The View From Row Z
Sadly, this turned out to be prescient this morning.
Laura Kuenssberg did give Nicola Sturgeon an uncomfortable time in their interview on her Sunday programme on BBC News, but when confronted with the one gaping open goal that Sturgeon has no answer for – and even when Sturgeon TWICE set it up on a plate for her – Kuenssberg failed to knock the ball into the empty net.
That doesn’t – by some distance – mean there was nothing of interest to note, though, so let’s take a walk through (the first instalment of) what was said.
Kuenssberg opens gently by asking if she didn’t notice anything odd over all the years of Murrell’s lavish spending, to which Sturgeon responds by saying that anything she saw in the house (eg a super-fancy £3,200 coffee machine) could plausibly have been afforded by Murrell on his SNP salary, which is broadly fair enough.
But the story soon starts to crumble.
Firstly, Tiffany diamond bracelets start at just a few hundred pounds. Even some of their top-ticket ones, like this (ahem) Wings bangle in platinum, come in at only a fraction of the price of a new Jaguar iPace, so it’s weird to suggest they’d have been a bigger red flag than the car.
But for Sturgeon to claim that she’s “not sure” whether the £2,200 Lalique salt and pepper grinders Murrell bought are the same ones that she used in the kitchen she says she never went into is comical. Even if you don’t know what they cost, they’re pretty darn distinctive and memorable.
Anyone putting a bit of salt on their sausage supper with those would surely pause for at least a moment to say “Ooh, these are fancy”.
We then get an extended sob story from Sturgeon about all the ways in which she’s a traumatised victim of Murrell (though immediately after it she says “I will never think of myself as a victim”), during which Kuenssberg lets her get away with falsely claiming she’s been “exonerated” and “cleared” of any wrongdoing.
Kuenssberg then gets onto the subject of the infamous campervan.
Well, Nicola, the reason it might have crossed your mind was because it was listed in the SNP’s accounts – which you signed off on and are both professionally qualified to understand and legally responsible for – as an SNP asset.
As to the camper’s visibility, incidentally, this is Murrell’s mother’s house. The Niesmann and Bischoff Smove 7.4e motorhome, at 24.3 feet, is considerably longer than the typical caravan, and would be quite difficult to avoid noticing even if you’d approached on foot to the front door from the garage side.
A Google Earth satellite image which captured it parked there showed it coming right up to the level of the front wall. It would have been unmissable from the bottom step.
(Just for fun, we asked ChatGPT to mock up what it would have looked like in the driveway, based on the positioning in that satellite shot. This is what it came up with.)
And the drive would be at a very odd angle/spacing to belong to the neighbours.
Although this is at least inventive.
What did she think it was? Cheese on toast?
She then throws SNP treasurer Colin Beattie under the wheels of the van.
But we must keep at the forefront of our minds that Sturgeon is legally responsible for signing off the accounts as being true and accurate. The idea that a £81,000 vehicle could have been explained away as hiring charges is absurd, not least because it was listed in the accounts as a fixed asset.
(And even that raises serious questions about the veracity of the accounts, since Murrell actually paid almost £125,000 for the camper, not £80,632. It does not appear as either an itemised or miscellaneous expenditure for 2020 or 2021.)
As Wings pointed out more than three years ago, you could have hired an entire fleet of much more suitable election-campaign vans (the ostensible official purpose of the Smove) for a small fraction of that money.
It was absolutely Sturgeon’s job and responsibility to question accounts which showed £81,000 of expenditure on vehicles for the party – which vehicles these were, what they were for, whether they were going to be sold to recoup the money etc.
Trying to dump it all off on Colin Beattie – the poor sap who wasn’t even allowed to SEE the books but could be counted on to meekly comply anyway, the exact reason he was brought back when Douglas Chapman resigned – is a squalid business.
At a minimum, the party treasurer publicly quitting because he hasn’t been allowed access to the figures in order to carry out his legal duties ought to cause the party’s leader to start doing some serious investigation into what’s going on, especially when half the Finance Committee has already quit for the same reason.
And that’s when Sturgeon’s answers REALLY start to get shifty.
After once again throwing Beattie to the wolves, Sturgeon pulls off a sneaky switch. She tells Kuenssberg that she had no reason to suspect “what Peter pled guilty to”, which was embezzlement of SNP funds for his own personal use.
But that wasn’t what Kuenssberg had asked her about. She’d asked about money vanishing from the SNP’s accounts in 2019.
There are two separate arms to the Operation Branchform investigation: the fundraiser money that vanished from the SNP accounts, which we noted in January 2020, and Peter Murrell’s embezzlement of SNP funds to buy gaudy gew-gaws for himself, which only became apparent some time after the police investigation began in April 2021, following Sean Clerkin’s complaint based on Wings’ reporting.
(The point at which the Scottish media suddenly noticed and started giving itself awards for its great scoop.)
As the investigation progressed, the police had started to spot another story.
Sturgeon was trying to deflect from Kuenssberg’s question by answering a completely different question about something else entirely. And that’s when Kuenssberg lost her concentration and totally fumbled the ball.
Trying to pass off the instant disappearance of hundreds of thousands of pounds that was supposedly “ring-fenced” and therefore untouchable as the normal “ebbs and flows” of party accounts is an outrageous dodge, and Kuenssberg simply missed it.
She’d started off well, trying to block Sturgeon’s deflection from the missing fundraiser money onto Murrell’s embezzlement.
Sturgeon just bulldozed past it and brought the interview back to the red herring that “one man committed a crime”. Sturgeon leads with her chin by saying she was talking about the missing money, dropping her guard and inviting the knockout blow (“But that money WAS missing, wasn’t it?”), and Kuenssberg just looks away
But the members of the SNP’s Finance & Audit Committee had resigned in March 2021, the month before the police began looking into the matter, and four months before the inquiry became a formal investigation in July.
March 2021 was also the month Sturgeon infamously issued this menacing snarled warning to SNP NEC members about asking questions on party finances, despite insisting to Kuenssberg that she’d never tried to shut them down.
Five months before the committee members quit, Colin Beattie had issued a strident denial that the fundraiser money had gone missing, insisting instead that it was “woven through” the SNP accounts – the literal polar opposite of being “ring-fenced”.
It’s ludicrous to suggest that Beattie would have been allowed to issue that statement without Nicola Sturgeon’s approval, and equally mad to suggest that Sturgeon would have approved it without checking the accounts that the money had supposedly been somehow “woven through”.
(An implausible enough line in itself, given that the SNP’s accounts had previously very carefully separated out “ring-fenced” funds from its general reserves.)
What are we being asked to believe happened here? That Sturgeon said “Colin, didn’t we just raise £700,000 for a ring-fenced indyref fund? So why is there only £97,000 in our bank balance?”, Beattie replied “Don’t worry, Nicola, it’s woven through the accounts in a way that appears to make it invisible” and she went “Oh, that all sounds legit, okay then”?
So the only possible explanation is that she DID look at the accounts and DID approve both the accounts and Beattie’s official statement, despite the fact that there was visibly, obviously, unmistakably £600,000 missing. And the only way that can have happened is that she KNEW the money wouldn’t be there, because she KNEW it had been spent on something else, and therefore when she looked at the books she didn’t see anything that she didn’t expect.
That isn’t Peter Murrell’s crime (except in so far as that he, along with Sturgeon and Beattie, had signed off the 2019 accounts). He hadn’t stolen anything like £600,000 at that point. By the end of 2019 his embezzling across 10 years had totalled a maximum of £221,000.
But even when Sturgeon then reminds Kuenssberg that the initial investigation was into the missing fundraiser money, Kuenssberg lets it go.
Wings Over Scotland has no idea what Nicola Sturgeon did or didn’t know about Peter Murrell’s embezzling. That’s not our business. What we’ve always been concerned with is the plainly fraudulent fundraising the SNP undertook in 2017 and 2019, garnering almost £700,000 in donations from independence supporters – not just SNP members – on the demonstrably false pretext that it would be ring-fenced for a future independence referendum, when there was clearly never any intention to set the money aside for that purpose.
We know that because at the end of 2017, having taken in nearly half a million pounds from the first fundraiser, it had under £8,000 to its name.
And by a remarkable coincidence, on 1 December that year it had repaid £500,000 in loans to Chris and Colin Weir., who by then had become disillusioned with Sturgeon’s iteration of the SNP and no longer wished to fund it.
It was under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership that the party ran those fundraisers. It was Nicola Sturgeon who fronted them.
It was under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership that the party furiously denied having spent the fundraiser money on something else, when it had clearly done so.
It was under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership that the party then concocted a series of ludicrous and contradictory excuses to try to conceal where the money had gone, and embarrassingly transparent schemes to retroactively pretend to really be spending it on the pursuit of independence.
(Once again, note that this happened in January/February 2021, months BEFORE any sort of police inquiry had begun, so Sturgeon can’t use that as an excuse.)
That this issue remains unsolved – or at least, that nobody has been held accountable for it – after five years of Operation Branchform is the real story that should be occupying the media long after Murrell’s thievery falls off the front pages.
No explanation has been forthcoming from either Nicola Sturgeon, her successors as SNP leader, or Police Scotland, for what happened to that money, acquired under false pretences. Sturgeon rolled the ball across an undefended goal in the Kuenssberg interview, but Kuenssberg skied it over the crossbar almost as badly as the Scottish media did when Wings first broke the story nearly six and a half years ago.
So we’ll need to wait for someone else to ask Sturgeon that question, or indeed to ask the Crown Office why they’re not interested in thousands of people being conned out of their cash.
There were many other issues raised by the interview, but this piece is long enough already so those can wait until later in the week. In the meantime, we’re disappointed but not surprised. If there’s one thing Nicola Sturgeon is good at it’s slippery lying, but even that skill is waning as far as the public is concerned.
We can only hope that one day the media will catch up and she’ll be made to sit down in front of an interviewer who’s sufficiently on top of their brief – dare we say from reading this website? – to actually properly nail her on it.
Maybe time too change your pinned tweet, Rev?
I mean: “Alert readers will have noticed we’ve been a bit short on articles lately.”
It feels like she realises things are going drastically against her, so she’s desperately trying to throw everything she can to deflect attention from herself. It’s not working though; her world is slowly crumbling. It’s so bad that even arch-sycophant Wishart has nothing whatsoever to say on the matter
By
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.
The only thing I’m willing to cut Sturgeon some slack on is the cruet set – until the week, I didn’t know you could pay such a daft price for salt and pepper mills – maybe she didn’t, either!
She claimed she didn’t even recognise them.
Have the books that so many people weren’t allowed to see been seen, yet?
Good question.
The National’s article from 28/10/20 claims that “the SNP has e-mailed all of its donors in a bid to “quash rumours”…”.
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.
I don’t know all the various financial positions in this squalid affair, but am I correct in assuming that Murrell ‘loaned’ the SNP a sum of cash of his own money, at some point?
Could it be he thought (wrongly) that he could simply use funds to repay himself the outstanding balance? I guess we might find out whatever motivated his actions tomorrow – or at the sentencing hearing in July during defence mitigation.
To be quite clear, I have no wish to even think of taking sides, be it this woman’s or her soon (?) to be ex-husband’s.
However, would the SNP have put the sooperdooper campervan in the accounts/balance sheet at a value to include or exclude VAT? If the value of the payment was the thick end of £125,000, wouldn’t the books reflect £103,000 or so NET OF VAT, with 20% in the analysed cashbook as £21,000 or so of VAT?
OK, that’s the purchase out of the way – did anyone pay Road Fund for it? Maybe insurance for the road? If not, how about insurance the against theft, damage?
When it got to 3 years old, who paid for the MOT?
The van should be shown in the Balance Sheet at cost price (ex VAT) less accumulated depreciation. Not sure what their depreciation policy was but probably 25% or 30% per annum. Thats why the BS shows a value of less than cost price.
I’m afraid that the coffee went all over the keyboard the moment I read the contribution from Sam Taylor in the screen grab at the top of the article…
“unlikely to be all over the details in the same way as Scotland based journalists who have been following every twist and turn of this saga”
ROFLMAO…
I didn’t know Bath was in Scotland, because 99.9% of “Scotland based journalists” have done the square root of bugger all in the last decade in terms of holding Sturgeon and Co. to account over this or any other “saga” that’s turned the SNP into the steaming, fetid pile of keech it is today.
I did pull him up on that 😀
link to x.com
She loves the tax regime she helped introduce in Scotland, she’s decided to live in England…..
The camper van is listed in the balance sheet as a fixed asset, presumably at current (second hand) value. The purchase price would be in the detailed income and expenditure, if there was one.
I’m more shocked that the £2,200 cruet set doesn’t even have a motor. Imagine having to grind your pepper by hand like a commoner.
The 2021 accounts list no motor vehicles under expenditure, and the “miscellaneous” entries don’t include the campervan.
When she went to visit longfingers Pete in the pokey, did she bring the old mother in law with her..l have mummy here Petey..do the right thing or the fish will be well fed.
You would not expect CAPITAL expenditure to appear in the expenditure listing of the profit and loss, or REVENUE account. What is interesting is that the Motor Vehicle appears in the balance sheet under Fixed Assets with a tag to note 18. However, note 18 makes no mention of Motor Vehicles – but subsumes it into computer/office equipment.
It’s still in the 2024 accounts with a long note about the impounding.
So I do not see how NS can deny knowledge of it.
Allow a chartered accountant to butt in: the balance sheet “cost” of the van (£80,632) is actually the net book value, ie, the actual cost less 33.3% depreciation (that’s the SNP’s depreciation policy per the published accounts). A full year’s depreciation is charged in the year of purchase notwithstanding when in the year the purchase happened. We could surmise that the capital cost was therefore £80,632 / 66.7% = £120,888. Slightly lower than £124,500, but the difference is likely to be a combination of revenue-type costs on the invoice such as RFL and fuel being written off to the I&E account and not capitalised, plus some element of the VAT being recoverable from HMRC. The letter is a hideously complicated area, but essentially because pretty much all the SNP’s income is exempt from VAT, the vast bulk of VAT incurred on expenditure is not recoverable. A small bit of income will be subject to VAT (conference/trading income) and for large capital purchases such as the van, the amonunt of VAT recoverable will be related to the VATable/total income ratio. So very low in this case. I think that the accounting stacks up therefore, even if the underlying stuff is extraordinarily fishy.
An interview was probably only granted on the proviso that it would be undertaken by a London bod who didn’t know the right questions to ask. The beeb duly obliged.
My wife teased me for buying salt & pepper grinders for just under £200 a couple of years ago, but, despite being blind, knew about the cost (not many companies sell cast iron ones these days). Are we really to believe that Surgeon wouldn’t notice Lalique (not the sort of things that you find in home bargain shops) ones – it not as if it hasn’t spent over a century as a luxury brand, famously so, in fact. I try to buy the best quality I can, but there’s a point at which diminishing returns set in and we’re well past that here to the realms of egregious ostentation. I cannot believe that any married woman wouldn’t notice that.
To be fair to Mrs Murrell, she claims it was her hubby who did all the shopping. She couldn’t possibly have known if Mr. Sturgeon bought the grinders at Poundland or Harrods.
Dig, dig, dig. Nothing to see here. Look, over there, a squirrel, another indy ref! Some more red meat to fling at the daft buggers to keep them off the scent…
It’s blatantly obvious to anyone with a functioning brain, yet Nicoliar stonewalls to the script. It wisnae me, ah kent nuh’ing, a big boy done it and ran away, it wiz the English (that she’s now living with in exile, ironically), blah blah blah.
Keep it up Stu, excellent journalism. To have a functional democracy, we must have non-partisan scrutiny and accountability.
With her lies Sturgeon climbed to the top of the (Holyrood) political heap.
Lies have been the secret of her success–so why expect anything different now?
1. You’re retired? Wow, you produce error-free great stuff nearly every day! 2. Why is Laura wearing lavender? 3. At least now we know why we don’t have indy yet, so that is progress. 4. Humza just HAD to become leader, as Ash, and probably Kate, would have spilled the beans- hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Oh yes, I meant to say, hubby pointed out flying AA down to London on a Sunday must have been very expensive for her!
I’m hearing £30,000.
Nicola Sturgeon was on Deserted Island Disks in 2015. Check out the luxury items she would take to the island. link to bbc.co.uk
The really obvious missed opportunity today was when Sturgeon said words to the effect that “at that point, the people investigation was to establish if the ring fenced funds had been spent on election campaigning”.LK should have asked, “Were they?”
I also noticed that when the video was mentioned were she was warning people not to ask too many questions, she closed her eyes and looked down, a tell tale sign she was trying not to react.
Finally, maintaining a 7- hour No Comment interview requires TRAINING, especially in a good cop/ bad cop scenario where the Police would have been trying to cut through by trying to get under her skin a bit. Sturgeon’s instinct is always to attack. The suggestion that she could maintain silence for 7 hours without significance preparation is for the birds.
Blamed for a crime I haven’t committed
But it was ok to try and get Salmond sent down?
I can’t wait to see this sociopath locked up.
She claims to be serving a sentence. Nope – that sentence starts when she’s in a prison cell. Best place for her.
A word to the wise, hen – when you’re in a hole, for goodness’ sake stop digging !
John Crace in the guardian put it like this…
link to theguardian.com
Regarding the pepper grinder I can assure everyone that Sturgeon has never had a “sausage” supper in her life. Maybe a Doner Wrap…
As to that interview never before has a bigger liar been exposed.
Tick tock. What goes around come around. She is more than ever Scotland’s Disgrace.
The ONLY reason she is NOT on trial is because of the COPFS who are obviously NOT interested in serving the ordinary people of Scotland , they are more interested in protecting a LYING , DESPICABLE , DUPLICITOUS CREATURE who has participated in the sabotaging of independence supporters donations
Apparently the investigating officers were outraged that her and the donkey Beattie were not to be prosecuted , WHO made that decision and on what basis was that decision made , was it insufficient evidence of which there appears multitudinous evidence , or was it the old pish about not in the publics interest, as a member of the public I DEMAND that the COPFS reverse their decision because it is glaringly obvious that the public are sick and tired watching contemptable LIARS AND CON ARTISTS escape justice
I have stated numerous times that if I were a donor I would trawl no win no fee legal companies to bring a civil action on these THIEVES
If Nicola Sturgeon is “serving a sentence for a crime [she] did not commit,” then is she serving it on the same wing as a rapist? She put other Scotswomen in that position. She gave a “no comment” interview to the Police before, days later, sending them a written statement that was copied to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, headed by the Lord Advocate in the Cabinet, which without further examination by anyone promptly decided not to prosecute her. Will this now be standard practice? Someone must have the file that Police Scotland sent to the Crown Office. This is what the Internet is for.
The Crown Office Procurator Fiscal Service is rotten to the core.
They traduce the prosecution service to what you would expect in a third world banana Republic. COPFS is an utter disgrace and acts not in the interests of justice. Its a political organisation that turns a blind eye when needed and pursues the malicious prosecution when someone is to be taken down.
A bent prosecution service.
There is something good came out of this mess, 1 Sturgeon had to stand down as FM and give up her seat as a MSP, 2 she’s fucked off to London to stay. Now this has to be positive for sure, I’m happy.
In the back of my head their is a voice shouting out why oh why is Peter happy to be the fall guy when clearly their was others involved. What has been bestowed upon Peter for him to behave so bravely he’s a cared little rat.
Now we all know Sturgeon is no Jane Horrocks but she seem to have now all of a sudden found her Little Voice. Which she happened to refuse to use when she was being questioned by the police in Falkirk.
Since the fraud seems to have started some time ago. Is there any evidence that would suggest that all the causes whose flags she wrapped herself in were just cynical ploys to generate stay out jail cards?
100% sure she was aware of, and involved in, both the ‘ringfenced fund’ ruse raised to repay the Weirs’ loan. And similarly aware and involved in Peter Murrell’s ‘loan’ to the SNP and the campervan-to-depreciate in some kind of scam.
Since the Jaguar purchase happened AFTER the ‘ringfence ruse’, Peter would have known she couldn’t object to the car, without risking him going public about the ringfenced fund.
So whether she knew about his embezzlement all along, or only noticed when he bought the jaguar, is anybody’s guess. But I think we can be certain that she was aware by late 2019.
Also, she did ask him to step down in 2020. Which he refused to do. She was trying to pin the ringfenced disappearance on him, and he supposedly played the ‘you don’t trust me’ card. But obviiusly knew she couldn’t risk forcing the issue.
How much he was just randomly impulse buying, and how much he was trying to secure her committment by showering her with gifts, I’ve no idea.
And in her case, having put herself in a vulnerable position, with the ringfenced ruse, with the Alex Salmond fit-up, and tued herself to some dubious gender lobby bullies, she rapidly painted herself into a corner.
A corner in which she is perfectly secure until such time as either the London or Scottish establishments find it in theur interests to pull the plug on her.
The rest of us will never get our time or money back, so keep the receipts, keep an eye on any developments, but focus on how the honest ‘remnant’ in Scotland can salvage our country.
We are living in a time now where people don’t really care if supposed left of centre polictians like Sturgeon has expensive and fancy pepper pots, coffee machines or flash motors.
What they do hate though is being reminded of the hypocrisy of her views when all this bourgeoisie extravagance is on show for all to see.
Sturgeon may very well escape any criminal prosecution but her reputation and credibility is in tatters.
She’s moved down to the big smoke but it’s hard to see what she will do down there. It’s hard to see how she can do any media political commentating and it’s hard to see how doing the non-political Loose woman type stuff as well.
It’s hard not to see her fading into obscurity in the coming years.
RADA refresher course
Amazing, is it not, that an albeit failed lawyer, however incompetent, has not the faintest idea what a company legal structure is and who takes responsibility for the performance and integrity of that entity. It is completely irrelevant whether she knew the scope of Murrell’s embezzlement – that is not the question which people are entitled to an answer on. It is the fact that as leader of the party, she and her accomplices take the responsibility for keeping the accounts in good order and as legitimate. It is an offence not to do so, and that is why she was required to sign off the accounts – to demonstrate her fiduciary responsibilities and oversight of the organisation. And in that capacity, she sought to stop any criticism by claiming that the accounts were in good order. So she was actively exercising her executive function of oversight.
Now that we know the books were fiddled, she must take the responsibililty for that failure. Even if she ‘didn’t know’ she was in a position which required he due diligence in ascertaining that they were accurate. As she failed to do so, she is legally bound by that fair, and as such, answerable for that failure. If she was still in position, she would be sacked. As it is, any ethically responsible person would admit that failure and seek amends – most people would first apologise profusely, thus indicating they took the responsibility they were charged with, and second would seek to compensate or restore the victims of the fraud – the innocent SNP supporters. Her atrocious characterisation of an apology as somehow admitting to Murrell’s crimes is a complete red herring, since nobody is asking her to apologise for that. They are seeking an apology for her incompetence in office, the blocking of legitimate requests to examine the accounts, and not lest the enormous damage done the SNP’s reputation and by extension the independence cause.
It has nothing to do with sexism, or some hurtful remarks, it is a basic demand for some kind of acknowledgment of her responsibilities and failures, and the most basic values of public service – which is her duty, as a leader and public servant paid handsomely by the taxpayer,
That she can’t even understand that and thinks it is about ‘poor wee me’ speaks volumes about the complete lack of any concept of public served and the basic standards we expect to be upheld. Her cowardly, snivelling responses and not worthy of a minor local official, never mind the highest office of the land, which she has betrayed and stained for a long time to come. Has she the faintest idea of the basic standards required, which most of us expect to be upheld?
An excellent post, Ian.
There can now be no doubt that the SNP has foisted two in a row of the most utterly disgraceful and unfit for office chancers on the people of Scotland – Sturgeon and Yusaf.
We have been living through a black period in Scotland’s history, a period which historians of the future will devote many pages to forensically dissecting.
Now we have Swinney for the foreseeable future. He’s not looking half so bad these days.
At least, not by comparison with what came before.
He could still salvage something from this train wreck. But not by stonewalling a full inquiry into the criminality and incompetence of the Sturgeon years.
Absolutely Ian . I would have hoped Kuenssberg would have called her out on her abject failure to discharge her legal responsibilities. Missed an open goal when she insisted she had nothing to apologise for.
When the humbler ranks of society are plucked from obscurity and deposited — blinking and dazzled — into the chandeliered splendour of British high society, one can hardly fault them for wobbling beneath the weight of temptation.
After all, these poor creatures were never groomed for empire.
They were not polished in the public-school crucible where entitlement is taught as a virtue and taking what one desires is considered a patriotic duty.
They arrive untrained in the delicate etiquette of exploitation, lacking the refined instincts of those whose families have spent generations practising the art of helping themselves to the property of others while calling it service.
And so, when these uninitiated souls behave exactly as they always have — like survivors rather than aristocrats — the establishment, affronted to see its own habits reflected back without polish or pedigree, promptly declares them criminals.
And so this becomes the fate of poor little Nicola, a girl who flew too close to empire.
A poor lass raised up from the gutter only to be cast back down, dazed and uncomprehending, into the forgettable ranks of the lower classes where she truly belongs.
It is, in its way, a charming little tragedy.
Aye… Bring a tear to a glass eye, so it would.
Or, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde’s comment on reading of the death of Little Nell: “ it would take her heart of stone not to laugh.“
A masterclass, Northy, on how it is possible to circle even a single wagon.
Here’s what a wondering world wants to know. Were you born spouting shite, or was it exposure to the English that brought it on?
After all, you blame them for everything else, so why not that too?
Good God!
I don’t believe I’ve ever witnessed a mind so thoroughly outpaced by the speed of its owner’s unthinking fingertips.
“was it exposure to the English”
Indeed, many peoples around the world have expressed how their interactions with England, their ‘exposure’ to the English, led to a great many disappointing and unwelcome outcomes.
And yet those same peoples warmed to us Scots and to this day make a great show of the kinship they feel for us. – the friendship they hold in their hearts for us.
Strange, isn’t it?
Strange how two peoples from the same island can be so different one from the other – as different as North from South – and are regarded and treated so by the other peoples of the world.
One universally loved, the other mostly hated.
Because I care deeply for you myself, dear, deluded Northy, I’m gonna refrain from encouraging you to get out among the peoples of the world.
Much as I’d enjoy you discovering the hard way that the Scots are not universally loved, it’s my taxes that would have to contribute to the repatriation of your torn and broken remains. From those parts of the Middle East, Africa, Central America, the Antipodes and Asia where memories are long and the contribution of the Scots towards centuries of rapine, theft and genocide still rankles.
What are they like, eh? Grievance nursing whiners, the lot of them!
So you just stay safe, Northy, posting shite on your device instead.
And so you don’t feel neglected and in any way unloved, I promise to reply from time to time.
The only victims are the people who donated money to a fraudulent scheme. They need justice and payback. That means selling off everything thing the Murrells own, but the would only be a start. Sturgeonistas should be purged that includes ministers, MSPs, MPs, councillors, NEC members and ordinary members. Finally the SNP should initiate a party investigation into this scandal including evidence from donors, ex-SNP politicians and ex-members who tried to raised concerns over party finances
Yes that is what a serious and responsible party would do.
The whole performance was a one-fingered salute with added crocodile tears.
My heart bleeds …. She should have just shut her pus and there might have been questions , but no she opened her thin mouthed gob and let everyone know she was complicit , she knew exactly what was going on when she shook her Lalique salt shaker over her fish supper
She claims she sent a letter to the polio in response to all these questions – but they never got back to her.
It’s gone beyond embarrassment – she need to publish the contents of that letter.
As I catch up, some charges (underwear etc), have been dropped. On whose aurhority?
Bain?
Please explain Ms Bain.
We are all hunting Sturgeon, but the buck stopped with Bain. Why?
Please. Please examine the scottish ‘legal’ system!!¡!
The poor wee cow.
She is currently on TV trying to reinvent herself amongst the wokeraty.
Hello All,
Whatever happened to the £667,000 which was “ring-fenced” in the late 2010s for Independence? Never mind the £410,000 “uncovered” by the Police!
I suspect that when the police got involved they found a more serious crime to investigate and that was Murrell. Investigating murky book keeping is more of an internal investigation which police try to avoid.
No Comment. Mind your own business.
You lot are too harsh on the lassie.
She’s a simple wee soul who only wants to be known and remembered as a great Scottish author in the vein of Muriel Stark and suchlike.
So she made a few tiny wee mistakes when she was First Minister, big deal.
Did ye no aw see her wee lip tremblin’ oan the telly and thon single tear that almost fell fae her eye?
That ‘lip tremble’ and ‘almost tear’ was enough for me to believe her tale and forgive her many mistakes – or sins, as God calls them.
You know… I’m not entirely sure I would have behaved any differently from Nicola or Peter if I believed I was empowered to do as I wanted safe in the knowledge I would be protected from any civil or legal or personal consequences for my crimes against Scotland and the Scots.
As a servant and high lieutenant of the mighty English colonial state I might feel entitled to take whatever I desired from Scotland as reward for my loyal services to Westminster, the seat of all power in these Great British Isles.
Yes, I am a weak man and I’d most likely sell my soul, and ma ain folk, for some coin, some baubles, some trinkets, and, of course, a nice wee knighthood.
“Fuck you Jockland… and fuck you, too, you sweaty jocks,” I would cry out loud enough for my new master to hear; to hear and in the hearing vouchsafe my 2nd class, almost English, citizenship.
And then, with a huge smile fixed across my face in grotesque mockery of all things Scottish, I would set off for London town; to the metropole of the empire – there to nestle in the bosom of polite English society… where I would write great novels admired for their genius and bask in the cold, uncaring harshness of my newly adopted people.
Fantasist?
Delusional?
CRIMINAL?
Not me… I’m… I’m… I’m as sane and honest as a cold winter’s day in ripped-off, plundered, and colonised Scotland is long.
Correction: Muriel Stark should of course read as Muriel Spark.
Big deal, Northy.
Now correct the rest of the shite.
Good God!
I don’t believe I’ve ever witnessed a mind so thoroughly outpaced by the speed of its owner’s unthinking fingertips.
I know, I’ve punted that line already today, but it’s so fitting for this guy, I couldn’t resist posting it again.
Maybe I’ll make it my stock reply to the anti-Scots pish it dribbles roond this place.
If oor Nicola didn’t see most of these items, my question is: Who were they going to? This sounds like a half-told story.
She probably did but any of the alphabetties needing “incentivised” would be one lead that should be followed..
Campbell Clansman says:
31 May, 2026 at 5:00 pm
“With her lies Sturgeon climbed to the top of the (Holyrood) political heap.
Lies have been the secret of her success”
==========
That comment recalls my suggestion the other day of an addition to her summer reading list:
Quintin Jardine‘s Secrets and Lies ?
It’s subtitle is even more appropriate:
Some crimes are hidden in plain sight
link to headline.co.uk
==========
You know, see when you sit and slowly reflect on the human condition as it’s developed..
Well,
Building another Ark is probably in order.
What is it with a society that just will not differentiate between right and wrong?
Maybe I am just getting old but if/ when the water comes I’ll at least be able to hold my head up high till the last..
Posted in the wee small hours, deal with it milk monitors!
What’s to deal with, YL?
There’s not one of us who hasn’t sat up into the wee, small hours, crafting a post to broadcast to the world that we’ve always been one of the good guys.
If Arky McArkFace isn’t already taken, I want you to have that.
Do you reckon that Nicola’s pathetic behaviour & exposure of many lies told during this whole corrupt pantomime has jeopardised her once-predicted future position, post-Holyrood, as a member of the international global power-elite?
Or, perhaps it has secured it? (Bit like Tony Bliar?)
Mmmmmm, let’s wait and see.
Point taken about London based journalist not being as clued up as Scottish journalists but the main Scottish papers have crumbled under the weight of fear of facing Nicola and her attack dog solicitor in court and have removed all comments from the many articles they published about the interview.
The Hate Crimes Act remains in force in Scotland.
As it happens, no political party seems to see any popular support for repealing it.
Perhaps the HCA was put in place specifically to ensure that Scottish politicians get an easier time of it than their counterparts elsewhere in the UK.
After all, the Murrell story of theft and embezzlement, spanning more than a decade, demonstrates that when it’s in their own interests, our Scottish politicians are quite competent enough to think and plan long term.
Is there any evidence the motorhome ever left the drive? And if so, where was it spotted on the ANPR cameras? Was it ever taxed and insured? Apart from satisfying the magpie aquiring tendency of Pete, what was it actually used for?
I recall at least one past episode that seemed to indicate that the onerous requirements placed on ordinary Scots to keep their vehicles legal, e.g. MOT, VED and insurance, don’t apply to senior Scottish politicos.
Give the boys in blue a chance, Roguesir. They only had five years.
Clearly, the ability to intelligently lie is inversely proportional for those in authority, hence she couldn’t have seen the motorhome because she remembers she had gone to Pizza Express that evening.
And so it goes…
The motorhome was an investment because she knew that their value was about to inflate massively because people were going to be prevented from holidaying abroad. How did she know that? Oh,yes…. This is akin to Trump starting a war so that he can benefit on the stock market. In both cases many have died or been injured as a consequence.
STILL awaiting the punishment of those responsible for the gross neglect that destroyed the GSA «iconic» Mackintosh building.
The perception of Scotland is one of as no one cares about anything you can get away with anything.
Aa jock tamson’s bairns & aa on the make & take.
Ciao!
What’s your game in this place?
What’s your angle?
I’m a Scot speaking up for Scotland and my people, the Scots, on an, ostensibly, Scottish independence supporting website.
Why the fuck are you here?
Is it for a wee laugh at the misfortune of indigenous Scots for being neighbours to the English?
Maybe it’s because English isn’t your first language (mine neither), but the vibe I get from your posts is distinctly anti-Scots.
There’s always a little Scottish put-down, a wee sting in the tail of your comments.
Oh, and if I’m wrong and you’re here in genuine support of the Scots and I’m just misunderstanding you – I don’t give a fuck… speak more clearly.
Don’t tell him, TURABDIN, it’s a trick.
He’s a Pict, not a Scot.
We Scots thought we had exterminated them all several hundred years ago, but obviously a few slipped through the net.
You can imagine the dirty, underhand tricks of lying, deceit, subterfuge and obfuscation his ancestors and himself must have employed to avoid detection until now.
Aye, Northy is a Pict…..
And you’re a….”prick”.
Wear your helmet with pride.
You leave your helmet alone, Wally W.
If there was any justice in this world, you’d have long since gone blind.
Is it possible that Laura K did ask those questions. but were forced to edit out on NS’s solicitor’s instruction?
“With what certainly sounded like a warning of repercussions, she sternly rebuked those in the NEC in 2021, in a video leaked to the press, to be ‘very careful’ about questioning the party’s finances, saying there were no issues.
Did she know that? Did she check? We don’t yet know.
That Murrell was her husband is relevant. It’s feasible this led to an unwillingness to question further. Instead, it was left to Stuart Campbell, the man behind the Wings Over Scotland blog, to provide the initial much-needed scrutiny, asking, in his 2020 blog ‘You Were Robbed’, where thousands of pounds of SNP supporters money had gone.”
——————————————-
Extract from article in The Scotsman today
link to archive.ph
Turabdin, that is another success story for the ‘sweeping under the carpet ‘ brigade.
No-one held to account, absolutely shocking.
“There cannot be a “humble address” in the Scottish Parliament.”
That’s a pity!
I just can imagine NS was all over everything control freak wise…all I can think of is this scene from A Few Good Men…
KAFFEE
We’ll get to the airmen in just a
minute, sir. A moment ago said that
you ordered Kendrick to order his
men not to touch Santiago.
JESSEP
That’s right.
KAFFEE
And Kendrick was clear on what you
wanted?
JESSEP
Crystal.
KAFFEE
Any chance Kendrick ignored the order?
JESSEP
Ignored the order?
KAFFEE
Any chance he just forgot about it?
JESSEP
No.
KAFFEE
Any chance Kendrick left your office
and said, “The ‘old man’s wrong”?
JESSEP
No.
KAFFEE
When Kendrick spoke to the platoon
and ordered them not to touch
Santiago, any chance they ignored
him?
JESSEP
Have you ever spent time in an
infantry unit, son?
KAFFEE
No sir.
JESSEP
Ever served in a forward area?
KAFFEE
No sir.
JESSEP
Ever put your life in another man’s
hands, ask him to put his life in
yours?
KAFFEE
No sir.
JESSEP
We follow orders, son. We follow
orders or people die. It’s that
simple. Are we clear?
KAFFEE
Yes sir.
JESSEP
Are we clear?
KAFFEE
Crystal.
KAFFEE speaks with the quiet confidence that comes from knowing you’re about to drop your opponents
KAFFEE
(continuing; beat)
Colonel, I have just one more question
before I call Airman O’Malley and
Airman Perez: If you gave an order
that Santiago wasn’t to be touched,
and your orders are always followed,
then why would he be in danger, why
would it be necessary to transfer
him off the base?
And JESSEP has no answer.
Nothing.
Being a professional accountant who does a lot of work on financial internal control, something bothers me about all of this. He was using the SNP corporate credit card and I assume that every month a detailed bill would be sent showing the payments made. A simple control that should be done is cross checking the entries on the credit card bill to what was described in the accounting records. For example, if the credit card showed a transaction with Harrods, and the books said something else then a red flag would be raised. It looks to me that Murrell has been ‘hiding’ the credit card bills or was in collusion with the finance officer.
It was always understood in the SNP, when Independence was achieved the SNP as a party would dissolve.
We knew but couldn’t confirm until now, that the riches these people where getting is the sole reason Scotland hasn’t and will never be Independent.
“It was always understood in the SNP, when Independence was achieved the SNP as a party would dissolve”
Perhaps that was before we knew that postcolonial theory tells us the dominant national party elite are ‘co-opted by colonialism’, they intentionally take the movement up a blind alley, and delay or prevent independence.
That is maybe a far bigger ‘crime’ than what is being discussed here, albeit the latter is surely part of the broader colonial manipulation going on:
link to yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com
Where you see “co-opted by colonialism”, Alf, I see “unfitted, morally and intellectually, to run an Independent Scotland”.
Occam’s Razor is on my side here. Not least because, with a very few exceptions, most Scots can see they’re a bunch of crooks, spivs and chancers.
Of course, neither myself nor Occam have a book to plug.
“they’re a bunch of crooks, spivs and chancers”
Yes, as Fanon reminds us, a co-opted national party elite ‘behaves like a gang’, Hatey; they ‘appoint their friends’ to high positions, they ‘build up their pensions’ and they ‘feather their nests’, and never make much progress on the ‘most urgent matter’, that of ‘freeing the people’.
However, we might remember that the role and behaviour of the colonizer is far worse, given the ongoing anglo-imperial global record of ‘legalized lawlessness’ (Elkins), and here we are reminded that the ‘root of colonialism is fascism’ (Cesaire).
Moreover, self-determination and decolonization is above all a question of international law and historical justice, and never a matter solely for colonial courts, colonial powers, or dubious national party elites ‘co-opted by colonialism’.
Which will always bring us back to the critical work of Liberation Scotland at the UN, which is why the latter receives no msm attention.
I think I’m starting to see it, Alf. The mists are parting – it’s all becoming clear.
Despite the complete inability of your narrative to gain any traction over the past 5 years where it counts – at the ballot box – you’re going to spend the next 5 years spinning your wheels in exactly the same ruts.
“self-determination and decolonization is above all a question of international law and historical justice”
I reckon there’s 45 million Ukra1n1ans who disagree.
And many dead for whom international law availed them SFA.
“The mists are parting – it’s all becoming clear”
Indeed, Uk***ne’s national elite opted to sacrifice their people and nation for ‘American domination – the only domination from which one never recovers’ (Cesaire).
Of course, Anglo-American high finance has been raiding Scotland for a long time, and they didn’t even need to kidnap a president or change regime here before stealing our oil.
You have to be aware that Kunessburg is a BBC state presenter. Its no wonder she let sturgeon of the hook. Remember, she let the labour MP harriet what ever her name is off light ly with her P.I.E connections.
The brit state is corrupt and vile.
Scottish legal opinion humbly sought here: trousering the four hundred big ones was clearly a criminal offence, but what about the SNP’s spending of the ‘ring-fenced’ Indyref2 contributions on something entirely different? Is that a civil matter for the defrauded to pursue, or should that be a criminal offence too?
The SNP apologists like the ginger ( give me a sub) dug and the weak whingy pop man are spineless.
Och, don’t be too harsh on them. They are grieving, still in the denial phase. In their wee ginger bubble, they are desperately trying to convince each other that it’s all over now. That’s the worst of it, surely, no more pain? Perhaps.
From those Google Earth pictures (watermarked 2020?) the Murrels Sr had a caravan parked in their driveway prior to the campervan. Presumably something they had for a long time and which the family will all have known and been familiar with.
For all those suggesting that maybe Sturgeon thought the campervan belonged to the neighbours, that only makes sense if this caravan did and was permitted space there (don’t the neighbours have their own driveway)? Otherwise you’d expect family to be asking when/why the caravan had been so substantially upgraded.
The least noticed and most important feature of Sturgeon’s speech is the constant micro-hesitation, so that she’s never fluent. This is surely because she admits nothing, and is always making it up as she goes along. Always.
55 minute version here: link to bbc.co.uk
?
sorry – that “?” character should have been a tick. (Don’t know why it was not recognises as such)
“Scotland owes him a debt”says The Daily Sceptic.
I agree wholeheartedly. It is always instructive to ask yourself “Do you trust them?”. The Rev gets an Aye. Not many others.
link to youtube.com
“You know how it is. You wake up and look out the bedroom window. You see a brand new Jaguar worth £81,000 parked in the driveway. You smile to yourself. That’s what you love about your husband. Always nipping out to the shops to buy himself treats. And where’s the harm in that? No one can say he isn’t worth it. And a new car is only a trifle compared with a motor home. That’s just Pete being Pete.
You get dressed and go downstairs. Your husband is already in the kitchen making you breakfast. “Fancy a coffee?” he asks. You nod. You’re busy not reading the SNP accounts. “Which machine would you like me to make it from?” he asks. “The basic Jura? The Jura Z8? Or the Miele? I always think the Z8 makes the best flat white. And what milk would you like?””
——————————————–
link to theguardian.com
Just the start of John Crace’s article. 🙂
It may not (?) be a criminal offence for the SNP to spend indyref “ringfenced” money on other things.
Criminal offence or not, it is a huge betrayal of trust. Not to mention further dishonesty with insulting rubbish about the funds being woven through the accounts.
Following the Murrell scandal, the SNP must provide a detailed account of what exactly the indyref money was spent on.
We know in 2018,the SNP repaid the £1 million loaned by the Weirs in 2016. When Peter Murrell was emptying the SNP coffers, where did the SNP find money to repay the £1 million in loans?
Until the SNP provide accounts detailing exactly what the £667,000 indyref fund was really spent on, the stench of corruption will hang over the SNP.
I think Peter Murrell always was a “patsy”, a “useful idiot”, first up, a convenient “beard” to hide that nikki don’t like the boaby. He is no mastermind, for he “dayz whit hes tellt”. Can you imagine him even having the bottle to organise a dangerous (and pretty inept) fraud behind her back?
Sometimes you see a couple and its like “a spider with a fly” and its more often than not the woman who is the spider. She psychologically dominates him.
We reserve our greatest hatred, not for the enemy, but for the tr4itor; so we see her, apparently giving us continuity post Salmond, then we think “she is waiting for the moment to strike”, then we thought she lacked the nerve, then we realised she “just wisnae intae it”, then actively against it, and what is more what she “really is into” is this modern day neo puritanism, this pride flag, identity politics, rainbow flags and genital mutilation craziness … tracking events we slowly had the veil removed; the inaction, the missed opportunity of brexit, the attacks on rivals and genuine nationalists, the betrayal of Salmond – looking back with perfect hindsight we see clearly she was no “marianne”, more like “madame mao” and her “gang” (who are still in charge).
Little Nikki (she’s a devil) remains, unreasonably, bafflingly, “teflon” and despite this ever increasing mountain of shite, no one has really put a hand on her. The reason for this is simple : she has carefully corrupted all of public life in Scotland – people she gave jobs to, favours she did, favours she is owed – she has collected her own “dossier of dirt” on people, and cultivated support among the people who write the stories, the bourgeois leftists, the fake nats, the oleaginous virtue signalling middle class of Scotland – the “I’ve got a good job, the system works” – devo crowd, the mediocrity which stodge everything up. She has enough on enough of these people to make sure nothing lands.
As for the police – when we had separate forces one could, at least in theory, be used to investigate another; not so anymore, for we have a national police now, all centrally controlled. The cops just do the investigating mind (and they can go fast … or … really …. sloowwwwwly …) but in the end they hand the case over to the prosecutors who can do what they like with it, they can make paper aeroplanes and wipe their arses with it – they don’t even have to give any reasons but if needed that catch-all “not in the public interest” can be used.
She is, of course, a nobody in England, and some of the more clued in among them may correctly see her as an “asset” who has “protected the union” (controlled opposition, gatekeeping), but she has no protection down there. I thought for a while the covid inquiry would cause her problems, but the english govt under johnson were even worse than she was – it was just the usual crap, a whitewash, a cover up, and some scapegoat.
Plastering herself (doing no favours) over the media while maintaining “I dont wanna, talk about it …” is just irritating now, like a bad smell (in the kitchen), or the guest that won’t leave. She should disappear completely.
link to youtube.com
and I see the generative AI memes are flowing, getting her ript – the least she deserves.
Check out on YouTube;
Nicola Sturgeons woes meets Gordon Browns cave.
:-). 🙂
“She is, of course, a nobody in England”
Only, she’s not, just as she’s not a nobody in Scotland either.
Confused, as usual, promoting himself to speak for the entire nation. Of course, he doesn’t.
Here’s a thought. It’s summer, warm weather, long days.
10,000 Scots marching the length of the Royal Mile to HR every Saturday throughout July and August. Demanding answers. Demanding accountability. Throughout the Festival and the Fringe. Live on the TV cameras of the world.
Do we think that would change things? Damn right it would.
But we’ll be unable to find even 10 Scots who care enough to turn up even once.
We had a chance to change things just a few weeks ago, the largest party is still the SNP and nobody was interested in the fringe independence parties and candidates.
Obviously most folk don’t give a crap about the issue so hardly surprising no “march on holyrood”
Just read the most recent revelation in the Murrell Collection; 100+ toilet rolls bought just before Tricky Nicky (during early COVID era) announced people had to restrain from panic buying.
They just don’t do irony do they! 🙂
Don’t forget Murrell is back in court tomorrow 2 Jun:
“for a “narrative hearing” because the legal teams on both sides had yet to reach an agreement on the “version of events” that took place.
While we know the amount Murrell embezzled, the narrative hearing will be an important part of the process to establishing the pattern of offending and the facts and circumstances around it.
Murrell’s solicitor – John Scullion KC – is also likely to speak where he can set out the personal circumstances, which can be considered in mitigation for sentencing.”
Believe this or not.
An acquaintance of mine, someone with decades of experience at the coal face of Scottish Criminal Justice, has opined he has a good chance of getting off with a suspended sentence.
The list of stuff fraudulently acquired is sufficiently bizarre for a plausible plea of “not of sound mind” to be entertained.
Well your coalface acquaintance with decades of experience at the coal face of Scottish Criminal Justice, knows sfa.
Murrell pleaded GUILTY and he will be sentenced on 23 Jun – he cannot now plea of “not of sound mind”.
Do try to keep up.
A KC on legal aid?
He is incorrectly called a solicitor – he is in fact a senior counsel at the Scottish Criminal Bar. (Barrister)
Who exactly granted legal aid for Murrell when all we have been told is that he was rich enough to buy all of the things without question?
I take it back, it appears to be perfectly normal for a KC to defend someone on legal aid. The seriousness of the crime will determine which court, etc. Talking piss, Sorry Mr Murrell.
I have no idea how it came about, what the rules are or whether it is the luck of the draw so there is no casting aspersions from me here. Maybe it is because there is a vast amount of press interest that has attracted a high end lawyer. That aside I am hopeful that we will learn something tomorrow.
Murrell was given legal aid because all his assets were frozen.
Thanks
What do the police believe about the indyref2 money? The most obvious fact about the whole business is that it isn’t there in a ringfenced account.Even if much of it ended up passing through Murrell’s pockets, he was only able to embezzle it because it went through the SNP books. Keep at this. They can’t cover it up forevere
Misandry…….
Hannah Bardell, former MP, lesbian and self professed “Queer” was aggressively pro Sturgeon on STVs Scotland Tonight.
A quick Google search confirmed the SNP is one of the gayest parties in the world..
They seriously need out of power for time to clear the travelling special interest group cling-ons and to remember what the day job and root aim of the party actually was, not what the cling-ons want.
Vote thiefs.
I’m done voting for them till they sort their heads out..
Bad me I suppose but eff em..
Away off and derail some other party and movement- which they probably will when another party is in power..
Political parasites, burrowed in like ticks, and the rampant nuggets in charge can’t (or won’t) see or deal with it..
A failed moribund party of its core cause in any reasonable analysis then..
The left has been dazzled by the idea that giving parts of our society who have been marginalised in the past a greater say in our society that in turn society has a whole will become more fairer and compassionate.
It has resulted in looking at people from these groups as representative of that group rather than looking at them as individuals and judging them as such.
We are now seeing that people from these former marginalised groups are no better or worse than the rest of us. An other is from the below article about a Spanish queer sauna which while advertises to be welcome to everyone, is only that if the individual subscribes to the organisers current political views:
link to archive.is
“Spanish queer sauna”
Good grief
This is what happens when you elect guttersnipes from Irvine.
And that is supposed to mean?
Only public school educated chaps and chappesses from nice areas are allowed to stand?
Some of the worst elected “entitled” scum come from the wealthiest I think you’ll find; a John Brown’s schooldays education isn’t really what it’s cracked up to be anymore.
Lose the snobbery..
@ Young Lochinvar
Snobbery works both ways.
This whole sordid episodes shows us that where despite having the same upbringing as everyone else, Sturgeon was so easily corrupted with the trappings of power and wealth.
Colonialism works via cultural/colonial assimilation and here we know that imperial England ‘followed the politics of assimilation unrestrainably’ (Cesaire) in all its colonized territories, including Scotland.
To paraphrase Cesaire:
“The barbarian world was Scotland, and the civilized world was England. Therefore the best thing one could do with a Scotsman was to assimilate him: the ideal was to turn him into an Englishman”
And in order to change one’s identity one had to ‘mimic the colonizer’ tongue (Fanon), learn to speak like them, to dress like them, to adopt their values (which include ‘the crushing of the colonized’), and hence ‘to crave dependency’ on them.
But, at the end of the day colonial assimilation almost always fails, because, as we see here with Sturgeon, “the colonized means little to the colonizer” (Memmi).
O/T
link to archive.is
The statement from the FBU on the article is littered with such utterances. There doesn’t seem to be much mention about inclusion for woman firefighters.
It’s hard to see what they are wanting. More investment to ensure buildings are complaint with the EHRC ruling or just inclusion for Trans?
If it is the latter, I wonder if the union has really thought it through that is worth to die on that hill?
It is amazing that organisations are still ignoring the law, and are being quite blatant about it.
Will it require a litigation each and every time to actually have the law adhered to?
The fallacy continues…
The most credible explanation yet…courtesy of Rev Stu.
link to x.com
Where’s Izzie when you need her?
THE SYSTEM will use this as a hammer to beat Scottish nationalism conveniently fogetting that it is the historic forensic work of a nationalist on this site that has brought this affair into the glare of public scrutiny.
The SNP has been accused of using a “ringfenced” independence fund to repay a massive loan from EuroMillions winners Colin and Christine Weir.
Pro-independence blog Wings Over Scotland alleged that hundreds of thousands of pounds, donated in good faith by grassroots activists to fight a second independence referendum, were instead used to quietly bail the party out of a £500,000 debt owed to the mega-donors.
According to the blogger, the supposedly ringfenced fundraiser was shut down on June 7, 2017, shortly after it had generated the exact amount of cash required to clear the party’s soaring debts. By December 2017, the SNP had officially paid off the massive sum to the Weirs.
Wings Over Scotland insists that Murrell’s shocking criminal actions are actually a massive distraction from the original missing crowdfunded cash.
The blogger claimed that Murrell’s arrest and subsequent charge have nothing to do with Operation Branchform’s initial remit, suggesting the party intentionally solicited grassroots donations under the false pretence of fighting an independence campaign, only to immediately hand the cash back to their creditors.
The blogger stated: “It is startlingly clear that the true purpose of the fundraiser was to pay off the debt to the Weirs (half of which had been paid off the previous year).
“The stated purpose was a fraudulent lie on the part of Nicola Sturgeon. Murrell’s embezzlement was a wholly separate matter. 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.”
Pointing to previous financial patterns, the blog added: “(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.)
“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.”
The blog concluded that this suspicious timeline explains the party’s sudden pivot in strategy: “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.”
link to scottishdailyexpress.co.uk
Someone needs to ask Swinney, succintly, in front of a camera (and not ‘in camera’) exactly this question…about the ‘ring-fenced’ money.
“Sturgeon’s term ended on 29 March 2023, following her resignation announcement on 15 February, in which she claimed occupational burnout was the reason for her resignation.”
“On 5 April 2023, Murrell was arrested by police in connection with Operation Branchform.”
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Are we really to believe that Sturgeon resigned for burnout and she really hadn’t been told that Murrell (and later herself) was to be arrested?
She resigned before she was ” burned out” of office.
And “burned out” she would most certainly have been.
Quick…over there….a unicorn!
& why was she told & by whom? That is what needs to be investigated.
The UK is corrupt as fck & it’ll be a surprise to absolutely no one that its footsoldiers will be exactly the same.
Lay with dogs & you’ll catch fleas.
Monkey see, monkey do.
Given his underhand shenanigans I think there should be questions asked about the leadership election cause that was also dodgy as fck. Dumbza the continuity candidate was never a winner there. We’d had ten years of continuity of nothing FFS – why would we want more?
But it’s the Union. We’ve all come to expect thieving, devious & underhand deplorables that we can do fck all about until the proles wake the fck up & eject every single one of the gatekeepers.
Murrell was CEO of SNP from 2001.
Murrell married Sturgeon in July 2010
The offences started 12 August 2010.
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Murrell didn’t do anything for 9 years until he married Sturgeon – then BANG.
Does any one else find this to be beyond co-incidence?
London based Scot interviews another London based Scot.
I wonder if after Murrell is sentenced more leaks will emerge? I suspect she did that interview to head off another flurry of incriminating tales and the probable Westminster enquiry is set up in the expectation of finding fingers were in tills other than just the SNP.
Yet incredibly, she’ll still manage political rehabilitation and restoration in the weird world that is the SNP.