Wings Over Scotland

James Hamilton is either a crook, a coward or an idiot.

There is no other viable explanation for this:

There is NO DOUBT OR DISPUTE WHATSOEVER that the Scottish Parliament was misled when Nicola Sturgeon told it that the first she knew of allegations against Alex Salmond was on 2 April 2018. That is a material fact accepted by all sides, because everyone including the First Minister herself now accepts she was told on 29 March.

The question of whether Parliament was misled deliberately, or merely as the result of a vastly implausible slip of Nicola Sturgeon’s memory, is another matter entirely. But that it was misled – told something that was untrue – is not up for debate.

The Fabiani inquiry, which is stuffed with SNP stooges and has been starved of most key evidence, nevertheless still managed to observe that Parliament had been misled, although it made no judgement on whether it happened knowingly or inadvertently.

For James Hamilton, armed with far more evidence, to conclude not merely that the misleading had been accidental but that it didn’t happen at all, is a lie so barefaced as to be breathtaking, and so farcical as to defy any possibility of honest belief.

Especially as we’re not allowed to know how he arrived at that decision:

Much else in his report is bizarre. But that one paragraph alone destroys its credibility utterly and forever. And unfortunately that means that Scotland is lost. Independence is over. All is destroyed.

We had feared, as the very worst case, a fudge in which Hamilton would find, like the Holyrood committee, that Parliament had been misled but would bottle out of saying whether it had been deliberate or not. This conclusion is so utterly mad and ludicrous that it honestly never even entered our consideration as a possibility.

Readers can choose which of the three causes they find most believable, but at the end of the day it just doesn’t matter. Our country is a banana republic, a nation that North Koreans point at and laugh. To be honest, readers, if we were you we’d get out while we still could.

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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Word reaches us from this afternoon’s meeting of the SNP NEC that three members of the Finance & Audit Committee (ie about half of it, we believe) have resigned on the basis that they’re responsible for the party’s finances but are unable to carry out their duties as chief executive Peter Murrell refuses to give them access to the books.

We don’t yet know if it’s specifically in relation to the missing £600,000 in “ringfenced” fundraiser money that was supposed to have been earmarked for use in a second independence referendum campaign but which cannot be identified in the records of a party whose last published accounts showed only £97,000 in the bank.

(The SNP infamously claimed it was “woven through” the figures. Wings has received no reply to the letter we sent on behalf of some concerned members to party treasurer Douglas Chapman on the subject more than two months ago.)

We gather that the three are Frank Ross (a qualified chartered accountant and current Lord Provost of Edinburgh Council), Livingston company director Cynthia Guthrie and the Mid Scotland & Fife NEC member Allison Graham.

We’ll bring you more on this breaking story as we get it.

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It is our grave duty to inform readers that Kenny “Kezia Dugdale will be the next First Minister” Farquharson of The Times has done a tweet again.

It’s a curious thing to say before either of the inquiries has delivered its report. The only people who are asserting that Sturgeon has been somehow cleared of involvement in a conspiracy are the SNP, and even their own voters are split down the middle on it.

But let’s just check on how big the SNP are winning right now.

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This isn’t quite yet a smoking gun, more of a starter’s pistol. But it’s already more than we’d expected from the Holyrood inquiry – an unambiguous statement that the First Minister misled it (and therefore Parliament) under oath.

What’s still missing at this stage is the word “knowingly”, which would turn it from a serious but non-fatal misdemeanour into a resignation offence. But nor, yet, is there any sight of the word “inadvertently”.

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When Nicola Sturgeon is finally held to account for the charred, twisted and shattered ruins that she’s made of Scottish political and civic society in her desperate attempts to save her own neck, the complete discrediting of ostensible support organisations for victims of rape will be near the very top of the charge sheet.

But before we talk about that you really need to read this.

Because if you live in Scotland you can only rationally be one of two things at this moment in history: (a) terrified, or (b) an idiot.

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We’ve received information this afternoon with regard to Nicola Sturgeon’s statements at today’s FMQs, which appear to have been wholly and disturbingly dishonest.

The quote below is from an email sent today by SNP communications chief Murray Foote, briefing ministers and MSPs on the official Scottish Government line, which is what the First Minister told the chamber in response to a question from Ruth Davidson.

We pass the true facts on to you below.

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The primary character trait of Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP is not listening.

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David Davis speaking in Parliament this evening.

The boy’s a timebomb.

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The Dunlop Review into the Scottish Government’s conduct of an investigation of false harassment allegations against Alex Salmond was published today. It is an extremely damning report, which basically boils down to “You got absolutely everything possible wrong, never do anything that way again, you incompetent idiots”.

You can check out the whole 78-page document here, but we’ve included its 10 key recommendations as to how such investigations should be carried out in future, along with a note of whether these recommendations were followed in the Salmond case.

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…simply don’t ask the question.

And the problem will magically go away.

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