For politicians, as is well-known, words are cheap. Not so Sir Fred Goodwin. At his pensionable rates even a cheery "Good morning" would probably set the taxpayer back the price of a small car. What with one thing and another, the less he says the better.

Still, at least we had the full affordable range of cut-price, never knowingly undersold, Holyrood language to be going on with yesterday. There was plenty to choose from.

"Obscene": that was ten-a-penny. "Apologies": plenty of demand for those. Even "values" have been devalued, at least if you believe Iain Gray.

Labour's leader had selected a technically tricky manoeuvre for his latest dive into the parliamentary shark pool. How to castigate Sir Fred, that £693,000 pension, and bankers generally without so much as alluding to Gordon Brown's role in the great financial sector massacre?

Did I say tricky? If I say that Mr Gray's intervention collapsed like the RBS share price, you might get a sense of the thing.

The idea was to lambast Sir Fred via a lambasting of Sir George Mathewson, the latter having given the former the job to which so much creative flair was later brought.

That Sir George is also an economic adviser to the SNP government must have seemed a bonus, as it were.

That the Nationalist knight has seemed relaxed about reckless bankers, and slightly dismissive of the First Minister's view on the matter, was probably supposed to be an added dividend.

Alex Salmond reacted like a man who has lost a penny and found a fiver wrapped in a golden parachute with a ticket to the Cayman Islands.

Sir George wasn't around, he said, for the RBS disaster. He had nothing whatever to do with the Goodwin pension.

Who did? The First Minister then decided that Stephen Hester, the new man at the bank, had implicated the Prime Minister and Alistair Darling.

Mr Salmond couldn't have agreed more. He couldn't have agreed more if the question had been "Fancy a £693,000-a-year pension?" Mr Gray ploughed on. For him this was all about "Sir George and the bonus bankers" versus the people of Scotland. The idea that Labour ministers might have been napping at the wheel did not merit his consideration.

Mr Salmond slapped the argument around for a while longer, then introduced the idea that the Financial Services Authority - dozing at the steering column - had been hampered by "political direction".

He therefore found it "passing strange" that Labour is suddenly among the righteous.

It was all too easy, even for an RBS former employee such as Mr Salmond.

Annabel Goldie, for the Tories, wanted to know about his recent meeting with Mr Brown, and to demand that these soul-mates meet more often.

The First Minister just wanted to deliver his solo performance - booked solid until Doomsday - The Five Hunnert Million.

This refers to the money Scotland will lose, says Mr Salmond endlessly, when or if Mr Darling proceeds with his efficiency cuts after the recession demon has been placated.

Even Tavish Scott got a dose of this, and he could have been mistaken for a supportive critic yesterday.

"Why has the First Minister spent this week creating a new argument with government?" asked the Liberal. Surely this is the time "to change the way we do business"? After all, if Holyrood is all sweetness, light and consensus, why can't ... Oh, right.

Mr Salmond threw that baby out with the rest of yesterday's tepid bathwater. From now on, only the Five Hunnert will matter. What fun there will be when Mr Darling fails to play his part.

Click here to comment on this story...