Exactly how bad does it have to get before someone, anyone, takes responsibility?

This is a Westminster election campaign so not necessarily the time to scrutinise the record of the Scottish Government; not, strictly speaking, the appropriate point to question just exactly what is going on in Scotland’s hospitals, courts and schools.

And, after the last week, as the First Minister took the last selfie and hugged the last hug of another day on the campaign trail, Nicola Sturgeon must have been thankful for that small mercy.

The headlines could not have been much worse for her or her ministers, particularly the ever-embattled Health Secretary Jeane Freeman. It is a job that has broken better – and worse – politicians than Ms Freeman, but, after her almost-daily stints in front of the cameras answering more questions about more scandals with more bullish can-do rhetoric, the health secretary must surely retire to her darkened office, quietly close the door, and spend a furious hour kicking her bin about the floor.

The job is, of course, one of the toughest in government, buffeted with gales of bad news and soaked by a torrential, relentless rain of scandal and incompetence. While her critics – Scotland’s mesh-damaged women, for example – made their minds up long ago, it is still difficult to say if Ms Freeman is actually any good, given her role has been more firefighter than health secretary. However, while the jury might still be out on her competence, her bad luck is not in question.

To have one flagship hospital in Glasgow accused of killing its own patients and another, in Edinburgh, costing NHS Scotland £1.4m a month despite the doors remaining locked because it remains unfit for purpose, is not a good look for any government claiming competence.

The revelations around the death in 2017 of 10-year-old cancer patient Milly Main, whose parents were shockingly unaware of the possible source of her fatal infection until last week, only deepens the sense of official cover-up and obfuscation.

Ms Freeman can, of course, deny any of this is her fault but she has had long enough to impose proper transparency at a health board which apparently believes whistle-blowing, not its own secrecy, is too blame for worrying patients.

Meanwhile, down the ministerial corridor, Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf seems to believe it is acceptable for families of loved ones who have died in uncertain circumstances to wait five or six years for answers from Scotland’s prosecutors. That is not justice. In a modern Scotland, it is indecent.

If our ministers faced with such a catalogue of inaction and incompetence, cannot bring themselves to resign, they must resign themselves to do more.

They must work tirelessly for families shattered by loss and grief, for families like Sheku Bayoh’s, for families like Milly Main’s, and for every Scot with a decent bone in their body.

Waiting five years for justice is not justice at all. In a modern Scotland, it is indecent