Bath, readers – which some of you may be aware isn’t even in Scotland – is a pretty darn pleasant place to while away your days, all things considered. Packed from head to foot with gorgeous Georgian architecture the colour of set honey and nestling amid a clutch of lush green hills, it’s like a miniature version of Edinburgh in sandstone.
It’s big enough to be lively and have plenty of culture, with theatres and museums and venues and galleries and cinemas both multiplex and arthouse. Countless movies and TV shows have been shot here, from contemporary episodes of Roald Dahl’s Tales Of The Unexpected to a whole string of period costume dramas, and the “Little Theatre” cinema seen in Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr Fox” is based on our real one.
It’s also very handily placed. Situated on or close to two main railway lines, you can hop on a train and ten minutes later be in Bristol, an ugly and unlikeable but still vibrant and eventful city. 30 minutes takes you to the classic English seaside resort of Weston-super-Mare, or the unfairly-maligned Swindon. Stretch it to an hour and you can be in a whole other country, in Barry Island or the impressive Welsh capital of Cardiff. 90 minutes gets you to London, and a couple of hours will see you in any of a bunch of places on the south coast (my personal favourite is Weymouth), all direct. You can even get straight to Edinburgh or Glasgow with only a single change of train at Bristol.
Having a car unlocks lots of other magical and fascinating places that are well within daytrip distance, like the ghost villages of Tyneham and Imber, the striking Cheddar Gorge, Longleat safari park and the world’s greatest museum ever, the batshit-mad Oakham Treasures, as well as Lacock, a quaint 13th-century townlet entirely owned by the National Trust, which gets invaded by Nazis every year.
(If you love a stately or historic home, you can join the Trust and visit somewhere new within 40 minutes’ drive just about every week for a year. Then you run out.)
It’s the second sunny day in Bath since last September, readers, so we’re going to go out and feed the wildlife, but we thought you’d enjoy a quick roundup of some of the distractions the Sturgeonite elements of the Scottish media are punting today in a desperate attempt to avoid dealing with the devastating contents of Alex Salmond’s epic evidence session at the Fabiani inquiry on Friday.
Iain Lawson’s fine blog today reveals that Nicola Sturgeon has already taken it upon herself to answer Jim Sillars’ complaint from Thursday – which was sent to Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans, not to the First Minister – about her breaking the Ministerial Code by casting doubt on the jury’s verdicts in the Alex Salmond trial.
It’s certainly an innovative approach to justice – we presume that if we were to murder someone tomorrow the police would now simply forward the allegations to us and allow us to find ourselves not guilty without any external input.
But it was the precise nature of Nicola Sturgeon’s self-acquittal that really left us with an uneasy feeling about the current state of Scotland.
In the end the four-hour session ran for almost exactly six hours, and Alex Salmond looked like he could have done another six standing on his head. Now, it would be only fair to acknowledge that this site was on his side before the start, but by any rational objective assessment the former First Minister delivered the performance of his life.
(We use “performance” there in the Lionel Messi sense, not the Laurence Olivier one.)
The contrast with every other witness who’s appeared before the committee was night and day. With Salmond there was no evasion, no hesitation, no forgetting, no “I’ll get back to you on that in writing”. (We recommend the Twitter feed of Scotland Speaks for some choice clips.)
Every question was answered fully, directly, fluently and immediately, without recourse to notes, and the content was never less than devastating from his opening statement to the final surprise bombshell. We were exhausted just watching it.
His words, tone and body language all absolutely radiated candour, solemnity and honesty. When the SNP members tried to trip him up on some arcane point or other, he was on them like an extremely calm hawk, methodically tearing their assertions to ribbons with the correct fact or quote at his fingertips, and ice in his veins.
Salmond came across like a man who’d been planning this day for almost a year and wasn’t going to mess it up. And he didn’t. Heavens, how he didn’t.
From 12.30 this afternoon, Alex Salmond will attempt to tell the people of Scotland the truth about what happened to him in the last two years – a grave injustice which saw an innocent man have his reputation dragged through the gutter, be placed under incredible personal stress, be left greatly impoverished by proving his innocence, and then have the jury’s verdict endlessly traduced by the media and a gang of criminal conspirators protected from the consequences of their lies by lifelong anonymity.
His job will be a difficult one. Every single person in the room will be bitterly hostile to him – the four Unionist committee members because he’s Alex Salmond, and the others because he represents a deadly threat to the First Minister.
The inquiry’s convener – a woman sacked by Salmond years ago – will attempt to prevent him from presenting large swathes of evidence, despite having made him swear to tell “the whole truth”. The SNP members will try to run down the four-hour session with questions designed to only deflect from the real issue – the actions and behaviour of the Scottish Government. Andy Wightman will probably just cry.
We’ll be extremely surprised if there aren’t some attempts to slyly re-try Mr Salmond and paint him as a guilty man who cheated justice, and to drag up salacious details of the allegations in an effort to smear him in front of the cameras.
We believe Alex Salmond will be more than equal to the task.
When the Faculty Of Advocates – the most senior body of lawyers/QCs in the country – is handing out barely-veiled smackdowns like this to the First Minister, then you know you’re in some pretty uncharted jungle.
Is the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service of Scotland institutionally corrupt? I don’t believe so, but it’s certainly a troubled organisation.
The cost and reputational damage to it from the Rangers FC case are of a magnitude never seen before, and the actions in the Alex Salmond case and related actions by the Lord Advocate and Crown Agent have called its independence into question.
There must be structural change and individuals must be held to account.
I had hoped that Stewart Stevenson, the new National Secretary and convener of the Conferences Committee, would be similarly inclined.
In summary, my endeavours have been ignored.
In the three months since our election (supposedly more than halfway towards a spring conference), and despite repeated emails, documents and requests for meetings, the Conferences Committee has never been convened.
As a result I have resigned from both the committee and the SNP, and the reasons for my doing so are outlined below.
For the record, we thought you should see what the Scottish Parliament considers to be the appropriate treatment of an “Urgent Question”.
For a little over eight minutes, the Lord Advocate was allowed to ignore and avoid a series of questions put to him regarding the abjectly corrupt Crown Office’s recent interference with the work of the Fabiani inquiry by redacting evidence which in no way identified anyone as a complainer in the trial of Alex Salmond.
By the committee’s rules, if it’s not on the committee website then it doesn’t exist, and the redacted parts are – belatedly – no longer on the website. (As far as we can make out the unredacted version was finally removed around midnight last night.)
Farcically, she also denied even knowing that this question from James Matthews of Sky News was about Geoff Aberdein, who is the subject of all the redacted sections, which are all about the meeting Matthews was asking her about.
The First Minister is a liar and has all but given up on even the most token pretence otherwise. She is a disgrace to Scotland.
Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “Inspirational stuff, NC. Do The Collected Speeches Of Nicola Sturgeon next.” Jul 13, 00:30
Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “Stick around, Dave, all will become clear. OK, maybe not the posts in Scots.” Jul 13, 00:10
Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “Ah kent ye’d say that, Alf. Remarkable, no?, hoo muckle fowk pick up ootside o formal education when they’re interested…” Jul 13, 00:07
Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “Epic fail there, YL Sah! Mind and keep your UK passport and your UK driving license safe. It’s the “logical”…” Jul 13, 00:02
Alf Baird on Just Good Friends: “A ‘mediocre meritocracy’ is the inevitable reality within a colonial society (Memmi), much as we see. But this is not…” Jul 12, 22:28
Alf Baird on Just Good Friends: “” if Scotland is still in large parts a Scots speaking nation, there’s precious little evidence for it on here.”…” Jul 12, 22:20
Shug on Just Good Friends: “It is very telling that the BBC is not making hay with this material. They will when that are ready…” Jul 12, 21:25
Northcode on Just Good Friends: “This infernal heat has driven me mad and in my madness I’ve been forced to transcribe the first few paragraphs…” Jul 12, 20:33
agent x on Just Good Friends: “http://www.manifestoforindependence link to petition.parliament.uk those links don’t work for me.” Jul 12, 19:47
Young Lochinvar on Just Good Friends: “In reply to P3nisbreath McP3nisbreathface @ 4.04pm The sexual perversion thing is all yours, just trawl back through your posts,…” Jul 12, 17:25
Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “Alf, if Scotland is still in large parts a Scots speaking nation, there’s precious little evidence for it on here.…” Jul 12, 16:11
Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “If “logically” the UK no longer exists, you’ll have burned your passport and your driving license. Looking forwards to your…” Jul 12, 16:04
Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “Not too bad a post, NC, but it lacks fundamental clarity. Which union are you discussing? The UK or the…” Jul 12, 15:59
Young Lochinvar on Just Good Friends: “Good post NC. One small correction, the construct was first called Great Britain. The United Kingdom came along later when…” Jul 12, 15:34
sarah on Just Good Friends: “A lot of us do, Dan – just not speaking up much nowadays. I shall mention, again, several things that…” Jul 12, 13:49
TURABDIN on Just Good Friends: “PILE it HIGH, sell it cheap in POUNDLAND. https://archive.is/VLCVd Everything must go!” Jul 12, 13:23
TURABDIN on Just Good Friends: “FALSE FRIENDS. DEMOCRATIC SYSTEMS fail when people with ability don’t have authority and people with authority don’t have ability What…” Jul 12, 12:45
Aidan on Just Good Friends: “Have you done any polling on how important the issue of the formation of the union in 1707 is to…” Jul 12, 12:13
Alf Baird on Just Good Friends: “Yes Hatey, if we “look at voting preferences against geographical areas in recent times” what we find is that the…” Jul 12, 11:49
Dan on Just Good Friends: “Things going on in Scotland… (Not that anybody here seems to give a shit) https://www.isp.scot/july-5th-july-11th-2025/” Jul 12, 10:23
Northcode on Just Good Friends: ““It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t…” Jul 12, 09:52
Northcode on Just Good Friends: “Naebody wid hae thocht hit possible tae uise ersecheeks tae blaff oot Inglis lees oan a keybuird an hae whit…” Jul 12, 08:38
James Cheyne on Too Tight To Mention: “Alf Baird. I apologise for late reply as busy thinking about re- locating.” Jul 12, 08:33
James Cheyne on Too Tight To Mention: “Alf Baird. ” Thus the old Scottish parliament members became [English parliamentarians]when they entered the continued English Westminster parliament resting…” Jul 12, 08:30
DaveL on Just Good Friends: “What the fuck are you talking about? What’s a ‘Da Dews’? I’ve never heard of it. While I’m here you…” Jul 12, 00:28
Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “I was confident you were going to morph onto Da Dews there, Confused, but you didn’t. Well done you. Bit…” Jul 11, 23:55
Hatey McHateface on Just Good Friends: “@Alf I must hae colonised masel! Partition is a possibility if the kind of eejits currently ruling the roost at…” Jul 11, 23:45