As the Scottish Government scrambles around trying to find cash to put together a support package for Covid-stricken businesses, it is galling that the Crown Office has blown £40million on botched prosecutions relating to Rangers.
Details of the massive sum were buried in Scottish Government accounts published this week which have been criticised, as it happens, for not being transparent enough on how the Covid support cash is being spent.
The Crown Office still faces a series of compensation claims related to wrongful arrests and prosecutions over the Ibrox club. It is feared the final bill for the taxpayers could top £100million.
The sum would be eye-watering during the best of times but with so many families and businesses struggling since the pandemic hit, public anger is more than justified at the sheer waste of much-needed cash.
The Scottish Government has agreed to hold a judge-led inquiry into the Rangers fiasco at the Crown Office once all the related legal proceedings are concluded.
By then many of the key figures will have shuffled off stage to their comfortable retirements.
But the inquiry must call people to account to answer for one of the major scandals of the devolution era and help restore faith in the Scottish justice system.
Last orders, Boris
It is to take nothing away from the campaigning power of the Lib Dems to say that the incredible result of the North Shropshire by-election is more a crushing, humiliating defeat for Boris Johnson than it is a win for them.
The Lib Dems this week became the lightning rod for the anger, disgust and discontent of voters in a normally safe Tory seat and across the country.
People have become fed-up with the incompetence, arrogance and chaotic behaviour of a Prime Minister who doesn’t even know that there are rules he should abide by.
Even his own backbenchers are calling last orders on the Downing Street saloon bar presided over by Boris Johnson.
Now the top civil servant called in to investigate the lockdown shebeens in Whitehall appears to have been hosting parties himself, rendering the whole process a sham.
One by-election does not change the government but it is becoming clear that Johnson’s Downing Street operation is rotten to the core.
If not last orders it should be “time, gentlemen please”.
