Salmond and Sturgeon - a little fishy?
Nicola Sturgeon, whose party has been in power since 2007, is set for a further term as First Minister, following next year’s Holyrood elections. She enjoys huge personal popularity in Scotland, being credited with calm, authoritative and consistent leadership throughout the Covid crisis. A safe pair of hands. Unlike Boris, whose hands were so unsafe that he not only had a near-death experience of Covid, but also had a second brush, requiring him to self-isolate, and whose team has been biting each other in the arse, much to the nation’s amusement. The Scottish experience of the virus has not been hugely dissimilar to that of England, whilst second-wave death rates are actually 25 per cent higher than those in England. Don’t bother with the facts, though – appearance is everything. Sturgeon looks the business. Boris, alas, poor Boris, doesn’t. Boris is Brexit. Sturgeon is pro-European independence. Sturgeon’s approval rating in Scotland is +49; his is -57. He is a liability for Unionists; she is the independence movement’s greatest asset. It is a bit of a worry. Opinion polls are reporting a Scottish majority in favour of independence. Nonsense and misinformation form the SNP’s claim that independence will leave Scotland wealthier - how can it be wealthier once the money stops flowing up the Great North Road from despised England - but the real driver for breaking up the United Kingdom is emotion. The SNP don’t like the English, don’t like being beholden, want their own sovereignty. As Sturgeon told the SNP conference on Monday, only independence will allow Scots to be the ‘decision makers’ in their own lives.
But, you know, there’s something very fishy in the Scottish Nationalist Party that just might save the United Kingdom when the Holyrood committee investigating the Alex Salmond affair reports before the election next May. It has been established that Sturgeon’s account to parliament of what she knew, and when she knew it, was at best incomplete and misleading. It has been said publically that Sturgeon has defied the Salmond Inquiry.
Salmond alleges that he was stitched up by a government-led plot. The inquiry was set up in January 2019 after the Scottish government conceded that an internal investigation of sexual misconduct complaints against Salmond had been unlawful. The inquiry was put on hold when criminal charges were levelled against Salmond, being resumed when he was acquitted of those charges.
The committee comprises a panel of nine MSPs - four SNP, two Tories, one Labour, one Green and one Lib Dem - headed by deputy presiding officer Linda Fabiani, with a remit to consider and report on the actions of Sturgeon, Scottish government officials and special advisors when they dealt with two allegations of sexual misconduct against Salmond, submitted in 2018 but dating back to when he was in office. Salmond maintained his innocence, said the way the investigation had been handled was "unfair and unjust" - and took the government of which he had once been First Minister to court. The Scottish government conceded defeat prior to this Civil Case hearing coming to Court. The two sides agreed that there had been a failure by the government in following its own recently-devised process, and that the report resulting from the investigation "could not be allowed to stand" because the investigating officer had been in contact with both parties. Salmond’s legal bill was £512,250, which the Scottish Government paid.
Sturgeon had signed off the complaints handling process, drawn up in the wake of the #MeToo movement and sexual harassment scandals at both Holyrood and Westminster. She told MSPs she had spoken to Salmond several times about the complaints. Questions have been posed about what Sturgeon knew and when she knew it. She said that she first learned of the matter in a meeting with Salmond at her Glasgow home on 2 April 2018, and that it had been considered strictly an SNP party matter rather than one of government. During his criminal trial, however, Salmond’s former chief of staff Geoff Aberdein - who helped facilitate the meeting - said he had met Sturgeon at her Holyrood office several days earlier, on 29 March. Salmond clearly thought this a significant point - to the extent that he appeared to prompt his QC to ask Mr Aberdein about it - and the Inquiry will ask why they only heard about it via testimony in court. Salmond's defence QC, Gordon Jackson, told jurors that the case originated in the "political bubble" and "absolutely stinks" .
Salmond's defence team very directly linked the failure of the judicial review to the criminal charges, claiming this "scandal" was the motivation for a politically-driven conspiracy against him. In pre-trial hearings, his lawyers said that after the "spectacular" collapse of the government's case in the Court of Session, people working within the current SNP administration turned their attention "very directly" to the criminal investigation and "sought to influence that process to discredit the former first minister". Witnesses giving evidence to the Holyrood Inquiry include Sturgeon, Salmond, members of Sturgeon's inner circle of special advisors and her husband, SNP chief executive Peter Murrell. The Inquiry has required internal SNP records, Sturgeon's personal phone data and the evidence Salmond had prepared for the judicial review. The Convener, Fabiani, has expressed "frustration and disappointment" about the paucity of information handed over by the SNP government. The Inquiry is working chronologically through the drawing up of the complaints procedure, its application to Salmond’s case and then the costly debacle of the judicial review. The Inquiry has also expressed an interest in examining the "culture" of government, which could see witnesses called to testify about life at Bute House under both Sturgeon and Salmond.
Related matters include an independent panel to determine whether Sturgeon broke the Ministerial Code in her dealings with Salmond, an internal SNP government review of how its harassment procedure had been applied, Salmond’s request for a review of how the existence of the internal investigation ended up in the media, the implication being that it was a government leak, and SNP MSP Alex Neil demanding a "judge-led public inquiry" into whether or not the "organs of the state" had been involved in a "conspiracy to do in Alex Salmond".
Time to turn to mr ishmael's take on the Salmond/Sturgeon fishiness, some 8 years ago:
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| Chairman Mac Tse Salmond, still on his Eating4Scotland mission. |
SHABBY SALMOND IN THE BUNKER: A GRUDGE TOO FAR. 12/10/14
Well he's off, blustering, his load shot, although he says he will continue to represent the constituency which shit on his independence proposals, will they have him and can he stand them, traitors all, unpatriotic, Tory lackeys?
She, now, must face proper scrutiny; why no children, is it cruel nature or obsessive career? Either way, national womanhood will be suspicious. Mr Fishwife? He's the Chief Executive of the SNP. How cosy is that, the taxpayer paying her salary, the party member paying his; national womanhood will be suspicious. National womanhood raises children. For the nation. National womanhood doesn't, as a rule, work so closely with husband, so well-paid and pensioned; national womanhood often does menial, part-time jobs, just to put food on the table - Ms Fishwife dines at official banquets and claims for her food on expenses.
National manhood, Jock, will not, does not, take kindly to having a woman in charge; Alec's deputy is one thing, First Minister is quite another.
The best thing, though, for those opposed to separation from friends, relatives and struggling comrades, is the fact that, quite dictatorially, without consultation, Alec has unilaterally written off the debts of PollTax non-payers, many of whom only registered to vote in order to support independence and now find themselves being pursued, via the electoral roll, by cash-strapped councils which now know where they live.
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| Hand, Alex. You have been warned about this sort of thing. |
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!'
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.
And is it true,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall ?
Become a Child on earth for me ?
And is it true ? For if it is,
Around those tissued fripperies,
And hideous tie so kindly meant,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
20 comments:
I don't really know Scotland. in the 1980s I visited Edinburgh several times on business - fly in and out on the same day. I once went to Glasgow on business and stayed overnight with a former colleague. We went to a local pub in the evening for a few wee heavies; it was like being in a foreign country; they could have been speaking Romanian (or even Polish) for all I could tell. I kept my mouth shut for obvious reasons. A little later we went to an Italian restaurant. Sitting at the table next to me was the legendary boxer Jim Watt with his wife. Now, I was a big fan of his and watched all his fights; he was a lightweight; very pale almost deathly white skin; every fight was a rollercoaster of emotion; he invariably got cut badly around his eyes and the whiteness of his skin amplified the redness of the blood. But he fought some of the toughest bastards on the planet (Mexicans) and won, not through force but because of skill and sheer bloody mindedness.
For 20 mins or so I agonised over whether to say hello. On the one hand he was having a quiet dinner out with his wife and must get pestered by drunks all the time; but, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Eventually I plucked up courage and introduced myself. He was very welcoming, polite and quietly spoken. He invited me to sit down. He shook my hand - I have boney and sinewy hands which, despite never having done a proper days work, are quite calloused - at that time I played squash every day, now its from golf. His hands were small and very soft. I told him that I watched his fights and of the time at one world championship, when it was in the balance, I had pains in my chest; and, I said a little prayer - please Lord don't let me die before the end of this fight. He was a very nice and surprisingly gentle man, or so it seemed to me.
I wish now I had seen more of Scotland.
It's a big place, mr mike, with a small population. For comparison purposes, Scotland's land mass is 30,981 square miles, whereas England's land mass is 49,944 square miles.
Scotland's population is 5.46 million, of which the majority live in the Central Belt, compared with England's massive population of 67.5 million.
It's not too late to see more of Scotland, you know - you could do a Scottish detour on your next European trip. I understand your linguistic difficulty in that Glaswegian pub. They are incomprehensible when they choose - which is when they are chattering amongst themselves or in order to exclude English eavesdroppers. Most Scottish people have heard enough BBC to make themselves understood by English speakers, but it is a matter of national pride not to. Then there's the languages, as opposed to the dialects. The Gaelic, which mr ishmael famously mistook for Polish in the Inverness Library, thus leading to the creation of stanislav, the young Polish Plumber. And the Doric - which I think is a dialect, but its adherants are claiming seperate language status for it. Where I live, the dialect of the isles is soft and gently rounded, a bit like Welsh, but with massive Norwegian influences. Kids are still named Thorfinn or Magnus. Ronald is spelt with a g and a v.
Scotland, especially the Highlands - well, anywhere north of Perth - is heart-clenchingly beautiful. The 6 cities each has a unique identity - Inverness, the gate to the Highlands, is a shining, sparkling city, its massive suspension bridge spanning the river Ness, its feet in the blue sea; Aberdeen is a grey old place, built of granite, solid, cold, grey, rich; Perth is, well, Perth, Dundee is a bit of a hole, but has the Scottish V and A, the Tay Bridge and its disaster so marvellously commemorated by McGonagle; Glasgow is vast, Victorian, bustling and wealthy and has the Kelvingrove; and Edinburgh is old, old, old, evil, murderous and dark.
The ancient, fathomless grievance of the Scots against the English has been ruthlessly exploited by the SNP to their own advantage. There have been five First Ministers, all of them shady, sleazy, incompetent or fools.
The three Labour First Ministers were:
Donald Dewar - whose administration was embroiled in an access-to-ministers scandal, the Holyrood building fiasco and the repeal of Section 28. He admitted the first year was "towsy". He fell over and died.
Henry McLeish, known to mr ishmael as Henry McThief, famous for his Westminster constituency office expenses scandal, dubbed "Officegate". He eventually resigned as first minister, describing his actions as "a muddle, not a fiddle".
Jack McConnell was an inept, foot-in-mouth clown, who finished Labour as a viable party in Scotland. Some achievement, that.
Then we had Sexy Alex Salmond, who, some say, groomed the feisty young sprat Sturgeon as his successor. And it is these two who have driven a stake into the heart of our nation. As my son-in-law explained to my grandson - she's an evil witch, that one, trying to break your country up.
Wonderful Betjeman.
She's such a pinched and graceless person, our Nicola. Such a shame for such a fine, rational country.
I'm rather fond of Betjeman's poems, mr bill. He's often a little sly - I take it that he personally doesn't think for a moment that the Christmas story is true - after all, if it is, why aren't you on your knees grovelling in abject fear and wonder that the all-powerful god has assumed baby-flesh, instead of wrapping up bath salts and picking greenery from hedges - which was a tribute to the old, pagan gods of these northern islands, so that the church "looks nice". He captured the rhythms of cosy, middle class speech wonderfully. And I just love the dig at the "shining ones" who live in the Dorchester Hotel.
The thing about Scotland is that it really isn't one cohesive nation - mind you, neither is England - there certainly are bits of it that are fine and rational - Edinburgh springs to mind, with its rich heritage of medical discovery, literature and politics. But there's other bits that aren't at all rational - witchcraft is actively practised in Caithness, for example. There's other bits that have urban despair, drug taking, drunkenness, generational unemployment and homelessness - Dundee leaps to mind. And there's the stoical, close-mouthed agricultural and fishing folk up north. Sturgeon is very typically Scottish, of a certain type and place. She's a Weegie. She'd be right at home in the Steamie. Quick-witted, sharp-tongued, bristling with grievance and aggression. Damn right that it is such a shame that she represents and leads the peoples of Scotland in all their multi-faceted diversity of culture, language and history, boiling it all down to a mindless scream of rage against the English oppressor.
I have just noticed that Blackwell’s has listed Honest, Not Invent in the DIY category.
Mea culpa, mrs n - I couldn't resist that when we went through the publication detail process, but it's since been changed to fiction/satire, in case the DIY (plumbing) gag was what's been bothering amazon's software - as yet the book has yet to appear there.
cheers
v./
NB the current lulu discount code is FESTIVE10
I thought it was brilliant, mr,V!
Thanks, mrs narcolept - mission accomplished, then, as I hoped it might give a browsing ishmaelite a laugh some time. Meanwhile, you may be interested to hear, we have a kind of volume 1A in the works, a slender paperback of pure stanislav, collecting much of the material that didn't fit into Honest, Not Invent. The many remaining Ishmael essays will take a bit longer to select, edit and arrange, but the stanislav book should be out in time for Easter, if not before.
cheers
verge
The problem with Mrs Fish, mrs i, is that fatal flaw of hatred. Her whole career is built on it. I don't think that actually I hate a single person - although plenty have given me cause. I do pretend in these pages for discussion purposes but is for wht mr i called mental hygiene reasons. There is a terrrible truth in life in that we all start off young and lovely, and wanting fairness, and freedom, and California Dreaming. And then we get even a little bit old - the first mortgage usually does it - and we have worked out that actually life works better if you don't smoke weed every night and indeed get up the fuck for work. This moment of realisation is now called out and despised as anything which isn't "IT". And the Itsters hate everyone who isn't one. Be they the SNP in NEDland, or Democrats in the US or Labour in the Uk, it is the same displacement anger.
But as St Peter was told that day - although it was paraphrased - you cannot build a castle on hatred. Thee needs a rock. Significantly, and extraordinarily, the right, the centre, the up and the down, do not actually hate the Itsters. Only the Itsters hate. Only the ITsters have an IT that one has to have. And that's why they eventually always lose. I'm a fucking capital-L fucking Liberal (to a degree) and even I don't get a pass because I will not bend to the dogma.
And that is Scotland. I do not know Glasgow much but Edinburgh plenty. There is a thick seam of anti-English hatred. Like a stick of rock it is. But it is a panto. They have to be stirred to it: "He's behind you!", "Oh no, he isn't!", "Oh yes, he is!" And so it is a pretence. It is a tin of shortbread with a silly arse in asilly frock playing a silly bag of air. Without the English money, the Glaswegians would descend on Edinburgh and hang the lot of them. And they know it.
The problem with Mrs Fish, mr mongoose, is she loves English pounds but hates the English providers of those pounds.
“We will provide 135 million extra English pounds, for ejacation, bonuses for teachers and more...” thus spake Swiney, in the council building built with English taxpayers pounds.
Like you I find it difficult to hate individuals, however, I sincerely hope there is a special place in hell for the Son of Satan, the Blair creature. Perhaps the most Evil beast this century.
Beautiful craftwork in the photos, I take it is your work Mrs I.
Scotland is a wonder and it’s people, in general, honest, down to earth folk; indeed I’ve been married to a Scot for 40 years now. It’s their politicians who are all, without exception, cunts. I defy anyone to name a good politician, other than a dead one, and, and some of the dead ones should be dug up, hanged, drawn and quartered, just to be sure.
Maybe just another kind of cunt, mr inmate, but El Pepe, Jose Mujica, former president of Uruguay, was an unusual specimen in office.
v./
Mr verge, thank you for drawing our attention to Jose Mujica. His wiki page describes him as "the world's humblest head of state" due to his austere lifestyle and his donation of around 90 percent of his $12,000 monthly salary to charities that benefit poor people and small entrepreneurs. He and his wife, Lucia, lived on a farm owned by Lucía in the outskirts of Montevideo, where they cultivated chrysanthemums for sale, having declined to live in the presidential palace or to use its staff. His car was a 1987 Volkswagen Beetle.
Our rapacious set of politicians are thrown into ugly contrast by this amazing man.
mr inmate, totally agree with you about Scottish (and other) politicians.
Yes, it is my work illustrating Betjeman's poem. Thank you - I was quite pleased with the cynical and sceptical expression on the cow's face on finding a baby in his food trough.
That is it, mr inmate. They must have their bauble - whatever it is, and whoever pays for it - and the rest - justice, honour, kindness - all is secondary. America is wading in it right now. It's well over the tops of their wellies.
We could use this idea to solve Brexit too. Just say that we are all too worked up, that none of the Covid-ridden us is going to do any proper work any time soon and therefore there will a treatyless Brexit. In 12 months time, we will sit down as good friends, as a divorcing couple sometimes do, and have a pint and a pie, and settle the nasty financials without rancour. It reminds me of the tale of Arthur's divorce - from long ago when divorce has hard to do - Said the Judge, "Your divorce is granted, Mr and Mrs Arthur. [legal blah, blah with dates and such] Now, Mr Arthur, take the lady out to lunch, Sir, for old time's sake."
I bow to your superior knowledge of cunts of the world mr verge. An exception to the rule, proves the point, that without such men as El Pepe, we would believe that politics makes politicians behave as they do, lying, thieving, ruining, but it is not true, ‘tis they who ruin politics, livelihoods, everything.
Flattered, mr inmate, but you're too kind. Apropos your other diagnosis, the following (re #10) is penciled in for the opening bars of the (eventually) forthcoming stanislav compilation :
"Speaking in Plumber’s Guide to the Galaxy, great Polish writer Douglas Adams said:
any cunt who wants the job, shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near it.
In recent love poem Stanislav venture:
Vote? I’d rather keep shit in the fridge. Throw them all out, they’re all cunts.
Remember, remember, the fifth of November…"
Bang on the money, as he usually was - Citizen Suspect Smith, a lodestar in the sewer.
cheers
v./
It's time England was given a referendum of independence from Scotland (and Wales) for that matter. I've never understood what the infatuation is with "The Union"?
I do believe, mr mike, that the union works far more to Scotland's advantage than to England's. The affection is felt far more in the Establishment than in the majority of the English people, who, for the most part, don't give a toss either way and haven't set foot in Scotland, preferring warmer climes. But the monarchy and aristocracy own great swathes of the place, particularly in the Highlands and do holiday there.
Don't know enough about Wales to comment. England was happy(ish) to let Eire go, but has clung ferociously to the Six Counties, so she has, because that was where the wealth was, in the industrial north.
Speaking entirely selfishly, I'm a UK citizen and I don't want to live in a foreign country, particularly a wretchedly poor country, that neither England nor Europe would want anything to do with, once having rid themselves of their Scottish encumbrance. When mr ishmael and I moved here, from England, twenty years ago, in our light-hearted, under-researched adventure, I had no more thought that I was going to live in a different country than if I'd moved to Yorkshire. Things were different then. Devolution was new - the Scotland Act was passed in 1998, establishing the Scottish Parliament, which opened in 1999, and transferred some of the powers previously held at Westminster. And the SNP was a tiny party, with the Labour party holding the majority. If things continue along Sturgeon's path, I'll find myself a stranger in a strange land.
Only been to Wales two times and found the place to be actually rather nice. I’ve often pondered on whether or not the Welsh were fucked over more than the Scots by the English. I’d guess the Welsh, but it’s only a guess.
Most Scots I know have no need or longing for a return to those times when the English left us on our own to squabble and bicker over bits of land and status.
But for being under the English cosh we’d be right back there.
The Scots were in partnership with the English when Great Britain ruled the world. (See Glasgow – 2nd city of the Empire).
‘Course built on white slavery it was but that’s another debate.
There are no James Watts or John Macadams any more. (See endless list of Scots contributors to civilisation). What we have now is Nicola and the English have Boris.
Fuck me sideways, can you imagine Isambard rocking into the HOC and finding that lot?
Macadam learning that Scotland would be back to 3rd world if it wasn’t for English broo-money.
@doug shoulders
i'll have you know that the welsh were never - and will never be - "fucked over" by the anglo-dachshunds, the extant proof of this indisputable fact being found in the resilient fabric of the historic woollen curtain which has been woven across this isle - and is commonly known as fuck-offa's dyke...
however, as an unforeseen, and highly unfortunate, knock-on-effect of the knee-jerk decision by camp-brittany's welsh war-refugees to support the 1066 froggo-brythonic invasion of england, it did indeed tragically come to pass that the english, welsh, and scots all got equally, royally, and often quite literally fucked up the arse by the ruddy normans.
now, weinstain stated, in his theory of general irrationality, that the definition of insanity is to repeatedly perform the same stupid action and yet somehow expect a different result from that altogether arse-headed action...
but well, i'm no weinstain - i'm the grand welsh wazzock - and anyway, that serious scientific stuff is all greek to me...
so when i hear that the coronavirus-re-infection-rate is rising, i just lock down the whole damn country...
and then when it's reported that the re-infection-rate is nudging up even further, i just lock the country down yet harder...
and of course, if it subsequently transpires that - despite the institution of an almost stalinist régime - the coronavirus-re-infection-rate still carries on merrily rocketing into the statistical stratosphere...
guess what i do next...?
yessir, i don my jolly green jackboots and stamp the bloody life out of the nation until the welsh population and the re-infection-rate are both at absolute zero...
because "better safe than sorry" is my motto-in-life, you see...
and naturally, if the top-ranking scientists and medics in the fields of epidemiology, pathology and micro-biology try explaining to me that the rt-qpcr-test for the current coronavirus-infection has belatedly been certified not fit-for-purpose, and that, unlike the lateral-flow-test, it is producing a phantom pandemic of false-positive results...
i obviously just lock the mad bastards up.
@mark drinkforbid
mr loony lockdowns might well have added:
"furthermore, if any cunt points out to me that at least nine european countries - including germany and denmark - have not suffered significant excess-death-rates during this so-called killer-pandemic...
or that wales itself has only experienced fairly minor spikes in the mortality-rate...
or that our minor - lockdown-related - mortality-rate-spikes have actually been the direct result of criminally restricted access to a welsh health-service which has already been cut back to the bloody bone by a corrupt labour-controlled welsh government...
then clearly, i take the only politically acceptable action open to me in the circumstances:
i have the heretical hair-splitting dissident put up against a wall and summarily shot."
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