot come cheap. We suspect that he might even be dearer than Kirsty Wark. That's going some when Scottish Enterprise recently paid Ms. Wark £9,000 for a days work. Good money if you can get it. It probably helps to pay the extra bills accrued when the First Minister spends his holidays at Ms. Wark's holiday home in Portugal.

But culture is a serious business. Certainly another of Jack's pals, the Culture Tzar, James Boyle thinks so. He has spent not a kick up the arse off £500,000 setting up Scotland's Cultural Commission, one of Jack's wee projects (let's all hope he doesn't ever come up with a big project). We are not entirely sure what the Cultural Commission's purpose is but such was the sense of urgency in setting it up that the usual channels were bypassed and recruitment was undertaken without many of the posts being advertised in the normal way. Any suggestion that this has the potential for cronyism should immediately be put aside.

And finally, some news to rejoice. Jack McConnell will not be attending this year's Tartan Day celebrations in the US and so Scotland will not be held up to international ridicule again. Apparently Jack is crucial to the Authoritarian (sorry, meant Labour) Party General Election campaign and cannot be released for the bunfight in New York.