The building is quite new, officially opened in 2004, built when Scottish Parliament was established. It’s not without its controversy. After a worldwide search, a Spanish architect was chosen. The design is such that you either love it or hate it, but either way it is interesting architecturally and from an engineering point of view.
It also had huge budget overruns, and to this day continues to raise unexpected costs for taxpayers. In fact, only this week I read in the papers that they are about to spend £12,000 to dig up surrounding footpaths, because there is no records of where the services for the building (gas pipes etc) are located.
The tour itself begins with a terse nod from the Policeman outside the front door, followed by a security check as thorough as any airport I’ve been through, including removal of belt!
Once inside, we paid for the tour. Scottish Parliament, if you’re listening, taxpayers should really be entitled to a free tour thanks very much!!!!!
The tour lasted about an hour, and actually didn’t roam too far from what are public areas anyway, which was a little disappointing. It mostly pointed out the many architectural features, plus explained how the parliament works which was interesting to learn as it’s all been a bit of a mystery to me.
Finally we got to walk through the debating chamber. What we thought were laptop docking stations on every desk were actually electronic voting machines. No counting paper based votes here!
All in all, an interesting tour, although for anyone out there reading this who is interested, you can visit inside and visit all public areas, and visit the public gallery of the debating chamber, for free. Unless you really want the tour, which points out architectural points of interest, save your money!
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