Scotland’s political opposition and media, today:

There can surely be no country on Earth cursed and plagued with a more pathetic shower of petty, whining, gossiping harpies in those roles than Scotland. And while we knew that already, barely a day seems to go by without them reaching a new nadir.

If you’ve got the stomach to hear about the latest low point, grit your teeth, lower your expectations of humanity considerably and read on.

So let’s walk through that.

Firstly, the headline is (of course) a lie, just like the one about the FM on the front page of yesterday’s issue that today’s Herald carries an apology for – the actual cost of renting the temporary accommodation for the leader of the country was NOT “nearly £20,000”, it was £11,008 for five months, or £2,201 a month.

(Another £8800 was spent on various fees involving the sort of extensive security and background checks that anyone who wasn’t a complete imbecile might expect to be undertaken on the prospective home of a First Minister/seat of national government.)

£2201 a month is a lot of money, but it doesn’t get you very much house in central Edinburgh. This is the FM’s normal residence, Bute House in Charlotte Square:

It’s pretty fancy. We couldn’t find anywhere for rent in Charlotte Square, but here’s a much more modest pied-a-terre located just a couple of hundred yards away in the still-nice but unquestionably less salubrious Alva Street:

And here’s one a little further out, but in the New Town proper:

It’d be a step down, but certainly still a pretty acceptable place to meet dignitaries and hold cabinet meetings and suchlike. Something more on the level of Bute House would be somewhat pricier:

But rather than bill the taxpayer to keep her in the style to which she’s accustomed, the First Minister of Scotland actually bunked up for five months in a TWO-BEDROOM FLAT and made do with huddling around the living-room table when she needed to discuss affairs of state with her ministers.

(Imagine Theresa May being asked to make do with a two-bed flat for almost half a year if Downing Street needed some work.)

And her thanks for this sacrifice? Furious howls of idiot rage from Unionist politicians and a supposedly grown-up broadsheet newspaper that she was “wasting money” by not decamping to a manky student bedsit or a tent on the Meadows with a lilo and a gas stove.

We’d quite like to see where Graham Simpson lives. We suspect it’s rather nicer than a two-bedroom flat, even though we doubt one Scot in a hundred could tell him from Adam and wouldn’t notice if he fell down a mineshaft for five months and couldn’t do whatever the hell it is he does all day for his fat taxpayer-funded salary.

(We’re pretty sure that he must be one of these anonymous, identikit fannybags, but we honestly wouldn’t like to have to bet 50p on which one.)

The sourest cherry on the cake was that the story was published on the same day Simpson’s government in London was dropping bombs that cost £800,000 each on the Middle East in a moronic act of bread-and-circuses misdirection from the shambles of Brexit, done without the consent of Parliament and based on some highly questionable evidence about a supposed chemical attack, which will do absolutely nothing to bring peace to Syria and could have been achieved perfectly well by the USA under the command of President Bobo The Clown without the UK’s assistance.

(And it is, as always, interesting to speculate on exactly how much the UK spent on its latest bout of impotent sabre-rattling pining for the days of the Empire, versus how many Syrian refugee children the money could have housed instead if we REALLY cared about the plight of the innocent victims of conflict in that benighted land.)

It’s hard to say whether the opposition or the Herald are the bigger embarrassment to Scotland. Governments do need oppositions in Parliament, no matter how dismal. But the Herald – currently bought by just 0.58% of Scottish adults – is altogether less necessary, and its finally swirling down the toilet of history would be little more than a blessed relief to everyone concerned.