And talking of stinking...

Sir Robert MacAlpine, one of the companies that bid for the construction contract on the new Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh is suing the Scottish executive. They claim they were passed over for the contract in favour of Bovis Lend Lease who put in a bid £1.4m higher. Indeed the huge disparity in the bids had originally lead to Bovis being eliminated from the shortlist. They were later reinstated by Barbara Doig, the civil servant managing the project.

This follows an earlier case where damages were paid by the Executive because the construction contract for an ancillary part of the project was not awarded to the lowest bidder.

And that followed the awarding of the architecural work to a practice that had been eliminated from the shortlist but were later reinstated by the same Barbara Doig.

For this to happen once could be construed as a SNAFU. Twice looks like incompetence. Three times looks much, much worse.