Wings Over Scotland

More than three months have passed since Alex Salmond launched a lawsuit against the Scottish Government for its grotesquely botched handling of false allegations of sexual misconduct against him.

With Scottish politics currently in a completely moribund state, as the party of government disintegrates shambolically and the main opposition party keeps its mouth shut and its head down in an attempt to not destroy its newfound and extremely fragile status as a credible alternative, one might imagine that the political media would be desperate for the case to get under way and provide them with some juicy content.

So it’s slightly surprising that none of them has noticed the latest development.

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Alert readers will have noticed some interesting stories recently.

The Scottish Sun’s scoop on Monday evening – a few hours after we tweeted information from a very well-informed source about the Crown Office’s continued attempts to obstruct Police Scotland’s investigation into the SNP’s finances – would have come as no great surprise to Wings readers already familiar with the way the unaccountable, unanswerable body operates.

But we’ve subsequently noticed a number of attempts by various people to muddy the story by talking about a “draft” warrant request, implying that there was no improper delay. So we checked up, and thought you might like to know how the process works.

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So we were a couple of days early on this one.

In fairness to the Scottish press, it’s had a lot of stuff to fit in recently.

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This is the SNP members’ website tonight.

Looks like anything goes, folks.

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Every Yes supporter in Scotland dreamed of having our own Mandela to lead us to freedom. Unfortunately, we wanted Nelson but we got Winnie instead.

And now our country is no longer a safe place.

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We’re sure most alert readers will by now have seen the purported “leak” of the actual results of the SNP’s mystery-shrouded regional list selections. While the figures are highly believable, we haven’t yet been able to obtain any corroboration for them being anything other than a plausible hoax.

The SNP has of course denied them, but they also denied our recent leak from the party’s draft manifesto and we know for sure that that was real. The trouble with lying all the time is that nobody believes you even if you occasionally tell the the truth.

Of course, there would be an easy way to prove the numbers were a fake – release the real ones, which is in any case the most fundamental element of transparency in a democratic election. And whatever they are could hardly be any more embarrassing than the rumours, which have candidates topping the list (and likely to get seats) on a shocking 2.4% of the vote.

Heavens, even Annie Wells managed 8.6%.

But there’s a much more important reason the SNP will never release the real results.

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We thought readers might like a look at the draft SNP manifesto introduction (written, we hear, by Mike Russell) that’s currently being passed around branches for comment.

So here it is.

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Alert readers will undoubtedly have noticed a number of, to put it mildly, explosive-sounding developments this evening regarding the ongoing inquiries into the Scottish Government’s misconduct over false allegations against Alex Salmond.

Several reports have quoted extracts from the former First Minister’s submission to James Hamilton, who’s investigating the current First Minister over possible breaches of the Ministerial Code relating to the investigation of the allegations.

The submission – delivered on Mr Salmond’s birthday – has been widely leaked to the media but only selectively reported, and like others Wings has obtained a full copy.

We are advised that its contents do not contain anything which breaches or potentially breaches Lady Dorrian’s court order protecting the identities of the complainers against Mr Salmond, and as such there are no barriers to us publishing the entire document in the public interest, because its contents make some extremely grave and disturbing allegations against the current First Minister.

We therefore do so below.

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As more and more information fights its way past the Scottish Government’s bouncers into the public domain, and the First Minister’s continued dogged insistence that she knew nothing about the false allegations against Alex Salmond until April 2018 looks more and more ridiculous, lots of things still aren’t clear.

One of them, of course, is who leaked the story to Davie Clegg of the Daily Record in August of that year, when the whole thing should have been confidential and passing it to the press was an unambiguously malicious and criminal act.

(The Information Commissioner’s Office investigated the leak but were sadly unable to locate any evidence. A second investigation is currently in progress.)

So let’s see what we know.

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Over the last year or so, this site’s commentary on matters surrounding the attempted imprisonment of Alex Salmond over false allegations of sexual abuse has attracted a considerable amount of ire from a section of the readership, demanding “proof” of the involvement of the current First Minister.

Such proof has been impossible to provide for legal reasons. But it’s always been the case that the truth could only be suppressed for so long, and events in recent days have brought the first chinks of light through the wall of smoke and mirrors the Scottish Government has been attempting to surround the matter with.

So in our very lightest and softest shoes, let’s tiptoe through what is both a labyrinth and a minefield and see if we can make some of it a little easier to understand.

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Readers, have you ever noticed how the letters pages of Scottish newspapers are full every day of the same names, a clutch of a couple of dozen super-hardcore frothing ultra-Yoons tirelessly and reflexively raging against independence, the SNP and pretty much anything without a Union Jack on it?

Have you ever found yourself thinking it must be some sort of co-ordinated group that gets together, plans topics in advance then writes in backing each other up, to create an illusion of speaking for a wide cross-section of society, before dismissing that idea as a daft paranoid conspiracy and getting on with your day?

Because we thought that too, until an alert reader infiltrated it.

Our very favourite bit is “we must not advertise the existence of the group. It can be mentioned verbally, in safe environment, that some people share letters/encourage each other, but anything more risks editors discriminating, nationalists reacting, and this diverse group being portrayed as a monolithic campaign”.

Probably don’t put it in an email, then. But your secret’s safe with us, lads.