John Farquhar Munro (Gaelic: Iain Fearchar Rothach) (born 26 August 1934) is a Scottish Liberal Democrat politician, and was the MSP for Ross, Skye and Inverness West from 1999 until his retirement in 2011.
Previously a crofter and a local councillor for 33 years, he was first elected to the Scottish Parliament at the 1999 election. Running against him for Labour was Donnie Munro, former member of the band Runrig, but Munro won by 1,539 votes. He was one of three Lib-Dem MSPs to oppose his party's coalition with the Labour Party (along with Keith Raffan and Donald Gorrie) and has deviated from the Executive on a number of issues (such as land reform, on which he believes they are not moving quickly enough).
He was prominent within the parliament in opposing the Skye Bridge tolls, to the extent of threatening to resign from the Lib Dems if they were not removed. The tolls were abolished in December 2004.
As befitted one of the few native Gaelic speakers in the Scottish Parliament he co-sponsored (along with the Scottish National Party's Michael Russell) a bill to secure the language's status as being equal to English. He was angry when the then Labour-Liberal Scottish Executive refused to back it.
He was re-elected to the Scottish Parliament at the 2003 election with an increased share of the vote.
After the 2007 election he was the oldest MSP in Holyrood. He stepped down as an MSP at the Scottish Parliament general election, 2011 at which time his constituency was abolished.
In a surprise move Munro expressed support for Alex Salmond in the 2011 Scottish Parliament elections.
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“When John Henry was a little fellow,
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He said to his pa, “When I grow up
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—Unknown. John Henry (l. 1–5)
“There’s no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty.”
—George Farquhar (1678–1707)
“Wit is often concise and sparkling, compressed into an original pun or metaphor. Brevity is said to be its soul. Humor can be more leisurely, diffused through a whole story or picture which undertakes to show some of the comic aspects of life. What it devalues may be human nature in general, by showing that certain faults or weaknesses are universal. As such it is kinder and more philosophic than wit which focuses on a certain individual, class, or social group.”
—Thomas Munro (1897–1974)