At the beginning of the week literally thousands of schools, colleges and universities received a free Saltire flag and glossy propaganda brochure courtesy of the Scottish Government as part of a move to boost national sentiment and celebration on St. Andrew’s day.

The problem? Well, I’m not overly comfortable with that little blast of nationalist pride – cynically inspired by the falling public interest in Scottish independence; currently, as The Herald reported, at a ten year low of 23 percent of the population – being paid for out of the taxpayers pockets.

Here’s a little bit of Goodwin maths. 2,563 Saltires were despatched at £1.79 each. That many flags multiplied by that much money equals considerably more than the average student loan: that’s right folks, a whopping £4,587.77. Now let’s take into account postage. Assuming that each was sent second class and weighed in at under 250g (which is probably generous), we can deduce that our newly renamed but no more shiny Scottish Government paid £1,537.80 on post. Throw in the costs of the glossy booklet and the manpower used up packing the whole set up, and we’re probably looking at a cost of around £8k.

£8,000 is what your average pensioner receives in a year, over a third of a new policeman’s salary and eight months worth of what the squaddies in Iraq are getting, and, crucially, nearly twice the maximum student loan. That money could, and should, have been better spent.

But that’s not where this little saga ends. When Edinburgh University’s illustrious student President voiced such concerns to the national press, the Federation of Student Nationalists went nuts.

Why? Well, according to the FSN, it’s all to do with party politics. You see, Josh MacAlister is a member of the Labour Party, and so naturally any criticism of a Scottish Government policy simply must be because Number 10 has phoned up and asked him to attack the Nats. Naturally.

I too am a member of the Labour Party, and I too was accused of taking my orders from the Party Machine when attacking politicians for some of their more ridiculous antics when I was President last year. During the election, I wrote to the Edinburgh Evening News to refute Mike Pringle MSP's statement that he had never agreed to vote against new student fees, when the day before the vote he had made that very promise to me, only to break it the very next afternoon. The result was that I was accused of having used my position for party political gain.

It's funny really. If that were the case, how come no one from the Labour Party has attacked either Josh or me for being party political when we campaigned against quotas on student housing or against top-up fees (I’ve been around long enough to remember the march in London when they were first introduced)? And how come no one from the Lib Dems or the SNP welcomed us into the fold, assuming we were new members when we supported scrapping the Graduate Endowment?

Those who go out accusing others of being inappropriately party political always have one thing in common: they're in the wrong. There's no getting away from the fact that Mr. Pringle MSP broke his word and betrayed the student movement. You can’t deny that spending eight grand on flag waving is excessive. The only way you can disguise it, however, is to rubbish your critics.

The truth is simple: you're not a member of a political party to peddle their every manifesto bullet-point. You’re a member because you believe in the principles. As a student activist, you have a duty to stand up for students. When the government spends the kind of money it has just spent on flags and brochures, instead of textbooks and teachers, you have a duty to say so. What Josh did wasn’t party political, nor was it careerist. It was a no brainer.