Was Kate Forbes blindfolded when she signed off the new pay deal for Scottish Government civil servants?
Perhaps Ms Forbes, thrust into the job of finance secretary when Derek Mackay was drummed out of office over a texting scandal involving a 16-year-old boy, was suffering from the symptoms of Covid-19 when she agreed to pay rises of up to 12% for the Holyrood pen pushers.
We must assume her sense of smell was affected.
Otherwise she would have known that, amid warnings post-coronavirus the economy would go into meltdown, we would witness mass unemployment and families would struggle, upping the pay of many C-grade Holyrood civil servants from £54,487 a year to £61,006 would not sit well with the electorate.
And how would her own constituents in Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch, many of them in a hospitality industry ravaged by the current crisis, feel that she thought it was all right to offer the civil service’s top dogs a jump from £67,148 to £73,935?
Yes, her sense of smell clearly has abandoned her.
The stench is so strong it would have reached her home base of Dingwall where voters, many of them working in the NHS, must be wondering: “Have we just been shafted?”
Ms Forbes agreed the deal at a time when countless private sector employees have suffered pay cuts and furlough as they consider a future without a job.
Insensitive will not cover how they will feel as they look in the direction of Holyrood.
So, why wasn’t she stopped?
Shouldn’t the first minister have stepped in to prevent this injustice as she continues to applaud low-paid frontline NHS staff battling to help those in grave danger because of the virus?
Will they be around when Nicola Sturgeon and her finance chief arrive at A&E having realised they have both shot themselves in the foot with this sickening display of unfairness?
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