One of them, of course, is who leaked the story to Davie Clegg of the Daily Record in August of that year, when the whole thing should have been confidential and passing it to the press was an unambiguously malicious and criminal act.
The SNP has still not provided any sort of meaningful answer, either to this site or to anyone else, over the missing £600,000 from the party’s accounts that was supposedly “ring-fenced” for a future independence campaign and not under any circumstances to be spent on normal party politics.
Enquiries from members and even elected representatives have met with a wall of silence for months, so we were more than a little surprised to be forwarded a recent email exchange in which the SNP’s chief executive had engaged in discussion on the subject with someone who isn’t even in the party.
No explanation is given for why “writer at large”Neil Mackay has suddenly conducted a “wide-ranging, exclusive interview” with “one of Britain’s most senior spy chiefs” for today’s Herald On Sunday.
As far as we’re aware absolutely nothing has happened in respect of the UK’s nuclear “deterrent” to make the subject topical. Maybe Mackay just coincidentally bumped into Sir David Omand down the pub or something.
We’ve just made an executive decision that we’re going to keep sending Freedom of Information requests to the Scottish Government until we get a straight answer to at least one of them. We expect to be occupied for some time.
We have to admit the line below takes some chutzpah to even attempt. It’s a little bit like Harold Shipman refusing to admit to all the murders he committed on the grounds that revealing the victim/patients’ personal data would break the Hippocratic Oath.
We know, for an absolute and uncontested fact, by the Scottish Government’s own admission, that the First Minister has already committed the most serious breach of the Ministerial Code possible – lying to Parliament (section 1.3c). She lied about the date she first knew of the allegations against Salmond.
From the First Minister’s own personal written testimony, we know that the reason she lied to Parliament was that she had definitely also committed another breach of the Code, either by using Scottish Parliament premises for party matters (section 1.3i) or by failing to record government business discussed therein (sections 4.22, 4.23).
So it seems a bit late to be getting all bashful about the Code now.
Last year I was booed on the stage of the SNP’s annual conference for attempting to have a debate on how we can achieve independence in the face of Boris Johnson’s unswerving refusal to agree to a referendum.
I know that it still sticks in the craw of many that an SNP representative was booed at an SNP conference for wanting to discuss how Scotland will become independent (the very idea!), but it only made me even more determined to ensure that the democratic voice of Scotland is heard.
Nobody around here has any time for the Tories. But if you believe democracy should exist then governments should have oppositions and be subject to legitimate scrutiny.
These motions were the entirely proper business (and indeed duty) of a Parliamentary opposition. In the first instance they were acting on behalf of a cross-party, SNP-led committee which has repeatedly requested evidence it hasn’t been given, and in the second instance the SNP didn’t even oppose the motion (their MSPs abstained).
Neither of today’s motions were anything to do with independence or a referendum, just the normal everyday operation of government, so what Wishart is so indignantly demanding for his party is a rubber-stamping sham Parliament in which the SNP can do whatever it wants all the time without any meaningful scrutiny or challenge – an arrangement better known in communist China or the Third Reich.
(Ironically, it’s also exactly the sort of staggeringly arrogant entitlement you’d expect from the most stereotypical Eton Tory.)
We don’t know about you, folks, but that’s not what we signed up for.
(It’s also passingly ironic that if Biden does win – as he still may well do arithmetically, although we wouldn’t necessarily want to put a lot of money on him living long enough to ever actually reach the Oval Office after all the legal wrangling/civil war is over – it’ll be on the votes of white men overturning those of women and people of colour, who all counter-intuitively and inexplicably swung to Trump.)
In a world where almost every vote seems to be on a knife-edge, it seems the woke left still hasn’t learned how criminally, recklessly, suicidally stupid it is to alienate 70% of the population to feed the endless, insatiable narcissism of 0.7% of the population.
Quite aside from anything else, that’s because the only votes you secure by doing so are the votes of people who’d never have voted for Donald Trump in a million years anyway. The only votes you’re gambling with are those of the natural left. And even if only a tiny fraction of the alienated actually turn, it can be enough to change the world.
When we first saw this video on Twitter through bleary half-asleep eyes this morning, we thought it was a well-done satire. But no. He actually put it out himself.
There can surely in history have never been anything that demeaned both the office of President and the USA as a nation more than the image halfway through that video of him prancing around in front of Air Force One.
Today America decides its future. And dear lord, what a choice it has.
Hatey McHateface on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “And on that day, everybody’s drawers will be around their ankles.” Jul 14, 00:08
ben madigan on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “I mean Scotsmen and women, wake up!!! What are we expected to believe – an individual who has been arrested…” Jul 13, 23:58
Insider on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “Question… Does Alf Baird really post his repetitive mince himself ? Or does he have a bot churning out irrelevant…” Jul 13, 23:23
willie on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “When it’s all laid out like Rev Stu has done it becomes so very clear what a barefaced liar Nicola…” Jul 13, 23:20
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Step One: “QUESTION XLI. « The sovereignty is originally and radically in the people,»” Jul 13, 22:56
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Step One: “SAMUEL RUTHERFORD: LEX REX. Summary prelude for QUESTION XLIII — « WHETHER THE KING OF SCOTLAND BE AN ABSOLUTE PRINCE,…” Jul 13, 22:36
Alf Baird on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: ““The former First Minister…is nothing but a stain on Scotland’s history.” Indeed Rev, however the fact remains that “a colonized…” Jul 13, 22:16
Mark Beggan on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “Anwar is a rat in a suit defending the pig in knickers.” Jul 13, 21:50
Old John on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “Anwar has been a radge wee man for most of his adult life. Ever since he got a bit of…” Jul 13, 21:34
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on Step One: “SAMUEL RUTHERFORD (1600-1661) Highly influential anti-monarchist Scottish constitutional thinker. « Presbyterian minister and St Andrews Professor, Samuel Rutherford in his…” Jul 13, 21:29
Fro on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “Isn’t there expression meant to be “gold-standard”. “Gold-plated’ suggests it looks authentic and real at first glance but is virtually…” Jul 13, 20:35
Ex President Xiden on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “Every terrorist who gave a no comment interview can now be said to have fully cooperated with the police. At…” Jul 13, 20:27
Hatey McHateface on Step One: “@Andy You are doing that Guardian BTL thing of assuming that the EU cries itself to sleep every night because…” Jul 13, 20:21
Innocent bystander on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “It is a joy to behold, that sharp common sense coupled with dogged persistance applied like an old fasioned poultice…” Jul 13, 20:15
Aidan on Step One: “@Andy – I think that’s broadly the point that a lot of posters are making, not that it can’t be…” Jul 13, 20:14
Alf Baird on Step One: “The use of a ‘local government franchise’ for a people who are also subject to extensive ‘demographic manipulation’ is clearly…” Jul 13, 20:09
Hatey McHateface on Step One: ““Indigenous Scot means ‘someone who agrees with me'” Bingo, Rob! Franchise discussions are a repeating theme on here. They usually…” Jul 13, 20:07
Hatey McHateface on Step One: “Odd, Northy. Most reasoning readers will conclude that the owner of a blog site is right. Posters BTL are wrong.…” Jul 13, 19:55
Andy Ellis on Step One: “@ Aidan 6.57pm I don’t underestimate the potential challenges posed by independence. The point is rather convincing more “soft No”…” Jul 13, 19:43
Blackhack on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “Now if that was me, and I had nothing to hide I’d be demanding that the “police interview” was published.…” Jul 13, 19:43
Hatey McHateface on Step One: “Dinna fash. They’re still firing missiles every chance they get. Still leaching off and stealing from the women and kids…” Jul 13, 19:43
Tartan Tory on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “I genuinely commit a crime virtually every day. Whether it’s exceeding a speed limit, peeing in the woods when caught…” Jul 13, 19:42
John Cleary on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “Ah the good old “exonerated”. That’s what I used to bring down Jeffrey Archer all those years ago. Are you…” Jul 13, 19:41
Hatey McHateface on Step One: “Still shite.” Jul 13, 19:34
Captain Caveman on Step One: “What do you call a brainless, jobless, smelly, thick fat twat on a blog? Answers on a postcard, eh Fatso.” Jul 13, 19:32
Morgatron on The Unstoppable Lie Machine: “Oh my god. Only thing gold – plated is her brass neck.” Jul 13, 19:30
Northcode on Step One: “Here’s my counter-argument – and to be honest, it’s more than colonialists in this place deserve: I’m right you’re wrong….…” Jul 13, 19:28
