The National:

IT'S often said that the Tories are stuck in the past – so perhaps it's not a surprise one of their MSPs has such difficulty with the concept of time.

Over the past couple of days, it was Scottish Labour embarrassing itself most on the Scottish Budget, courtesy of entirely misreading a key statistic.

Now, it's Tory MSP Jamie Greene deciding to make a fool of himself.

At First Minister's Questions, Scottish Tory interim leader Jackson Carlaw said: "Mr Mackay boasted that in 2018 the economy was predicted to grow in Scotland at a faster rate than the UK as a whole. According to the Scottish Fiscal Commission, in how many following years is this expected to be the case?"

The First Minister said the Scottish economy is doing so this year, and had not been predicted to last year – so take the figures with a grain of salt.

So, your typical political disagreement ... and then Greene chimed in on Twitter.

"Since the First Minister couldn't answer that question, let me help her. Between 2019-2023, Scottish annual GDP growth will not exceed 1.2 per cent and will fall well below growth rates across the rest of the UK in every year. That's a shocking record on the economy. #FMQs"

Unfortunately for Greene, it's quite difficult for the Scottish Government to have a "record on the economy" for future years. Records aren't estimates for what will happen in the future. That's not how language works.

Given the state of Brexit negotiations, we can probably say with some degree of certainty the Tories are not in posssesion of a crystal ball either.

Of course, we can definitely trust their predictions. For example, their claims that staying in the Union was the only way to guarantee Scotland's continued membership of the EU has proven entirely accurate, hasn't it?

Twitter had some excellent responses.

This isn't the first time Jamie Greene has caught our eye this week. He was also very upset about one of our front pages.

It read: "Cowardice. Shambolic. Disaster. Pathetic. Failure. Shameful. Incompetent. Clusterbourach."

Greene responded: "This kind of hate-filled discourse has a profound effect on the public. It’s evident that this shift is language from the First Minister and National ‘newspaper’ is designed to feed and escalate the divisions across Scotland. The Scottish Government should know better."

The words were taken from descriptions given in the House of Commons that day – and the idea that the First Minister has to shift anything to inspire these entirely obvious descriptions is quite funny.

Though to hear about "hate-filled discourse" from a party responsible for such policies as the hostile environment is quite something too.