Nothing exists in isolation
Posted on
March 04, 2013 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
Whenever we put up one of our very occasional football-related posts, a few readers grump about their apparent lack of connection to the wider sphere of Scottish politics. So we couldn’t help but notice this comment lurking unassumingly in the middle of a Davie Provan rant in today’s Scottish Sun about the Rangers cheating verdict:
“Despite the £250,000 non-disclosure fine, Nimmo Smith ruled that Rangers had gained ‘no sporting advantage’ through their use of EBTs. If that’s good enough for the man who tried the Lockerbie bomber, it should be good enough for the rest of us.”
We think that’s what they used to call “friendly fire”.
Blue on Blue….
Nimmo-Smith based his findings on the assumption that the EBTs were legal (which they are at this point). I can’t help thinking he’s made an error by placing so much emphasis on, ‘competitive advantage’. If HMRC eventually win the ‘big tax case’ then it would totally discredit his assumptions. Although unsatisfactory, it may have been better to suspend this hearing until the tax matters have been settled.
Oh then that’s the manny is it? I didn’t realise it was the same guy. Anybody who could contrive to not see the evidence available at the Camp Zeist trial was a stick-on to do this neat little job too. One calculated ‘mistake’ is bad enough, a repeat performance on another issue might, even to the myopic, suggest something other. What else has crossed that desk?
That would also be the Mr Provan who, like, on occasion, Messers Nicholas, MacLeod and Burley, has obviously been told his second career in footy punditry requires him to disavow any previous existence in a Celtic jersey – to the point of being ludicrously anti-Sellick in his comments and observations.
Funny, the likes of Derek Johnstone and Mark Hately haven’t felt so obliged …
OT .. how can an email address be added to “Notify me of new posts by email” without adding a comment to an article?
I note you have RSS, but many people have no idea about that and don’t use it.
It would be handy if you could have a form which allowed readers to send a link and a message to someone they think would enjoy WingsOverScotland updates via email.
The person receiving the email should be able to join if they wished.
I feel like I’m a day late and a dollar short here. When I read the Rev’s article about the Nimmo-Smith findings I was irresistably reminded of the Lockerbie judgement. The “this is what we want to conclude so we’ll conclude it anyway” format was positively spooky in its resemblance. I even said so in the comments.
I actually had no idea Nimmo-Smith was one of the five Lockerbie appeal judges. I’m sorry, I can’t remember everything. The appeal judgement is even more surreal that the actual trial judgement. It literally beggars belief in places.
My favourite is the part where they discuss the slight difficulty that months and years of intensive investigation on the island of Malta had utterly failed to find the slightest trace of the bomb on the island, or any way by which it could possibly have been smuggled on board flight KM180 at Malta airport, which is what Megrahi was convicted of doing. During the appeal proceedings, Lord Osborne said,
“But is it not a different matter to say, on the basis of these features of the situation, that the bomb passed through Luqa Airport [Malta], standing that there is considerable and quite convincing evidence that that could not have happened.”
This taken from the report of the UN observer to the trial, Prof. Hans Kochler.
link to i-p-o.org
This report bears reading. Kochler was and is absolutely outraged about what he witnessed at Camp Zeist.
Then when that point is dealt with in the actual judgement all the doubts are dismissed in one sentence. “It was to be remembered that the Crown case was that the security measures at Luqa had been deliberately circumvented by a criminal act.”
What the hell was that supposed to mean? The Crown had no evidence at all that that had been done, and there was a lot of evidence to show it simply didn’t happen at all. But that’s OK, because it was done by a “criminal act”, so we can just assert it? What sort of law is this? Anyone can be accused of anything at all, with no evidence, and convicted on the grounds that, well, it is alleged it was done by a criminal act?
I think that throwaway line by Dave Provan in the above post highlights something very fundamentally rotten in the Scottish criminal justice system. We have judges and indeed an entire establishment that proceed according to what is most expedient, rather than by any criteria of truth or justice. Ask Shirley McKie.
I’m still up to my neck analysing the raw data of the Lockerbie evidence, and the more I see the worse it gets. An investigation that went off the rails in the first few weeks after the disaster. Complacency, ego, vested interests, lack of communication and sheer utter lack of analytial skills combine to make a perfect storm of a screw-up.
This is what we are currently stuck with. And don’t blame the Americans or the CIA, this is a home-grown Scottish clusterfuck. Maybe it’s a consequence of having had a legal system without a legislature for nearly 300 years, I don’t know. But the Scottish legal establishment makes the Augean Stables look like the winner of the prize for farmyard hygiene.
Nimmo-Smith is just one turd in the muck-heap.
A lot of loonies out there still think Megrahi was guilty no matter the welter of evidence proving that quite possibly he wasn’t.
The trial of Megrahi was also called the biggest stain on the probity of the Scottish Justice system, or something like that?
The SPL employed ‘Nimmo the Dimmo’ to deliver the coup de grace, but blow me down if he didn’t deliver a reasonably just verdict. Perhaps the presence of two English based QC’s persuaded him to see the error of his ways?
Provan’s ‘rant’ demonstrates the paucity of talent to be found in Scottish sporting journalism. He probably didn’t know how crass the comment was?
My fire is also still ‘friendly’ ………..amused of Orkney
The Scottish “establishment”, legal, MSM, or otherwise, needs gutted post-independence. Root and branch – a parochial cesspit beholden to a larger pimp of a sclerotic, gangster “state”.
Might the football branch of this apparatus, the contemporary opiate for the sovereign people of Scotland (Alba), be among the many first things to be cleansed from our cultic Augean stables?
Jamie Saxt may have been a malevolent, shitty, little gobshite; but, perhaps, his thwarted desire to ban this excuse for mass, tribal animalism (pace, animals), might, at last, the light of sanity and day (along with the sub-par legal establishment et al sent packing).
If Rangers didn’t gain any ‘competitive advantage’ after spending all those millions, the only verdict can be that the establishment’s favourite club’s management was even worse than we thought before… Maybe that’s the friendly fire?
I like most readers on here am a Nationalist.
Also like most of you on here I have been bombarded by Unionist trolls on sites like the Scotsman.
They refuse to listen to any contrary argument to their position of Westminster good ,anything Scotland ,anything SNP very bad attitude.
No matter the reasoned argument you put forward all you receive in the way of a reply is personal abuse or abuse about the FM or his Deputy.
I am also a Bluenose ,and have been all of my life (in my 60s now)
The same type of hatred and bile is spewed by those that hate Rangers.
All rationality goes out of the window and the same type of behaviour that we find so distasteful in Unionists comes to the fore.
It is also an observation of mine that stereotyping is a mistake made by Nationalists nad Unionists alike.
The largest bastion to British Unionism is not Ibrox but Parkhead.
Irish Nationalists on a Saturday and die hard Britnats every other day of the week.
Indeed Parkhead has more British MPS sitting in their stands of a Saturday than any other British Football Club.
To my knowledge Rangers have never had a British Cabinet Minister on their board let alone as their chairman.
Finally for those that like a conspiracy theory ,how about this one.isn’t it coincidental that Rangers were only team in Uk hounded and investigted like this?
No coincidence that a British Cabinet Minister was Chairman of that cheeky little Irish Club at the same time it all began?
@Rod Mac.
Good points,
I thought it often enough, Rangers tax arrangements were dodgy but so are the tax arrangements of the BBC , the banks, other multinational corporations, rich connected individuals the list goes on and yet Rangers is singled out for special punishments and now, with Green in, favours from bent judges.
It’s the malign British state at work. What of Mr Green? An Englishman who seems to want to stir up unionist, loyalist resentment and pointedly reaches out to Rangers supporters in Northern Ireland. It wouldn’t surprise me if it turns out he’s being handled by Mi6 to try to bring that little bit of Northern Ireland that no-one wants, you know, the running around in the streets with petrol bombs (and that bloody flag), into Scotland. Come in Mr Green you’ve been rumbled.
Ghengis , and I thought I was the only one with a conspiracy theory.
I just find it more than coincidental that Rangers were singled out for special investigation when a member of HM Government is Chairman of CFC.
The irony being that CFC the “Irish Nationalists ” is polluted with die hard British Unionists.