This is also a lie. I donated £20 to the crowd-funder on 13/03/17, the day it opened. I am not, and never have been, a member of the SNP. They did not e-mail me. They may have e-mailed members, but they certainly did not e-mail “all donors”.

What they did do, however, is demonstrate that their records contained, as they should do, evidence that my donation was explicitly for that purpose and no other.

I know this because I requested the return of my donation. I also asked for a smaller donation to be returned; I was fairly sure that was for the local elections held in May 2017 (I don’t recall why I donated for those; I don’t usually do anything for council elections except vote).

My receipts for the two donations, signed by Murrell, were identical apart from the date, the amount, and a reference number. I included the references in my request.

The reply said that one was for the referendum crowd-funder and the other for the local elections – so they can distinguish between the two. I was told I couldn’t have the second donation back because they’d spent it on the elections. That’s fair enough.

But they did return the other donation, thereby admitting that they hadn’t spent it on the purpose for which I had donated it.

1. Signing off the accounts
2. Shutting down questioning and scrutiny of the books
3. Raising money for a specific use only to utilise for another

would, I imagine, qualify as criminal negligence/incompetence.

I mean: “Alert readers will have noticed we’ve been a bit short on articles lately.”