IT will a relief to taxpayers everywhere that although civil servants have helped mess up legislation on vulnerable children and prostitution this week, they can juggle with chiffon scarves.

Jack McConnell was furious after being been forced to drop a section of the Protection of Vulnerable Groups Bill which would have required sharing of information to protect children's welfare.

Then his Finance Minister Tom McCabe had to re-write the Prostitution Bill.

Ultimately, the changes were forced through by MSPs, but the preparatory work was done by civil servants from the Executive's Justice Department.

These are the same people who were taken on a £25,000 away-day to play with balloons and fish plastic ducks out of buckets.

They also took part in a team-building exercise constructing a tower out of balloons, learning to juggle with chiffon scarves and assembling rubber rings.

An Executive spokesman, with no hint of embarrassment, said the exercise was important because civil servants were encouraged to think beyond their immediate policy areas if they were to continue to deliver better results for taxpayers.

So there you have it - next time your having a kiddies' tea-party, just call the Executive and you'll get your money's worth from a trained children's entertainer.

Either that or you could ask why this Executive is so profligate with your money.

Private companies can do what they like with their cash, but throwing taxpayers' cash away like this is outrageous.

The £25,000 would surely have been better spent teaching them to draft legislation properly before even half-witted MSPs can pick holes in it.

SNP boss Alex Salmond continues to play a blinder as he leads his party into the May election.

But so he should because, in opposition, you can say or do just about anything because you are accountable for nothing and are in pole position to exploit government weaknesses.

Mr Salmond is a smooth operator - clever and witty, or supercilious and smug - depending on your politics.

Any irritation he shows is usually reserved for the thicker television interviewers, so why did he apparently lose his cool at a posh lunch in Glasgow this week?

The SNP boss was mixing with the great and the good who had turned up to listen to ex-US Vice President Al Gore and former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix when he had a spat with a well-known Glasgow businessman.

Mr Salmond left the bash early and didn't hear Gore's excellent presentation on global warming, but his aides insist it wasn't because he was in the huff - he had to leave to be briefed on an interview with a late-night TV show.

If the SNP wants to win seats in the west, maybe he'll have to learn to put up with the Glasgow banter.

THE standard of presentation by Gore and Blix showed a gap as wide as the hole in the ozone layer with Scots politicians.

Ross Finnie, Environment Minister and Captain Mainwaring lookalike, was so excited by sharing a stage with world-renowned statesmen that his prattling was embarrassing in comparison. He should have been he had 90 seconds to say his piece and then been hauled off.

But if Finnie is boring, at least he didn't embarrass himself as badly as Scottish Tory matron Annabelle Goldie talking about her boss, David Cameron.

She gushed that walking along the street with him was like being in the company of George Clooney or Ewan McGregor.

What planet were you on at the time Bella?