The timing could hardly have been worse.
As the SNP continues to reel from the impact of a major police investigation into party finances, senior figures have spent months trying to stabilise the nationalist ship.
And, so, revelations that Scottish Government civil servants spent £14 million on a taxpayer-funded credit card in just three years have come at a most inopportune moment.
This story pushes our outrage buttons while seemingly confirming the suspicion that, perhaps, those who govern us have a tendency to be reckless with money.
The list of items bought by government employees could have been written by an angry tabloid news editor.
Some purchases – several copies, for example, of a book of Nicola Sturgeon’s collected speeches – fall squarely into the you-couldn’t-make-it-up category. People may be equally perturbed by the decision to buy 21 copies of a book entitled How to Run A Government: So that Citizens Benefit and Taxpayers Don’t Go Crazy.
Among other things bought with taxpayers’ cash include a yoga class, suntan lotion, and make-up. Perhaps the oddest purchase was a copy of the 2014 independence white paper which is a) available to download for free from the Scottish Government’s own website and b) 600-plus pages of nonsense, and out of date nonsense at that.
But the spending that has most exercised opposition politicians is around 10 grand for access by former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to various airport VIP facilities. The company Ace Handling Ltd was repeatedly hired to ensure Sturgeon’s swift passage through airports, including fast-tracked check-in and security clearance.
The Tories’ Annie Wells tells us she’s not surprised that the Scottish Government wished to keep the figures, obtained by Labour after redacted bills were published, quiet. We are invited to be furious at an attempted cover-up of Sturgeon’s “diva-like” tastes.
I’m afraid I struggle to get upset about the spending on airport facilities for a serving first minister. Do we really expect to see an FM on government business standing in the Ryanair queue?
There are perfectly good reasons – from allowing a senior politician the space and privacy they need to work, to the heightened security implications of a national leader visiting an airport – for some arrangement to be made to keep the FM away from the riff-raff.
The provision of VIP services to the former first minister might have fuelled headlines of the “Nicola Splurgin'” variety but, on reflection, weren’t these justifiable outlays?
£32k on team-building nonsense is unforgivable
I’m less convinced of the value of spending £32,000 on team-building exercises.
I have, despite my best efforts to avoid them, been obliged to participate in a number of team building away-days, each of which has been a carnival of misery.
Staff from an organisation which is riddled with office politics and where tensions between Barry and Frank are already at breaking point are forced by human resources department lunatics to assemble at an outdoor centre, where abseiling and paintballing will help engender trust. The workers are asked to throw off their inhibitions and write a poem or sing a song. As the day draws to a close, the team leader talks to them like they’re children and asks what they’ve learned.
Later, because it’s all on expenses, someone orders shots at the bar and, within the hour, Barry and Frank are knocking chunks out of each other in the car park.
The team-building industry is a great modern scam. A bunch of consultants sell your idiot boss a series of pointless courses. Once employees have completed these, the consultants give your boss a certificate. Then they sell him another course and he gets another certificate.
And, every six months, you have to go line dancing with people from accounts.
Shelling out £32,000 on that sort of nonsense is unforgivable.
Yousaf is right to cut up the credit cards
I’m sure those who ran up these massive credit card bills would argue that each and every purchase was necessary and justifiable. That, I’m afraid, doesn’t matter.
The perception that Scottish Government officials were free and easy with our money is out there now and, well, there’s quite the audience for that kind of thing.
During a brutal cost-of-living crisis, it’s hardly surprising that stories like this one gain traction
During a brutal cost-of-living crisis, it’s hardly surprising that stories like this one gain traction. When times are hard, we like nothing more than an out of touch “fat cat” against whom to rage. So, the first minister was right to announce a review of government credit card spending.
Despite the lack of a “smoking gun”, this story retains the power to damage the SNP. Humza Yousaf is right to take it seriously.
Euan McColm is a regular columnist for various Scottish newspapers
