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The Great Indyref Swindle

Posted on April 06, 2021 by

It’s probably past time that we put this all in one post for easy reference.

Herald journalists with no idea what a story is, start here.

Our tale begins in March 2016, when lottery winners Chris and Colin Weir each issued a loan of £500,000 to the SNP, which logic would suggest was intended to assist with fighting that year’s Holyrood election seven weeks later.

(Because they’d made similar loans a year earlier for the UK election, which had been paid back five months later. They also donated £250,000 each in April 2017, a few days after Theresa May called a snap UK election for June that year. It fits within an established pattern of them giving the party money for election campaigns.)

The SNP duly won the Holyrood election comfortably, although they lost their majority in the process. But it was seven more weeks on from then that things got interesting.

On the 23rd of June 2016, the UK voted narrowly to leave the European Union, while Scotland voted by a huge 24-point margin to remain. The next day Nicola Sturgeon made a speech in which she vowed to “do what it takes” to prevent Scotland being taken out of the EU against its will.

[SPOILER: Scotland was taken out of the EU against its will.]

She was clear about what that meant:

Nine months later, in March 2017, the Scottish Parliament duly voted in favour of a second independence referendum, to be held “before the UK leaves the EU”.

But we’ve skipped ahead slightly there. Because a couple of weeks earlier the SNP had already jumped the gun and launched a fundraiser for that second referendum without waiting for the Holyrood vote, aiming to raise an ambitious £1 million.

There was no ambiguity about what the money was supposed to be for. Even the domain name of the website – ref.scot – made the purpose clear, and every page emphasised that the fundraiser was for a future referendum campaign (hashtagged #ScotRef), not just general SNP funds.

Indeed, the SNP weren’t mentioned at all except in the tiny, legally-required small print at the bottom.

The site included a video:

It features an unequivocal pledge: that “when the options are clear”, there would be a choice between leaving the EU with the rest of the UK, and avoiding that fate via a second referendum on independence.

So everyone knew exactly what they were donating money for.

The fundraiser ran for three months before being abruptly shut down without warning in June 2017, the day after the snap general election Theresa May had called to try to give herself a stronger hand over Brexit negotiations, and at which the SNP had lost 21 of their 56 seats.

The SNP said that this was to ensure separation between the indyref fundraiser and fundraising for the general election, even though the page had been live right up to election day and had run alongside a separate election appeal.

For some unknown reason the ScotRef appeal was not restored after the election, even though the fund was less than halfway to its target. The last known total on the page was £482,000.

It was at this point that controversy started to arise.

Opposition parties accused the SNP of using the referendum fundraiser money in its election campaign – something the SNP furiously denied, insisting in the starkest terms that the £482,000 would be “frozen” in its accounts until such times as there was a new referendum.

The SNP has maintained that position in public ever since. Indeed, it had already been giving donors private assurances on the subject since almost immediately after the ref.scot appeal was launched.

Especially alert readers may have noted that the above responses from Jim Henderson appear to identify a specific designated “Referendum Campaign” fund in the party accounts – something that the SNP’s national treasurer would subsequently deny the existence of. But we’ll get to that later.

Now, at this stage we need to rewind slightly. Remember back at the start of this article Chris and Colin Weir had each just loaned the SNP £500,000 for the 2016 Holyrood election? Well, at some point in 2016 one of those loans was paid back, as revealed by the party’s 2016 accounts.

That left the SNP with less than £53,000 in the bank.

For some reason the Electoral Commission website lists both loans as having been repaid on 1 December 2017, even though it looks on first reading like one of them was in fact repaid the previous year.

The 2017 accounts appear to back that assertion – they list loan repayments of just over £500,000 in each of 2016 and 2017, and they can only have been to the Weirs because nobody else has ever loaned anything like that much money to the SNP.

(Its biggest previous loan was £200,000 from the Royal Bank of Scotland in April 2011, again just before a Holyrood election and again paid back in August of the same year. The Weirs won the Euromillions in July 2011.)

[EDIT: We subsequently heard back from the Electoral Commission explaining that what happened was that rather paying back one of the loans in full, the SNP paid back HALF of each loan in 2016 (ie £250K to Colin Weir and £250K to Christine Weir) and the other half in 2017, so neither debt was cleared until December 2017.

That has no impact on anything else in this article, it just explains the apparent discrepancy in terms of the Commission’s records.] 

So at this stage we have four quite interesting facts:

(1) At the start of 2017 the SNP owed half a million pounds to Chris and/or Colin Weir. Unlike most of their previous election borrowings it hadn’t been paid back within six months. The party simply didn’t have the money to do so.

(2) The party then raised roughly half a million pounds from the “ringfenced” ref.scot fundraiser between March and June of 2017.

(3) Nobody knows where that half-million pounds is now, but it certainly doesn’t appear in the SNP’s most recent accounts, which show a cash balance of just £97,000 despite the ref.scot money supposedly having been “frozen” in the bank until such times as a second referendum campaign, something that hasn’t happened yet.

(4) But what we do know is that the outstanding half-million pounds in loans to the Weirs was repaid in December 2017, leaving the party with less than £8,000 in the bank by the end of that year.

Could these facts by any chance be connected? We don’t know. But we do know that after April 2017 the Weirs never donated or loaned any money to the SNP again. Colin Weir, a lifelong member and supporter who sadly died in late 2019 with £41m in the bank, didn’t leave a penny of it to the party.

In terms of large donations Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership has alienated the general public and big business alike, to the extent that she’s become so desperate to get some sizeable cheques into the coffers she’ll do just about anything.

It may also explain why by 2017 the party’s fundraising efforts had shifted focus, from trying to get people to donate to the SNP itself to using causes like a second indyref or a non-existent guidebook to independence.

There has in fact never been any detectable trace of the ref.scot money in the SNP accounts since 2017. At the close of that year, despite having received £482,000 for the supposed campaign, the party had just £7,906 in the bank and total assets of almost £100,000 less than it had received in ref.scot donations alone.

At the end of 2018 (the first year since 2014 that there hadn’t been an election or a referendum to fight, and in which the SNP therefore got to trouser close to £3.5m in membership fees and UK government funding without any major outlays), that amount had increased to £411,042 – still well below the fundraiser receipts.

But a year later, after another snap election, it was back down to £96,854 despite a new fundraiser ostensibly intended to produce an independence guidebook – though sometimes the description was downgraded to a “leaflet” – for every household in Scotland raising around £100,000.

Nearly two years on from the launch of the new appeal there’s still been no sign of the guide, despite the website once again having made very clear that all the money would be used for that particular purpose rather than just general SNP funding.

And again, Jim Henderson was keen to confirm that position.

The fundraiser is still accepting donations, but since last year there’s no longer been any reference on its website to the guidebook, and the SNP has never mentioned “An Independent Scotland: Household Guide” again.

Implausibly, the party continues to insist that between the 2017 and 2019 fundraisers it still has their combined total of almost £600,000 available to spend at a moment’s notice, with then-treasurer Colin Beattie infamously claiming in 2020 that the money was “woven through” the accounts in some unexplained way, although being woven through something else is the literal exact opposite of a thing being “ringfenced”.

(This would inescapably mean the separate “Referendum Campaign” fund mentioned by Jim Henderson back in 2017 has either been dissolved or forgotten about.)

It dismisses any notion that it’s been spent as an “utterly baseless conspiracy theory”.

But it refuses to tell anyone where the money can be found, and bizarrely in the same breath tells us that it’s actually spent some of it already, on unspecified “preparations” and on the creation of an “independence unit” (or “Marco Biagi” as the unit normally prefers to be called), and that it intends to have blown the lot by the end of 2021, even though there are no credible plans to hold a referendum either this year or next year.

[EDIT: Biagi quit after just four months as head/only member of the “independence unit”, calling it “the worst job I’ve ever had” but declining to elaborate further. His silence was rewarded with a job as “chief of staff” to Tommy Sheppard MP.]

And even questions from within the SNP’s own National Executive Committee about the money have been going unanswered for almost two years. (Colin Beattie wasn’t at the meeting below, but Peter Murrell and Nicola Sturgeon were, although the publicity-shy Murrell seems to have ducked out of the group photo.)

It would, of course, be quite seriously illegal for a political party to be hiding half a million pounds off the books somewhere in a secret slush fund. And while the SNP has almost 300 “accounting units” (AUs) registered with the Electoral Commission, mainly local branches, none has ever filed accounts which could explain them being used to hold the ref.scot money.

(Any AU receiving over £25,000 in a year has to file separate accounts.)

By a very big distance the largest SNP AU outside the central party is the Westminster Group of MPs – no other SNP AU has ever declared income in six figures.

In 2017 the Westminster Group declared £421,157 in “miscellaneous” income, which is actually the two levies taken by the party from MPs’ staffing allowances and salaries – around £14,000 a year per head – and known as the “pooled budgets income” (PBI).

(That’s why the 2017 PBI figure is significantly lower than the 2016 one, after the party lost 40% of its MPs halfway through the year.)

The PBI and Short money are the WM Group’s only sources of funds.

So the money can ONLY have passed into (and out of) the central-party accounts, because there’s nowhere else it could lawfully be.

At the end of the day, then, by far the most plausible explanation – indeed the only one – for the Mystery Of The Missing Money seems to in fact be a remarkably and surprisingly straightforward one: the ref.scot funds were used to pay off £500,000 of loans to Chris and Colin Weir in late 2017 and have never been seen again.

On that basis, everything in the accounts adds up and makes sense. On any other basis, it simply doesn’t.

(When three members of the party’s own Finance Committee tried to carry out their legal duties this year by examining the books to verify the fact, they were refused sight of them by party CEO Peter Murrell and resigned to protect themselves from liability.)

[EDIT: They were subsequently joined by the party’s National Treasurer, who also stood down when Murrell refused to provide him with the access to the books required to perform his fiduciary duties. He was replaced by Colin Beattie, the previous Treasurer, who’d been rejected by the membership at the NEC election of November 2020 after his attempts at whitewashing the issue with the “woven through the accounts” line. Chapman had been elected on an explicit promise to bring greater transparency to the party’s finances, but Murrell prevented him from keeping it.]

And unfortunately for the SNP, if that’s true then it’s a clear case of common-law fraud. Nobody was asked for donations to pay off the SNP’s debts or for any other party purposes, they were asked for money to be kept in reserve for a future referendum.

[EDIT: Having initially refused refunds when people asked for their money back in the light of Wings’ revelations, the SNP swiftly U-turned after the police became involved and is now returning donations to anyone who asks.

In June the Mail On Sunday also reported that at some point prior to his death in late 2019, Colin Weir had asked for a donation to the referendum appeal be refunded – perhaps because he discovered it had gone into SNP general spending rather than a ringfenced indyref fund. Given that he wasn’t exactly short of a few quid it’s hard to imagine why else he’d want it back.]

Belatedly the party has tried to cover its tracks, by breaking its own promises and (notionally) spending the money before there’s another referendum, which is the exact same thing it’s angrily insisting it hasn’t done before now. (In reality, it’s rebadging normal staff wages as the ref.scot money to try to make it vanish retrospectively.)

[EDIT: Since this article was written the SNP has completely changed its story AGAIN, and now admits that the money WAS spent on other party business but says that this is simply normal “cash-flow” accounting and that in effect it has replaced the cash with IOUs, to be returned to the indyref fund from future revenues, possibly including new additional fundraisers.]

But it’s far too late for that. A crime appears to have been committed, the police are investigating, and the only way that Peter Murrell and Nicola Sturgeon could get out of it now would be if the person in charge of criminal prosecutions in Scotland was also a minister in her government who was directly answerable to her and already had a worrying track record of deeply improper behaviour, or something mad like that.

And readers, what sort of a twisted, crooked joke of a country would that be?

Maybe you should ask “Nicky Special”.

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Dorothy Devine

Wow! Just wow!

Ian McCubbin

Wow the link up made.

Debs

Wow very informative, the Nicola faithful really need to open their eyes. Thank you for your hard work getting the truth out there.

Alison

Like thousands of others I donated to a referendum fund. I also paid fees & a regular direct debit to the party for their general costs & whilst I regret that those costs include vastly inflated salaries & legal costs for court cases that could, & should, have been avoided, I accept that that money was theirs to spend as they saw fit. The money in the referendum fund was not theirs & I want answers.

Jeannie McCrimmon

The jokes on us. I hope the Murrell’s get their day in court.

The return of, a very brave, Alex Salmond, is showing he is a leader and has buoyed my hope’s of iScotland being a reality.

Janelochleven

This is why they try to shut you down. Because you have an enquiring mind and are tenacious enough to trawl through the mud to get to the facts and the truth.

Graf Midgehunter

IOW P Murrel and Nicola St. are common fraudsters and not fit to run a political party or any other organisation.

Wolffe should also be prosecuted for hindering the course of justice.

Jim Bo

Again, kudos to you for your journalistic style Stu as well as doing what should be the MSM’s job for them. No wonder they all despise Wings so much!

Jason Smoothpiece

There is a strong smell, no doubt about it, we all know where it is coming from.

Get the Salmond squad on this ASAP.

Donibristle

Only thing missing Stu, was Sid singing My Way !
Brilliant analysis and detective work !

Frank Waring

If such a clearly ‘defamatory’ article is not legally challenged, it will be an excellent contemporary example of The Dog in the Nighttime (that didn’t bark).

The Isolator

Bingo,Full house? Wow just wow

Hamerdoon

What’s so depressing is that it’s the ‘follow the money’ approach only that might bring relief. Other issues of immorality appear to have little effect on those who have lost their critical faculties around NS and co.

Wonder if they’ll respond?

ScottieDog

Even if Alba do exceedingly well in May, there really isn’t a supermajority for independence, simply because the SNP, or its current Leadership anyway, isn’t pro-independence.

This makes Alba more of an indy ‘lifeboat’ and unless there’s a coup within the party, realistically we will have to wait until 2025 for another crack at independence.

Breeks

SNP:“We’ve had a big idea! Quick! Pay us!”

YES: Ok. Here you go.

SNP: “……, ……., ……”

YES: So, err, yunno, … what was your big idea?

SNP: “Pay us…. That eh, … that was kinda as far as we got.”

Hamerdoon

BTW

Here’s the text of the email I received from Jim Henderson after I donated to the referendum fund – received 17/5/19 – I still have it.
————————/——————————————-
Thank you for the donation you made to the Scottish National Party last month. Your donation, along with many more, has been put into a ring-fenced fund to build up a war chest to fight a future Independence Referendum that we all hope is not too far off.

Brexit will, if it happens, deliver a devastating blow. It will destroy thousands of jobs. It will, by driving away talented and welcome EU citizens, undermine whole industries and increase depopulation in our rural areas.

Trying to deliver that poisoned policy is the most intransigent and most arrogant UK Government ever. It has shown contempt for Scotland and the views of the people of Scotland who voted not to leave the EU.

The opportunity afforded by the European elections, by the preparations announced by the First Minister at Conference for a genuinely inclusive and open-minded Citizens’ Assembly and by the enthusiasm and commitment of this national movement to finish the journey all bring hope of turning our dream into reality.

As the SNP continues to fight in Scotland’s interests against a Brexit we didn’t vote for, it simply underlines the case for Scotland to take all the decisions which affect our future. We know that Scotland deserves better than the shambles of Westminster. Britain is broken and Scotland is ignored by Westminster. This cannot go on.

Our message must be simple. It must be about what we know is the truth. That the future of our nation will only be enhanced when we break free of the dangerous, nasty and failing politics of Westminster.

Again, thank you for your generosity and support.

Yours for Scotland,

Jim

Jim Henderson
Party Fundraiser
Gordon Lamb House
3 Jacksons Entry
Edinburgh
EH8 8PJ
0131 525 8904

Big Jock

The net is closing on the Murrells. I am kind of glad. Because I am scunnered trying to get family members to see what I see. The cult have gone quiet over the last week though.

I probably sounded quite unhinged when I explained what was going on to the cult. That’s what the SNP want us to look like. Soon we will look like the sane ones.

BLMac

This is why you should never lie.

No matter how big and powerful you are, at some stage you will be vulnerable.

And that’s when the truth gets wheeled out.

Of course, this article is speculation, but it’s a logical one.

It just makes you wonder what the SNP did to piss off the Weirs though.

Milady

This is… what’s the word I’m looking for… ah yes, journalism. Quality work Stu.

Famous15

Tumbleweed?

robertknight

So it would appear the SNP is to Referendum Funds what Robert Maxwell was to Pension Funds.

To (mis)quote Shawshank Prison’s Warden Samuel Norton:
“Lord! It’s a miracle! Money up and vanished like a fart in the wind!”.

Somewhat of a depressing reality check to conclude with…

COPFS – Crime Only Pays For Some

Famous15

I am so curious as to why the Weir’s were “alienated “ from a party they loved and respected.

Captain Yossarian

That sounds to me like a plausable explanation.

I wonder if James Wolffe and his stable of £500/hour legal arseholes have got it solved yet…..or has investigating Holyrood become too complex.

DAVID COUTTS

It is astonishing that any time Nicola Sturgeon is asked a serious question suddenly she can not remember.

A meeting with a huge property company about to get a massive planning consent worth 650M.
A meeting in Parliament on 29th March to discuss serious allegations.

Well to help her and given her new found fascination with race horses and at no cost to the party because it is clearly skint and the cash has disappeared.

I recently retired a race horse we had with Phil Kirby at Catterick called of all things TRUST THOMAS.
Well this morning we have just bought a young 2 year old and we have applied to call it –
yes you guessed correctly I CAN’T REMEMBER.

Maybe enter it into the first 600k race at Ayr!!

Nevermore

Financial jiggery-pokery. That’s how they got Al Capone, wasn’t it?

frogesque

If all the above is correct (and I don’t doubt it given Stu’s track record for impec impeccable investigation) this is a despicable way to treat the Weirs and their memory.

Its worse than bungling incompetence, its taking everyone for mugs. Deliberately.

Ross

So we’ve donated to pay back millionaires that wouldn’t have needed the money?

Not understanding what was in this for the SNP.

Were the Weirs demanding the money back in a oner? That’s a story itself.

David Nicholson

Little wonder there is no rush to leave Westminster then

That might be another appearance in front of a committee that Mrs Murrell will have to defend
What a wimp of a liar he is

FM has been going on about ‘one mans ego’…..might just be her own mans that leads to a fall

Dave Beveridge

Thankfully I wasn’t daft enough to contribute to the fund as it was glaringly obvious they’d no intention of pursuing independence. I can only imagine how angry folk are that did.

Taking 11k a year from their WM MPs as well? No wonder they’re determined to protect their monopolising of the indy vote. I hope the 2 Alba recruits jumped before their levy was due.

Ian Brotherhood

Could it be that the Weirs, like so many of us, just got really scunnered by all the trans stuff?

manandboy

If the SNP can’t be trusted with a small thing like money, how can they be trusted with something really important, like the well-being of the nation?

AngusSkye

Another “point of interest” in the SNP accounts must be the “intangible assets” shown in the Balance Sheet. These seem to consist of “software licensing” and “software development” which are not owned but are on hire purchase. I suspect some “creativity” here.

Ross

If this is correct I’m not happy

However

Nobody has been enriched by this

“Swindle” is a bit of a stretch.

The story here is the Weirs appear to have been infuriated.

Ps much more pissed off there are staff on over 50k a year and a CEO on 100k. Should be more like 35k and 55k. That’s the swindle.

Johnny Martin

Was just saying to someone that there would be folk hitting out with Ross’ argument (9:39am) – ‘how dare the Weirs want their money back!?’.

If they’d been silly enough to give away £500k at a time without looking for it back, there would have been a queue and it wouldn’t have lasted long.

If the terms decreed it came back ‘in a oner’ that’s how it should have been done and folk are kidding themselves on if they are claiming that they would not have been pissed off with anyone loaning money and then not adhering to promises to pay it back.

TheSNPLeftMe

As you so eloquently put it Rev ” on that basis it makes sense”
They conned us to clear their debt.
The are trying to con us again by switching Party salaries into a fictitious Indy campaign and fake the books.

Peter Murrell is still there busy shredding the evidence.

If you are reading this and you are a member of the SNP Finance Committee you had better start moving your assets into your partners name. You are going to be liable for the missing money – NOT the Murrells.

I am still voting SNP1/Alba2 because it will be even more fun keeping her in the spotlight. I look forward to a very public humiliation and resignation.

Then we can get on with Independence!

somerled

Interesting that the ref.scot website is still running and says it is promoted by Peter Murrell on behalf of the SNP but searching that web address on the whois domain search website shows it was created on 17 May 2020 but has a 4 year history with 56 changes happening. No details on previous hosting companies.

If anyone donated with a credit card, have they tried claiming the money back as fraudulent ?

Did the original website give the bank details so you can check the sort code for its location or which organisation owned the bank account if not the SNP?

Peter Murrell, Nicola Sturgeon, Jim Henderson, Colin Beattie and others in SNP should all be questioned under caution in my opinion

Graeme Hampton

As someone once said. “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated..”

Aulbea1

Fraudster & charlatan – from early days as a lawyer till present day. Wonder where & when it will end ?

AwakeNotWoke

I truly hope those on the hook for the SNP financials are sweating buckets, and that we see people wearing handcuffs eventually. However, they’ve done a real job suborning power to the Dear Leader(s) and I’m not holding out much hope. The display of arrogance over the Salmond affair and the open contempt for a jury delivered verdict has truthfully left me feeling that we’ll never see them held to account properly. And, I’ve basically lost all respect for those who continue to defend them and blindly support both what they have done and what they are planning. The wave upon wave of corruption boggles the mind. I’ll never forgive her for what she has done.

Scot Finlayson

Would there be less tax on a loan than a gift,

any good accountants out there,

i don`t mean spiritually good (not looking for the impossible 🙂

John

That would help explain why they need bothvotesSNP, – they need as much short money as they can get.

Stoker

Academic blog deleted, as it was not the view of the Government: link to centralbylines.co.uk

Scott and Chapman’s censored article on Scottish Independence: link to pontifex.substack.com

Lost

This is what you call quality investigative journalism. Right up there with expenses scandal. Great work.

I’d wager most of the ref fund is made up from donations from C2DEF groups. Anyone living in these groups know how tight money is and it’s been handed over in good faith.

If true taking money from the poor to pay the rich is not a good look.

My question would be why did the SNP need the loan from the Weirs in the first place? Was the SNP so skint back then? Strange for a party so popular? Or instead of cutting back was everyone riding the gravy train? Or back then were people beginning to see the light?

The SNP could shut this down today by showing us where the money is.

Ross

Jonny – I hear you but the reason you’ve thought that as well as me is there’s something in it.

I’m not happy about this and have a lot of respect for the Weirs. Equally this has been a decision to repay a loan, not enrich themselves. The question is; why?

It seems to me that the story is why did the Weirs request their money back in a one-er. If the SNP agreed to that during the investment, it doesn’t make sense either. You don’t take the risk like this to save on interest fees.

Lioness of Aberdeenshire

Can I just say nice things about the Weirs? Colin was, Chris is truly kind, thoughtful and generous philanthropists.

robertknight

Ross says at 9:45 am

“If this is correct I’m not happy

However

Nobody has been enriched by this

“Swindle” is a bit of a stretch”

WTAF are you on?

Individuals gave their hard-earned to a cause only to find that there’s an extremely high probability that the same hard-earned was used for purposes other than intended, and you say “swindle is a bit of a stretch”?

Here, just for you…

Swindle

Verb:

Use deception to deprive (someone) of money or possessions.

“a businessman swindled investors out of millions of pounds”

Noun:

A fraudulent scheme or action.

“he is mixed up in a £10 million insurance swindle”

If using “ring-fenced” IndyRef2 funds to repay a loan obtained to fund a general election campaign isn’t “a fraudulent scheme or action” I don’t know what is!

Socrates MacSporran

If the Murrells have any genuine friends left, these friends should perhaps be telling them: “It’s time you two got the Hell out of Dodge City.”

manandboy

Nicola’s knittin’s comin’ aff the needles.

Hatuey

My God, Stu, that’s dynamite.

I knew this was bad for them but from what you say here it could be really bad.

But hold on. Does this mean they effectively spent misappropriated funds on the 2017 General Election campaign? (assuming they used the indyref ringfenced money to pay back loans which were deployed to fight that 2017 General Election)

holymacmoses

This is brilliant Mr Wings.

From past experience I know this to be the most tedious of research. And being able to translate the tedium into an eminently readable and interesting article is one of your real talents. Research AND writing at its best.

Whether the Sturgeons or the justice system ever do anything about it – who knows? That ‘staff costs’ figure is huge btw.
Let’s see if any of the MSM show any interest in spreading the news – they’ll all be reading this for sure.

You take care and keep your doors locked and your phone ready to call a friend.

The Times look as if they might be doing a bit of digging.

I wonder how Mrs Weir feels about the SNP at the moment?

the friendly sassenach

Investigative journalism of the very highest order

Ross

Robert. On reflection you’re right. I don’t disagree with you and want this looked at properly.

The point I was trying to make (poorly) is it doesn’t appear the money has flowed into Mr Murrels friends pet projects or his own pocket. It’s been used to pay off a loan. My question is why take the risk of using this cash in this way for no obvious benefit? What pressure were they under to do so?

Willie Hogg

Alison may accept the monies were theirs to spend as they see fit, however, that may not be the way that HMRC see it.
If an employee of an organisation receives payment to cover personal expenditure, say legal fees, it is seen as payment in kind and HMRC will demand payment of employer’s NI, employee’s NI and the tax on the total. So a payment of £150k will result in a demand for about £90k in addition. If they get the wind of this there will be nothing Wolfe can do about it.

100%Yes

Who wouldn’t want Independence but on the same hand who’d want to be Independent and her as leader, god help us all.

Robert Hughes

Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Fx Sisters .

Brilliant post Stu

robbo

“Jesus, Mary, mother of Joseph” as my auld ma used to say when she was astounded by a subject.

Skye Sutherland

Well, no wonder then that they don’t want a Referendum on Independence. If I had spent the money to fund it I wouldn’t want one either.

Mark Boyle

@Ian Brotherhood says: 6 April, 2021 at 9:43 am

“Could it be that the Weirs, like so many of us, just got really scunnered by all the trans stuff?”

Think Colin was dead before the trans nonsense started in earnest (although it tends to go in peaks and troughs – they don’t call it “trans-trenderism” for nothing).

They’d been a wee bit too free and easy with their largesse over the years, particularly to ingrates, and it may have simply have been the process of their lawyers looking after them by calling those outstanding loans back in.

Anyway, superb job by Stu – scary to think the Sex Pistols had better management than the SNP or Scotland does! Malcolm McLaren – thought himself Arthur Daley when he was more Arfur from On The Buses.

TNS2019

WoS leading the way again. An outstanding article with a deeply disturbing but unsurprising message.
Mr Campbell leaving the MSM in his wake.

Prasad

Could this explain Sturgeon is so into Queer Theory? Is she after funding from pharmaceutical companies like the Greens?

shug

Would she be happy with a not proven verdict now and I guess she will want a jury rather than a judge to cry and wail in front of.

Hatuey

If the money was to mysteriously appear — if they borrowed it or received donations to cover it — would that be the story over? Would they be off the hook?

Lulu Bells

Like many others before me…Wow! Perhaps this will be the downfall of the Murrels. It has always struck me as completely wrong that a married couple were allowed to continue in the positions they are in. Left themselves wide open to this.

robertknight

Ross @10:12

“My question is why take the risk of using this cash in this way for no obvious benefit? What pressure were they under to do so?”

The benefit, I assume, was not to piss off the Weirs in the hope that future donations/loans could be secured.

However, I can only speculate that perhaps there was some gentle encouragement to convert the loans to donations, and this approach was handled poorly/not appreciated by the Weirs and the loans had to be repaid, as per the terms and conditions under which they were made.

The only £ which may have been available to repay a single loan at that time could’ve been the “ring-fenced” IndyRef2 funds.

I can well imagine a conversation along the lines of “but what about…” followed by “we’ll cross that bridge as and when”.

Perhaps they figured at the time that they could replace the IndyRef2 funds when they were needed, by once again approaching the Weirs.

“The best laid plans o mice an men…” comes to mind.

shug

How does the time line of this tie in with the domestic problems and complaints about which I know nothing!

Boudleaux Merkin

Oh, Mr Campbell, I am seriously impressed by that stunning article. Wonderful journalism.

INDEPENDENT

John
As I read it voting Both votes SNP in this election has no effect on Westminster Short Money!

So it’s SNP 1 Alba 2 to max the YES for me.

dramfineday

Well, well, another of Stuart’s “I’ve got a machine gun. Ho, ho, ho” moments. Delightful.

Sadly, if it is as simple as repaying the Weirs, it was out of order using the ref money and trying to hide the fact. Surely it would have been better to have been honest with the reps and members by laying out the financial position and putting in some emergency budgetary actions?

This is where tangling the web gets you.

Auld Jock

Brilliant detective work..fantastic piece. Just wish some of the bigger news outlets would run with it. Alas I don’t think so

Breeks

ScottieDog says:
6 April, 2021 at 9:25 am
Even if Alba do exceedingly well in May, there really isn’t a supermajority for independence, simply because the SNP, or its current Leadership anyway, isn’t pro-independence.

This makes Alba more of an indy ‘lifeboat’ and unless there’s a coup within the party, realistically we will have to wait until 2025 for another crack at independence.

That’s the battle before us. We have a month to waken the awareness of the ordinary SNP voter who genuinely wants Independence.

To go all Lord of the Rings you, it isn’t clear in the movies, but when the Fellowship is trying to march through the snow over Caradhras, before they give up have to go through the Mines, a terrible storm kicks up, and the air is filled with incantations from Saruman and Gandalf. Saruman’s incantations are trying to wake up the evil, ice demon, spirit of Caradhras, – that’s what is causing the storm, and Gandalf’s incantations are trying to make him go back to sleep.

Alex Salmond is now trying to wake up a YES vote to carry through an ALBA supermajority, while Sturgeon will try her best to keep everybody asleep, keep the blinkers on, and demonise Alex Salmond into the bargain.

It’s a big ask, and thoroughly depressing, asking people to keep just enough faith with the SNP’s leadership to vote for them, but just keep reminding yourself it’s not the Leadership we’re appealing to, it’s that YES component in every SNP voter who can do the arithmetic and understand what a supermajority delivers.

Dig deep folks, get ALBA the money it needs because we have just one month to get a vital message delivered to every home in Scotland.

SNP 1 ALBA 2.

ALBA and SNP voters voting SNP in the Constituency seats, godwilling delivers an emphatic SNP majority.

ALBA and SNP voters voting ALBA in the List seats augments that SNP majority, and godwilling, delivers the Pro Indy Supermajority.

The only reason for voting SNP 1 and 2 is a safety net, a contingency, for IF the SNP vote collapses and they can salvage some buoyancy from picking list seats. But to need that contingency, the SNP vote will have to fail first.

We thus need YES to do what YES does best, get talking, spread the word, give people hope… 4 weeks of positivity and sparkling momentum. We can do it.

I repeat again, it’s a symbiosis. We both benefit from the other doing well.

SNP hostility towards ALBA is as dangerous as it is misplaced and unnecessary. Set aside the Leadership inspired bitterness which clouds the issue, because a supermajority is worth the sacrifice. Alex Salmond can rise above being smeared and sent to jail as a sex offender. How does your sacrifice compare to his?

May is not a vote of confidence in a corrupt regime, it is a vote to give Scotland’s Parliament a supermajority, because that supermajority brings us to within a whisker of Independence.

auld highlander

No amount of air freshener or cheap pungent perfume can hide the rancid stench of this.

Johnny Martin

Hatuey @10:23am:

Chronologically, how does that work? Event 2 (the things you suggest) doesn’t make alleged Event 1 ‘unhappen’, does it?

John

INDEPENDANT:

Holyrood doles out short money too.
Agreed, second vote ALBA

Liz g

Ross @ 9.39
If the Weirs made a LOAN to the SNP that loan would have to have teams and conditions attached.
Up to and including when it becomes due . ( the whole point of it being a loan , I think )
They ( the Weirs ) would have to have accounts able to be presented to HMRC and therefore it’s not a matter of them demanding the money back (which they are entitled to do no matter how much they have ) but also to keep their own finances above board.

There was a News Paper article a few years back in which they touched on how it wasn’t so simple to make the donations they wanted to and there was a process .
So it’s unfair to intimate that they should not expect to keep themselves right and just forgive the loan, and apart from anything else …. no matter the amounts involved any loan should be paid back as originally agreed, or the only other course of action is honesty and a new arrangement sought.

Any young mum in benifits will assure ye that ye need to keep yer name good with friends who will lend and pay them back when you say you will , or that option very quickly becomes closed off.

John Main

Rev Stu

A master class in forensic journalism.

Kenny

At the risk of sounding ungrateful – I’m anything but – this story smacks to me of having been exposed long ago. I also see more and more of the British State involved in an elaborate plan to kill more than a few birds. If BuzzFeed’s Jamie Ross smelled a rat in Jun ’17 – as his emerging story suggests – then what made him come to smell a rat? (almost like the SNP were being scrutinised to the nth degree for the slightest irregularity) and why was the story immediately clamped-down upon, never to see the light of day until now?

For me, too many dates tie-in with too many major events; I reckon that if a Salmond – not remotely threatened by the gained power of his protégé – identified something off – like a fund being raised unlawfully – then he’d be quick to ask the right questions. Salmond being a fly in the ointment would then have to be kept occupied, before he acted.
“What about the law?”Let us worry about the law.

Wonder who owns this Party?

Kenny

..would hasten to add, this story would never have seen the light of day, at any time, if not for this site.

stonefree

I wonder if anyone has noticed that the period that this part started was as AS lost his WM seat and just prior to the Sturgeon created problems.
I would have said Sturgeon started her actions in late 14/early15, but that was not in regard to the money,I digress
The money issue has been gray-washed for while whilst AS is in effect out of the picture and It seems none of the bastards have a clue to balance sheets far less spread sheets
Now AS knows finance, did he not write the RBS’s strategy?
plus others.
With Salmond otherwise engaged and ultimately out of the SNP.
I tend to think to an extent that the removal of AS , clears Sturgeon’s way to bankrupt the party
It really is not that hard to believe,is it?

RutlandRules

According to an article in the Daily Record in June 2020 “Euromillions lottery winners Colin and Christine Weir revealed as SNP’s biggest donors during last decade.
The pair handed over more than £6 million to party coffers following their jackpot win in 2011”.

Dinny Vote SNP

SNP appear in deep shit financially, almost like a company unable to continue to operate. Fat salaries a big part of the issue no doubt. The timing of this though is problematic. What happens to our supermajority strategy if they are out of the game?

President Xiden

According to Scots Law.
Fraud: The common law crime of obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception.

chas

When you start going down the road of deceit you inevitably have to compound the original mistake/lie/error in order to try and conceal. When you are eventually found out it only makes things worse.
No doubt Ms Sturgeon will not been involved in any capacity/forgot/have no recollection of events that unfolded. The individual she shares a house with will never have mentioned anything about the Party’s finances as they do not appear to speak to each other!
The Murrell’s and the Party hierarchy have conned the SNP faithful for years whilst their own individual bank balances increase month after month.
It will be interesting to watch developments. Senior SNP figures will be squirming like eels in a barrel.
Voting SNP 1 and Alba 2 was a possibility but I simply cannot support the 1 part of the scenario any more.
Proper investigative journalism on show here. Very well done Stu. Others need to follow your example.

Stuart Anderson

Are people still planning on voting SNP on May 6th? If so, you must be mad!

manandboy

The Murrells’ jaikits are on a shoogly peg alright. Time they hopped the twig.

Will they even make it to May 6th? Or will they be stranded by the outgoing tide of public opinion before then?

Either way, the Rev is still one helluva guy to have on the side of Independence. He’s our star striker!

jennifer Allan

I too have struggled to find out what happened to the Weir’s loans to the SNP. The BBC gives quite a good overview published 24th August 2017.
“SNP given £500,000 by lottery winners Christine and Colin Weir”
link to bbc.co.uk
Quote:-“The latest figures also showed the Weirs loaned the SNP £100,000 during the second quarter of 2017. The party has received £2.1m of loans from the couple since 2015 and has paid back £1.6m.”
Assuming the BBC’s figures are correct, this appears to show £500,000 outstanding in August 2017.

David Hannah

Explosive stuff Stuart Campbell.

To Nicola Sturgeon, Alex Salmond said this.

“The real guardians of progress are not the politicians at Westminster, or even at Holyrood, but the energised activism of tens of thousands of people who I predict will refuse meekly to go back into the political shadows”.

Today is the 701st Anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath.

Today Martin Keatings appeal is going on in the Inner House of the Court of Session over Scotland’s right to self determination with the powers it currently has.

Today Alex Salmond, the former first minister who lead an Independence referendum campaign, is launching the Alba Party manifesto for Scottish Independence.

Today Nicola Sturgeon, your establishment ruling class elite, ran by your husband – Chief Inspector Murrell – is facing allegations of fraud by stealing from its core voter base – theft by clandestine possession.

Fortunately, the real guardians of progress, refused to go back into the political shadows.

Hail Alba.

stonefree

The Weir’s money was I believe lent to Salmond’s SNP,as Salmond spoke of the Weir’s repayment being due.
The Weir’s donation would have been formalised in provide the necessary paperwork
The Weir’s loan again would have again the paperwork.
I believe the Late Colin Weir had reservations of the money use,that was when Sturgeon was in charge
I think that money was a donation
Brian Souter? I think he stopped about the same time

holymacmoses

Does anyone know how many people are employed by SNP?

Mac

I can’t recall if it was here but I think it may have been. When I looked at the SNP accounts I said the same thing. It looks like (most of) the missing money was used to pay off a loan.

Reading this all it is very clear that is what happened in substance. Can’t recall if I knew it was to one of the Weirs however, possibly not.

Loan Agreements even between friends for any substantial sum of money are usually hard-nosed legal documents setting out repayment deadlines, penalties for default, procedures for calling in the loan etc etc…

If this loan was very late being repaid it may have triggered heavy penalties at some point motivating them to repay it.

If the SNP had alienated the Weirs they may have simply called the loan in.

If the SNP did not have the money to repay it and could not get a loan that could have triggered an insolvency event.

Whatever happened the SNP are not entitled to the Weir’s money forever. A loan is just that, you expect it back at some agreed point.

Did the Weir’s patience reach breaking point over something else, very possibly. The SNP these days are colossal arseholes. They piss off a lot of people.

Donald MacDonald

Now this is journalism.

Captain Yossarian

High-volume silence from all at the SNP at the moment. All the tools of the Junta….silenced by an internet blogger. Never in a million years will the SNP lead Scotland. They’re goners.

Vronsky

“the only way that Peter Murrell and Nicola Sturgeon could get out of it now would be if the person in charge of criminal prosecutions in Scotland was also a minister in her government who was directly answerable to her and already had a worrying track record of deeply improper behaviour, or something mad like that.”

So it’s a very safe bet that that’s what will happen.

TheSNPLeftMe

@Stuart Anderson

Simple fact. If you don’t vote SNP you don’t get ALBA. You are voting SNP not for the current leadership. The clear out comes later.

Ian Mac

Great investigative journalism. And of course the SNP could clear the issue up immediately if it levelled with people, promising to reimburse them or reinstate the fund from their party accounts.

As an aside from this imbroglio, let us remember in that timeline that the funds for campaigning in the 2017 GE resulted in a loss of seats to the Tories in Scotland which was the sole reason May survived to cobble together a coalition with the DUP. And that set in train the disastrous brexit bill, the inept and catastrophic ‘negotiations’ which Boris Johnson inherited and made even worse.

So for all the whining about brexit from the SNP, it is well to remember that their failure in that election enabled the whole catastrophe to unfold and a tory supermajority to emerge out of it. Well done, Nikla, all of your posturing and posing about brexit triggering an indyref was hot air while your failure propped May up, which led in turn to the playboy of the western world and his mini Trump altright coup. Which set back democracy in the UK enormously, and in Scotland extinguished any hope of your feeble indy plans.

I would call this whole corrupt, and disastrous, last few years a resigning matter. Your time is up.

stuart mctavish

Could the Weirs have been encouraged to call in the loan after the fundraiser lest a timely indyref2 scuppered whatever cunning plans were afoot for the post Brexit utopia (eg covid 2020, etc)

manandboy

link to theguardian.com

Violence has broken out once more on the streets of Northern Ireland, despite appeals for calm.

“A car was set alight in Sperrin Park in the Waterside area of Derry, while there were also reports of violent incidents in Carrickfergus, near Belfast. Both locations have been the scene of violence and unrest among the loyalist community in recent days.”

If this were happening in English cities, it would be a very, very different story.

At times like this NI comes across as being far away and of little importance to Westminster.

In some ways, just like Scotland.

But we can change that.

*Vote SNP1 / ALBA 2.*

holymacmoses

Rev. Stuart Campbell says:
6 April, 2021 at 11:04 am
“Does anyone know how many people are employed by SNP?”

I believe the most recent figure is 21.

And the figure £1,168,663.00 staff costs:-)

Mac

A loan is also a way of making a donation contingent.

I will give you a loan today and if you fulfill your promise on XYZ I will forgive it in the future (making it a donation). Don’t fulfill your promise and I will demand repayment in the future.

The fact the Weir’s made it a loan in the first place and not a donation I think very possibly tells us something about the state of their relationship with the SNP even then. Maybe doubts were creeping in… so they made it loan to wait and see.

A Murison

It’s maybe one thing for the Lord Advocate /Crown Office / COPFS to dabble in politics, but it’s probably quite another for them to overlook (potential) financial crime putting their own careers / legal standing on the line

Brian O'Neill

An interesting analysis, maybe other outlets will pick it up and give you credit this time?

Another plausible situation is that the second £500k was repaid using the indyref money with the condition that the SNP could call off on £500k from the Weirs to fight a future indyref? That would minimise interest payments in the short term, but would still maintain the indyref fighting fund.

That addresses how the fund could still be available but there not be any cash at the bank.

That doesn’t address the current HR election spend though.

Michael B

Craig Murray:
‘The majority of countries in the entire world became independent in the course of my own lifetime. In only a very small minority of cases did the process involve a referendum. The International Court of Justice has ruled that the legislation of the state being seceded from, is not the determining factor of whether a state can successfully become independent in international law. If you think about it carefully, that must be true, or Estonia would still be Soviet and Slovenia would be Yugoslav.’

John Martini

Like russia will inevitably have to invade ukraine, the SNP will now have to invade wings over scotland or be forever condemed by its silence.

The murrells won’t get away with it as malcom mclaren was brighter than that pair.

Indy Now

Well done again, it’s a bit like jigsaw identification !
If this is correct, which it sounds as though it is, someone will have authorised that payment.
The Treasurer will likely have made the payment but won’t have made that decision on his own.
So, it’s either the CEO or the NEC that made that decision so either he, or they are responsible .
Undoubtedly the party leader would also have known, although will struggle to remember.
She really should go now.

Ian Mac

Those scot.ref leaflets and web pages are quite shocking in their subterfuge. Most reasonable people will have seen the campaign as a way of funding what they thought was a separate organisation called ‘scot.ref’. All of the literature suggests it.

The small print isn’t just small, it is microscopic. And notably it mentions Peter Murrell first. My bet is that most people will have no clue who he is/was. He is not a politician. Even if they had spotted this tiny reference, they might have just clocked a name which meant nothing to them, assuming he was some person who administrated this scot.ref organisation. And most people wouldn’t even bother reading it anyway.

The deliberate diminishing of the information is as close to hiding it as legally possible. The simple question is if it was an SNP fund, why go to such great lengths to obscure that?

John Alexander Ferguson

nevermore, remember they had Eliot Ness and Sean Connery.

INDEPENDENT

So £55k per head average.
Where do I sign up?

Mac

The loans were possibly contingent donations to the indref fund by the Weirs.

Once the chance of indyref2 went out the window they then had to be repaid.

The Weirs probably had their suspicions that would happen (probably based on previous experiences) hence the loans not donations, and then nothing ever again.

somerled

Anybody voting SNP1 needs their heads examined and maybe their bank accounts too. Have you been given backhanders by the corrupt Murrell crime syndicate?

It doesn’t matter what YOU want your vote to be seen as. It will be seen by Nicola, the SNP and the media as a vote of confidence in Scot Gov and it will give them a green light to go ahead with Trans GRA reform, corrupting school kids with porn, poor education and more lies and corruption in the future and if YOU vote for it, then don’t go crying when women’s rights to safe single sex spaces are removed and YOUR kids or grandkids want their healthy breasts or genitals removed.

The SNP under Murrells, Swinney, etc are not interested in Independence just now and maybe never. Even if the Murrells leave, their co-defendants in the Cabal remain to take over and you will still be ignored. You shouldnt work with the SNP, you need to wipe them out and start again with the Alba party in charge on its own but that will take 5 years, not 5 weeks.

David Ferguson

There is an important technicality in Colin Beattie’s statement – an irrelevance masking a lie:

Like all other political parties, the SNP does not separate out restricted funds in annual accounts. Any such donations are woven through the overall income figures each year.

How the SNP accounts for its income each year is of no relevance whatsoever to the Referendum Fund debate. The Referendum Fund is not “income” – which is accounted for in a Profit and Loss Account – and has not been since 2017. The Referendum Fund is supposedly existing funds. It is an “asset” that should be accounted for and visible on the Balance Sheet (where self-evidently there is no sign of it).

Josef Ó Luain

When a brand new “campaigning car” mysteriously showed-up in my area in the later weeks of the 2014 campaign, I was forced to wonder what the Weirs and their lawyers and accountants might make of such an unnecessary outlay. Not a feckin lot, is probably the answer.

Strathy

robertknight at 10.25am.

‘However, I can only speculate that perhaps there was some gentle encouragement to convert the loans to donations, and this approach was handled poorly/not appreciated by the Weirs and the loans had to be repaid, as per the terms and conditions under which they were made.’

That is a good bet.

The Murrells are used to getting their own way.

Mac

As part of a loan agreement you very often have to supply the lender with regular and timely financial statements.

If the Weir’s lent the SNP the money for a specific purpose, i.e. indyref2, and they found out that the SNP had used the money to pay everyday bills (as they clearly did) it might have enraged them into recalling the loans.

The SNP having already pissed the Weir’s loan money for indyref2 up against the wall then used the chunk of cash raised for indyref2 from the general public to pay back the Weirs.

Or in other words the SNP stole from Peter to pay back Paul.

Either way the SNP were spending money that they should not have been and it came back to bite them on the arse when those loans to the Weir’s had to be repaid.

That was the day the chickens came home to roost, and shat all over the carpet. Probably.

Glen Clova

It’s a cracking piece of investigative journalism and at the very least provides evidence of sharp practice but is there evidence of fraud? It seems likely that the funds raised from the appeal were routed into a general SNP account and presumably the loan was repaid from the same account. But how does one prove that it was specifically the tenners and twenties from ordinary punters that were used to repay the loan? All sorts of monies would have been going in and out of that account.

While comments of SNP spokespeople and the letter to Hammerdoon @ 9.27am are interesting they occur subsequent to the closure of the appeal. Whether fraud can be alleged depends on the basis on which contributions were requested at the time the appeal was running. If the party pledged in writing that all contributions would be ‘ring-fenced’ and then funds raised were not invested in a dedicated account then there may be grounds for alleging fraud. Saying funds would have been earmarked or frozen does not carry the same legal weight as ‘ring-fenced’.

Secondly, was there a specific condition that the money would only be accessed once the referendum had been agreed or a date set? A ‘referendum campaign’ could be interpreted as lobbying or preparing for a referendum to be secured, not necessarily waiting until the starting gun is fired. You can bet that the SNP’s lawyers were fully consulted before anything related to the appeal was put in writing. Is it a coincidence that the appeal was closed as soon as soon as the half million to repay the loan was raised? Probably not, but proving illegality is a different matter.

Lost

Going to play Devil’s Advocate here:

Parties in Scotland are at an automatic disadvantage as they have to fight more elections as were still hooked into Westminster.

In 7 years we’ve had:

An Indy Ref
Brexit Ref
3 General Elections
A Holyrood election
A European Election (which we left months later).

Can see why the SNP had the begging bowl out, but doesn’t justify financial mismanagement. High staff costs averaging £55k per person, most organisations would look to cut back and reduce wages to balance the books.

Not this lot, head-in-the-sand stuff. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

John Digsby

Why does the debtors and prepayments line steadily rise to over £1m in 2019?

HighlanderMSP

So the SNP not only don’t actually want to pursue Independence but even if they did they can’t afford the campaign – they are, quite literally, a busted flush.
What an absolute affront.

No competent business would permit a CEO exhibiting such ineptitude (or criminality) remain in situ, unless the surname was Maxwell.

Tony Little

Is it plausible that the claim by the SNP that this money is “instantly available” for a Referendum campaign, is that there is an agreement with Mrs Wier to give them a further loan when/if a Referendum is called? This would at least resolve that particular statement?

Patrick Roden

And just like that, Rev Stu embarrasses the Herald, the Daily Record, and the BBC, by showing them what proper journalism looks like, and all done by one man with far, far fewer resources than any of these organizations.

No wonder they try to smear him at every oportunity!

David R

It’s reassuring to know that in an independent Scotland our politicians will be as corrupt as the buggers in Westminster. Yay!!

TheItalianJob

Because of the snail pace at which the SNP were going in terms of delivering Independence (and by that I don’t mean a referendum as such), I avoided this site and a few others for well over a year as nothing was happening.

But now with Alec Salmond back along with Alba I’m now back on here and also other Indy friendly sites such as Craig Murray’s etc.

Suddenly wasted years of inactivity and promises by the SNP leadership is now being challenged.

The YES movement is bigger than the SNP and we need people in our government who will lead that movement rather than fiddling around with Westminster and their cohorts as is the case now with the SNP and some of its Parliamentarians both in Holyrood and Westminster.

Alba and the return, hopefully, of Alec Salmond to the Independence cause is the injection we have needed for so long.

merganser

Rev,

You have done all the work for the police in advance of their investigation. Have they passed the ‘Assessing’ stage yet?

If you send a copy of your article with an invoice to the investigating officer they should reimburse you.

How much to ask them for? Well, a dedicated fraud unit complete with administrative back up and specialist accountancy experts taking a year to get this far – say, 10 X £50,000.00. p.a.

As the car advert says, ‘You do the maths’

ScottieDog

@ Breeks
It’s a mountain to climb.
My wife posted positively on Facebook about the Alba party and got a tsunami of abuse. Most of it was regarding Alex as being a rapist. This is coming from progressive, mostly YES voting people – many leaning towards the greens.

It is depressing that folk who should be able to read beyond the MSM just jump on the bandwagon so easily.

Vestas

Fuck your whataboutery “Ross”.

We see you. We know what you are.

Now fuck off with your sly insinuations.

Mac

The fact the Weirs never donated again (if I have that right) and Colin left them nothing suggests that the repayment of the loans was abrupt. It was a ‘falling-out’ event.

This suggests the SNP would not have been prepared for it. They were probably caught unaware. They could in the circumstance have been desperate for cash.

And as we know, desperate people often do desperate things.

Great article. A real tour de force of what real journalism looks like.

ahundredthidiot

Rev followed the money. Well done.

No one else could be bothered (or instructed otherwise).

Justice?…..not in 21st Century Scotland there wont be.

John Martini

Could we ‘lend’ them our vote with the right to recall?

Liz g

Somerled @ 11.25
Oh I don’t know Somerled…. because that’s no what Alex Salmond sayn, now is it ?
He’s sayin vote SNP 1 and make that vote Indy safe by voting Alba 2, he’s no talking of 5 + years either !
The only thing he’s talking of “wiping out ” is the Treaty of Union.

We shouldn’t be throwing out the baby with the bath water here, and we can also take a crumb of comfort from the fact that if this is all true and the SNP are dependent on Westminister short money!…..Then Westminster are funding their own demise…. thats quite the change isnt it ?
So … Let’s Do That then .. eh?

Now that the Rev has at least given Police Scotland no where to hide, ( the Weirs accounts shouldn’t be difficult to get hold of ) in ruling this potential answer to the missing money in or out we should let that run its course.

If the SNP are bankrupt as a party , the elected MSPs are still elected MSPs are they no ?
The MSM will be back to sayin “unprecedented ” every 2 miniutes and we might just have the opportunity to look at the party system just in time for our new Constitution being written.
5 years my aunt fanny there is no real reason to wait any longer …. we are moving on this NOW..

Mike Robson

I salute you Rev,yet again a world-class expose. Real cutting-edge journalism worthy of the name. Well done and keep up the good work, the other so-called journalists across the Press, Radio and TV in Scotland should read this piece and weep. They aren’t fit to tie your bootlaces.

Dan
The Hot Needle of Enquiry

Alba fundraiser continues to swell.

Now 21870 pounds.

Should hit 50% of target today.

Alba for the list!

holymacmoses

Not this lot, head-in-the-sand stuff. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.

When you consider what some of this staff seem to be required to do, it’s perhaps more appropriate to call the ‘salaries’ something like ‘hush money’:-)

John Martini

No One Is Innocent

Peter Murrell was doing time until he done a bunk
Now he says he’s seen the light and he sold his soul for punk
Peter Murrell was doing time until he done a bunk
Now he says he’s seen the light and he sold his soul for punk
Sold his soul, Sold his soul, he sold his whole soul for punk

Republicofscotland

The sad fact of the matter is that Sturgeon could steal Scotland’s Honours and sell them abroad, and she’d face no criminal prosecutions, because she has the, in it up to his neck, Lord Advocate in her pocket.

The ringfenced indyfunds are gone, never to return, I say don’t give the SNP a penny in donations, we’ve no idea what the donations would be used for.

I hope Police Scotland’s investigation does turn up enough evidence to prosecute Sturgeon or Murrell or both if we’re lucky but I doubt anything meaningful will come of the investigation.

Confused

“… they’ve arrested Malcolm … !”

Sounds about right.

My own guess was they had this money, sitting there, which they KNEW “they were never gonna use” – so, made it work for them :

pay down a bit of their mortgage

– reducing payments, giving them a lifestyle they cannot afford.

If they were clever about this tho – it could be done via intermediary, made to look like an investment, with an income, small for the visuals.

Property tends to go up in value, so the money is “safe” and can always be gotten hold of quickly by simply re-mortgaging the property.

Dave Beveridge

somerled @ 11:25 am

Apart from the “Have you been given backhanders by the corrupt Murrell crime syndicate?” it’s pretty hard to argue with any of that. 🙁

Unfortunately where I am and going by the figures last time, I HAVE to vote SNP1 if my excellent Alba candidate is to stand any chance of getting into Holyrood. We don’t have the luxury of rebuilding from the ground up over the next 5 years, we need these voices in Holyrood NOW. At least they’ll speak up against this GRA insanity which we’re getting anyway whether we like it or not.

I console myself with the thought that it’ll be interesting hearing Sturgeon’s excuses every week on what she’s done to advance the indy cause. Even better would be Alba bringing forward a bill and watching the SNP fight against it. THEN the scales would surely start to fall from certain eyes? Even the most deluded disciples would see it.

Time is not on our side though and we can’t spend 5 years building a new party outside Holyrood. What’ll the Murrells have done by the end of that period?

Republicofscotland

A wee bit of positive news YES Tories have seen a surge in Tories intending to vote for the ALBA party.

link to thenational.scot

Anna

It looks ‘mucky’, little wonder the Murrels were desperate to prevent Salmond coming back and the involvement of the Crown Office and civil servants in the Salmond case becomes even more intriguing. What did they fear?

fillofficer

breeks @ 10.31

“May is not a vote of confidence in a corrupt regime, it is a vote to give Scotland’s Parliament a supermajority, because that supermajority brings us to within a whisker of Independence”

if the current FM is still in place, then no supermajority will exist. the current batch of sycophants in the SNP will not go against blessed Nic.

she will not be coerced by the likes of AS to press on with an independence campaign, due to being compromised by WM

there has to be a monumental change at the top for ALBA2 to make any difference

however, i do have a little hope, thats why i joined ALBA

somerled

fillofficer – are you going to vote SNP1 and Alba2 ?

holymacmoses

Dan says:
6 April, 2021 at 11:56 am
link to twitter.com

Where the power lies.
James 6th tried to get that established through the plays of the Shakespearean tribe

‘Macbeth’ to damn the auld ways of election in Scotland
‘Richard’ 2nd to establish the nature of a good king.

He was a greedy little sod as well as the cleverest King any country could every have. It’s all in the blood

holymacmoses

even ‘ever’ have

Lyn Hay

We should not forget that Evans will soon be up before a judge, who will have the power to call the evidence that Alex has said is yet to be seen.

So the gameplan is: put the Sturgeon gang into Holyrood so as to get Alba there too.

Then put the Sturgeon gang into gaol, with the attendant disruption that will give room for further moves by Alex Salmond.

Jack Murphy

OT. TODAY.

Daily Record on-line:
“…Nicola Sturgeon’s most trusted aide for over a decade will be voting for Alex Salmond’s new pro-independence party at the Holyrood election.

Noel Dolan said it was “sensible” for pro-indy supporters to give their second vote to Alba…”

Lothianlad

All part of the deliberate attempt to sabotage the SNP by its leadership and her handlers.

Dr Vinnie Boombatz

Mine came earlier in March with slightly different wording.

“We are starting now to build the resources that will ensure we are not outspent in the referendum campaign. Your generosity and support will be vital to making that happen.”

(Full message below)

From: Jim Henderson
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2017 3:51 PM

Subject: Thank you for your donation to the Scottish National Party

Thank you for your recent donation to the Scottish National Party. We are now entering a very important time for the Party, first with the Local Council Elections and then onwards to the Independence Referendum.

Our job over the next 18months to 2 years is not to talk to each other, it is to reach out to those not persuaded – to put ourselves in their shoes. To understand the hopes, fears and ambitions of all our fellow citizens and to do what we can to establish common ground.

We all want the best for our country – we just have different views on how to achieve it, so let us resolve to argue our case with passion and commitment, but – at all times – with courtesy, understanding and respect.

Yesterday the Scottish Parliament voted to allow the Scottish Government to take forward discussions with the Westminster Government on the details of a Section 30 Order which would allow a second Independence Referendum to be held as it is important to us all that Scotland’s future should be in Scotland’s hands.

As Article 50 is triggered, change for our country becomes inevitable. We don’t yet know the exact nature of that change. Much will depend on the outcome of the negotiation that lies ahead, but we do know that the change will be significant and profound.

When the nature of the change made inevitable by Brexit becomes clear, it should not be imposed upon us, we should have the right to decide. The people of Scotland should have the right to choose between Brexit – possibly a very hard Brexit – or becoming an independent country, able to chart our own course and create a true partnership of equals across these islands.

So if the choice we face is an inward looking, insular, Brexit Britain, governed by a right wing Tory party, obsessed with borders and blue passports at the expense of economic strength and stability or a progressive, outward looking, internationalist Scotland, able to chart our own course and build our own security and prosperity, then that is a case we will win.

We are starting now to build the resources that will ensure we are not outspent in the referendum campaign. Your generosity and support will be vital to making that happen.

Thank you again.

Yours for Scotland

Jim

——————–

Exactly the same day, I got this begging letter from Murrell.

Don’t let them block #ScotRef

Peter Murrell

Wed 3/29/2017 5:44 PM

Don’t let them block #ScotRef

Yesterday the Scottish Parliament backed a second independence referendum.

No surprise – Tory and Labour MSPs ganged together to oppose Scotland having a choice.

The Tories at Westminster immediately said they’d block a referendum.

But yet, the Tories and Labour are raising cash for the referendum campaign. No question they’ll have bags of cash and big money backers.
 
Make sure Scotland has a choice. Make a donation today.

By contrast, our campaign relies on the support of tens of thousands of people like you across the country. That’s why monthly contributions are so critical to our campaign.

So I’m asking you, as one of our best supporters, to consider making a monthly contribution. 

We’re so close to reaching £500,000 – halfway towards our £1 million target. With your support we can get there and ensure we have the sustained, predictable funding we need to stand up to them. 
 
Peter Murrell
Chief Executive

Kev

Great work, Stu..does the Lord Advocate have the power to stop or hinder a police investigation?

fillofficer

somerled @ 12.08

i am currently reviewing ALL options

as AS has recommended SNP1, the next 5 weeks should be quite the hard sell, for me

‘fastens seat belt’

madridjim

Superb and clear reporting Stu.

I have a request. Could you turn your forensic journo spotlight onto the Green party and give us source material to get out there regarding their 12 constituency candidates, why they’re standing where they’re standing, any links to Big pharma lobbyist money any of them may have and so forth?

My meagre resources & investigative skills way below yours.Only 30 days to get them & their GRA motives exposed. Here’s the Nicola Gazette article listing the names.

link to thenational.scot

Did you know “slater” is Scottish term for “wood louse” by the way?
Thx.

Jim Chalmers

chas says

Voting SNP 1 and Alba 2 was a possibility but I simply cannot support the 1 part of the scenario any more.

Stuart Anderson says

Are people still planning on voting SNP on May 6th? If so, you must be mad!

If you don’t vote SNP1, you won’t elect ALBA on yor second vote. Instead you’re letting Ubionists in on both votes.

Hold your nose one more time.

AndyH

Help ma Boab!

Impressive work indeed.

Mac

The fact the loans were not paid back simultaneously (despite what the weird discrepancy on the dates says) could also suggest the SNP were unable, at first, to pay back more than one Weir loan.

I don’t know but it seems logical to me that both the Weir loans would have been identical to each other in terms and conditions and thus would have been called in at the same time and in the same manner by the same lawyer.

After being able to only pay back one loan and maintain the ring fenced funds, the SNP would then have been urgently seeking to get a new loan… when that failed it would have then dawned on them they were really screwed… and that was when they decided to use the ringfenced money to pay back the second Weir loan a little time later.

Out of the frying and and into the fire.

But you know they would have got away with this had it not been for this darn meddling blogger.

Athanasius

I’ve looked this up in several reference works and consulted a number of historical authorities, and although I cannot be definitive — the phenomenon not having been observed in a British context for several generations — I believe this is what used to be known as “journalism”.

Allyreid

they couldn’t run a menodge, well they could only if it was their payout week every week,

Wee Willie

I’m afraid the Scottish Independence campaign needs a complete reset. It’s no good entrusting the cause to Sturgeon,Murrell et al. If the SNP win handsomely in May then she will simply carry on prevaricating and enriching herself ,and her ego. Perhaps the reset could begin with the Alba Party becoming the main vehicle for Independence,but that will take time.
The Scottish Government and the SNP are so mired in corruption ,that the movement is severely compromised. I think it’s going to take at least a decade to get the movement back on track.

Mark Boyle

If you want to do something useful today and have access to a decent printer, copy the above article into a Word document or whatever, tidy it (make all the pictures with square text wrapping), print it off (it should come to eleven pages from my experience), and give it to someone who isn’t on the net or prefers the printed word to online or has no internet access.

Make it your task to ensure you get the word out about this today to at least one more person.

Anthony Armstrong

Surely it would be robbing Paul to pay Peter.

Andy

Glasgow Southside,,,

Vote Sarwar 1 and ALBA 2.

Stop Sturgeon in her tracks.

Don’t let her set a foot back in the Scottish Parliament ever again.

After all, she can’t run a country from Corton Vale Prison.

The Supermajority is still there, even without the presence of this crook.

James Che.

To achieve a majority for independence in Scotland Snp 1, alba 2. This is first and foremost important step we the Scottish people must do.
I would love to see the alba party hold the snp,s feet to the fire with the backing of the Scottish people who were cheated by the snp, and watch them squirm.
Pro majority first,

Captain Yossarian

This is why no member of the SNP is permitted to speak to Stuart Campbell. In Scotland, whistle-blowers are hanged from trees by James Wolffe and his team of 18th Century law officers. I hope that, whoever the whistle-blower is, has bought him/herself a couple of ferocious Doberman Pinschers for their own personal protection.

Brian Doonthetoon

Hi Mark Boyle.

All you have to do is click on the green “Print PDF” button at the bottom of the article, above the first comment.

Frazerio

Demagoguery at its finest!!!

ahundredthidiot

Somerled is a unionist mug.

But he is smart enough to sell ‘dont vote SNP ever’ because he knows that less SNPs in the constituency means less ALBA MSPs being returned on the list and therefore no Indyref2 and more unionist MSPs.

Don’t listen to these unionist trolls.

Stand Together SNP 1 ALBA 2

Captain Yossarian

James Che – that doesn’t work, James. Once at Holyrood, they are the best of pals – MSP’s, staffers, SPADS. They don’t really hate each other and that stuff is just made-up.

Don’t elect any crooks to Holyrood. Don’t give them a seat there, don’t give them an office, they represent no-one and that way no further damage is done. That’s the only solution that works.

The future of Holyrood is hanging by a thread. Do not re-elect the same people or it risks being closed-down. Scotland needs to clean-out its own stables.

jaf

AngusSkye says:
6 April, 2021 at 9:44 am
Another “point of interest” in the SNP accounts must be the “intangible assets” shown in the Balance Sheet. These seem to consist of “software licensing” and “software development” which are not owned but are on hire purchase. I suspect some “creativity” here.

Most credit agencies and banks consider intangible assets of no value. Therefore if you deduct their value from the SNP accounts, the net assets turn into net liabilities.
Furthermore their liquidity ratio deteriorated from above 1 to below 1 in their last filed accounts.
All of which are indicators in a normal entity that going concern basis for signing accounts needs much more justification/work by auditor (the audit fees are up considerably in the most recent accounts). However it should be noted that in the past the SNP accounts showed large net liabilities on the Balance Sheet without any greater going concern disclosure nor auditor comment, and the position has improved since then.

If I was suspicious about anything else on the Balance Sheet it would be prepayments and accrued income. In 2016 this amounted to £45k. By 2019, despite broadly similar income and expenditure, it had incrementally jumped to £879k. Funnily enough that £800k is also the value the Balance Sheet has improved by between 2017 and 2019. To be clear what this is, it is an asset representing things that have already been paid for but which the economic benefit will flow in future (prepayments) at which point it will be released to the profit & loss account. Might this be the weavers basket?

Willie

But here’s the rub.

If the money has been stolen, used for other purposes other than what it was solicited for, will the Lord Advocate decide nor to prosecute. There is already great doubt about the integrity of the Lord Advocate with many saying he is severely compromised.

Indeed there are rumours about relationships that he may have had, and maybe still has, with a member of the First Minister’s coterie. Whether these rumours are accurate or not is a big question. Maybe the Lord Advocate is as pure as the driven snow. Impartial as the day is long.

Most certainly however there is a huge smell about what happened to Alex Salmond and the interventions of the Lord Advocate. There is also a perceived bias which’s raise some very concerning issues issue in the mind for many. Sir Jimmy Saville, by way of example certainly showed how rumour turned into outright scandal with exposures after his death.

Justice as the old saw says needs to be seen to be done. It is at the heart of a fair, open and transparent society.

This piece, on the issue of money is very very concerning. Let us hope it is investigated scrupulously fairly and not covered up, especially when a man cannot serve two masters.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodiet?

maureen

Republicofscotland says:
6 April, 2021 at 12:05 pm
A wee bit of positive news YES Tories have seen a surge in Tories intending to vote for the ALBA party.

Archived link for you!

link to archive.is

Breeks

fillofficer says:
6 April, 2021 at 12:05 pm

if the current FM is still in place, then no supermajority will exist. the current batch of sycophants in the SNP will not go against blessed Nic.

Feel inclined to agree fillofficer, but, Alex Salmond has also served notice on Leslie Evans that she will have to defend her actions in a court of law, and if a fraction of what we know is true, it should mean a judicial review by proxy of the whole sworded business. The amnesia and redactions of Fabiani’s Inquiry won’t cut any ice under legal cross examination.

It seems possible this furore about missing IndyRef money isn’t going away either.

Sturgeon might survive the May Election, but her tenure in command is still living on borrowed time. With Evans in court, and Sturgeon herself facing possible accusations of complicity, conspiracy, dishonesty, financial irregularities, and don’t forget, IF Alex Salmond scoops a supermajority againstSturgeon’s vehement will, then she might be returned to Holyrood in a nominal leadership position, but she will have lost the argument and pretty much ALL the political initiative to Toruk MakSalmond.

If the grassroots of the SNP are persuaded to back ALBA on the list vote, it also means they have heard the call and mustered to the sound of Salmond’s trumpets, not Sturgeon’s.

I think that’s when Sturgeon will bail, and the Wokeratti will just be shunned and unable to orchestrate trouble for their own ends.

Much of what I’m saying might be Crystal Ball territory, but if we can just nail that supermajority, then we are in a much stronger position to act in any way that suits necessity. No supermajority, and we remain bogged to the axles indefinitely. There is no downside to having a supermajority. That alone makes a supermajority a no brainer.

Andy

ahundredthidiot 12.55

“Stand Together SNP 1 ALBA 2”
Except in Glasgow Southside where you should vote Labour 1 and ALBA 2.

There ahundredthidiot,,,sorted that for you.

Mac

The SNP could have got away with this if they had just replaced the missing ring fenced funds by tightening their belt in another area during the following years.

Sure it is not great using the ringfenced funds even temporarily but had they replenished it then I don think anyone now would care too much today.

They chose not too however. For the simple reason I think they believed no one would hold them to account for it, that they could ‘get away with it’.

Boy that was a fuck-up. lol.

They’ll be fine… the Lord Advocate is already intently looking the other way and will be until all of this blows over.

manandboy

” Let us hope it is investigated scrupulously fairly and not covered up” says Willie.

Just like the criminal leak from Scot gov to the Daily Record.

Who will police the police?

TheSNPLeftMe

Andy

I would rather poke sharp sticks in my eyes than vote Labour!
They are a Unionist Party – remember BT

Mark Boyle

@Brian Doonthetoon says: 6 April, 2021 at 12:46 pm

“Hi Mark Boyle.

All you have to do is click on the green “Print PDF” button at the bottom of the article, above the first comment.”

It comes to 19 pages that way and the fitting of the pictures leaves something to be desired – always have sympathy with your target audience is my motto, something with half a pic on one page and half on the other looks a mess.

Better off doing it manually, it only takes about five minutes of time.

Gordon Darge

Oh what a tangled web we weave when tis our intension to deceive.
I’m sure I’m not the first to think this;
The SNP commit a crime paying off the Weir loan with the ‘ring fenced’ referendum fund and to cover this up have spent the next 4 years putting off any referendum for fear that their crime will be exposed when it is discovered they have no ‘ring fenced’ fund to fight said referendum.
Hold my nose 1, Alba 2

dexey

I do hope the MSM pick up on this! Well Done

jaf

Following on from my earlier post, I suppose it may be commonplace in political parties for the accounting to have high prepayments and accrued income, so did a little comparison :

Percentage of total income prepayments and accrued income represents :

Scottish Greens – 0%
Conservative Party – 3%
Labour Party – 5%
SNP – 16%

I think its clear that the SNP are an outlier in this comparison, and if I were investigating this is precisely where I would be probing…………..

James Che.

Only unionists with an agenda of trying to prevent a super majority of Scottish voices in the Scottish Parliament would suggest not to vote snp1 alba 2,
We have always maintained here in Scotland that we want our own parliament close to home, so if we see wrong doings we the Scottish people will sort it,
We have found wrong doings, we will contribute to holding the snps feet to the fire, thank you very much captain for your opinion to go against Alex Salmonds advice.

sarah

Completely O/T but great news for Bath residents, you jammy devil, Rev.

Persephone Books is moving in to 8, Edgar Buildings.

Persephone is the most delightful publisher – great reads, superb quality, really nice people. Looking at their site alone is refreshing to the spirit!

Captain Yossarian

“Feel inclined to agree fillofficer, but, Alex Salmond has also served notice on Leslie Evans that she will have to defend her actions in a court of law.”

I read that this is likely to be settled out of court. More advantageous to all.

Shocked

Bang to rights yet again…

Of course those £500 stilettos and £2000 suits the 2 bit failed lawyer and fraudster Sturgeon likes don’t pay for themselves…

Meanwhile the sturgeonites who live in the fringes of the real world come out with their demented “SNP 1” bullshit and trying to excuse common theft and fraud to be heaped on the crimes of perverting justice and perjury already committed by Sturgeon and Murrell. These idiots might as well have picked everyone’s pockets themselves, someone who defends a thief is worse than a thief themselves.

Aye “wheesht for indy” aye, the New SNP are going to call indy ref 2, aye Nicola will have her “feet held to the fire” if we vote for them. Spare me these mind numbing imbecilic dribblings. Only a complete and utter idiot could think such things. It is no wonder sturgeon and Murrell thought they could steal everyone’s money and get away with it. That pair of bastards should be getting 10-15 years for this.

So everyone defending this shit and coming out with “SNP 1”, this utter corrupt flaming oil tanker wreck is on you. It is your fault that we are where we are, 7 years wasted backing a common thief, liar and fraudster. Pat yourselves on the back people, it is you who killed the chances of independence.

John Martini

How to deal with false accusations.

link to lawtrack.com

Anton Decadent

All they care about is their public image whilst behind the scenes there are nothing but problems. These people have no feelings and are no fun. The bodies are beginning to wash up and I can see the liar going off to Portugal for a holiday in the sun.

James Che.

Very interesting ploy to try dismantle the snp before AS can use it as a platform in the up and coming election to improve a majority for independence.
Read between the lines folks .
Some are working overtime to try prevent a majority, we do not need a corrupt snp, any more than we do labour or tories,
But we do need the snp as leverage at this moment in time.

Clavie Cheil

I saw two real red squirrels today – honest I did.

Ken

Genuine question; Why would the Weir’s *loan* the SNP money rather than *donate* the money?

I always assumed the Weir money was an outright donation.

somerled

ahundredthidiot – the only mugs are people who vote for a corrupt party that steals from its members and tries to get its former leader jailed on trumped up charges. Whatever reason for voting SNP, YOU are voting for that and it will continue and YOU will be responsible for it. NOT me.

As Stu says today Sturgeon has pushed back Indyref2 to late 2023 if at all. You are deluded if you think Alex will make any difference to Indyref2, he probably justs wants a salary to pay off his debts. Boo Hoo Hoo Indy will NEVER happen, no matter how much you cry about it. But you WILL get men using female spaces legally because Sturgeon wants them to and YOU are voting for Sturgeon not Indy.

maureen

Anyone got a link to watch Alex Salmond conference at Buchan Hotel?

Anton Decadent

“baseless” appears to now mean we are engaged in a massive cover up and have a dedicated team of pet journalists in an on message media who will smear anyone who brings up the subject.

Paul McRae

Great investigative journalism, Stu – Messrs Gordon and Leask take note. Oh, Mike Small, if you’re reading this – and I know you are – try not to bite all of your furniture in frustration

Captain Yossarian

“We have found wrong doings, we will contribute to holding the snps feet to the fire, thank you very much captain for your opinion to go against Alex Salmonds advice.”

….then you will inevitably see the return of what Andrew Neil referred to as ‘Nicola Sturgeon’s Storm Troops.’ Specifically, James Wolffe, John Swinney and Humza Yousaf.

The country then becomes ‘a banana republic without the bananas.’

The rule of law in Scotland is already dead to most of us. Waken-up for God’s sake and don’t just do whatever Alex Salmond asks of you. He doesn’t get everything right.

FarmerTed

In 2020, press reports said – “after speculation on the Wings Over Scotland blog, the SNP’s treasurer Colin Beattie wrote to party donors to say that money raised for indyref2 was being held in a “Referendum Appeal Fund”. He said there was £593,501 ready to be deployed “instantaneously” He added: “Like all other political parties, the SNP does not separate out restricted funds in annual accounts. Any such donations are woven through the overall income figures each year.”

Colin Beattie may have chosen his words carefully – if the quote above is strictly correct he did not say there is a restricted fund , merely that if there was one it would not be separated out.
Worth also that noting that not separating out does not prevent you referring to it or even to the total amount of all restricted funds as a material item in the narrative to the report and accounts but nothing was disclosed.

The whole affair brings to mind a certain fictional ship’s engineer…. “Furtive. That’s the word I’d use, furtive. Para’s been furtive since we left Inveraray” – in 2017.. All questions to Colin Beattie…..

Bill Mackay

TheSNPLeftMe says:
6 April, 2021 at 11:07 am
@Stuart Anderson

Simple fact. If you don’t vote SNP you don’t get ALBA. You are voting SNP not for the current leadership. The clear out comes later.

Simple fact is this there is not a cats chance in hell of removing sturgeon if she gets back in,this is our only chance of getting her removed,if she gets back indy is gone forever,it’s like some people have no recollection of the past year with what happened to AS

WeeChid

President Xiden says:
6 April, 2021 at 10:47 am
According to Scots Law.
“Fraud: The common law crime of obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception.”

Which is why people who lie on a job application are liable to prosecution – unless you are a man pretending to be a woman and you apply for and successfully gain a job with R**e Crisis Scotland.

Clavie Cheil

So what is this Pooled Budget Income this last year? Does anybody know because I have cynical view that it will be woven into the books and it will be a case of nothing to see here move along and Alex Salmond bad whilst they plead for cash.

Cudneycareless

O/t but may be of interest

“If we look forward to two, three or four generations, then it may well be that it will be a good idea for Greenland to become independent.

Tillie Martinussen, Chairman of the anti-independence Cooperation Party

Same story different country

Robert Graham

A simple question should have given us a simple answer it’s either there or ir isn’t.

If it’s not Why not , now it’s a question of where did it go if it’s not where it should be , this shouldn’t take days or weeks to figure out if the person or persons giving the answers are truthful and can show they are truthful the figures won’t lie , it’s not a Multi National corporation it’s a small political party so Why the delay , ” political interference ? ” some might say that I couldn’t possibly comment

Republicofscotland

I think Alex Salmond is giving a route-map speech to Scottish independence at 2pm today. Today is the 701st anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath.

not sure where we can watch his speech though I doubt the BritNat propaganda terrestrial channels will air it.

WeeChid

Ken says:
6 April, 2021 at 1:33 pm
“Genuine question; Why would the Weir’s *loan* the SNP money rather than *donate* the money?”

I think theyre are certain restrictions on how much can be donated – not sure but I’d imagine it would be up to the Weir’s accountants. I think when you have that much money it would be very difficult to manage it without an accountant – unless, like me, you’d demand it in cash and keep it inder the bed:-)

sarah

@ Republic of Scotland – see Alex at 2.00 on Alba facebook, web and twitter.

tartanfever

James Che. @ 1.16

‘Only unionists with an agenda of trying to prevent a super majority of Scottish voices in the Scottish Parliament would suggest not to vote snp1 alba 2 ‘

This person thinks women have penises, what a misogynist.

Two can play that game.

sarah

@ RepublicoS – sorry Youtube not website.

Republicofscotland

Thanks Sarah.

Alf Baird

Great stuff Rev.

As I recall, Alex Salmond was the reason for the Weir’s support:

comment image

So it was the Murrell’s who lost that incredible support, and most of the SNP membership too.

And now they’ve lost the ‘plot’.

Benhope

Can I award Nevermore the booby prize for being first to come up with the Al Capone trope on this thread at 9.37am.

What is the booby prize???

dropthevipers

Blimey. What the hell else needs to happen before various high ups start being ferried around in Black Maria’s?

Ron Maclean

Say it ain’t so, Nicola.

BLMac

There are 2 reasons to vote SNP 1

First, so the Alba wins its list seats.

Second, it does not matter how bent the SNP is right now. There is no way they are going to avoid the consequences of corruption and we’ll see 2 miracles, the disappearance of the Murrells and the sudden recovery of Joanne Cherry.

There will be squeals and tantrums from the wokerati and they’ll show their rage by decamping to the Green party. God help any straight white men in that party.

K1

Alex Salmond unveils new ‘Declaration for Scotland’ and a route to independence:

Live now

link to youtube.com

Brian Doonthetoon