The Guilty Party
These are the people whose job it was to stop the leadership of the SNP from stealing almost £700,000 of “ringfenced” fundraiser money from independence supporters, and who utterly failed at that job.
It was also their job to stop Peter Murrell stealing the best part of £500,000 from the SNP, in a separate but related crime, and they failed at that one too.
A small handful of them (marked with red asterisks, but see postscript below) tried their best to do their duties, and were blocked primarily by one powerful woman – Nicola Sturgeon – and a room full of cowards, weaklings and bullies, listed above.
This video is a horrifying watch.
But the most shocking part comes about 12 minutes in. Allison Graham, a member of the SNP’s Finance and Audit Committee (FAC) as well as of its National Executive Committee (NEC) relates how at an NEC meeting on 20 March 2021 she read out a statement from herself and two other FAC members.
Though the statement was quite diplomatically phrased considering the seriousness of the issues, the response to it from the online meeting was a sustained personal attack on Allison Graham from Cllr Ian Cockburn, then the co-leader of the SNP group on Highland Council and who’d completed a law degree just three years earlier.
Despite therefore presumably knowing that he and the other NEC members were legally liable for the SNP’s finances, Cockburn laid into Allison Graham with such a degree of unprovoked vitriol that she physically bowed her head in front of her PC screen, and then the rest of the committee – including Nicola Sturgeon – joined the pile-on, with both anger and mockery.
Most of those doing so were women, but alert readers will have also spotted the eternally poisonous Glasgow councillor Graham Campbell – part of Sturgeon’s inner circle and seen on the far right of the pic below – going so far as to say that a member of the party’s Finance & Audit Committee shouldn’t even have been allowed to read out a statement expressing the FAC’s concerns about the party finances at a meeting of its National Executive Committee.
(In other words, that the FAC literally should have been prevented from doing its job of warning the NEC about a massive seven-figure gap in the SNP’s accounts.)
This was entirely in character for Cllr. Campbell, who at around the same time was demanding that anyone having any dealings (even retweets on Twitter) with Wings Over Scotland – which was also trying to warn SNP members and indy supporters that their money had been stolen – should be expelled from the party.
Ian Cockburn and Christina Cannon, incidentally, are still on the SNP NEC today.
Allison Graham had read out the statement from the FAC members in the hope that it would be recorded as part of the minutes of the meeting.
But the NEC had stopped properly recording minutes of its meetings in November 2020 – by a remarkable coincidence, the exact same month that Douglas Chapman had been elected to replace Colin Beattie as National Treasurer specifically on a platform of delivering greater financial transparency, and recruited Allison Graham, Cynthia Guthrie and Frank Ross to help him in that aim – and started providing party members with only “Outcome Of Business” notes.
This is all ordinary party members were told about the 20 March meeting:
And even NEC members got only this:
It’s important to emphasise once again that at this stage the concerns being raised were solely about the missing fundraiser money, not Peter Murrell’s personal embezzlement from the party.
The SNP’s accounts for 2020 wouldn’t be published until several months after the FAC members resigned, and by the end of 2019 Murrell had only pilfered around £210,000 – a small fraction of the amount of the discrepancy the FAC had noticed.
But all attempts to solve the problem had been frustrated not just by Murrell – who had obvious motivations to keep the finances away from prying eyes – but by the aggressive hostility of the NEC, the very body that was supposed to hold him accountable, driven by the attitude of the party leader.
And as Cynthia Guthrie ruefully notes, that was the real problem.
Nicola Sturgeon’s involvement in the coverup of the dodgy finances goes far beyond mere ignorance, far beyond even a wildly reckless lack of curiosity. She actively, brutally crushed any attempt to warn those responsible for the SNP’s finances of any alarming issues about them.
The FAC members told all of this to Operation Branchform police. And yet still nobody has been held accountable for this misappropriation of hundreds of thousands of pounds solicited from donors on a false premise, and which the SNP now admits had already been spent on something else long before the FAC members resigned and long before the majority of Peter Murrell’s embezzlement.
Alex Kerr, who was on that 2020 NEC, is now an MSP and SNP National Secretary.
Kirsten Oswald, the Business Convener who shut down every attempt by the FAC to raise the issue with the NEC, is now an MSP and a government minister.
(Hilariously, the SNP issued a statement yesterday that Oswald had been committed to transparently updating party members about what had happened at NEC meetings.
Let’s just remind ourselves what Oswald told members about a meeting where half the party’s Finance Committee had resigned because they had extremely grave concerns about the party’s finances and the Chief Executive’s refusal to provide them with even the most basic information required to do their job.)
Alison Thewliss, who was on the 2020 NEC, is now an MSP.
Ian Cockburn, who instigated the pile-on against Allison Graham – the only time he ever spoke at an NEC meeting, Allison told Wings earlier today – has now resigned from Highland Council but is still on the SNP NEC.
Christina Cannon, who also joined in the pile-on, is as noted above still on the NEC and is an SNP councillor in Glasgow. She’s never had any sort of job outside politics, which is at least good news for the world of commerce, given her determined lack of interest in accounts.
Graham Campbell, who thought it was outrageous that the Finance & Audit Committee was even allowed to report to the NEC on the party’s finances, is a councillor in the same ward as Christina Cannon, and chairs the SNP’s BAME Network.
Farah Farzana, who also joined in the pile-on and is also a former chair of the SNP BAME Network, describes herself as a “social injustice activist” [sic] and is currently the Equalities And Human Rights Officer at Falkirk Council. She was the Scottish Parliament’s “ambassador” for World Hijab Day, and remains active in the SNP.
Heather Anderson, who also joined the pile-on, became an SNP MSP at last month’s election, giving her oath in “Dundonian Scots”. She previously founded Scottish Human Services, a charitable trust focused on “inclusion”.
Laura Mitchell, who also joined the pile-on, is another who got herself rewarded for years of obedient compliance with a nice cushy MSP job last month. She appears to have no life story whatsoever other than having been “born and raised in Moray” and boilerplate boilerplate boilerplate. We think she might actually be AI, or at any rate that an AI MSP would be more interesting.
Laura Brennan-Whitefield, who also joined the pile-on, is an SNP councillor. When seeking to be elected to the NEC in 2018, she expressed her wish to “influence Party policy in a progressive way”.
Stacy Bradley, who also joined the pile-on, stepped down as an SNP office-bearer in 2024 in order to concentrate on a new career as a trainee criminal defence solicitor, which might come in handy in the future.
Emma Hendrie, who also joined in the pile-on, campaigned actively in the SNP’s “Young Scots for Independence” wing – commonly known as the Twitler Youth for its slavish and vindictive devotion to Nicola Sturgeon – for the decriminalisation of sex work. (She’s the brunette on the right of the pic below.)
When she was seeking re-election to the NEC in 2020, she said “Constructive criticism is always welcome”, which we’re sure will come as comforting news to Allison Graham. Hendrie seems to have subsequently vanished from public view.
Findlay MacGregor, who also joined in the pile-on, is the brother of SNP MSP Fulton MacGregor, and was re-elected to the NEC in 2021 after all of the pro-accountability “rebels” elected in 2020 were pushed out. This 2019 campaigning pic is almost all we know about him.
All of the people above, and all the other members of the 2020 SNP NEC who didn’t resign, are complicit – either actively, as in the cases of those we’ve just listed, or passively in the cases of others – in the cover-up of the theft of the fundraiser money (and also in the cover-up of Peter Murrell’s embezzlement).
All failed in their duty to the party as NEC members, and in their legal fiduciary duties. All of them share the responsibility for the subsequent calamities that befell the SNP, because none of them asked the questions it was their job to ask, and instead attacked those who did.
But what the testimony of the FAC members this week really demonstrates is that everyone who didn’t resign from the NEC in 2021 was involved in a crime for which nobody has yet been held to account, and that it is now even more astonishing that the Crown Office decided not to even try to prosecute anyone for it, and refuses to offer any sort of explanation for why.
Crown Agent John Logue’s comments tell us nothing. WHY were the police and Crown Office not able to establish fraud, as the money had demonstrably been spent, and not on what it was raised for? And HOW were they able to establish there’d been no fraud, as at the point when the focus of the investigation switched from the fundraiser fraud to Murrell’s embezzlement they hadn’t questioned anyone in the SNP leadership? Like a magpie distracted by a shiny object, they simply dropped all the twigs they were carrying and went after their new prize.
(Conversely, the same organisation DID previously push ahead with a trial against Alex Salmond for which there was literally not a scrap of material evidence, and a string of witnesses whose testimonies were obvious and demonstrable lies.)
The SNP was the victim of a crime, but also the perpetrator of one, and until the latter is addressed we’re all just being told to Wheesht For Nicola. If we know what’s good for us, that is.
.
[POSTSCRIPT]
Some people have noted that the non-asterisked names included NEC members who were elected on the “good guys” slate in 2020 and have been unfairly traduced, having done other honourable work in areas like the gender wars and supported the other members.
We purposely took a very hard line for this particular feature in only “exonerating” those who resigned or spoke up publicly on the specific issue of the finances. However, Joanna Cherry made the very fair point to us – which we hadn’t previously known – that the “good guys” cohort on the NEC adopted an organised and delegated approach to trying to fix the many problems within the party: someone would address the finances, someone else the fiddling of the election list, someone else gender issues and so on.
So for the record we’d like to acknowledge that Lynne Anderson, Chris Hanlon, Caroline McAllister, Amanda Berger, Catriona MacDonald, Robert DeBold and Roger Mullin do not belong on the list of shame, and were part of the doomed attempt to save the SNP from the Sturgeon faction before it was too late, so we’ve given them aqua asterisks. Everyone else is still absolute scum.
Are the red asterisks missing from the first image?
NOT ANY MORE THEY’RE NOT
Special agent Johnson?
Every single name on the NEC list except Alison Graham, Joanna Cherry and the other few people who complained, should all be referred to OSCR, the Charity Commission and Companies House to investigate all charities and companies they are connected to as trustees or directors, especially if also treasurer, secretary or other senior role.
It’s not only incompetence, ignorance and arrogance but they should all be held legally liable for the collective failure to manage an organisations finances. There was no due diligence, integrity, honesty, impartiality or objectivity or even common sense. A bunch of playground bullies led by bruiser Sturgeon and her cult followers. Those with legal or accountancy memberships should also face disciplinary procedures.
That these people also help run our devolved nation’s government finances to the tune of millions and billions, suggests that these corrupt cabal of crooked politicians should be nowhere near positions of power and every single person who votes for them is an idiot.
Very well put Martin
Surely “Well said, Ian”? 😉
I watched the interview in full. Two very experienced, intelligent and articulate women there. Governance Gamekeepers. The rest of the NEC were and still are all toads. Toon councillors to a tee.
I liked Allison Graham’s insight into corporate structures of authority and blind deference. This coupled with Sturgeon’s chronic confabulation proved to be a heady mix indeed. How she is still walking the streets, everybody knows.
As I scrawled on every ballot paper after 2014, ‘corrupt as fuck’.
Excellent work Stu. How can anyone still be a member of this corrupt party?
“How can anyone still be a SNP member?”
As long as the Scottish people vote to return the SNP to power, the SNP will have no trouble finding candidates and members.
Especially from the Far Left, who use the SNP as its Trojan Horse.
Rarely, for once, I agree with you.
Don’t get over excited, you normally post anti Scots sh1te that I don’t..
Oh I have second hand embarrassment for them . Clearly have not got the intelligence or character to do their own critical thinking .
The bullying is horrific . I am ashamed to be Scottish and have people like we have anywhere near power .
Toxic people .
Please please PLEASE will someone sue these barstewards. I’ll GLADLY contribute something
I am surely not the only person to wish that Alex was here to see all of whats going on.
Aye he is sadly missed.
I am sure Alex is doing from far what he could not do on earth and brought the darkness to the forefront and the public to see what these corrupt Scottish no party is all about R I P Alex they tried to set you up but you are having the last laugh
Campbell swanned around Glasgow Merchant city when my OH had a Bar there 2008-2010. He sucked up to the Labour Council leaders who frequented the Bars in that area! I did not know who he was at the time- but I just did not like him!
Wasn’t Cllr Campbell involved in an incident a few years ago when money belonging to a charity he was involved with magically appeared in his wife’s bank account?
I am at a loss to understand why the missing indy ref fund has not been addressed. My husband and I gave Police Statements. We were interviewed over 3 separate meetings. We had Beattie’s woven through the accounts statement read to us and asked if we accepted it. Which we didn’t. I provided the email trail when I claimed our £520 back which showed that they clearly kept a separate account of the money paid in under the indy ref fund. We paid our membership subs separately to the Indy Ref fund payments and from a different bank account.Our complaint was about the indy ref fund. Allison and Cynthia started from the indy ref fund. SNP have gone from 2021 oh it’s there it’s woven through to it’s been spent. Unbelievable.
The Police did not interview me at all strange seeing as I was the only one who went public about getting my donations returned ?
Fine we article this one, again. I am sure it will be well read by folk up and doon the land.
Plus ca change
So when are the Murrel supporters on the FAC going to do their financial duty and make good the losses?
Isn’t that what liability means?
Thanks for this article and for all your work. Hope you have a bodyguard.
The timing of the whistleblowers’ NEC letter may explain the lengthy statement about “Referendum Appeal” by the National Treasurer on pages 13 to 15 of the SNP’s 2020 audited accounts which were signed off on 25 June 2021 by the auditors and the National Treasurer. Similar wording did not appear in earlier years’ audited accounts.
The party leader does not sign the accounts.
Excellent Forensic Articles the Last Few Weeks Mr Campbell.
Absolutely first class reporting, again. Should be made required reading by the Scottish press and anyone who believes in Scotland
Sturgeon was SNP leader all through the time of the indyref fundraising campaign and the money’s disappearance into SNP general spending.
Some very simple questions that noone seems to be asking Sturgeon:
1. When was the decision made to redirect the money to the SNP?
2. Who made the decision?
3. Who were involved in discussions to do that?
4. Where are the minutes?
5. Why was money redirected?
6. Why were donors not asked for permission?
7. Why were donors not offered refunds?
8. When did Sturgeon, Swinney et al become aware the indyref donations had been redirected?
These are extremely simple. I’ll add one more:
9. Why are mainstream journalists incapable of asking such questions?
Not forgetting Laura Mitchell who was one of the first to support Ian Cockburn’s comments. She’s now SNP MSP for Moray.
Thank you Revd Stuart Campbell for this further sure-footed step forward through the dense mine-field surrounding Sturgeon.
Thank you Allison Graham and Cynthia Guthrie for your courage and articulacy, reminding us afresh (and well we need reminded!) of John Barbour’s evergreen lines in ‘The Brus’:
« A! Fredome is a noble thing!…
« […] A noble hart may haiff nane ese
Na ellys nocht that may him plese
Gyff fredome fail…
« […] And suld think fredome mair to prys
Than all the gold in warld that is.»
With that caliber of people in politics I think we dogged bullet IN 2014. I want my money back ,years of direct debits and a lump some for the ring fenced indy ref pot.
@ wullie: if we had actually managed to leave the Union in 2014 – remember that it was only an advisory referendum, not a binding one – the first election would have been wide open to other parties. The SNP’s raison d’etre would have gone. And Alex Salmond would still have been in charge, choosing people of calibre to appoint, so these toxic idiots would have been nowhere.
I don’t think any bullet was dodged, after Alex’s resignation we ended up with The Murrills and their misanthropic posse of fanatic followers.
One could fairly assume Scottish independence would have triggered the exhilarating return of very many highly able exiles – rather than desolate departures resulting from controlled close-down. It’s terminal punishment. Scotland is being starved of oxygen. There’s a foot on our throat.
A rare departure from common sense for you, Fearghas.
I won’t be exhilarated post Indy by a flood of chancers, carpet baggers and leaches. If they want to get their paws on the spoils of Indy, they can return to Scotland now and graft for their share.
“Highly able exiles”
How about you name one or two?
Fearghas’ logic follows the postcolonial reality, Hatey, where two main population shifts may be anticipated:
1. their privileges ended, the colonialists have a tendency to return to the mother country, and;
2. the ‘banished natives’ tendency to return to their home country, now decolonised, to share also in their ain people’s liberation and to aid the nation’s necessary re-development.
The “chancers, carpet baggers and leaches” you refer to more relate to the mediocre elites running the territory under colonial rule, such as the current mankit regime and institutions.
Have it your way, Alf.
Fingers crossed one of Fearghas’ highly able exiles doesn’t take your job when she returns.
“Banished natives”
How about you name one or two?
Alf
Promise us you won’t change your mind post Indy when some exhilarating highly able exile returns to take your job. Possibly an even more exhilarating one will take your boss’s job too.
Still, good to see you’ve dropped the requirement that post-Indy, only fluent Scots speakers will be allowed employment. Perhaps you’ve twigged how much of a folly that is.
Re your “banished natives”.
How about you name one or two?
“Promise us you won’t change your mind post Indy when some exhilarating highly able exile returns to take your job.”
Hang on Hatey…. Alf has a job?
As in “going out to work and getting paid” kind of job?
Who knew!
In my career I became a Fellow of a Professional Body, which has rules about obligation of probity to employers and also to the wider public. Are any of these characters Accountants, Engineers, Architects or similar, with equivalent requirements?
I suspect they’re hanging on and hoping that Murrell repays a good chunk of the money, and then they’ll say, look, naughty Pete stole the money, now have it back, we’ll use it for ‘working towards’ a referendum as promised, which is what the SNP does, we are victims, move along now please.
A pretty damning dissection of this murky business.
Interested to note an ex-leader of Highland Council in the middle of this; all I can say is, as a Highland resident, I’m not in the least but surprised. This useless organisation is the epitome of incompetence.
I have said it before and I will say it again:False accounts were submitted to the Electoral Commission.
The Electoral Commission should take action against the SNP and insist that accurate accounts are now submitted.
World Hijab Day.
I’m beyond outraged that nae cant telt me.
Don’t worry full exposure will happen shortly, but maybe not in the way you seek…
link to awarenessdays.com
I want my country back and I want these people gone.
How many of those who attended that NEC meeting were elected as supposedly “Good Guys” at the 2020 conference and why didn’t they all speak up? The “Good Guys” were supposed to hold Sturgeon and her cabal to account. The four names with asterisks did. Why didn’t the rest?
All resigned or left by Feb/March 2021 with Alba launching, if memory serves me. By then they’d all been ostracised and prevented from having any influence. The attempt to turn things round from the inside only lasted a few months till things splintered.
Some did, but not all. It would be interesting to see a history of the “Good Guys” campaign as it was the last and final opportunity for the membership to try to take back control from Sturgeon and her cabal.
I spent a lot of time during the Good Guys campaign reading the latest (at that time) and previous version of the SNP constitution and rules and concluded, before the 2020 conference, that the campaign would fail because the number of appointees, representatives of affiliated organisations and politicians (who had to obey the party whip) on the NEC was greater than the number of representatives that the Good Guys campaign could realistically expect to elect. Put simply, the Good Guys would be easily stifled by the NEC.
That’s exactly what happened, but the way in which Sturgoen and her cabal treated the “Good Guys” was much more brutal that even I had expected. They prevented our Women’s Convenor from speaking on matters that affected women’s rights, they prevented the finance committee from seeing the accounts, they prevented the disciplinary commiteee from meeting, even virtually etc etc.
Those who were much closer to the Good Guys campaign than I was should get together and document what actually happened, then share it amongst the independence community. It will demonstrate how the changes to the constitution and rules of the SNP that were made in 2018 turned the party into an effective autocracy that completely disempowered the membership.
Good people. I beg you to watch the video in full. To hear two ordinary women who wanted to help tell you what happened is gob-smacking. Even though we all know these facts you should hear it from those who tried. If you can’t do it for you, please do it for them.
It doesn’t take much to disable a party.
Under Salmond the SNP and the wider independence movement were motivated and focussed. The independence referendum was given in the belief that the Yes vote would fail. But it didn’t fail. It came close, closer than we may actually know and it could not be allowed to happen again,
And so, and the Brit state are good at this, and have plenty of experience of it, they set about destroying the SNP and the independence movement. And what better, more insidious way than by rotting the party from within.
Bribery and its counterpart blackmail are key parts in this. And bribery comes in all manner of forms. Some forms quite anodyne whilst others quite outrageous. And its not just comfy slippers but rather a whole panoply of graces and favours that get some to just peddle time to others actively acting for a foreign power and against the movement they are supposed to represent.
Bought and sold for English gold may be an old dictum but what of those who have partaken of forbidden fruit, been helped even to partake of forbidden fruit. Not difficult to keep these folks on message else exposure.
The suspected paedophile ring at the heart of the Thatcher government most certainly fits that bill. Or what about Little St James and all the underage girls, and in fact more, as exposed by the Jeffry Epstein ring. Or Sir James Saville and his deep connections or a couple of good but foolish SNP MPs caught in a honeytrap by the same woman.
And then of course, with fifth columnists in place, control centralised, and difficult people out of the way, aided and abetted by deep state control of the civil service, police and COPFS aids and abets, the ship was redirected.
And Sturgeon, she was turned. Of that there should be no doubt. She sold a movement riding high short. And she was protected because that was her job.
Murrell was a two bit embezzler. And Sturgeon must have known it. But she was protected whilst Murrell was ultimately not.
And will Sturgeon remain protected. That is a good question. There very much appears to be solid grounds to prosecute and maybe when the time is right, she too. like Murrell, will be offered up. The case is there, the gun is loaded, and it just awaits the masters decision to go.
And meanwhile the donkeys safely graze as the good ship SNP falls apart.
But you know what. The political party mechanism may have been destroyed but the desire for independence is still there and stronger that what it was before. Our opportunity still awaits and the British government know it, and fear it.
I responded to your post on previous thread, seeing as you asked a question.
A lot of folk spend too much time stating what is wrong, but not enough effort and ideas put into discussion on how to begin to correct matters.
If all you’ve got to state is negativity, with no remedy to address these ills, you’ll jist scunner folk to the point they don’t see any way out and switch off. Well played for preserving the Union…
Ah, jist checked and the “willie” I responded to had a capital W so maybe not yourself. But the premise of my responding posts is still relevant.
What a shower of shit.
From http://www.decolonise.scot
Scotland is a colony and the world now knows it
This is a long read, but well worth it. Aidan and co will hate it.
Short read please.
Tell us the date of our Independence so we can plan.
Chop. Chop!
“Short read please”
This may be more up your street, Hatey.
Liberation only comes when the oppressed group finally see through the ‘colonial hoax’, which deluded folks still call a ‘union’:
link to decolonise.scot
Sorry, Alf.
Not seeing the Indy date in there.
But then you knew that.
“Don’t tell him, Pike!”
Interesting reading, thank you for sharing.
I always get rather unnerved by the PRC’s engagement in anything, being a hostile power, however the above is an argument well-made. Food for thought.
That pile-on would be disgraceful in a knitting facebook group, let alone a professional forum for a political organisation. “hashtag i’mwithian”???! How utterly thick and embarrassing are these frauds?
Willie,
Thats what happens when we have a controlled pretendy Governance in Scotland from Westminsters Scotland Act,
If anything, these rotten placements in the pretendy parliament and takeover of the SNP highlights how easy it is to control everyone under one umbrella,
The reason that 50% of Scotlands independence supporters survive through the ages is due to the fact that we no longer place all our eggs in one political basket which the the likes of the SNP tried to take control of.
The pretend governance of Scotland was advanced to Scotland after three hundred years of no Scottish parliament in Great Britain parliament, under Westminster parliament for England and Wales – Scotland act, for that purpose, when required to be activated, dismantling Scotland,
A little bit of info included above from Stu also mentions a worry regards elections. Control and management of the people in Scotland not in the treaty of union. Its not just the SNP that are displaying financial corruption to break Scotland from the inside,
With a controlled parliament inserted into Scotland all sorts of other Crazy controlling laws and perverted ideas can be falsely passed as laws of Scotland through Westminsters back door when required.
Where are Scotlands problems originating from?…The pretendy parliament and all the mistakes, errors, financial expenditure, cover ups, misplaced wrong tenders, and appalling conduct,
Yes Willie, it spreads like a disease, for most of these issues come to Scotland via the Scotland Act,
“it spreads like a disease”
Yes James, colonialism ‘is a disease of the mind’, and ‘like a cancer it seeks only to spread’ (Memmi).
And all part of the ‘colonial hoax’ and associated pathology:
link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com
Indeed, one only has to look at the pathological obsession with many across Scotland and Britain more widely with the European Union. Particularly bizarre with those who claim to want Scottish independence yet want to shackle us to the EU.
As someone very open to independence due to the current mess of British politics and the resulting negative impact on the population’s living standards, I’m sick of those who seek to outsource democracy to overseas interests (EU, UN, WHO etc) that are completely unaccountable to the population.
Another guilty party.
link to irishtimes.com
What you see is what you get,
Garbage in, garbage out,
You cant make a silk purse from a pig’s ear or a parliament from a parish council,
& similar aphorisms
Well, considering devolution was a project by The War Criminal to turn the other regions of the UK into permanent Labour fiefdoms whilst New Labour was at the height of their power, it’s not surprising.
It should either have full sovereign powers, or not exist at all.
It has become what it was intended to be, in that respect, exercising the limited powers of the old Scottish Office, its members have done a very good job of sovereignty containment.
From the outset the institution was the stunted creature of Westminster dancing to its tune.
Legalism, essentially a fear of being radical in action, has dogged the institution exemplified by the grovelling petitioning of Westminster for the right to hold domestic referenda.
Power is seized never voluntarily given.
I don’t think anyone – not even here – could sensibly argue, with a straight face, that 2014 Sturgeon/Murrell and their entire venal cabal (pretty much the same cabal as per 2013 pre-referendum, incidentally) would’ve been anything less than a total disaster for Scotland. Any notion of these people being entirely in charge must surely be met with abject horror.
The present outcome is far from good – for anyone (again, ironically, as due to the rank incompetence of the same SNP that sought to govern an independent Scotland). Sky high taxes, ineptitude, awful “identity politics” and corruption – what’s not to hate? Notwithstanding, though, I would still say “bullet dodged”.
Your Sixth Form politics (“Revolution, yeah? Because, like, we’ll sort out all the petty details later, we is colonisedTM”) is single-issue, grievance-led, absurdly simplistic and all rather juvenile in the crass avoidance of substantive issues, the remotest detail and most tellingly, the efficacy (or otherwise) of those who would be doing the actual “leading”.
A vapid collection of slogans and quotations.
(@TURABDIN obviously).
CC @ 11.09
I read your post, sometimes nodding in agreement, other times shaking it in disagreement.
What I’d like to know though is why you blew your own work out of the water in its closing summary which I found quite amusing:
“A vapid collection of quotations and slogans”..
Hahahahahahah. 🙂
A bit harsh on yourself- You really shouldn’t put yourself down so “old boy”, to cheer you up consider a burger flipped just for you. 🙂
Heh. Well, there is no “work” to blow out of the water, YL – unless you count 30 seconds’ worth of idly musing over the blindingly obvious, empirical facts as regarding the useless SNP and almost everyone within it.
Mind, some people really are blinkered, and (IMO) none moreso than the Scots electorate.
Sarah,
We (Scotland ) are not in a Union, and was not in a union in 2014,
Read Xaracen,s post.
@ James Che – you know, and I know, that we aren’t legally or in practice in a Union. It was shorthand. 🙂
Union(sic)
Xaracen,
Thank you so much for your post today,
It clarifies much of what we have been trying to explain to union believers for years, including to Scots.
“Oh what a tangled web we weave/ When first we practice to deceive,”
from Marmion., Sir Walter Scott.
Sir Walter Scott says it all imo.
Interesting to note that Cheese Eating Weasel, Doug Daniel, sat on his chubby hands.
Alf Baird.
Xaracen post is very clear regards the UN, as were your own and mind mine over the years, trying to explain the treaty of union as ahoax,which has been mocked by union believers.
As this progresses, not just in the UN but becomes knowledge around the globe. It will have an impact world wide on other Countries that did not realise that there was / is no such condition as the State of the kingdom of Great Britain between Scotland & England.
The Westminster Parliament’s finest trick is to persuade you that the Act of Union as an international treaty binding two sovereign states actually exists in the form which they claim it does.
Further relaxed respectful (1 hr 15 mins long) interview yesterday with Cynthia Guthrie and Allison Graham (by Gina Davidson LBC NEWS, 25 June):
SNP WHISTLEBLOWERS CLAIM WARNINGS OVER PARTY FINANCES WERE IGNORED | LBC Exclusive
link to youtube.com
Excellent! Thanks for posting
Marvellous, Fearghas – thanks so much for posting this link. MOH and self are “enjoying” it over lunch.
Xaracen, that’s a really interesting article explaining the inner working of the UN. Especially interesting to know that Scotland’s case is now in the wider frame of the global south and will be looked at outwith a western perspective.
We will all have to hope and pray that Scotland’s long history of colonial theft, ethnic cleansing and genocide isn’t also looked at in the wider frame of the global south and outside a western perspective.
They’ve got more sense than to fall for the “English cants did it, blamed us, then ran away” myth. They may be third world, but only racists would assume they’re thick.
How’s the tranni van man coming on at HR? Isn’t he planning introducing legislation so that Scotland can start to pay reparations for our colonialist past?
That’s another comforting myth many Scots cling to – that we’re so cuddly and lovable the third world are our besties. It grows out of Scots denial about our imperialist, colonialist past.
HMcH
Whoa!
Easy there tiger!!
While I have a scintilla of sympathy with the thrust of what you are saying there, doesn’t the whole episode you talk about not come under your highly flexible (to suit) criterion of “ancient guff”?
Two faced wordsmith rogue comes to mind about you!
Gaun! Back to the void from whence you came (seeing as you Yoons are right into yer fantasy films)!!
🙂
Numpty..
Posted at 4.15am – bad me – but deal with it milk monitors!!
tits posting bollocks here isn’t exactly novel here … but let’s make one thing clear :
if YES wins in 2014, the STURGEON DOES NOT GET THE BIG JOB, Salmond would have been in charge, trying to get it all setup, for at least another 5 years (the institutions, the currency, the NATO question, the europe question, negotiations with the anglo scum … ) – there is no way he would have got out the hot seat to let her take over. Nor would she want it, really, if she had to setup a new country.
So, a whole load of shit … never happens; the SNps best are not driven out, the internal democracy is not destroyed, a gang of Nikki mini-mes and woke-ideologues do NOT infest all important choke points of interest; the trans bollocks, never happens, a lot of shite just never happens because when you peel it all back there is always some incompetent nicola fan-girl in charge. Nikki has been so destructive because of the network she setup to protect herself; it is still in place. She rules from behind the curtain.
Salmond demonstrated high levels of competence in charge; e.g. the new bridge. He wouldn’t hand over the reins when he had a job to do; Nikki may even have been useful, if restricted to a lesser role – it was when she was allowed to peddle her “grand vision” we got all this shite.
I also doubt the conspiracy to stitch up Alex would have happened – Nikki would not have had the power to organise such a thing in secret.
Those damn postal votes cost us everything.
something for the connoisseur of driest wit – the scotgov has -rejected- plans for the new replacement monklands hospital as it “would not be value for money” …
link to bbc.co.uk
– it’s never stopped them before.
Maybe there was not enough tranny surgery departments or net zero going on; maybe I will rebid, instead of 2B, I will ask for 3B (bank account details provided) and call it the NET ZERO TRANS HEALTHCARE MIGRANT VILLAGE it will have an asylum seeker hostel within it as well, and a private airfield so international trannies can come in. Tranny surgery will be offered free to anyone who comes here. Post rehab we give you a passport, a house in Bothwell and map of the local primary schools.
An additional innovation will be a free compulsory diversity training seminar given to all A&E service users prior to their treatment. (We don’t want to treat any racists, you know).
Monklands is shambolic, falling apart, shanty town of a hospital, with no parking and a bad layout. They should have shut it down ages ago but it would then add inordinate pressure on hairmyres and wishaw (only 3 general hospitals in the area) – they have to build a new one, sometime.
Fucking working class bastards, they are all FAR RIGHT – better they should … just fucken -die- and be done with it.
It used to be a decent midsize hospital cost about 100M (but that was 20 years ago); the new stobhill cost about 8 times that and seems to have a poisonous ventilation system. Maybe 2B is too much, or it is maybe just ballpark these days; ironically being risk averse makes things prone to fail, it takes much longer, people add things on – they are obsessed with centralising all services under one roof. The chinese will do you a massive state of the art hospital for about 1B. There is a generalised incompetence in the UK with big projects, they just can’t do them and westminster is even worse than holyrood, they have one disaster after another HS2, hinckley point, the dreadnought, the superjet; the last thing they did that worked well was the 2012 olympics, and that was because they gave seb coe the power of a dictator, plus a blank cheque book.
I don’t see why they can’t build lots of smaller, cheaper, hospitals and spread them around; this notion of one massive hospital that does everything does not seem a good idea. Look at Lidl – their supermarkets are everywhere and they are all the same layout; it makes it cheaper, easier, and when they get permission for a new one somewhere, their guys can just turn up and do it, because they have done it already 100s of times; every custom design costs a lot. Modular design, all that. Hairmyres isn’t a bad layout, why not just copy it?
The new monklands was meant to be built in 2016.
“every custom design costs a lot”
Exactly the same with Edin trams, the ‘new’ parliament building, and of course ferries:
link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com
ScotGov still specifies and ‘designs’ its own in-house unique prototype ferries costing £50m-£300m each (and therefore costing several billion£ for total fleet replacement), whilst sensible operators continue to opt for proven standard ferry designs for under £15m each:
link to sealink.com.au
I expect our mediocre colonial administrators will continue to make such sub-optimal procurement decisions until they run out of cash. Which is likely the case with rejection of a ‘new replacement monklands hospital’ and other capital projects.
However Swinney hopes to raise money by other dubious means via his City of London ‘alliance’ (aka oor doun-hauder):
link to gov.scot
As a former regular ferry user to the Western and Northern Isles for many years you have hit the nail squarely on the head, Alf.
Holyrood insists on the bespoke approach which inevitably ends up with the taxpayer being bled dry for something delivered years late and invariably unfit for purpose. WM also is wedded to this siloed groupthink – HS2 being a swinging example of state ineptitude.
During my former regular commutes to the islands I was always impressed by the reliability, punctuality, speed of loading/unloading and cost of the Pentland Ferries service to Orkney as opposed to the Northlink service, not to mention the slow, expensive, inefficient, extremely unreliable CalMac sailings I had to put up with for over a decade when working on the islands. Pentland Ferries could certainly teach Calmac a thing or two, both in terms of service provision and execution.
The Pentalina and Alfred were a snippet of the cost of the Loch Seaforth, Glen Sannox or the Glen Rosa.
Presumably post-Indy, Alf, the self same mediocre post-colonial administrators will continue in their comfort zones making the same sub-optimal procurement decisions because we’ll all be shitting spare cash. Isn’t it an additional £150 billions per year we’ll be struggling to burn through?
Unless the exilirating highly talented ones are going to arrive from outside of Scotland and chuck people out of their jobs.
Seems to me there’s a lot of promises made about the post-Indy landscape that don’t stack up.
“The Pentalina and Alfred were a snippet of the cost of the Loch Seaforth, Glen Sannox or the Glen Rosa”
Yes indeed, Pentalina cost just £7m in 2009 around the same time CMAL spent £25m on Finnlaggan. And the Alfred cost £14.5m around the time CMAL ordered their dual-fuel prototypes at an initial cost of £50m each, the latter subsequently costing taxpayers £300m each.
And our colonial administration’s ferry procurement crisis gets ever worse with Scottish Gov now paying fully for three delayed / unfinished prototype ferries in Turkey and hoping for the best as the yard may go bust:
link to bbc.com
Whilst that’s true Alf you aren’t entirely comparing like with like. The MV Finlaggan is a higher capacity vessel than the MV Pentlina, and the MV Loch Seaforth is larger than both of them. The two Calmac vessels are also much more comfortable than the Pentlina, which is a very basic ship designed for passengers to spend only around an hour. In contrast, the two Calmac vessels have to cover the Oban – Castlebay/Lochboisdale routes in the winter which can be upto seven hours if they do the joint Barra/South timetable. I wouldn’t want to spend seven hours on the Pentlina.
There is obviously no defending the Glen Sannox/Rosa however.
Alf
The projects you cite highlight slightly different issues but the same underlying problem: client driven contractual risk transfer.
It wouldn’t take a genius to recognise in advance that the Edi tram line works would entail inordinate alterations to a maze of below ground utilities lazily recorded.
Think £££££.
The solution, pass it on to someone else to take the hit for time delay, cost, diversions and remediation of decrepit ancient buried services and swing off to the wine bar thinking you’ve pulled a fast one.
Then the ferries.
Not understand the implications of what you are talking about, engage with stakeholders post contract, not pre contract, many of whom can’t read drawings anyway then invoke the “it’s the clients prerogative to make changes” post signing of contract without understanding that ultimately it’s also the clients obligation under such scenarios to shoulder the unavoidable additional expense of these “changes of mind”..
This isn’t a Scottish problem, England is littered with equivalents but goes some way to explaining why competent experienced persons are required in positions of decision making- not 3rd rate flunkies/ inexperienced graduates advised by equally inexperienced time serving civil servants holding (it appears) no responsibility or accountability for their “advice”.
What a joke.
Goes without saying being an old f8rt that it wasn’t like this back in my day but then again back then artists impressions of proposed developments weren’t released with totally unrealistic timescales of delivery given out on the news that were highly/ extremely unlikely to be achieved on “budget”- usually politically driven guesswork of course.
Government (British Empire style at least) is the absolute worst at capital investment projects. They write a poor quality brief, and then change their minds as to what they want, all the way through.
They bring in lots of the wrong consultants, pre-qualify potential contractors with horrible conditions that drives away the good ones, compromise the design & budget and then panic.
HS2 has always been an absolute shambles, they still can’t get it to aerive at Euston, and abandoned destination Manchester long, long ago.
The same with every other project, Scottish Parlianent, Edinburgh trams Glasgow Airport rail link, dualling A9, House of Coomons refurbishment, and the Scottish ferries -where they even foegot to orovide fuel at the harbours.
Consultancy firms should be the best and smartest, but now it’s just a gravy train for them, driven by their invoicing depts.
Some valid points from Confused.
Unlike LIDL, it’s easy to staff a new hospital because every migrant dinghy is hoaching with nurses, midwives, cancer specialists and brain surgeons.
Never shelf stackers or bog floor moppers.
The Scottish Parliament is a corruption.
The Scottish Government is a fiction.
And Holyrood is no more than a colonial administrative outpost – a branch office of Empire England Plc.
We Scots can rant and rage and rail against the heavens,
We can curse the Gods and cry out against injustice,
We can whine tae the wind,
we can screech at the stanes,
We can bark at the moon and bellow tae the blaw,
We can shout at the storm till the clouds crack,
We can do all of that, but it won’t change a thing until we raise ourselves up and act.
The Independence effort needs YOUR effort… at work, at home, in your community.
“Wait, here’s a bunch of Indy kids who look like they could eat Anglos for lunch… what do you say kids?”
“Yum yum yum!”
Young people from all over Scotland are joining up to fight for Scotland’s future.
They’re doing their part… are you?
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
(Contact Salvo Marshal Sara Salyers, leader of Scotland’s liberation movement.)
JOIN THE LIBERATION ALLIANCE TODAY AND HELP SAVE SCOTLAND.
NOTE: Membership guarantees Scottish citizenship
He’s back!
Alpha Centauri was it, Northy?
While you’ve been away Indy has been sorted at the UN.
So you can stand down.
Here, what’s the Scots for “United Nations”?
In politics as in life. So often, the least competent/laziest/most mediocre/most parasitical are rewarded for sucking up to the boss/appearing to do, but actually do nothing. Happens everywhere. The hard-working and competent are usually kept in their place because they keep everything actually running. It is a law of nature.
Also, I hate to say it, and, of course, I may be wrong, but there is no law as far as I am aware that states that monies that have been earmarked or ring-fenced for a particular purpose must be used for that purpose. Yes, the SNP claimed that the monies were to be used for another referendum and that, at a pinch, could be deemed to be fraudulent, but, again, another referendum would need to be in the offing and the monies not there at the time they were needed. There would require to be that direct thread, I think.
If the monies were, instead, woven through the SNP accounts in such a way that they must have been used for elections, for example, it would be very difficult to prove fraud. If the monies were used to repay loans made by the Weirs, that would not amount to fraud either because these loans would have been legally enforceable on the party, as a legal entity. It has been rumoured that Mr and Mrs Weir were horrified at the direction the party was taking, but there may be no truth in that. I do not know.
The only way, I think, and I could be wrong, that a case could be made against these people and they held legally liable under joint and several liability is if they deliberately misled the membership and others into donating money for another referendum when they knew no referendum would appear, that there never was any intention to provide another referendum and that the monies were always destined to pay off the loans, or, if the monies had been placed in a separate account for a referendum and marked as such, and, subsequently, were withdrawn and used for something else.
I’m not letting them off the hook, just speculating as to how a case would hang together. I’m sorry to say it, but I believe they were backing Sturgeon and the top brass to the hilt and were just too inept to understand the reality of the situation. If she said, jump, they asked, how high? There can be no way that the high head yins did not know the state of the finances and that promises had been broken, and had they been open from the start with the membership about the state of the finances, this parlous state of affairs would not have arisen as it has (Murrell being a separate issue, although also the result of too much power at the top, and too little accountability).
It is the immensity of the arrogance, entitlement, stupidity and vicious back-biting that stuns, but, as you say, Rev, most of them are women and few women actually know what it is to both have power and use it wisely. I am not denigrating my sex, but they are the ones who tend to form the cliques and refuse to see the truth of a situation, especially if other women are involved who are contradicting them, and especially if those who are contradicting them are older women. Another law of nature.
None of this, including the Alex Salmond affair, would have happened quite as it did, otherwise. Joanna Cherry shows in her book just how toxic women can be when they rally against common sense and how they always punish other women far more severely than they would ever punish men in similar circumstances, although, granted, Mr Salmond was the exception to that rule. That several men were directly involved, too, proves that pettiness and toxicity is not confined to the female of the species.
Lorncal,
I posted this link upthread but in the context of your post I provide it here again for fear it gets overlooked. Two worthy women indeed — Cynthia Guthrie and Allison Graham — bravely speak out in the 35 mins long SUN interview embedded at the top of Stuart’s article above. This different LBC NEWS interview linked below is 1 hr 15 mins long, allowing more detail to be given plus some naming and shaming by the two intrepid women.
And in case people don’t catch the connection, the “Allison” who Nicola infamously has a go at regarding questions of finance (see SUN interview sequence beginning at 11.43 mins), is the selfsame Allison Graham.
Please people, find time to watch this…
Cynthia Guthrie and Allison Graham interviewed by Gina Davidson, LBC, 25 June:
SNP WHISTLEBLOWERS CLAIM WARNINGS OVER PARTY FINANCES WERE IGNORED | LBC Exclusive
link to youtube.com
I’ve just signed a petition “Hold a referendum on abolishing the Scottish parliament & Government.” if you interested the link is below.
link to petition.parliament.uk
Tumbleweed …
Let us know when there’s a petition to re-instate slavery. Not for private individuals, you understand, but for the state.
We could declare all the incumbents at HR as wholly owned slaves of the state of Scotland. Then work them until they’ve repaid Scots all the money they’ve stolen, misappropriated, extorted through punitive taxes, filched by consumer price manipulations, and squandered on malign lawfare and mind bogglingly incompetent failed legislation.
I addressed this issue in my blog article today. But Stu is very much better at the forensic stuff than I am. This article demonstrates just how good he is. I doff my cap, sir.
The cause needs all our best brains working together. Good to see this appreciation – there’s hope yet!
“Stu is very much better at the forensic stuff than I am”
You are too modest, Peter; few have reached your stage of analysis regarding our ‘condition’:
link to peterabell.wordpress.com
When I joined the SNP in 2019, the Coatbridge and Chryston branch, I quickly found out about Findlay MacGregor. There seemed to be two factions in the branch and he seemed to be on the other branch from the more left wing one that I naturally supported. He seemed to be very argumentative, which is fair enough, it is politics after all, I’m sure from his point of view the other side were too but I must admit, as a new member, I did not have a good impression of him. As you say he is the brother of Fulton but his other brother Fergus is an SNP Councillor in North Lanarkshire Council. I of course left the SNP in very early 2021 as I was not happy with either how our branch was being run or the SNP itself.
I should also have said, this is a great article.
The Decolonise-Scot article isn’t the game-changer it appears at first glance, but it does clarify a key point: the “salt-water separation” that Aidan treats as a critical requirement simply isn’t part of Article 73. It was a historical practice, and not a formal rule, so there’s nothing that would need repealing by the UNGA.
It’s also worth noting that IPLSA is now the second body with UN consultative status to conclude that Scotland’s case for NSGT consideration is legally coherent, and as far as I’m aware, none have argued the opposite.
These morally vacuous, pea brained cultists are so suceptible to group think that they should never be anywhere near public office. Tbey afe the type who will go full authoritarian if the leader demands it. Dangerous people.