It is still an open question whose judgement will be heard first on the new Scottish parliament building. The Queen, it can safely be assumed, will be politely enthusiastic in October when she opens the new building on its astonishingly beautiful parkland site under the sheer rock walls of Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh; Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, it can equally safely be assumed, will not be. Fraser, the thick-set former Scottish lord advocate with the jowly demeanour of a gangland enforcer, says it will take as long as it takes for him to finish his report after a year-long public inquiry into what he describes with studied but unconvincing impartiality as its “apparent” cost overrun.
How, in any case, do you begin to judge Scotland’s new parliament? On one level, as the scaffolding comes down and the cranes move on, it is emerging as one of the finest pieces of new architecture in Britain for 50 years. On another, and especially in the eyes of Scotland’s newspapers, it is a shocking case of the mismanagement of public money by the young Scottish government. A project first budgeted at £40m could now cost around £400m.
These are such incompatible perspectives that making sense of the project becomes especially difficult. How can you talk about the architecture without mentioning the money, and vice versa? Fraser promises to avoid any consideration of aesthetics in his report. And, perhaps because people have seen his taste in purple ties, nobody complains. But it isn’t possible to divorce what the parliament looks and feels like in use from what it has cost. It would be as pointless as writing a Michelin guide based on the cost of ingredients, leaving out whether the cooking is good.
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