Rennie calls SNP amateurs over £400,000 Olympic vanity project

Remember last week I told you how Alex Salmond had blown £400,000 of our hard earned taxes on an extension of his ego in Pall Mall to promote Scotland during the Olympics? Great, except that they could have had home of the Scotland Office, Dover House, for free.

To add insult to injury, the club they'd taken over to create Scotland House wasn't even ready on time, leaving Sports Minister Shona Robison with nowhere to meet her Australian counterpart. Apparently they can't just do these things in Starbucks like the rest of us!

Anyway, they actually switched the venue to Dover House and for some reason (could it be because someone anticipated that could be controversial because of the amount of money Salmond Scotland House is costing?) it was changed again to Westminster's banqueting hall, which presumably they got for free.

Willie Rennie was scathing about the muck up, calling the SNP amateurs and saying Alex Salmond was cutting off his nose to spite his face, especially given that Salmond's Ego Scotland House looks forlorn and deserted much of the time:

This shows Dover House was more than suitable for the SNP government to use to promote Scotland at the Olympics.Yet they’d still prefer to blow £400,000 on a vanity project for Alex Salmond.

Firstly we discover the SNP Government spent a whopping £400,000 on a building they didn’t need to avoid using the UK Government’s Dover House even though it was free. Now we find out they couldn’t even get the building open and ready on time. When it comes to international relations the SNP are amateurs. Instead of courting the world’s most expensive tumbleweeds at deserted “Scotland House,” Alex Salmond should be working with his UK counterparts to drum up every bit of business interest he can for Scotland. It seems however, that Alex Salmond is prepared to take the phrase “cutting off your nose to spite your face” to a whole new level.

 It is incredulous that he believes the Scottish taxpayer should foot the bill for his ego.

I hope that Willie doesn't treat this as a Summer story and let it drop now. I want to see Salmond questioned on this in Holyrood when it reconvenes next month.