scotlandisdifferent

Constant Readers Sey&Dor have chided me for not blogging for two months (can it really be that long?!). So here is a quick rundown on where this blog now stands, which of course means a quick rundown on where we all stand on Scottish independence. First up is total scunneration at the Holyrood election result: no dent in the SNP, Salmond's reputation is rubbished, and Alba gets nowhere. Indy off the table for five years. Second up is the unbelievable corruption in the Scottish government. Sturgeon and her clique conspired to pervert the course of justice and to jail Alex Salmond for life. A corrupt Lord Advocate - who runs the Crown Prosecution Service but is also a government minister - puts in place procedures (anonymity in sexual-offence cases) that mean that no whiff of this can be published. Craig Murray, the only journalist who gave an impartial account of the Salmond trial and highlighted the strength of the defence, has been sentenced to eight months in jail for doing s...

There still seems to be a lot of flak going around to the effect that Salmond was charged with so many offences that some of them must have been true. That doesn't follow, of course, and there are three things to be said about it: It's logical nonsense ( fallacy of the undistributed middle ). It's exactly what the conspirators wanted you to think, which is why they dredged up a dozen or more charges out of thin air. Moorov was a Scottish lawyer who formulated the doctrine that witnessing a similar event to the one on the charge-sheet would count as corroborative evidence. So Moorov, or "more of". The fragility - or rather the emptiness - of "Moorov" in this case has been fully debunked by a very angry and upset Craig Murray here . It's a bit long, but enormously worthwhile, and since it's a podcast you can listen to it in bits. Also, some readers of this blog have said to me that they really don't have time for this, it's only politics, a...

Dear Patrick, I can't see why you sent me this. If it's a response to my claim that there's major corruption at the head of the Scottish establishment (and let me repeat, there is), it's tosh. Or to put it another way, I'm sorry to say that I find myself unpersuaded by the points you make: 1. "Police Scotland are operationally independent of Government and cannot be instructed to investigate". Police Scotland allocated 35 officers over two years, and untold public funds, digging  up dirt on Alex Salmond going back ten years. On the basis of what they found, fourteen charges were brought, and on fourteen of those charges Alex Salmond was acquitted. Police Scotland must be either thick as mince or eminently biddable (or both). 2. "This is one of the fundamental principles of our police system." Well, it would be if it was, but it isn't. 3. "COPFS (the Crown Prosecution Service) cannot instruct the police." I didn't say they could....

Dear Derek   Thanks for getting back to me.   Please be assured that, if there’s any credible evidence of criminal activity in Scotland, this will be examined by Police Scotland.   It may be helpful if I explain that Police Scotland are operationally independent of Government and cannot be instructed to investigate – or not to investigate – any evidence of criminality. This is one of the fundamental principles of our police system.   Similarly, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS), who are Scotland's prosecution service, are entirely independent of the Police and cannot instruct, or be instructed, by them in these matters.   As you're aware, there is an ongoing and wide-ranging inquiry in the Scottish Parliament into all aspects of the handling of complaints against Alex Salmond, with which the Scottish Government are collaborating. If the Committee conducting the inquiry, which includes opposition MSPs, were to discover a...

No, not that Alex. Alex Prentice, of course, the prosecutor in the Craig Murray contempt-of-court case. Craig is proposing to bring forward individual witnesses who say they couldn't identify any anonymised witnesses from reading Craig's blog. The prosecutor wants to rule this evidence inadmissible, on the grounds that the individuals are too few to make a difference: "...the state of knowledge of a limited number of individuals cannot assist in the central issue [of 'likelihood']...". This is an unfortunate argument for the prosecutor to have used, because it concedes the point that likelihood is measurable: if these individuals are too few, there must be a number that is not too few. Further, Alex Prentice has to decide what that number is, because he's going to need it. He's going to need it to deal with the second implication of his argument, which is his presumption of guilt: these numbers are too few, he implies, to show Craig's innocence. Bu...

Craig Murray is facing trial for publishing information "likely to disclose the identity" of persons involved in the Alex Salmond trial (they have statutory anonymity for life). What a can of worms that word "likely" is! Longman's dictionary defines it as "can reasonably be expected [to happen]". Reasonably, that's the word. Craig wants to bring in two pieces of evidence: first, evidence from people who read the mainstream-media accounts of the trial, and were able to tell from those accounts who the anonymised persons were; and second, parallel evidence from people who read Craig's blog and were not able to tell who the anonymised persons were. The prosecutor has asked the Court to disallow these two sets of evidence, but the reasons he gives don't meet the point. Moreover it seems clear that he's intentionally missed the point, so that he can muddy the waters. He can't be so thick as to have merely got it wrong. Likelihood - as ...

As immediate fall-out from the Alex Salmond trial stitch-up, the commentator Craig Murray is being prosecuted for saying that the Alex Salmond trial was a stitch-up. The grounds for the prosecution are that, by saying that the Alex Salmond trial was a stitch-up, he committed contempt of court. Contempt-of-court cases are heard not by a jury, but only by judges, and carry a possible sentence of two years in prison. The first step is a procedural hearing, scheduled for Wednesday 10th June at 10:00 a.m. This hearing will be on line, and therefore open to anybody with an internet connection. But you need to apply for access. Please do so - it's important that as many people as possible know what was actually said in court, because the mainstream media and the judiciary will try to stamp on anything they see as threatening, and what Craig Murray has to say undoubtedly fits that bill. You can apply for access by emailing judicialcomms@scotcourts.gov.uk . And please circulate this to fri...

My last post has been met with incredulous hostility by some commentators, hostile incredulity by others (all in personal communications), so I need to flesh it out a bit. To provide continuity with the previous post, I thought of heading this one "Where it's really at, asshole", but since the skeptics were my friends I've forborne to do this. The first point in my previous post - that Nicola Sturgeon would either commit or not commit to an indyref this year - was not controversial (how could it be? - it covered all possibilities). In the event, NS's response contained many fine words and high aspirations, but you should always listen to the small print. What she actually said was, " it is still my hope [that we can get an indyref in 2020]". That doesn't sound like commitment to me. My second point - that SNP policy is based on the belief that indyref without a Section 30 order would create too much hatred and division to be sustainable - attracted ...

Craig Murray's petition to bring in OSCE observers for the next Scottish referendum (which I hope you've all signed - DO IT NOW!) has resurrected the doubts about postal votes in 2014. These doubts solidify, for some people, into the claim that the 2014 referendum was rigged by the UK Government packing the postal vote with "No" ballots, as evidenced by the extraordinarily high postal turnout. This is a consoling narrative for those indy supporters who were gutted by the massive "No" wrecking-ball that crawled out of the woodwork on September 18th to steal the referendum (which many Yessers feel in their bones was in truth a clear victory for Yes) and demolish their dreams. So we need to look at that claim again now. The claim The detailed account of this rigging (the "Dunoon Report") has gained some traction among the Indy community. It was authored by Andy Anderson, Education Officer of the Dunoon Unit of the Democratic Socialist foundation, and...

Craig Murray says it all, doesn't he?: "I do not recognise Brexit Britain as the country in which I was born and raised. The UK has become a nasty and mean-spirited place, and the sooner it is broken up the better." (See context).