SCHOOLS Minister Maureen Watt must be relieved that the use of Lochgelly's finest manufactured item, the tawse, has been banned from use in this country, otherwise she might have found herself summoned to the office of headmaster Salmond for six of the best.

The pledge to ensure that children get two hours a week of PE lessons has sparked a bruising debate for all sides. It was the issue which last month led to Wendy Alexander embarrassingly running out of questions. Alex Salmond had responded: “Reports over the weekend that we intend to scrap the existing targets are completely unfounded,” which prompted the Labour leader to say: “I have no further questions.”

But now the curse of PE has come back to haunt the Nationalists, who were in difficulties this week after Ms Watt claimed during a radio interview that the extra two hours of PE might include the walk to a from schools. While it is all very well to wish to see the end of the queues of Chelsea tractors outside schools dropping off and picking up the little dears, the walk would scarcely amount to a PE lesson. Kids would only have to live a 12-minute walk from the school for their return journey to amount to the whole two hours.

Mr Salmond was quick to correct her, insisting that the two hours would be within the school day and would indeed involve expert tuition. Ms Watt, he said, had mixed up a general commitment to increased physical activity with the specific commitment on physical education. But for all the talk of an additional £40m committed to the subject, question marks remain over the training and retention of sufficient PE teachers.

“We don't do slapping down in this administration,” said the FM. I very much doubt that and I think we can expect the schools minister to be better briefed on this issue in the future. I just hope she covered up her wrists – that's where the tawse really hurt, as I recall.

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As I write Gordon Brown will be putting the finishing touches to his very own Sermon on the Mound. I'll probably watch his address to the Kirk's General Assembly on television tomorrow, but if he uses the phrase “moral compass” I'll stage my very own walk out from my living room.

Margaret Thatcher outraged the Commissioners a generation ago, not by claiming there was “no such thing as society” (that was a different speech), but by her homily on: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.” The Moderator that day, the Very Rev. James Whyte, was later to say: “She confuses the creation of wealth with the making of money.

“Wealth is created by those who take something of no value and make it into something of great value. It's created by craftsmen, by people who work in industry. The shuffling around of shares in order to make yourself a fortune in a fortnight is not wealth creation, it's just money-making. She doesn't seem to know the difference.”

Will the current Prime Minister?

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A colleague here in the press tower bought a set of silver cuff-links from the Scottish Parliament shop recently, in the form of the MSPs' “think-pod” windows, complete with representations of the wooden spars in front of them. At the second time of wearing them the cuff-links disintegrated, with the spars falling off. Today Press Association reports that all around the parliament complex these strange adornments are having to be repaired, so in a strangely voodoo way the cuff-links were perfectly realistic!