WHO is the more recognisable - Labour's Holyrood leader Iain Gray or Glasgow City Council leader Steven Purcell? If this week's headlines are any guide, Mr Purcell is way ahead.

Mr Gray's speech at the Labour Party conference in Dundee at the weekend was given modest coverage in the press. Mr Purcell's speech, in which he pledged a "Glasgow living wage" of £7 an hour for low-paid city council staff, grabbed everybody's attention.

As the man who pulls Glasgow's purse strings, Mr Purcell can promise what he likes.

No-one is going to criticise him for trying to make life easier for the low-paid - although when councils across Scotland are complaining about the SNP squeezing their budgets, other council leaders may not to be too happy.

They fear being asked by their staff that if he can find the money, why can't they?

The affable Mr Gray has steadied the Labour ship after the hurricane that was Wendy Alexander - and that's about it.

Unlike Mr Purcell, he can't make a manifesto pledge to raise the minimum wage because it's a Westminster responsibility and Gordon Brown wouldn't let him.

Labour insiders say Mr Gray was aware of what the leader of Scotland's biggest council was going to say.

If that is the case he should have realised he was going to be upstaged.

He could have told Mr Purcell to find something else to say and hold his big announcement for another day.

The SNP is often accused of picking fights with Westminster but the same charge could be levelled in reverse at Lord Chancellor Jack Straw over compensation claims by prisoners for slopping out'.

In December, the one-time student radical pompously declared he was "not persuaded" there was a reason to change the law and introduce a one-year time bar, which would prevent murderers, rapists and other poor wee souls from claiming compensation for having to slop out.

The time-bar exists in England and Wales but Mr Straw didn't think it was worth bringing Scotland into line by making a minor adjustment to the Scotland Act and in the process saving Scottish taxpayers around £50million.

After representations from First Minister Alex Salmond he's now agreed there may be scope to do something.

Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy, the man with the least onerous job in Scottish politics, has now said he's confident he can "fix this".

The question is: Why hasn't he done so already?

The LibDems - anyone remember them? - are holding their annual conference in Perth this weekend but leader Nick Clegg won't be there because his wife has just had a baby.

The child had been due this weekend, which is why he originally got off the hook.

But the timing has been questioned by cynics.

They are wondering why even the party leader would go to such lengths to try to time the arrival of the baby to avoid a weekend in Perth with his Scottish followers.

They'll have the pleasure of listening to deputy leader and former Glasgow Labour councillor Vince Cable instead.