The most tedious question we ever get asked when we criticise the SNP – because we’ve explained it a hundred times already and none of the people asking have ever bothered to look – is “But what would YOU do to secure independence, clever-clogs?”
We’ve outlined that plan in detail repeatedly – you can read it again here if you want. But maybe we need something a bit simpler for the hard of thinking, so let’s have a go.
We just noticed a finding from the most recent opinion poll that surprisingly seems to have escaped the attention of every Scottish newspaper except the Press & Journal.
As far as we can ascertain, the P&J was alone in reporting the obviously newsworthy fact that just a quarter of Scots believe the First Minister’s ridiculous cock-and-bull story about “forgetting” the occasion when she first heard that her friend, colleague and mentor of 30 years was facing charges of trying to rape some of her other friends.
But the figures are part of a wider and depressing trend.
We’ve just received the most extraordinary Freedom Of Information response from the Scottish Government, readers. Trust us, you want to go and make yourselves a strong cup of tea before you read it. Or get this guy to bring you one.
It doesn’t take a master analyst to see that the Salmond inquiry committee is running out of patience with the Scottish Government’s endless attempts to obstruct its work.
This afternoon it issued a statement, with obvious irritation, making clear that it did not wish to see documents the Scottish Government was trying to submit to it, which the committee had not asked for, and which had previously been struck down as unlawful by Lord Pentland in the initial judicial inquiry.
The Scottish Government’s only purpose in doing so was to try to put the details of the discredited and disproven-in-court allegations into the public domain with the intention of smearing Mr Salmond yet again, and the committee has made its displeasure with the plan clear, telling the Scottish Government to abandon its intended legal action to release the documents and get on with producing the ones the inquiry HAS asked for.
But there’s a little bit more to the story than that.
We’re grumpy this morning, readers, because it’s Sunday and we were planning a long lie and then someone told us about this. It’s the First Minister appearing on the Sophy Ridge show on Sky News at around 8.45am and you need to see it.
In the light of yesterday’s revelations, we’ve sent the following Freedom Of Information request to the Central Enquiry Unit (CEU) of the Scottish Government.
Back in the 1980s there was a hit game for the ZX Spectrum home computer called Worse Things Happen At Sea. In it you play a robot whose job is to get a heavily-laden cargo ship safely to port, except that more and more disasters keep befalling it.
It springs leaks, it veers off course, the engine overheats and the robot’s power runs down, until eventually the catalogue of catastrophes overwhelms the harassed metallic custodian and the boat slides down into the murky depths.
We wonder if that feels familiar to anyone at the moment.
On 23rd March this year, after Alex Salmond was found not guilty of 13 criminal charges in the High Court, I called on the Scottish Government to set up a judge-led inquiry into the allegation that he had been the subject of a conspiracy involving the Scottish Government, which resulted in him being accused of criminal behaviour.
There’s an especially interesting post on the blog of Scottish solicitor-advocate Gordon Dangerfield at the moment, pointing out that there are no legal reasons whatever for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) to be withholding documents relating to the allegations against Alex Salmond, and indeed issuing dire threats of prosecution against him or anyone who might put them into the public domain.
(All of the blog’s coverage of the inquiry in general has been expert and revealing, and should be the first stop for readers seeking to understand proceedings.)
The items in question include the infamous WhatsApp messages exchanged by the group of people attempting to have Salmond imprisoned for crimes he didn’t commit, among them SNP chief executive Peter Murrell.
When two of Murrell’s messages were leaked recently it was front-page news in the Scottish press, and generated a huge amount of subsequent coverage. Commentators as diverse as Mandy Rhodes of Holyrood magazine and Alex Massie of the Times and Spectator have noted that while they’d initially disbelieved talk of a conspiracy, the Scottish Government’s actions have given them the opposite impression.
The message log is absolutely central to Salmond’s claim of a conspiracy against him, so the last thing that either COPFS or the leadership of the SNP wants is for it to become public knowledge. Indeed, COPFS has denied that the messages exist at all, which makes it a bit weird that the police are currently conducting a serious criminal investigation into who leaked some apparently entirely imaginary documents.
So it would be quite astonishing if they suddenly disappeared, wouldn’t it?
Readers, we can’t tell you how much we want to get back to just dissecting Scotland’s hopeless Unionist media for a living. It’s a lot more fun than what the current political circumstances are obliging us to do, so you can hardly imagine our excitement when we spotted what looked like an open goal in yesterday’s Mail On Sunday.
Our ears pricked up immediately at the sight of the words “up to”, which is invariably a sign of dodgy doings on the way, and so it proved. The article contained no solid data at all about the size of Scottish Government special advisers’ pay rises, only how many SpAds there were and which general pay bands they were in, each of which spans a wide range of between £14,000 and £23,000.
But while the Mail had spooned the sitter six feet over the crossbar – because the crude spin they’d put on it was total rubbish – there was still a loose ball just waiting to be knocked into the back of the net.
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Two Men Unalike: “JENNIFER BILEK | Who is Behind the TRANS AGENDA? (2023) Jennifer Bilek is an investigative journalist, a feminist and a…” Feb 28, 23:42
Geri on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Oi Fandan That’ll be eight of yours too then trying desperately to look relevant with zero point but word salad…we…” Feb 28, 20:56
Geri on The Tactics Of Suicide: “*scans Franchise fannies mutterings for any deep & meaningful insight, rebuttal or even a quality counter argument* FAIL! FAIL! FAIL!…” Feb 28, 20:46
lorncal on Two Men Unalike: “Three strands at work here: 1. the big corporates (all male) which have invested billions in the ‘trans’ industry -…” Feb 28, 20:30
Mark Beggan on Two Men Unalike: “Pedophile Apologists. Friends of Groomers. Corrupt to the core. Makes the SNP look like a community project with missing raffle…” Feb 28, 20:22
Aidan on The Tactics Of Suicide: “That’s 8 posts from you Alf, all of which say basically the same thing. You might get beyond rhetoric to…” Feb 28, 20:16
Cynicus on Two Men Unalike: “Don’t expect Parliament to do anything about this in a hurry. It too is virtually captured. Almost 12 % of…” Feb 28, 20:05
Mark Beggan on Two Men Unalike: “They have cut off the head of the snake. The Iranian supreme leader is no longer.” Feb 28, 19:55
Alf Baird on The Tactics Of Suicide: “For the “hard of thinking” colonialists BTL – an ye aw ken wha ye are, an so dae we -…” Feb 28, 19:45
Sven on Two Men Unalike: “Lends a whole new meaning to the term, “Labour of love”, Mark B.” Feb 28, 19:03
Mark Beggan on Two Men Unalike: “God help those who help themselves. Korea next? Why not. Zap the bastards.” Feb 28, 18:36
Young Lochinvar on Two Men Unalike: “Strike Hebes, should have read camel jockeys.” Feb 28, 18:32
Mark Beggan on Two Men Unalike: “Pride in the workplace. Does that include Rent Boys.” Feb 28, 18:32
Young Lochinvar on Two Men Unalike: “Hi tech long range warfare unleashed yet again. God help the Americans if the Hebes and Mullahs get their hands…” Feb 28, 18:28
Northcode on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Correct, Geri. I don’t think most folk will need as many as three guesses… one will probably be enough.” Feb 28, 18:18
Aidan on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Of course no mildly educated person in reasonable control of their own faculties and with a balanced state of mind…” Feb 28, 18:04
Nae Need! on Two Men Unalike: “In my head, that’s pretty much how I visualise the word: Nonce sense.” Feb 28, 18:00
Nae Need! on Two Men Unalike: “Indeed. Anarcho-tyranny doing its thing.” Feb 28, 17:57
Nae Need! on Two Men Unalike: “My thoughts too.” Feb 28, 17:56
TURABDIN on Two Men Unalike: “The fantastic world according to Lewis Caroll is preferable to the sinister world according to D Trump. Where’s the rabbit…” Feb 28, 17:52
Bilbo on The Tactics Of Suicide: “It couldn’t happen to a nicer person lol but I’m cynical that all these recent allegations of misconduct is a…” Feb 28, 17:51
Bilbo on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Thanks Cynicus for your measured reply. I don’t get involved in anything to do with events in the ME especially…” Feb 28, 17:40
Nae Idea on Two Men Unalike: “These trans people are dangerous lunatics. For the tiny number of them they are, they have caused a HELLUVA lot…” Feb 28, 16:46
SilentMajority on Two Men Unalike: “I thoroughly agree. It was wonderful watching Peterson, who very politely, showed just how biased Newman is. Definitely recommended viewing!” Feb 28, 16:30
Andy Ellis on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Geri is about as connected to the truth as Trump and Uncle Vlad and their respective acolytes. She couldn’t rip…” Feb 28, 16:26
Sean Duffy on Two Men Unalike: “Further proof that it’s all noncense! [spelling intentional].” Feb 28, 16:05
twathater on The Tactics Of Suicide: “Oh NO crivvens help me bob , I am distraught Kay with an E the STAR Kaye Adams reportedly axed…” Feb 28, 15:54
twathater on The Tactics Of Suicide: “@ Geri that wee break you had away from the arseholes has did you good , you are on fire…” Feb 28, 15:47
Curtain-Twitcher General on Two Men Unalike: “The NHS are obviously getting bribed. Around 10-15 years ago, all the NHS seemed to talk about wss “acid reflux”.…” Feb 28, 15:41
