Humza Yousaf has not had his problems to seek in recent times.
The latest political disaster to befall him was the resignation of his health secretary, Michael Matheson – someone he had described as “a man of integrity and honesty” even after Mr Matheson had admitted lying.
Read more: Humza Yousaf staked his own reputation on the 'disgraced' Matheson
Today, one of our readers pens an excoriating critique of the First Minister – and explains why he regards him as a “fence post tortoise”.
Peter Wright of West Kilbride writes:
"Scottish politics is now in a situation where I no longer know if I should write to Letters to the Editor or to The Diary.
"We have watched this First Minister go from one comical calamity to another and now he is inflicting his own incompetence upon himself.
"He first came to the notice of the electorate when he crashed his scooter in the Parliament corridors in the manner of Coco the clown.
"He was in charge of Transport Scotland as the ferries debacle built up steam, A9 dualling was sidelined and the A83 ignored in the hope that it would go away. In health he presided over a Scottish NHS which resulted in him having to appoint an 'NHS Recovery Minister' on becoming First Minister.
"As First Minister he has snuggled up to the Turkish President whose record on human rights is abominable, indeed the treatment of Kurds is generally viewed as ethnic cleansing and has recently extended this to Kurds in Syria and Iraq.
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"Last week he claimed he could have been the chairman of Celtic Football Club as his Health Secretary, whom he backed wholeheartedly as 'a man of honesty and integrity', resigned after claiming £11,000 in expenses used by his family to watch Celtic playing live whilst on holiday in Morocco, the handling of which turned out to be a possible breach of the Ministerial Code. You could not make this up.
"Enough of Mr Yousaf's CV: in a past employment we had a department manager of similar talent whom our American VP described as 'a fence post tortoise'.
"He explained: 'When you’re driving along a country road and you come across a fence post with a tortoise balanced on top, that’s called a fence post tortoise.
"'You know he didn’t get up there by himself, he definitely doesn’t belong up there, he doesn’t know what to do while he is up there, and you just have to wonder what kind of idiot put him up there in the first place.'
"I would add that there never seems to be any interest in removing the fence post tortoise, its curiosity is a matter of interest, amusement and bemusement. The usual outcome is that it is blown off by strong headwinds and walks slowly into the distance."
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