IF anyone is in charge of Labour's campaign to win May's Holyrood election, they'd better turn up for work soon.

And if Parliament Minister and Baillieston MSP Margaret Curran is a genuine contender to replace Jack McConnell in due course, she'd better start reading motions in her name more carefully.

Labour want people to believe a motion posted by them on the Parliament website for days wasn't right because of a parliamentary clerk's mistake - something that won't wash with Presiding Officer George Reid.

It stated there should be an increase in the powers available to the Scottish Parliament - a gift for the SNP and an unbelievable gaffe for Labour.

Just a few months ago, in the annual lecture commemorating Labour's great home rule campaigner JP Mackintosh, the First Minister argued against "the current fad" for constitutional tinkering.

The motion was rapidly changed to mirror Labour's current mantra that "the SNP does not come without independence and independence does not come without a cost".

To her credit, Ms Curran went to a briefing for journalists to take her lumps.

What she couldn't explain adequately was the Donald Dewar quote which remained in the motion that devolution "is a process, not an event".

Unless the process is over and no-one has noticed, surely that means arguing for more powers.

A measure of how the election campaign is going was the space given to SNP boss Alex Salmond in that most unionist of papers, the Daily Telegraph.

After his speech to party loyalists at the weekend, there were predictions from Labour of 100 days of turmoil, reports of a 100-day war with Westminster and a even a forecast he'd destroy the UK in that time.

All good knockabout stuff, but ably fielded by Mr Salmond at his cheekiest.

In his newspaper article, he wrote: "There may be some doom-mongers who think England is too lacking in resources - too poor without Scottish oil - to be a successful independent country. But I disagree."

The nationalists are running a largely positive campaign, which is backed by a sophisticated backroom set-up and on-form frontman.

Labour leaders, meanwhile, are antagonising even some of their own backbenchers with a campaign relentlessly attacking the Nats but not talking up their their own record.

Some Glasgow MSPs, who are guaranteed a return to Holyrood, are irritated at the strategy.

At least Labour and the SNP are slugging it out.

In a petty bid to get some coverage LibDem MSP Euan Robson MSP slammed the "bitter battle" between the heavyweights.

All they do is spend their time "fighting and name calling".

If his leader Nicol Stephen got involved, maybe he would not have been fifth behind Alex Salmond, Jack McConnell, Tommy Sheridan and Annabel Goldie in a recent survey of party bosses recognised by the public.

WHILE Labour and the SNP have been working themselves into a lather, the Tories were also revealing a manifesto commitment.

They want young people to have affordable homes - but couldn't find young Tories who need them.

They hired actors as a young mother, a nurse, a Chinese girl in a graduation outfit, and a painter and decorator for the launch.

They posed with ladders to symbolise - yes you've guessed - people getting on the property ladder.

They could have chosen a better location, however.

The ladders were filmed propped against a cemetery wall - symbolic, perhaps, of where the Scottish Tory Party is heading if its fortunes don't revive.