Jo Farrell became Scotland’s top police officer in October, becoming the first woman to hold the role following Sir Iain Livingstone’s retirement earlier this year.

Now she has had to issue an apology – just weeks into the role – after she used a police vehicle to take her home to Northumberland from Edinburgh when the train she had planned to travel on was cancelled.

Ms Farrell said: “I requested my office to arrange for a car to drive me home to the Northumberland area after work.

“I was unable to complete the journey by train as services had been cancelled and my own police vehicle was unavailable.

“I have apologised for this error of judgement.”

This sounds to me like good thinking rather than bad judgment on the part of the Chief Constable.

The Pharisees who are doing all the shouting about this are no more than clypes seeking a bit of publicity for  themselves.

It just so happens that something similar is going on with the Health Secretary Michael Matheson, pictured right,  over the “scandal” of his sons having tuned his I pad into a football match without telling him at their holiday home in Morocco last Christmas and New Year.

And that a greedy telecoms company – well, they are all greedy, are they not? – pounced on a mistake that would have been obvious to them and charged his parliamentary account more than £11,000 when he was questioned about the matter.

It seems he found difficulty in explaining it away for the simple reason that he didn’t know how it had come about although he stated generously that he would make a contribution towards it. He came up with three grand. That’s a lot of money.

But salivating in the corridors of Holyrood were then usual suspects only too ready to “monster” him.

To plunge their teeth into him. To visit the sins of the sons on their father.

They wanted him sacked from the ministerial post he seemingly carries out better than his predecessors in the post, who include First Minister Humza Yousaf and Nicola  “it wisnae me” Sturgeon, who have presided over so much chaos in NHS Scotland and cost the taxpayers so much money.

And the hang ’em, flog ’em and boil ’em in oil brigade who were right behind them, whitened sepulchres and plaster saints all of them, most of whom should be thinking there but for the grace of God go I.

I thought it remarkable that the public criticism of the Chief Constable came from a journalist who became a politician since journalism is a trade notorious for expenses fiddling.

Filling in their expenses form was said to be the most imaginative piece of fiction they did in a week in the office.

So-called watchdogs at the Scottish Police Authority (SPA) confirmed chairman Martyn Evans had raised the matter with Ms Farrell and she apologised for having having “borrowed” the police car and the driver for a few hours.

The Health Secretary too has apologised. Not only that but he made a significant contribution towards the cost off the telecoms bill his boys ran up.

Although it has not been established that they did run it up since it could have been yet another blunder by the kind of telecoms people who overcharge their customers on a daily basis.

Respect is the element missing in these matters. Do the naysayers in the Scottish Parliament really believe that their colleagues are cheats and liars?

And who wouldn’t have offered the new Chief Constable a lift home in that storm, knowing that she had no home to go to in Edinburgh and that she had recently taken so much of her own time working all hours in her new post making preparations to repair the deficiencies in Police Scotland, which was a misconceived idea from Nicola Sturgeon and her Nationalist cronies in the first place.

Would the first begrudger who thought they were doing a public service by tipping off the SUN about the Chief Constable’s lift home, and those others still howling at the moon for the Health Secretary’s resignation, ever get a life, stop moaning and complaining, and get on with the job of making Scotland great again?

And would the Scottish Parliament take a leaf out of the book of the Scottish Police Authority by closing down comment on this and bringing this matter to a swift end?

• The Sunday Mail reported this morning that Mr Matheson has a holiday home on the Isle of Skye. He doesn’t make a profit from renting it out according to an entry in the MSPs’ register of interests at Holyrood. Additionally, they have reported that he attended as a guest two cup finals in which Celtic were involved.