We’re still retired, but this just can’t go unremarked.
This is absolute banana-republic stuff. Even before you get into any of the specifics of the case, it’s simply not the Crown Office’s job to interfere with a police investigation by telling them who they may and may not interview under caution.
Scottish justice is extremely seriously compromised.
15 years ago this week (today if you’re counting strictly by date, Thursday if you want to go with election days) the SNP came to power in Scotland for the first time ever. The media operating in Scotland is full of retrospectives and polls on the period, but as usual they’ve missed the real story, as a reader pointed out to us a few days ago.
So for old times’ sake, let’s do their job properly for them one more time.
To: Humza Yousaf (Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care), Shirley-Anne Somerville (Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills) and Clare Haughey (Minister for Children and Young People)
28 April 2022
Dear Mr Yousaf, Ms Somerville and Ms Haughey,
Cass Interim Report: Independent review of gender identity services for children and young people – Implications for Scotland
The trans-sex-role-stereotype movement has put what would have been concealed and kept behind closed doors on centre stage. This is why normal, decent men look aghast at other men’s behaviour while many women sigh with an ‘oh, this again’.
The woke bloke contempt for women is clear and abusive behaviours are on full display. Reading through Lundy Bancroft’s pivotal work “Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men”, the full cast of characters is present on Twitter, in the news and in our political parties and institutions.
Should disabled children be used as props to make men with sexual fetishes feel better? It doesn’t seem like a difficult question, does it?
The above quote is part of the heartfelt plea of a mother of a disabled daughter. We know that women and girls are vulnerable to male sexual violence, we know that men commit 98% of sex offences and we know that disabled children are three to four times more likely to experience abuse.
We just don’t seem to care.
For many years now, whenever I’ve done one of those “Which Political Party Should You Be In?” online quiz things, it always says that I’m a Green, which is weird because I really hate cyclists. Nevertheless, it was still the result when I did one most recently, just last month.
So I decided that for the first time in my life it was finally time to join a political party.
Craig Murray’s speech to the Alba conference yesterday, delivered by his wife Nadira.
We had a phonecall this morning from HMP Edinburgh, asking us to briefly relapse our retirement again to put out a request on behalf of Prisoner 157095 – better known to you and us as our friend Craig Murray, the only person on the planet to now or ever have been imprisoned for the undefined and extremely selectively prosecuted pseudo-crime of “jigsaw identification”.
Craig is doing okay a week and a half into his eight-month sentence in Saughton and is being treated well by both staff and inmates, but was recently informed that he is not eligible for early release on an electronic tag (which might have seen him out by the end of next month) because he’s a civil prisoner rather than a criminal one.
Ironically, if he’d murdered, beaten or raped someone he WOULD have been eligible for early liberty under the scheme, but because he’s a frail elderly man in jail for a non-violent quasi-crime and represents no possible earthly menace to anyone, he’ll be locked up for months longer.
What Craig IS finding difficult is being locked up alone in a 12′-by-8′ cell for 22.5 hours a day with very little to do, and he would greatly appreciate if people could take a moment or two to write to him. Letters or cards can be sent by the traditional paper-and-pen method via this address:
157095 C Murray
G3/34 HM Prison Edinburgh
33 Stenhouse Road
Edinburgh
EH11 3LN
Alternatively you can email him via the officially-sanctioned Email A Prisoner service. This costs 40p per message, but Craig can reply and video chats are even possible (although sending photo attachments is NOT allowed at HMP Edinburgh).
Please find the time to do this if you can, readers. Don’t just think about it, actually do it, even if it’s just a card. It’s only a few minutes out of your day, but it would mean a lot to a man for who that time passes much more slowly.
Please note the below press release regarding the impending incarceration of former UK Ambassador Craig Murray
[29/07/2021; 15:52 pm; Edinburgh]
Legal precedent will be set tomorrow as Craig Murray will be the first person to be imprisoned on the charge of jigsaw identification in the UK, and indeed in the entire world. Scotland’s second most senior judge, Lady Dorrian, sentenced Murray to 8 months of incarceration following a contempt of court charge for ‘jigsaw identification’ relating to the trial against Alex Salmond.
Craig Murray was today sentenced to eight months in prison for the crime of “jigsaw identification” of one or more of the complainers in the trial of Alex Salmond, despite the supposed existence in Scotland of a presumption against prison sentences for any crimes attracting a penalty of less than 12 months.
We believe he is the first person ever to be convicted of this extremely vaguely-defined crime, and certainly the first ever sentenced to imprisonment for it.
In her judgement Lady Dorrian cited a number of factors, one of which was that the case was an extremely high-profile one which had attracted a great deal of media attention. This was of course in large part due to the actions of an “unknown” person within the Scottish Government or Scottish civil service who illegally leaked the story to David Clegg, then of the Daily Record and now editor of The Courier.
In reality everyone in Scottish politics knows who this person was and whose orders they were acting under, but even though they’re not the subject of any current court case we cannot say their names or we too would face prosecution and imprisonment. (As ever, DO NOT speculate or hint about their identities in comments. Any such comments will be deleted and the commenter banned.)
In sentencing Murray to incarceration rather than the fine which is almost always used for contempt charges, Lady Dorrian emphasised the danger of dissuading victims of crime, and especially sexual assaults, from reporting the offence if they thought they might be identified publicly.
But it must be noted that NONE of the complainers against Mr Salmond were victims of any crime. The jury heard their evidence and the defence evidence – the latter of which went almost entirely unreported except by Craig Murray – and concluded that none of them had in fact been assaulted in any way whatsoever.
Several of the complainers gave evidence which in the light of the verdict suggested a strong case for charges of perjury, but no prosecutions (or, as far as we’re aware, even investigations) have followed.
At least 10 Scottish newspaper journalists have also published information which by any empirical measure enables the identification of complainers. Two separate independently-conducted opinion polls have found that far more people claim to have identified complainers via these newspaper publications than from Craig Murray’s blog. All the articles in question remain online, yet none of their authors have even been questioned or warned by the Crown Office or police, let alone prosecuted.
(The Crown Office has for over a year refused to tell this site whether we’re allowed to quote those articles or not.)
Craig Murray is only one of a long list of people supportive of Alex Salmond to have been prosecuted in connection with his trial – others, including this site, have been threatened – while absolutely nobody hostile to Mr Salmond has faced any criminal action. The official in charge of prosecutions in Scotland, the Lord Advocate James Wolffe, is a minister of the Scottish Government directly answerable to the First Minister. We are sure these matters are unconnected.
We understand, though we have not confirmed, that Craig Murray remains at liberty for now, pending a request for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. He is an elderly man of previously impeccable character with a number of serious health conditions which could create a severe risk to his life in prison, and who clearly poses absolutely no sort of danger to society. His appeal fund is linked at the bottom of this post.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
