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.
Chas on The People You Most Suspected: “Throughout history smaller disciplined groups of people all too easily defeated the disorderly masses. The elite (not necessarily politicians) knew…” Nov 12, 19:14
Willie on The People You Most Suspected: “Forgive me but are Boaby extenders legit. Cock stretchers for those he think Boaby is a girl. Or what about…” Nov 12, 19:10
Martin on The People You Most Suspected: “This will only continue with sturgeon controlling everything. The fact that she has submitted an application for Holyrood 2026 means…” Nov 12, 18:20
twathater on The People You Most Suspected: “And that is the rub of the matter Liz ,these clowns ,and I mean ALL of them throw our money…” Nov 12, 18:08
twathater on The People You Most Suspected: “WHIT? a good man , a fucking corrupt ,spineless, deviant and pervert supporting piece of faeces, nae wonder Scotland is…” Nov 12, 17:58
Hatey McHateface on The People You Most Suspected: “before someone in authority finally says “no more” Hang on – it’s the ones in authority who are saying “more…” Nov 12, 17:46
Hatey McHateface on The Show Goes On: “I suppose it’s harmless enough, if it’s working for you – it is 2024 after all, even in Scotland. Nothing…” Nov 12, 17:33
Hatey McHateface on The Show Goes On: “Good gravy! Another poster with pricks on his mind. Take a cold shower, in case you start slavering about Zelly…” Nov 12, 17:28
twathater on The Show Goes On: “Thir aw getting panicy that their place on the gravy train might be at risk, the comments on the daily…” Nov 12, 17:00
Mark Beggan on The People You Most Suspected: “Visiting some friends over the Halloween period I seen their kids dressed up to go to a party. The average…” Nov 12, 16:52
James on The People You Most Suspected: “Because the unionist parties are all signed up to this stuff. In fact it was ‘Labour’ that started the ball…” Nov 12, 16:41
Campbell Clansman on The People You Most Suspected: “Leftist governments throughout the western world take hard-earned money from the taxpayers to fund this nonsense.” Nov 12, 16:25
James on The Show Goes On: “Aye they’ll be splitting their time between there and here. Couple of candidates just a few posts above yours….the usual…” Nov 12, 16:24
John C on The People You Most Suspected: “Trump picked up loads of votes on this issue and yet, the Democrats refuse to engage with the issue which…” Nov 12, 15:39
John C on The People You Most Suspected: “A friends daughter (transman even though she’s 5 foot and clearly female) used binders before she had surgery. She has…” Nov 12, 15:33
Shug on The People You Most Suspected: “What gets me is the unionists in the parliament are not kicking this ball straight into the face of Swinney.…” Nov 12, 15:12
Jason Smoothpiece on The People You Most Suspected: “Outrageous behaviour by a school children safety should come first in schools. the problem may be that the head teachers…” Nov 12, 15:03
Geoff Anderson on The People You Most Suspected: “Labour, LibDems, Greens and the SNP all worship and support this Ideology…….with our MONEY” Nov 12, 15:02
Den on The People You Most Suspected: “If I go into a shop an buy cigarettes or alcohol for anyone under 18 I’d be charged by the…” Nov 12, 15:01
Betty Boop on The Groomers’ Union: “Where are parents in all of this rotten mess? Why aren’t parents knocking on the school doors? Surely parents know…” Nov 12, 15:01
