Kirsty Wark documentary about Alex Salmond sexual assault case

[quote LonnyVonnyWilsonFrickett]@DidoLamenting can I ask why?

I'm not an SNP supporter - but this is my government. It speaks to the culture of my country. It's not just about some people not being happy with some other people's policy on referendum. [/quote]
I don't get all this "proud Scot" " culture of my country" stuff. This is an SNP problem. I'm not responsible for them

I loathe the SNP. If this damages them , great. Personally given what has happened with Covid anyone banging on about independence needs their head examined (even more than in normal times)

The idea that 9 different women agreed to lie to the police and the court for political reasons is to me less likely than him doing this stuff.

Just my view.

Loads of different women.

I know what I think.

I don't believe he was touchy feely in a general sort of creepy sense. I do think he was (and maybe still is) a tactile person. I think he also had one or two inappropriate relationships alongside that.

I also think he was arrogant and somewhat naive in the way he conducted himself while in office though.

I found the programme interesting and the court case wholly depressing.
The message to me as a female in Scotland is that it is ok for the most powerful man in Scotland, (at that time), to be touchy feely with more junior staff and there was no recourse. Quite a scary position for women to be in.

It will be interesting to find out the answer during the review as to whether female staff were not to work with him alone. Ignoring the politics of it all, that if true, is utterly horrific as what message does that give to all the other sleazy men out there.

Agreed @AnyOldPrion. There is a huge and very significant overlap. Several points of overlap too. The identity politics divide isn't the whole story but it's certainly a significant part of the story.

The SNP isn't coping well with power games at the moment. If they don't sort it out it'll be SNP themselves that present the biggest obstacle to independence. They're all over the place.

CharleyParley has done a terrific job of breaking it down. It's such a complex situation and if you're not interested in the mechanics, minutiae and subterfuge of Scottish politics it's very easy to just go with "ah yeah sleazy boss". They interviewed hundreds of people trying to find victims or witnesses and the best they found was outlined above. There's lots of things nobody is allowed to say (because contempt of court) and which add layers to the whole story too. The one situation he admits is used to provide foundations for a narrative that is incredibly weak.

Should he as FM have behaved better? Aye. But that's it. I'd be the first to scream from the rooftops if he was deserving of any of this, my politics are not tribal and I don't have that sort of blind loyalty to any party. It all absolutely stinks though. And never underestimate just how ridiculously petty and unprofessional some media/journos can be.

Wark has a bit of a thing for Salmond. No idea if it's personal

Wark is Labour and is personal friends with senior Scottish Labour people. She is a talented journalist who was once widely respected, but why anyone thought she was a suitable person to produce a programme on this topic is a mystery.

Saying I remember from years ago, “Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”

Just because Salmond was an example of your archetypal boozy, sleazy man, which obviously is “disappointing” (understatement alert) it doesn’t mean the women in this case were innocent victims, let down by the system. My personal suspicion would be that at least some of them were not his victims, but did indeed conspire to have him put away.

Anyone who frequents this board and thinks that that kind of political shenanigans is unlikely within the SNP hasn’t been listening. This case isn’t about women’s rights, but I’m fairly sure there’s a large overlap between the in-group who are pushing for men to be given women’s rights, and those bringing this case against a man who remains a threat to Sturgeon, who is firmly in their pocket.

@DidoLamenting can I ask why?

I'm not an SNP supporter - but this is my government. It speaks to the culture of my country. It's not just about some people not being happy with some other people's policy on referendum.

@Iggypoppie he didn't have to use 'threats' of retribution - his very position was threat enough. If you think that a prime minister doesn't have power over female civil servants you are being naive - he didn't have to threaten to wield power that he clearly holds. The unofficial 'don't work alone' policy was never refuted.

And actually, as a proud Scot I expect more from my first minister than I do from some random movie producer. The adherence to a higher level of behaviour was supposed to be baked into the bricks of Holyrood and was one of the reasons I voted for devolution all those years ago. An awful lot of women have got skin in the game here and this should be our MeToo.

@CharlieParley It’s such a shame you’ve taken such a clearly biased stance on this within the thread. And made the thread go in one way when it should be going in the other. It’s obvious you have fallen down the rabbit hole of this being a conspiracy against Alex Salmond. And that prosecutors and the police have been complicit in that. But you seem to ignore the fact that there was a sufficiency of evidence to bring the case to court.

Who are you accusing of a serious abuse of power?

The two evidence requirement is that you need two witnesses to corroborate the version of events... this rarely happens in sexual assault because victim and perpetrator are alone. One part of it was disgusting, a woman described how he had touched the side of her breasts and moved down to her backside and defence said “and you call that groping for you?!” And he had touched her slightly lower than she would have liked indicating that it was hardly a criminal offence! Don’t know how he managed to get away with it.

Admittedly I haven’t followed this case in any great depth, other than Salmond had 9 women making allegations against him.

Now I do believe in innocent before guilty, if it was one woman, perhaps it would be hard to prove, but none?
Did nine women really decide to make false allegations against him? Seriously.

The facts as laid out are that Salmond at times acted like a drunken sleaze of a boss. However he didn't appear to use fear of violence or retribution (unlike Weinstein). At least once he accepted responsibility and apologised. Whilst his behaviour was sleazy, embarrassing and unprofessional I can't see how it should've been treated as criminal. And the insistence on pursuing it through the criminal courts is what makes it seem to me like there was something else going on, such as a concerted effort to bring him down. Not sure who is behind that, possibly a number of groups have their motives.

Treating it as an SNP civil war doesn't help either - it's bigger than that.

Well no, @CharlieParley it clearly isn't Scotland's Me Too moment as the fact - the uncontested fact - that we had at the very least a drunk handsy first minister in office for years who was defended in court by a senior advocate who openly boasted on a train about ' putting a smell on a witness' has gone mostly unremarked by the public, who prefer to comment on the manners and morals of the complainers. We really aren't interrogating the situation at all - it's like we've collectively said 'ah well, he's not guilty, I always knew women were brazen hussies, let's just pretend it never happened.'

With some notable exceptions and I include Kirsty Wark in those, although as I said upthread I thought the angle she took in the programme was odd and didn't add much to the conversation.

Please note I said he was found "not guilty". I did not say he was found innocent.

He was tried for 14 charges. For 13 he provided witnesses who were either there when the alleged incidents happened and who disagreed with the alleged victims' version of events or who provided evidence those incidents did not happen at all.

He was the FM. There are official records when events in Bute House actually took place. He cannot - as alleged - have done something at an event that did not take place. Another alleged victim claimed (in support of her own allegation) to have met a person who was not even in Scotland at the time, because that person's father had died. And so on. For those 13 charges he was found Not Guilty.

The Not Proven charge was for an incident where Salmond went through an official civil service process at the time, accepted full responsibility and apologised. During the trial, that particular incident was presented differently from the way the alleged victim had done at the time of her original official statement. And this was the charge where the jury could not reach a verdict.

I recommend you find the trial transcripts or the very few blogs that reported both the prosecution and the defence case and see for yourself. You might find them illuminating. None of the media reported the defence case; the judge refused his much stronger original defence case and he was found not guilty anyway.

This isn't Scotland's MeToo moment, this is a serious abuse of power in action. If you really hate the SNP, you should look into this trial a bit more closely.

Thanks Lonny. God that's depressing.

(Not proven simply means that there was not enough evidence either way - neither the prosecution nor the defence could prove their case.)

"Not Proven" does not mean that. The defence does not have to prove anything. It means the Crown did not prove its case beyond all reasonable doubt; same as not guilty.

"Not proven" is a historical accident- nobody seems terribly clear what it means. It should be done away with.

Apparently it was easy to identify one of the complainers @RozWatching - but I'm not sure. If you can stomach the Twitter I'm sure it will be on there, people were planning to watch them side by side earlier today. I had to delete the app (again) because we seem incapable of having this discussion without targeted misogynistic abuse at the women speaking out.

Why, you have to ask, has this been hidden away ay 11pm on a Monday night? It should have been on BBC1 at 9pm midweek.

It was first shown at 9pm, I only caught a bit of it. Apparently BBC then removed it, changed some of the content and reuploaded the programme, but they wouldn't elaborate what the change was.