He might as well argue that Salmond would have been found guilty in the criminal trial if the court hadn’t abruptly intervened and declared him innocent. It’s just as ridiculous.
No man in Scotland could have survived the scrutiny that Salmond was put under. Untold numbers of police investigated him for months, all sorts of people from his past were pressured into speaking against him, and it is clear that a multitude of conspirators did everything possible to demonise him — apparently going as far as making things up.
On top of all that, the whole MSM played along with this, using all their considerable power to blacken his name with.
I wonder how Wightman would fare.
Corruption has an unmistakable smell, and the stink of this is disgusting. The persecutors of Alex Salmond would do fine working in an abattoir that never gets disinfected.
Keep wielding that steam hose Stu.
So, I was in the toon and this guy says to me he heard from a guy that this other guy was actin a bit dodgy n that and that theres something going on
– but when you tell folk this … they don’t believe you
that andy wightman – is it true he has cages and a sex dungeon under his house full of filipino children?
Has he ever denied it?
Is there any evidence that these allegations are not true?
Didn’t he once buy a spade out of B&Q?
Even if we dig up his house and find nothing, chances are he just moved it.
I believe it.
– are you saying “some guy in the street” is lying?
and it’s not like some woman with a grudge against a man will ever act upon it, like – not getting the job she wanted. This never happens. Women never lie.
Scotland, where false accusers get anonymity for life, and not the jail for perjury.
“… Which questions relating to the allegations against Alex Salmond do you consider to be “still unanswered”?
Specifically which criminal offences do you believe Alex Salmond to be still under suspicion of having committed, and does that include any of those of which he was charged and acquitted in the High Court?… ”
This, to my mind, is the crux of the matter. Andy Wightman is not the only person to suggest that the verdict needs to be look at again. One of the basic tenets, if not the most basic tenet, of the Scottish legal system is that a person is innocent until proved guilty, in a court of law, by his/her peers, and, if acquitted, walks free without a stain on his or her character.
These attacks are, I believe, driven by fear of Mr Salmond bringing a case successfully, and, thereafter, returning to front-line politics. That putative return was the underlying motive for the first, in-house challenge which was found to be illegitimate and illegal and which the mandarins in Whitehall warned the Scottish branch Civil Service to avoid, as retrospective challenges can backfire, coupled to which, no former PM or FM had ever been investigated and challenged in this way before.
No surprise that the SG did not listen (and the civil servants would have informed them), but the civil service is not off the hook either. Yes, the British State would have made hay had Salmond been found guilty in either the civil or criminal case, or both. They would have utterly destroyed him precisely because they fear him as a real Scottish Nationalist and not a pretendy, collaborationist one. However, this mess was home-grown and entirely in keeping with the farces that have occurred since in other areas of governance. Spite, jealousy, the ambitions of political and intellectual garden gnomes all played their part.
I am very disappointed in Andy Wightman who, albeit he has been a staunch defender of female rights, and lost his own political career over his stance, is way off beam here. He is undermining Scots civil and criminal law. It is not perfect, but it is all we have to protect us from the establishment and their lackeys.
What the hell is Wightman playing at here? he appears to be trying to go over old ground and if not change the outcome, at least instill a feeling of doubt, doubt that judicially doesn’t exist.
Alex Salmond was found not guilty by a jury made up mostly of women.
The big question must be is why is Wightman is going down this road after all these years especially when many Scots know now what actually happened to Alex Salmond and the injustices he suffered in the process.
Perhaps several possibilities going on – 1 Andy Wightman has no insight into his own lack of intellect and is just being thick. 2 He’s been offered a way back into mainstream politics and this is the price he has to pay, demonstrating his loyalty to The corrupt core at the heart of the Scottish political machine. 3 Scotland is a Controlled Democracy, Andy recognises this and Andy is actively participating by claiming his oh-so-elite status, with a “look at me, I’m important” moment.
Lorna Campbell @ 2:26 pm
“However, this mess was home-grown”
A colonial society is described as ‘a Manichean world’ in which the native group is forced to exist between ‘two cultural and psychical realms’ in conflict (Fanon).
The colonial environment, therefore, is never ‘home-grown’; politics and institutions in a colony are not the same as in an independent country. In a colony ‘only the values of the colonizer are sovereign’ (Memmi) and colonial elites hold only to those values.
Seeing as Mr Wightman is entering the fray and expressing some views on the debacle. I wonder if he also has anything to say about the total piss-take that is the metaphysical aspect of an individual allegedly attempting to rape an individual when both parties were not even in the same building at the time and date of the supposed incident.
And what are Mr Wightman’s views on giving an individual who made a verifiable false accusation against another party lifelong anonymity?
Especially taking in mind that said accuser had, in the balance of probabilities had previous interaction with some very significant people in positions of power and influence to guide them on a way to proceed with their conspiracy that allowed the alphabetty accusers to remain anonymous.
I am absolutely bewildered by this contribution by Andy Wightman who struck me as the sole honest actor in the Fabiani Farce. All the others were driven by party agendas : the 4 SNP members, including the preposterous Fabiani, were out to clear the SG and Sturgeon.
The unionists were determined to taint BOTH Salmond and Sturgeon. Wightman alone, it seemed THEN, was the only MSP on the committee concerned with the public good.
Where this latest intervention leaves me now I do not know.
Remember what Sturgeon said:
“The behaviour complained of was found by a jury not to constitute criminal conduct and Alex Salmond is innocent of criminality, but that doesn’t mean the behaviour complained of didn’t happen and I think it’s important that we don’t lose sight of that.”
gm @ 5:45 pm
“During his time in parliament he did not lay a glove on the landed interest”
Even in the foreword to the 2013 edition of ‘The Poor etc’, Andy seemed unable (or unwilling) to make the obvious connection between the theft of our lands/resources and colonialism; much like most of the Scottish bourgeoisie more generally, who remain in denial. His website ‘hot topics’ all relate to land matters, yet he fails to make the obvious and necessary colonial linkage. By its omission, independence is evidently not one of his ‘hot topics’, much like his former Green colleagues.
Given the decision of the jury based on evidence presented (and not all of it was permitted to be presented), defending the arguably dubious honour of the alpha-betties seems an odd pursuit.
Panda Paws: yes, indeed. however appeals by the Police/Fiscal are usually made on sentencing, so not appropriate here. I have suggested in the past that the women might want to launch a civil appeal, but, of course, they won’t. Only those who are genuinely whiter-than-white and feel aggrieved that they have not received justice would ever attempt such a thing. The evidence would be examined under a much less stringent microscope and the law would undoubtedly favour Mr Salmond again. At least some of the women were carried along under pressure and gave evidence under duress. It doesn’t exonerate them, but it does explain a few strange anomalies.
Moixx: you are right that AW did, indeed, take the ‘middle ground’, but he did argue cogently for women’s spaces, etc. No, there can be no middle ground on the issue of ‘trans’. He, like so many others, think that compromise can be reached. It can’t. These people are part of a men’s sexual rights/men’s rights movement that will never stop at the door of the female loos. The number of people who still talk about ‘real’ ‘trans’ is quite shocking, given there evidence that has been accumulating. The ‘trans’ identified men are sexual deviants, but it doesn’t seem to matter how many of them commit disgusting crimes, there are still those who find excuses for them rather than believe women.
I think AW is one of those people who can never choose a side when, on some issues, we all must, eventually. He is far from being the only one in the independence movement. Craig Murray, much as I admire him for other stances, is so wrong on this one that you have to wonder about his motives because he is a human rights and civil rights supporter, yet he cannot see that females are disadvantaged to a massive degree by this stuff, their rights taken away as if they are lesser human beings. Neo matter how you dice and slice it, young women and, especially, children, are being harmed by the male-centric ‘trans’ lobby.
Not to mention that the hair pinging allegation which was only present to bolster the ridiculous “Moorov Doctrine” attack on Mr Salmond actually allegedly took place in a lift in a hotel in Hong Kong which the last time I looked was outside the High Courts jurisdiction for everything except certain forms of sex trafficking. The High Court now apparently accepts jurisdiction for offences if publishing the names of Alphabetties anywhere in the world in complete contravention to the Spy catcher case where in a case of alleged treason a story banned by the English High Court could legally be published in Scottish newspapers which ended up making the English ban so ridiculous that the subsequent ban in the English High Court was lifted.
” Tommy Sheppard: We need a brand new independence strategy…
Yeah, we’re working on one Tommy.
Stage 1 is getting rid of the dysfunctional charlatans exploiting the Independence cause for their own personal advancement while selling Scotland out, squandering mandate after mandate, abdicating Scotland’s Constitutional rights and integrity, organising bogus Independence events to clash with AUOB events, turning up at Pride Marches rather than YES marches, and not forgetting stabbing their own “colleagues” in the back.
Stage 2… yeah, we’ll tell you about that,… when or if we need the excess baggage of mind-numbingly stupid, gravy slurping charlatans to get on board with the real Independence movement…. again.
I am surprised the names of the Alphabeties have not been made public.
The corrupt Scottish government after all leaks like a sieve.
The courts may say that they have the authority to impose a world wide ban. But somehow that doesn’t seem right.
One thing for sure is that the issue will not have gone away. And that may be why, despite Alex Salmond being found innocent, certain malcontents still try to disregard his innocencr as if he was actually guilty.
Andy Wightman clearly now falls into this class of malign defamers. Maybe he knows that the truth is lurking to emerge and the whole rotten shame of coordinated malfeasance of state might be about to emerge.
“I am surprised the names of the Alphabeties have not been made public”
In normal circumstances, I would be surprised too. But these are not normal circumstances.
We have had the main arms of the British state involved on this to their armpits and from the very beginning: the civil service, the Police, the Crown Office, the main press and, at points, even the Lord Advocate and some judges.
It cannot be a coincidence that all these corrupt people were chosen to be in post at the same time. It cannot be a coincidence that none of them have been held accountable for anything. It cannot be a coincidence that this was also happening at the same time the SNP, with absolute majority after absolute majority in Westminster and with the power to rightfully end the UK right there and then, had just been defanged by the same political fraud, even before they reached the seats in 2015, which, with the highest ranking officer of the UK civil service in Scotland, appears to have been at the centre of the implementation of this alleged conspiracy.
It cannot be a coincidence that, what at first sight appears to be a clear cut case of fraud involving funds donated for a specific cause and used for something else, is taking such a looooooooooooooooooooong time to progress and which, incidentally, has the same political fraud, as leader of the party and wife of the CEO at the time, right at the centre of it.
It cannot be a coincidence either that under the stewardship of this political fraud, an unelected representative of the crown was invited to the executive so they could simply steal from the people of Scotland control over its legislative body and hand it to the English crown in the form of an English court and English judges. It is obvious this was done to stop a referendum bill that, otherwise and with a pro-independence majority in Holyrood, would have passed no problem and would have left the monarch with the uncomfortable choice of having to stamp it against their will or denying the stamping and, in doing so, violating the Claim of Right 1689 they had just swear to uphold.
It is clear as day that this matter is only a small part of a much larger puzzle which transcends well beyond a narcissistic political fraud, drunken in power and on her own self-perception of importance, and her carpetbagger minions.
What is not clear to me is how far up the UK hierarchy of power this conspiracy goes. But when you have so many elements of the state frantically standing on the lid and biting the heads of whoever attempts to lift it, you can only guess that this goes quite high up.
I would not be surprised on the least if, at some point in the future, we find out that things have not been revealed sooner because, somewhat, this whole story, including the active, forceful, persistent and systematic suppression of evidence of fundamental public interest in Scotland by elements of the crown, has been loosely linked to “a matter for national security”. It all depends how far up the hierarchy this thing goes and where the order to start all this came from.
When, in the context of the third decade of the 21st century, we heard about the absolutely idiotic and absurd demands of having to wear a tie in Westminster to be called to speak to represent their constituency, you have to wonder who/what completely detached from reality undemocratic nutter/nutters is/are really in control of the UK.
I mean, how many of the working class people in the UK wear a tie to work? So, the nutter/nutters, is/are sending the message that the tools sitting in Westminster only speak for tie-wearing citizens and to hell with everybody else.
In such absurd context, is it really that unlikely that such nutter/nutters rather abuse power and misuse the concept of “national security” than being exposed and held accountable for improper and unlawful interventionism?
I think we have seen worse.
Alf: I absolutely accept what you say about colonized nations, but the Salmond debacle was cooked up at Holyrood. Responsibility for that lies right here, not down there, however much we might want it to, and, albeit no doubt the British State and Westminster would have made hay with it, had the Scottish branch Civil Service and the colonial Scottish government listened to the warnings from Whitehall, all of it could have been avoided. No matter how colonized you are, in the end, it’s up to you to decide whether you accept brainwashing or not. The ‘trans’ issue is another where brainwashing has taken place. Sometimes, we have to accept that some people – a lot of them – are just plain stupid.
Dave L: the Moorov Doctrine is a perfectly legal means of pinning down, for example, a serial killer, a serial housebreaker, and so on; it is not ‘ridiculous’. Every jurisdiction uses it in some form. It seems to me that it was misused in the Salmond case which became more of a fishing expedition that a nothing else.
The women are still under the protection of the anonymity umbrella – and, again, it is a perfectly reasonable legal device/convention when used properly. The best hope of breaching it is if one the women cracks and spills the beans. All anonymity orders are life-long, as far as I am aware. Without doubt, at least one of the women, possibly more, were pressured to give evidence not wholly willingly, I believe, or Mr Salmond and his team will blow the whole thing apart and it will become redundant.
I will keep on saying, the SG wanted Mr Salmond out of Scottish politics for good for the reasons I stated earlier: he was, and will always be, a thorn in the side of the collaborationists and devolutionists. Had he returned to frontline politics, independence would not be stalled. The SG knows it, we all know it and you can bet that Westminster and the British State know it, too. The SG’s actions were like a ripe plum falling from the tree into their lap. Now, why would that be?
“the Salmond debacle was cooked up at Holyrood”
I have to disagree on this. I agree that the implementation of the “plan” must have been led by Sturgeon’s Gov and civil service, but the strategy and plan for this was not cooked up here.
Take a look at what was happening in Wales right at the same time. Take a look at the process that Mr Carl Sargeant was put through and that ultimately drove him to his death and to the resignation of the FM of Wales at the time.
What do you see?
The parallelisms are uncanny. It is not possible that both permanent secretaries in Scotland and Wales came up, randomly, with the same stupid plan almost simultaneously. They were directed to do this by somebody/something else. Nicola Sturgeon had no beef on Wales, therefore she cannot be blamed for that. It had to be something else above them all. Now, what do the permanent secretary in Scotland and Wales have in common?
In the case of Mr Sargeant, there was also an individual who dished historic accusations against him. This individual was immediately labelled by the press, the Wales Gov and politicians as “the victim” and Mr Sargeant was guilty before even an effing trial had taken place. He was even sacked. Mr Salmond was forced out of the party. The same as with Mr Salmond, Mr Sargeant was not given any information at all to be able to defend himself.
The complaints procedure in Wales was as disgustingly botched as the one up here and was also led, allegedly, by civil servants. In both cases, the accusers were given life-long anonymity.
Coincidence? Yeah. And pigs can fly too.
Now take a look at the circumstances when this was happening: this was happening from 2017 ownwards, after the EU referendum had taken place and the Uk was in negotiations with the EU for brexit and desperate to cut trade deals with other countries.
It was most convenient for the British state to have the two nations in the UK most affected by brexit, and which would cause mayhem if they suddenly started to obfuscate the negotiations with demands for independence referendums, “distracted” with something else.
Making the governments of Wales and Scotland look inefficient, incompetent and corrupt was of course a bonus if not done by design. Nothing would reassure other potential trade deal partners to the UK more than being shown that neither Wales nor Scotland could possibly govern themselves therefore their independence was not on the cards.
I do not know the reasons why Mr Sargeant was targeted. But, in my opinion, Mr Salmond was targeted for obvious reasons: to fabricate an irreversible division in the independence movement and to stall it for long enough so those those trade deals to go through.
I do not know if you remember about the early rumors in the press about an division in the SNP, with a pro-sturgeon camp and a pro-Salmond one. If I remember correctly, these rumors started well before the complaints procedure took stage. Was this an example of the classic “problem-reaction-solution” strategy? Were the prestitutes of the MSM already brainwashing us in preparation for the mother of all divisions of the independence movement that the British state were about to deploy?
In my humble opinion, Sturgeon or, heaven forbid Evans with her Music degree, lack the brain bandwith required to concoct such plan. They however can make a right arse of implementing it and leaving the Scottish Government and every other Scottish public structure particularly the parliament and COPFS looking totally corrupt and unfit for purpose. But, I am sure that was part of the original plan after all.
Isn’t it remarkable that we never heard anything of a similar botched complaints procedure for England?
@LornaCampbell
In this instance it was ridiculous because Alex could theoretically be convicted of attempted rape for pinging someone’s curls in a lift in Hong Kong .
Also the Advocate Depute stated that he wasn’t going for Moorov whilst the prosecutions case was being heard even though it was obviously set up for that but then as the prosecutions case moved forward and Witness H made her cockups he gave up trying to win on the arguments and only questioned the first defence witness after Alex then sat in his chair and hoped for Moorov. It was also interesting to nite that the previous case where Moorov had been discredited was at Kirkcaldy High Court and the presiding judge was none other than Lady Dorrian. So it’s unsurprising that she’s at the vanguard of trying to take the decision away from juries as even with the weight of Moorov making it possible to get a clean sheet of convictions in a breach of the peace they seem incapable of doing anymore with a stitchup than protecting those involved in causing it. They must have been raging that they had dropped the bottle of fizzy water after the verdicts came in.
“He was the key figure in ensuring that vital evidence was withheld from the Scottish Parliament inquiry” –
Allowing people involved in an inquiry to choose or accept what information is released and what isn’t shouldn’t be for them to decide. It makes a mockery of the word inquiry. There needs to be some form of control (VAR) to make sure that legal matters determine such things. Without this any inquiry will too often just be a pantomime with a pre-determined outcome. As usual the lack of consequences for actions that allow this to happen ensures that it won’t change until there are. For now though all that can be done is to keep on exposing the shenanigans. The more cracks that are exposed the more likely that the whole charade will fall apart.
The point (well made point) by Mary Cuthbertson is indeed very important, I’d be a bit more than slightly angry if I was Alex, and I really do not know how he has kept his cool over the years. When he gets back into court, I hope that Mary’s point is used, it really does hammer home the pressure that must have been applied to keep him from returning to front line politics in Scotland, and how he was denied a fair “inquiry” from Holyrood. Most of all what annoys me is the lack of support (since the day the Daily Record reported the story/leak way back) he has had from the people he guided into politics in the first place. You all know who you are :/
As I have observed online before, the despicable stitch-up of Alex Salmond and its aftermath surely provides us with a clear case of what contemporary Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, in his book State of Exception (2005), terms “homo sacer”, ie an individual who in an extreme Kafkaesque manner finds themself in a no-man’s land neither conclusively inside nor outside the judicial order.
Agamben points to Guantanamo Bay internees and stateless asylum seekers as classic examples. The individual is here viewed by the State as a “non-person”, paradoxically trapped by the law but also abandoned by the law. The consequence of that latter vulnerability is that (and this is the relevant point here) they can be attacked with impunity — and let’s never forget Kirsty Wark’s hatchet job scandalously re-enacted by the BBC.
We also noted the parallel in another post somewhere that protesting women in Scotland can find themselves under attack while police are present yet who disgracefully refuse to protect them. The “State of Exception” before our eyes.
Agamben further points out that in any state of emergency (eg involving martial curfews, “national security” measures etc) the State ironically thereby also itself steps — legally as it were — “outside the law”, and is therefore able to act injuriously and with due “legally illegal” impunity against targeted citizens.
And to take our train of thought a bit further today, it seems now arguable that Scotland itself exhibits such a condition of being “homo sacer”, increasingly manifesting as a no-man’s land at the mercy of UK “special measures” whim, and with no higher international referee. Especially so if our own historic Scottish judiciary fails us all by being deviously complicit, naively compliant, or just grievously cowardly.
This free-for-all, consequence free, smear Salmond all you want, needs to stop, and there is only one way to do it.
Salmond should take a good holiday to somewhere which respects freedom, Iceland, or Switzerland, and maybe “get the writing bug” – then blow the doors off, from a safe distance. It all starts with the names of the alphabetties, and once you know who they are, it all becomes “obvious”, e.g. woman H and her motivations. It really is a criminal conspiracy, and there is only one person, one control-freak at the heart of it who could have set it all up. It’s really Sturgeon and woman H, then the flying monkeys, Lloyd, Evans are pulled in to do their thing, and I think most of the rest of them were more or less bullied into signing on to the enterprise, anonymity being a big part of getting them onboard.
People have mocked the “failure” of ALBA; well, I think Salmond always hoped for some reconciliation, but it’s now time to go scorched earth; you can’t start re-planting while the “japanese knotweed” of scottish politics, the SNP, are still in root.
I don’t remember which one it was but did one of the members of the WhatsApp group not message to the others that ‘I know how we can do this and yet remain anonymous’? ( Or words to that effect.)
I wonder who had told them that this would happen. Who would have the authority to tell them that in advance? The whole conspiracy to take the case to criminal court hung on that assurance being given to the accusers.
I think Mr Wightman is on the run, at the time of the Inquisition, it may have seemed that accountability would not have to be accounted for and the hubris that led from this position has led to the alternate position where it is now demanded.
The demands cannot be met without admission of a clear bias, and therefore the shit is about to hit the proverbial fan and in that expose the corruption of governance structures of Holyrood the judicial system, the integrity of SNP, and the Scottish Parliament.
It is not a pretty picture and illustrates how an immature political system becomes lost in the domination of its own ecosystem due to forgetting it not only has a duty to the party but more salient the Scots electorate, which is the heart of the larger ecosystem and the determinants that make that ecosystem viable.
Scotland’s unicameral system is fraught with antidemocratic features and the Salmond affair has quite rightly emphasized its limitations, although it may in our early stages leave a trail of devastation to those who have relented to the allure of power it must be viewed as a step in the right direction and alternate modes of governance must be examined to remedy its flaws.
In fact, the Salmond affair is an opportunity to re-examine the Holyrood system and make appropriate adjustments
There seems little doubt that this is the start of yet another orchestrated attempt to finally finish off Alex Salmond, as a statesman, as a political figure, as a person, as a former leader of the former SNP (airbrushed from party history, remember?) There must be SOMETHING that we can do.
I daily mourn the slow murder of the sovereign state of Scotland. I salute Mr Breeks who has been one of the few who documented the myriad of lost opportunities amid the rejoicing of the trolls who now inhabit btl.
I too used to respect Mr Wightman, especially for his book THE POOR HAVE NO LAWYERS.
What can they have offered him for this truly lamentable smear attempt?
It seems some folk find great difficulty in understanding the clearly stated legal principle that someone accused of a crime is entirely innocent of that crime unless it is proven beyond all reasonable doubt they committed it.
Scotland’s legal system doesn’t require an accused to prove their innocence, it requires the prosecution to prove their guilt.
The prosecutors in Salmond’s trial failed to come close to proving his guilt.
Therefore, Salmond was innocent of the charges made against him before his trial, during his trial, at the conclusion of his trial, for all the time that has passed since and for all time yet to come until the end of eternity.
Salmond was, is, and always will be, not guilty of the charges made against him and as such his innocence remains intact – this is an indisputable legal fact ratified for all time by a court of law and a jury of his peers.
To deploy the adage ‘no smoke without fire’ against Salmond is no more than vile rumourmongery motivated by stupidity, ignorance, spite or malice – or all four combined.
Could it be that he is trying to make himself employable in certain circles?
How much his public stance on certain issues might have been influenced by the scare of the defamation court case brought against him must be considered.
I wonder what may have been happening in the background.
According to the press, on 21 March 2017 he was served with a defamation case presented by Wildcat Haven Enterprises CIC for some historic tweets Mr Wightman had posted. This would not be heard in the Court of Session until October 2019. It was not until March 2020 that it was made public that Wightman had won the case. His court expenses would not be awarded until February 2022. These must have been 5 years of hell.
According to the Holyrood Parliament website, Wightman joined the parliamentary inquiry on the 1 December 2020 as a substitute of Alison Johnston from the Green Party. Bizarrely, in her parliamentary website, Alison Johnston still appears as “member” of the inquiry from 06 February 2019 – 04 May 2021.
It was published that Wightman left the Greens on the 18 December 2020 and from then on sat as an independent in Holyrood. However, he was not replaced from the parliamentary committee and remained as the substitute for Alison Johnston despite no longer being a member of the Green party.
In May 2021 Wightman lost the seat
In January 2022, it was published by the Daily Record that Mr Wightman had said to have had only 4 days of paid work from May 2021.
According to the press, it was in February 2022, when Mr Wightman was awarded the expenses of the defamation case.
In November 2022, Mr Wightman was reported as saying that he no longer supported a second indyref until there was sustained support for it.
According to the Scottish Parliament website, on 21 June 2024 he was invited as panellist in a discussion on the land Reform (Scotland) Bill hosted by Holyrood’s Net Zero Committee.
Let’s look a little bit more at what was happening in 2017 around the time Mr Wightman’s defamation case started.
He was served with the defamation case on 21 March 2017
On 29 March 2017, England (as the UK) notified Brussels of the intention to trigger Article 50 of the Treaty of the European Union.
On 8 June 2017 the UK GE took place and, thanks to successful strategic voting by unionists, Mr Salmond was removed from Westminster.
On 2 November 2017, it was published that Mr Salmond joined a bid to take control of the Scotsman. That send some into throwing the toys out of the pram.
On November 2017, it was also published that Mr Salmond had agreed to host a talk show on RT. This sent shockwaves across the entire Uk, apparently, with the MSM and many politicians, including Sturgeon, going into complete meltdown mode.
November 2017 is also when the whole brouhaha of the unlawful complaint procedure against Mr Salmond started on a hurry.
Nov 2017 is also when Mark McDonald was forced to resign from his position as minister.
November 2017 was also when legal representatives of Wightman and others wrote to the UK gov asking for their position on the ability for the uK to unilaterally revoke their triggering of A50. The Uk gov was given until 12 Dec 2017 to respond.
In December 2017, Wightman and others submitted to the Court of Session a case to determine if the UK could unilaterally revoke their Article 50 TEU notification to leave the EU.
It seems that the centrepiece against most of what might have been happening in 2017 hinges around was the triggering of A50. So, how long before/after 29 March 2017 Mr Wightman had decided to lead the court case to establish the ability of the UK’s unilateral revocation of triggering A50?
How long in advance was this decision known by others?
Did the timing of the defamation case had anything to do with this other court case at all? If you do internet searches about it, it seems that finding out if the UK could unilaterally revoke its triggering of A50 was already being discussed at the end of 2016. Jolyon Maugham had even set up a fundraiser around December 2016.
In the current climate and in the political sewers circulating under Holyrood, the survival instinct of siding, even loosely, with perjurers, conspirators, corrupt crown agents, dirty politicians and unprincipled civil servants may be far too strong to resist.
Also, siding with criminals and “the law of the land” may be far more lucrative than siding with the actual victim.
Stabbing the yes movement on the back by publicly reneging on indyref and openly protecting criminals while publicly criminalising the victim, appear to be today’s two indispensable skills to succeed in the Holyrood cesspit.
Who knows. Maybe the man is just trying very hard to ride two horses at once. It may have worked out for him for a while, but now that each horse is strongly pulling in a different direction, it has become a bit more complicated.
Mia
Many thanks for unravelling and explaining what indeed must have been 5 years of hell for Mr Wightman. This makes me more ashamed than ever of what Scotland has become.
Andy has been made to clearly understand that regardless of truth, it is imperative that Salmond is suspected, or even just cognitively attached, to the idea that he did what he self evidently and at great expense to me and the people, did not.
If I were him I would quit while I was behind, but some strange impetus drives him forward…
I’m so disappointed in Andy Wightman over this. And so glad I left twitter if this is how politicians feel free to behave on
Okay. I think we need to put this in context.
It is July 2024. There are less than 2 years left to the next Holyrood election and this election is going to be the mother of all political fights. The fight will be dirty because dirt is all the SNP and the British establishment have left in the tank.
On one side we have the SNP carcass fighting for its political survival. They know that they are at risk of losing votes, and a lot of them, to Alba. They have no money, they have no credibility left, they are going through legal cases that are putting some of their worse dirty laundry on display, they lost most of their activists, they have a leader with zero charisma and with a background of actively cooperating in the suppression of information of high public interest, they cannot offer anything of substance to entice pro-indy voters and they have seriously pissed off the bulk of their voting base.
The only thing they have going for them is a collection of high profile available charlatans and troughers who have just been given the p45 by SNP voters at the latest GE and will work hard for a chance of a seat in Holyrood. In 2021, the meme “vote SNP 1 and 2” was deployed as a display of Sturgeon’s arrogance and contempt for Scotland’s independence and pro-indy voters. In 2026 it will be deployed again for survival. They need regional seats and I am sure they are relying on them to keep a presence in Holyrood.
On the other side, we have Wightman, politically homeless and quite possibly looking for a paying job. He already cowardly retreated his goalposts by announcing in 2022 that he no longer supported indyref. So now is equally employable by the SNP, unionist parties and the deep state. With this last intervention, he has demonstrated that he is willing to join the crew of vultures deployed to finish Mr Salmond’s reputation off in preparation for the election, because those sending the vultures know that politically, they cannot beat him.
I guess they are seeking to “level the field”. He already showed some bias against Mr Salmond during the inquiry. When he resigned from the Greens, I wondered at the time why the hell he was kept in the inquiry as substitute for the Green Alison Johnstone. That he was a plant and was simply parachuted to the inquiry did cross my mind more than once. It was quite revealing that his vote on several occasions was decisive to push the narrative in favour of the SNP to protect Sturgeon.
On other side we have the British state desperate to formally take control of Holyrood under a colonial party and unionist majority, so they can save their face as pretend “democrats” by safely removing the unelected crown representative figure from the middle of the executive.
The British state will be heavily relying on the disenfranchised pro-independence voters not casting a vote and staying at home so the proportion of vote towards Labour and libdems can be inflated even further under this voting system and the perception of another “resurrection” of Labour can be engineered thanks to the conservative vote.
On the other side we have hundreds of thousands of pissed off pro-independence voters who have became utterly disgusted with the SNP betrayal, will never vote for a unionist party and who are hungry for an opportunity to effect political revenge against the SNP and the establishment for taking them for fools.
On other side we have the parasites who have just lost the Westminster seats and are desperate to rejoin the gravy train. These are the ones I expect will soon join Wightman in the smearing of Mr Salmond. It is a competition for them. Those who shout the loudest against Mr Salmond will be the ones most likely to be put in the list for a seat.
And then, of course, we have the criminals behind the political conspiracy frantically fighting for the lid to remain firmly down.
I think Mr Wightman might well represent a recruit for the first round of attacks against Mr Salmond’s reputation, as part of the establishment’s strategy to stop Alba getting a significant number of seats.
Wightman will not be the only minion recruited for the dirty job. The troughers who lost the seats in the recent GE will soon come to join on the attacks. The conspirators will join too. And Lloyd and Sturgeon, now the darlings of the establishment propaganda mouthpieces, will join too in earnest.
To fabricate credibility for the smears, they will recruit other sources who are seemingly independent from each other and not linked to the SNP/British state at all. Spokepersons for Government subsidised quangos, political hasbeens, some religious figure or another, some academic, and of course the paid trolls will do the rest. We have seen this strategy paying off plenty of times since 2013.
To identify the smearing troops, we should be looking for standardized clichés, semantic similarities and shared sources.
I suspect the smearing will progressively ramp up as we get closer to the election. We need to be prepared for that.
There is at least some truth in his book ‘The Poor etc’ in which his conclusion is that:
“Most land reform programmes around the world have taken place in response to political upheaval – be that revolution, decolonisation or the overthrow of a dictator. The establishment of the Scottish Parliament was none of these things.”
Which helps explain to us the urgent need for independence, i.e. decolonization, and removal of the dubious values of the colonizer. Not that those passing through the Holyrood colonial set-up appear able to figure this out.
Sturgeon needed a “me too” head on a pike to burnish her credentials in the USA, for when she moved on to bigger and better things.
Wightman still seems to think that “me too” is all about social justice. He also clings onto “You must always believe her” as a badge of his enlightened thinking. How quaint. Those women were thrown under the bus once it was weaponised for political purposes and personal gain.
“We made no comment whatsoever about these mysterious other allegations that, inexplicably, have never been followed up after the crooked investigation into them collapsed.”
This is the nub of the matter to me. After the criminal trial, which ended 4 years ago, why were these allegations never investigated again? If they were truly such serious matters of workplace harassment then is it not the Scottish Parliament’s duty to follow up on them, to right the wrongs of the original investigation? This isn’t a criminal matter, so double jeopardy isn’t a factor – indeed, are the Scottish Parliament not letting those complainants down by failing to pursue the investigation?
Or is the reason in fact perfectly explicable – that the allegations were vexatious, distorted as an attack on an individual for political reasons, where workers were coaxed or otherwise convinced to reimagine innocuous nothings as heinous abuses of power?
Extract from highly pertinent (2022) article on Craig Murray’s blog:
SCHROEDINGER’S EVIDENCE by Craig Murray (4 March 2022)
« […] 12. Alex Salmond, with whom I had only very slight prior acquaintance, invited me to meet him in the George Hotel in Edinburgh. Here, for the first time, he told me that Nicola Sturgeon had been behind the process designed to generate false accusations against him. He said as well as Mackinnon and Evans, Liz Lloyd was responsible for the actual orchestration.[…]
« 17. It had been impossible to follow the judicial review case without concluding that a very unfair process had been undertaken against Alex Salmond, and that it was impossible this could have happened without the knowledge and approval of Nicola Sturgeon. That was a shocking realisation to an Independence supporter like myself. But what Alex Salmond was now telling me went further, which was that Nicola Sturgeon was involved in the orchestration of fake complaints against him. This was fairly astonishing on first hearing.
« 18. I asked what the motive could be. Alex replied that he did not know ; perhaps it lay in King Lear. He said that he had genuinely intended to quit politics and had lined up a position as Chairman of Johnstone Press, which had fallen because of these allegations. But he had retired from the party leadership before, and then come back, and perhaps Nicola had concluded he needed a stake through the heart. He had made plain to her that he was not happy with her lack of progress towards an Independence referendum following the Brexit vote.
« 19. Alex Salmond was plainly very unhappy. He said that he believed that Nicola was banking on his loyalty to the SNP and to the Independence movement, thinking that he would not split the party by revealing what or who was behind the allegations against him. At this crucial time, a Salmond/Sturgeon split could derail the chance for Independence and have a truly historic effect. I asked him directly whether this meant he did not want me to publish this information at the moment. He confirmed I should not publish. This conversation was in confidence but, as my blog was highly influential within the Independence movement, he thought it vital that I know the truth as matters develop.
« 20. I told him that Sturgeon’s hostility towards him seemed to be longstanding. I recounted a story I had been told by Robin McAlpine, of an occasion shortly after his resignation when Alex Salmond had arrived at the Scottish Parliament for a function and the First Minister’s Office had refused to sign him in. Alex replied that this was true ; it was particularly embarrassing as the occasion had been to hand over a large cheque for funds raised for charity following a campaign he had initiated as First Minister. They had been forced to do the photoshoot in the rain outside instead.
« 21. I advised Alex Salmond that he should continue to fight any allegations vigorously and should not worry in the least about any consequential damage to the SNP or the Yes movement, which were both very robust. If the SNP leadership were behind the attacks on him, it was much better that people know.
« 22. I also told him I knew exactly how he felt, having been myself subject to false accusation when as British Ambassador I blew the whistle on UK Government collusion with torture in the War on Terror. To be subject to a fit-up, particularly by those you knew and considered friends, was extremely disorienting. I was probably one of the few people in the UK who knew precisely how he felt.
« 23. The meeting concluded with Alex making the observation that he blamed himself for having established far too centralised a system of power in Scottish Government and the SNP, and not taking account of how far that was open to abuse by a person of ill-will.
« 24. In June 2019 (I do know the precise date, time and venue but to give it might aid identification of my source with deleterious consequences for them) I met with a person well known in the Independence movement who informed me that they had been present at a meeting with Nicola Sturgeon and key members of her inner circle, including ministers, which had gamed the possible outcome of the Salmond affair. My source was trusted as a Sturgeon loyalist.
« 25. The view of the meeting was that if Alex Salmond could be convicted on just a single count, he would be destroyed politically forever, which was explicitly the objective. He would be on the register of sex offenders and branded a rapist in the public mind, even if the actual offence convicted was knee touching. I was also told that the Law Officers were confident of a conviction for something, which is why the multiplicity of charges. They apparently advised that, faced with a whole raft of charges, juries tended to compromise in the jury room to reach agreement and convict on a lower charge.
« 26. What struck me, both at the time and still, was that it was impossible to understand the account as given without it involving of necessity corrupt collusion between Nicola Sturgeon’s ministers and aides and the Crown Office over the handling of the Salmond case and the charges being brought.
« 27. I directly asked my source why they had been regarded as so trustworthy as to be included in such a meeting. They replied that they were generally highly supportive of “Nicola” and her leadership and had been on the fringes of her inner circle for a while. But they were not happy with the “fitting-up” of Alex Salmond, which they described as “unnecessary”.[…]
« 82. The general media situation is perfectly exampled in the subsequent BBC documentary, “The Trial of Alex Salmond”, broadcast by the BBC on 17 and 18 October and fronted by Kirsty Wark. While purporting to be a day to day account of the trial and adopting a “Day 1”, “Day 2” etc format, incredibly the documentary simply skipped from Day 7 to Day 10 and missed out the defence witnesses. That is just what the overwhelming majority of the media did – quite deliberately, of course. There can be no serious argument against the proposition that the Scottish mainstream media is overwhelmingly hostile to Alex Salmond. […] »
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/03/schroedingers-evidence/
Garavelli Princip @ 12:07 pm
“a certain segment of the SNP, and we know who they are, along with Brit state actors”
The possibility exists, also considering the blind alley the SNP leadership and ‘Scottish Government’ has repeatedly taken the independence movement along, as well as the lack of any official urgency in prosecuting anyone, that all or most of those involved in this affair are ‘Brit state actors’.
We might recall that criminal conduct may be authorised – “A “criminal conduct authorisation” is an authorisation for criminal conduct in the course of, or otherwise in connection with, the conduct of a covert human intelligence source”, according to the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2021/4/section/1/enacted
Alf Baird
Ignored says (2:06pm):
“The possibility exists, also considering the blind alley the SNP leadership and ‘Scottish Government’ has repeatedly taken the independence movement along, as well as the lack of any official urgency in prosecuting anyone, that all or most of those involved in this affair are ‘Brit state actors’.”
Alf, I think that is highly likely; through penetration, Kompromat and long-term ‘sleepers’. As well as ‘turning’ folks who may have been originally ‘true-believers’.
I could readily believe that NS was a ‘sleeper’. She was, however one looks at it, Salmond’s biggest mistake – his second being resigning in Sept 2014 – however understandable the latter was. He thought he was leaving things in ‘safe’ hands. Weep!
As we well know, nothing is better designed to do the latter than the blandishments of office and incumbency, both in Westminster and in it’s wholly-owned subsidiary of Holyrood (not forgetting St Andrew’s House).
Your excellent ‘Doun Hauden’ spells out in detail how a bourgeois party of ‘independence’ is either a priori ill-suited to its stated aims, or is easily distracted and bought.
Especially one that has never been able to see the nature of our colonial status and the structured of occupation, which they tehmselves administer on behalf of the colonial power.
I am yet to come across a senior member of the SNP who either accepts or understands our national predicament – and I was a member for nearly four decades.
@Hatuey 4:52pm
We are in agreement. Nothing will work in Scotland until this boil has been lanced. It’s no longer about Scottish Independence but whether the citizens trust the Holyrood Government. And they don’t, no amount of clever spin or deflection will save them. Until these questions are answered we will hound them to the four corners of the Earth.
George Ferguson @ 5:44 pm
“Nothing will work in Scotland until this boil has been lanced. It’s no longer about Scottish Independence but whether the citizens trust the Holyrood Government.”
Why should an oppressed people’ depend on, never mind ‘trust’, a colonial administration?
The ‘boil’, or rather ‘scourge’ as the UN describe it, is colonialism. Which implies that such events and much else besides is precisely about (preventing) self-determination independence, which is decolonization.
Upon liberation we should rightfully no longer onymair suffer from a political elite and justice system serving anither soverane croun an aye wirkin agin oor ain fowk an laund. Such is the Manichean nature of colonialism (Fanon).
Garavelli Princip @ 5:30 pm
“I am yet to come across a senior member of the SNP who either accepts or understands our national predicament”
Yes, this may appear odd but postcolonial theory provides the explanation. It is because the dominant national party elite ‘has never undertaken a reasoned study of colonialism’ that their understanding of independence, and that of the people too, ‘remains rudimentary’ (Fanon).
A colonized elite are in the main drawn from the more assimilated and privileged bourgeoisie, a class who ‘crave dependence’ (Cesaire) and who use psychological ‘defence mechanisms’ to deny oppression of the people exists. This group has yet to discover that independence means decolonization; although we only have to look at the membership of the UN today to understand that reality.
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2024/03/03/the-colonial-mindset/
“Definitive proof is in front of you”
Absolutely. Who is delaying the investigation into the theft of the 600,000 pounds from the indyref fundraiser? The money was raised in 2017. That is SEVEN years ago. So why there isn’t hardly any progress? Who is delaying the investigation? That will be the police. Who is delaying the prosecutions? That will be the crown office.
Who does the crown office represent? The clue is in the name. That will be the crown. Sadly not Scotland’s crown.
Does England have a crown office attached to the jugular of its crown prosecution service and abusing it as a political weapon to persecute political figures? No, it does not. So why does Scotland have one?
Let’s now go to the civil service. Is Evans a Scot? Where was Evans Line Manager based? That will be in whitehall, England. Who controls the UK civil service? That will be the crown, but not the Scottish crown.
What about LLoyd? Is she a Scot? Between STurgeon and Lloyd, who was the handler and who was the handled?
Let’s now go to the police. Who is controlling the police? Is the highest ranking officer a Scot or every now in then has to be taxied up from and down to England to where she is from?
Now lets go to the Fabiani’s Farce aka the parliamentary inquiry. What entities were suppressing information? Who was gagging the enquiry? That would be the Lord Advocate and the Crown Agent. Who/what do these two figures represent? That will be the crown. Sadly not the Scottish crown.
Now lets go to the judges that handed forever anonymity to potential perjurers and false accusers. Who/what do those judges work for? That will be the crown. Again, not Scotland’s crown.
Now let’s go back to the current Lord Advocate. Who/what was she working for when she usurped from the people of Scotland control over the legislative power and proceeded to hand it to the English crown in the form of an English court and English judges so this crown could impose absolute rule over Scotland and frustrate the people of Scotland’s will for a referendum? That will be the crown. Sadly not the Scottish crown.
Let’s go back to the previous Lord Advocate. Who/What was he working for when he intervened in the Keatings case and frustrated any attempts for the people of Scotland to clarify the ability of HOlyrood to invoke a referendum? That will be the English crown again.
Now let’s look at the judge who decided to suppress from the public the whatsapp messages. Who/what was that judge representing when she suppressed those messages of high public importance from the Scottish people? That will be the crown. Again, not the Scottish crown.
Now lets go back in time to the first time Mr Davis invoked parliamentary privilege to expose the disgusting doings of the conspirators. He was very clear at the time that the Lord Advocate was abusing their poistion of both head of the crown office and an unelected minister parachuted to the executive cabinet. What did Westminster do about it? SFA. Three years and we are still waiting. Does England have the equivalent of a Lord Advocate giving the crown control over the judicial, the executive, and indirectly legislative power like we are seen done in Scotland? No. Holyrood is a creature of statue from another parliament that currently functions around the Scotland Act. Who created the Scotland Act? That will be England as the UK parliament.
So yeah, the evidence is right in front of our eyes. A bunch of greedy idiots in Scotland’s government and cabinet and in the higher positions in the SNP may be frantically trying to stand on the lid to cover all the dirt they stupidly allowed themselves to be dragged into. So hell mend them for that and for having betrayed their country and the members of their party in the absolutely disgusting way they have done. These idiots may have been the minions who did it, but this strategy has the Brits colonial fingerprints all over it.
get some of your anti-imperialism, 10 for a pound, bestofordur … white socks, lighters, anticolnialist struggle the-ory …
https://www.conter.scot/2024/7/11/the-fire-last-time-anti-imperialist-struggles-since-ww2/
grangemouth getting shut down – yay … that means we must be down to net zero … we can now import all our petroleum from abroad, but our own carbon footprint is minimised
here’s a better idea – get ratcliffe to shutdown all englands refineries – collapse the net zero !! – then they can import all the petrol from holland. Smart thinking – I mean, why not do that?
– the lying bullshit about oil and gas really stinks :
net zero, green transition, buy a heat pump you diesel driving fascist … and all that shite …
(finds oil)
“man the PUMPS for blighty!”
no, this didn’t take long. I wonder what royalty the falkland islanders will get, technically “independent” in a sort of half arsed ambiguous way.
Gordon Dangerfield
Absolutely, and it is to the eternal discredit of Scotland’s establishment that not a single MP, MSP, mainstream journalist or legal official has stood up to the flood of lies and obfuscation in this seedy banana republic saga. Despite the fact than many of them full well the chicanery and serious abuse of power which went on, and which has damaged the reputation of Scotland’s parliament and constitution. It is also a textbook case how corruption at the highest level is possible and how it relies on chains of people whose job dependency and material comforts are the price they pay for their silence.
We only know that thanks to small cadre of bloggers, like Wings and Craig Murray as well as a few others, and David Davis. Nowhere will you find a serious analysis of the crimes in a book, documentary or ‘serious’ newspaper which would make it impossible to ignore or not act upon. After all these years it is still restricted, by design, to independent outlets where it can be ignored, or threatened, by all these comfy professional classes whose job it is to defend our constitutional arrangements and state functions from such perverse and corrupt actions.
The aim seems to be to smother it forever, with the passive acceptance of those who know about it but will not act. Scotland and independence absolutely needs this boil to be lanced and, as Davis, advocates, the necessary changes made so that it cannot happen again.
What a country we live in…
Truly a depressing state of affairs, particularly when so many in the SNP and the MSM stick a finger in each ear and sing at volume “La-la-la not listening”.
Which is proof, if it were needed, that the British Establishment consider Salmond and NOT the SNP to be the primary threat to their Union.
Hence the conspiracy and collusion to “get Salmond” and the complicity of the players in the SNP who one can only assume through personal gain or fear of kompromat have and continue to be willing participants in this sorry affair. We here know all the relevant names.
I have yet to read a tolerable justification for the anonymity of Mr Salmond’s accusers.
On David Harvie, Craig Murray said that he (Harvie) entered the court room just before Murray was to be sentenced for Jigsaw Identification (the only person ever to go to prison for it, even though Murray’s kangaroo court conviction saw Murray unable to present all the evidence in his defence) and had a good chat with the sentencing judge.
The day after his speech I sent the following letter to David Davis:
Dear David Davis,
I am not a Tory (to put it mildly). I am a long-term supporter of Scottish Independence – and (sadly) a former member of the SNP – having been a member for nearly 40 years.
I resigned from that party three years ago mainly (but not exclusively) over the appalling stitch-up of Alex Salmond, and the grossly criminal behaviour involved – some of which you aired publicly yesterday in Parliament.
As both you and I know, there is much, much more to be told, and I hope that when the time is ripe, you will do us the service of speaking about it in the English Parliament. Sadly, the Scottish Parliament is not yet capable of rendering us such a service, having been captured by a parcel of rogues in the guise of Scottish patriots.
I would not normally welcome the intervention of an English MP on Scottish matters, but in this case I am bound to make an exception. I not only welcome your intervention, I rejoice in it.
I know from other matters on which you have spoken, that you speak from the highest principles in respect of freedom, justice and integrity in public life. I therefore know that you speak from the best of motives.
In so doing you have rendered a great service both to truth and to my country.
For that I thank you.
Twathater , I am with you on that – to hell with forgiveness and reconciliation ,I want revenge and blood on the carpet.
twathater @ 6:14 pm
“The ONLY positive thing to come out of this putrid corruption is to highlight how weak the actions the people can take to avoid and correct the determined actions of evil people”
Correct, for in a colonial society the people are essentially ‘out of the game’ and unable to halt ‘the evil work’ of the ‘watchdogs of colonialism’ (Cesaire) who manage the country’s institutions ‘in the interest of the colonizer’.
Which brings us back to the realisation that the only remedy for colonialism is liberation. Failing which, more and more of this ‘evil work’ will undoubtedly continue; for ‘between colonization and civilization there is an infinite distance’.
Article from ‘CSW: Civil Service World’ online newsletter (21 Nov 2014) —
HM TREASURY TEAM WINS SPECIAL CIVIL SERVICE AWARD
« The team was tasked with producing analysis in the lead-up to the Scottish referendum of how both Scotland and the rest of the UK benefit from being part of one country.
« The award, which is aimed at “an individual or team who deserves particular recognition for their outstanding achievement in making a difference on an issue of national significance”, was handed to the winners at the awards ceremony held on Wednesday, 19 November, at Lancaster House.
« Cabinet Secretary and civil service head Sir Jeremy Heywood presented the award to team members Paul Doyle, Will MacFarlane, Shannon Cochrane, and Mario Pisani.
« Pisani said: “In the Treasury, everyone hates you. We don’t get thanks for anything. This is one occasion where we’ve worked with the rest of Whitehall. We all had something in common, we’re trying to save the Union here, and it came so close. We just kept it by the skin of our teeth. I actually cried when the result came in. After 10 years in the civil service, my proudest moment is tonight and receiving this award.”
« He added: “As civil servants you don’t get involved in politics. For the first time in my life, suddenly we’re part of a political campaign. We were doing everything from the analysis, to the advertising, to the communications. I just felt a massive sense of being part of the operation. This being recognised [at the Civil Service Awards], makes me feel just incredibly proud.”
« Cochrane said: “we’ve learned that it is possible for civil servants to work on things that are inherently political and quite difficult, and you’re very close to the line of what is appropriate, but it’s possible to find your way through and to make a difference.”
?And Doyle added: “This award is not just for the Treasury, it’s for all the hard work that was done by all government departments on the Scotland agenda. The reality was in all my experience of the civil service, I have never seen the civil service pull together in the way they did behind supporting the UK government in maintaining the United Kingdom. It was a very special event for all of us.”
« MacFarlane also gave credit to their Scottish Government counterparts, “in particular the government economic service there, who did their jobs for their ministers. I think over the currency debate in particular both governments put forward their economic analysis, which framed where their governments were coming from in the debate.” »
@sarah 2:00pm
If Salmond had joined the ISP and had assumed a position of influence within in it maybe the ISP could have amassed a meaningful amount of money to campaign with, and put candidates in most seats and put its policy of abstentionism in the forefront of Scottish politics. At the moment Alba, in rejecting abstentionism, is just as ineffective as the SNP on independence.
PAB is right about the need for a radical party on independence.
It’s early days but the SNP seems to be unable to comes to terms with the fact that hundreds of thousands of independence supporters refused to vote for them because of the SNP’s lack of fire on independence. The same thing will happen in 2026 unless the SNP suddenly changes its tune or a new [or ISP max] party emerges. The 2026 election will be about independence no matter if established parties in Scotland believe otherwise.
The ALBA PARTY is republican:
“A written constitution starts from the principle that the people of Scotland are sovereign, in keeping with the Scottish constitutional tradition and as such we propose to the consultation that Scotland should move to an elected head of state with similar powers to that of the Uachtarán na hÉireann (The President of Ireland).”
https://www.albaparty.org/scotlands_constitution
My understanding is that SALVO is ultimately republican, but meanwhile its case is necessarily (in its view) premised on monarchical issues, ie on highlighting the radical historic constitutional differences between the “CROWN” in Scotland and in England (which latter outlook of course absolutely prevails).
gm @ 2:51 pm
“Peter A Bell suggests that a new and RADICAL party is needed in order to rouse people from lethargy”
I’m not sure about the need for another national party, but Peter is right about the need ‘to rouse the people from their lethargy’.
Postcolonial theory confirms that in the the third and final phase of decolonization the people ‘must finally awaken and shake themselves from their lethargy’ (Freire) in the face of the forces of colonial occupation, economic exploitation, and political and cultural domination.
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