Billy Connolly once described Holyrood as a “wee pretendy parliament”. Many of us who love Scotland’s greatest comic quietly wished he’d not been so disparaging about this place. We all surely wanted it to work, didn’t we: including those who had opposed devolution?

It made us uncomfortable because, well … Mr Connolly is usually bang on the money when he holds a mirror in front of Scotland. And besides, he has attained that status, reserved only for an anointed few, of being beyond public criticism.

If he were so inclined, I suspect the Big Yin might be tempted to challenge us all to tell him he was wrong. Each year, the case for the defence seems to become increasingly more threadbare. Last week, our MSPs gathered to congratulate each other on the 25th birthday of Holyrood. They were surrounded by a dreadful host of familiars, bottom-feeders and scavengers in the lobbying industry, the only sector that’s experienced a sharp growth in the devolved era.

Of course, the SNP administration since Nicola Sturgeon succeeded Alex Salmond as First Minister, leads from the front in embarrassing Scotland. But they are ably supported in their thorough inadequacy by most of the other parties. The Scottish Greens are now happily removed from any say in government, but not before they had cost us tens of millions of pounds in their fatuous, toy-town stratagems such as the deposit-return scheme.

From today, a family celebration will cost you more moneyFrom today, a family celebration will cost you more money (Image: free) Their daft plan to impose heat pumps on every home in Scotland was exposed as an expensive whim when a Scottish Government report found that wood-burning stoves produced fewer CO2 emissions than heat pumps.

During the 25th anniversary celebrations, no mention was made of the single most abject failure of Scotland’s political elites: that the poorest neighbourhoods in Scotland in 1999 are still the neediest in 2024. The educational attainment gap in 2024 is wider than it was in 1999. The SNP has been in charge for 17 of those 25 years.

They’ve not failed at everything, you understand. And so it’s only fair that we outline what they’re good at. The SNP have become world leaders in killing Scotland’s most vulnerable and disadvantaged people. Scots are more likely to die of drug and alcohol addiction than any other country in Europe. The poorest Scots, as ever, are much more vulnerable to premature death by addiction than any other cohort.

The Scottish Government’s response, backed up by the agencies they fund to look the other way, is to give them more drugs in safe consumption rooms. They despise these poor people so much that they deny them even the basic right of having an opportunity to become drug-free. This is because they regard them as not sufficiently human to deserve the cost of rehab beds. No form of human existence is lower than a government which treats its most vulnerable people in such a way, and then tells lies about it.

The biggest lie is that new form of magical thinking: yes, yes: we know the scum are dying but if it wasn’t for our efforts a lot more of them would be dead. It’s an admission that they’ve not actually been atrocious at addressing the drugs and alcohol deaths crisis; just very bad.

Aided by the Scottish Greens, they have also specialised in threatening the safety of women, especially those who have been traumatised by male sexual violence. They have overseen an insidious decade-long process of enabling violent men and rapists to identify as women.

As our MSPs fell upon each other in an orgy of self-adulation it was revealed by The Times that they are also highly successful in another department: tabling parliamentary ‘empty gesture’ motions which insult the intelligence of voters.

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You might have thought that every spare minute at Holyrood is expended on improving the lives of our poorest communities by tackling inequality in health and education and driving investment towards these places. But you’d be wrong.

In the last three years our MSPs (salary: £72,196) have devoted more than half of all their “standard motions” - 7,000 of them – to sending congratulations to people and organisations, including many who probably weren’t aware that their virtues were being extolled in the highest debating chamber in the land.

These included congratulating Taylor Swift for being brilliant; applauding an Aberdeen bowling club for the eye-catching refurbishment of its lavatories and sending best wishes to a couple of Scottish nags running in the Grand National.

Yesterday, a new minimum unit price for alcohol was imposed on Scotland. The cost of all alcoholic drinks will now increase from 50p to 65p a unit in pubs and shops. The Scottish Government says this latest increase will save lives, despite knowing that following the first MUP hike the number of Scots dying from booze-related illness rose sharply.

This had been predicted by various genuine addiction-experienced charities and organisations such as FAVOR (Faces and Voices of Recovery). Since this was introduced in 2018 is that alcohol retailers have boosted their profits by around £70m per year.

“It’s not the alcohol that’s attractive,” says Annemarie Ward, chief Executive of FAVOR, “it’s the oblivion that comes with it. People will simply turn to the cheapest methods of oblivion.

Scotland became the first country in the world to introduce minimum unit pricing for drinksScotland became the first country in the world to introduce minimum unit pricing for drinks (Image: PA) The political actors and their middle-class policies have no idea of the inadvertent consequences of these actions: people turning to cheaper alternatives for oblivion. It’s the mind-altered state they’re looking for. Why are they looking for that? Because they’re in pain. Why are they in pain? Because of inequality.”

The Scottish Government 17-year-long pattern of failure in helping the country’s poorest communities is evident in its refusal to support FAVOR’s Right to Recovery Bill which would provide a legal right to several stages of addiction treatment: residential rehab; community rehab; stabilisation centres; detox and harm reduction services. Ms Ward describes it as “the full spectrum of evidence-based treatments that are proven to help people get well.”

Ms Ward believes that the dripping roast which is Scotland’s addiction sector is advising the government not to back this simply because it wasn’t their idea. They also fear that people might start to ask questions about the purpose of the addiction sector and why such vast sums of public money are spent maintaining their patterns of failure.

FAVOR’s mission slogan is “You keep talking: we keep dying.”

It’s could also be the defining message of 25 years of the Scottish Parliament.

Kevin McKenna is a Herald writer and columnist. This year is his 40th in newspapers. Among his paltry list of professional achievements is that he’s never been approached by any political party or lobbying firm to be on their payroll.