Nicola Sturgeon STILL didn't know her husband stole £400,000

[Imdunfer]

Follow on from previous thread.

That's an excellent article

Sorry if this has been covered, but did they ever actually use this campervan? Or did it only ever sit on her MIL’s drive?

My pet theory about Sturgeon is that she was grown under glass to succeed Salmond but never had the political challenge or consequence nous he did. Salmond was an operator. He engaged emotions in politics rather than pure pragmatism, and energised an otherwise defunct nationalism.

Sturgeon inherited what he did. And she learned his emotional engagement technique. But as a delivering or legacy politician, what did she actually do?

This seems apposite here

I have a pro fairness and decency agenda whereby people who have not been charged with a criminal offence are not treated like criminals.

I have a pro Scottish independence agenda. I vote Green and I vote SNP. It doesn't mean to say I agree with every policy they have - it's not possible to find a political party that a person can do that with. I admired and respected Nicola as First Minister and she, and no politician, deserves the treatment she is getting now.

Fwiw I also was appalled and disgusted by the witch hunt against Jeremy Corbyn when he was leader of the Labour Party.

I find them just fascinating though. I can’t help it. They’re so assiduous at sticking to the SNP / Indy is great script, even when you point out the obvious, glaring flaws in their argument. It’s like arguing with a robot. You rarely see such unthinking in real life. It’s like an anthropology case study and yet this sort of attitude amongst Indy supporters has become so normalised within the Indy echo chamber they think it’s normal not to question the lines they have been fed.

NS has decided that the line is that it’s ‘misogyny’ to question her accounts oversight and ludicrous ‘I never used my kitchen’ and so the robots scream ‘it’s misogyny’. When anyone with half a brain knows that that’s nonsense, can see it’s nonsense. Not Indy supporters. That’s the line they’ve been told to take so they’ll keep saying that forever more.

I find them just fascinating though. I can’t help it. They’re so assiduous at sticking to the SNP / Indy is great script, even when you point out the obvious, glaring flaws in their argument. It’s like arguing with a robot. You rarely see such unthinking in real life. It’s like an anthropology case study and yet this sort of attitude amongst Indy supporters has become so normalised within the Indy echo chamber they think it’s normal not to question the lines they have been fed.

NS has decided that the line is that it’s ‘misogyny’ to question her accounts oversight and ludicrous ‘I never used my kitchen’ and so the robots scream ‘it’s misogyny’. When anyone with half a brain knows that that’s nonsense, can see it’s nonsense. Not Indy supporters. That’s the line they’ve been told to take so they’ll keep saying that forever more.

I don't think it is do with her being a woman. There are plenty of other reasons why people would dislike or feel angry about Nicola Sturgeon.

It is a little hard to believe the picture she is trying to paint of an innocently trusting little wife who was ignorant of financial matters and was easily tricked by her nasty husband (like so many before her). It is a stance that is rather insulting to both men and women.

it is an excellent article. And very much explains how I feel.

murrel committed the crime. He is the one who deserves the scrutiny and punishment for that aspect.

but the leadership of the party isn't blameless. It was allowed to happen on their watch and questions were shut down. The fact that they were married should have meant considerable oversight of everything to make sure they were completely above reproach. Complete transparency. So that if anyone threw mud none could stick. Instead they chose the complete opposite and that allowed peoples donations to the party to be stolen over a long period of time. Sturgeon is responsible for some of that and the buck, while she was leader, stopped with her. She isn't the only one who needs to face scrutiny but she does need her fair share of it. She needs to accept her actions here have consequences. And she is doing herself no favours by trying to say any scrutiny is because she's a woman.

the severe lack of governance should concern swinney. He should be jumping at ordering an independent investigation into how it went undiscovered for that length of time, looking to show complete transparency and have a genuine desire to strengthen the governance of the party so it cannot happen again. And his lack of desire to do so tells me a lot.

The auditors only resigned when issues became public. The public seemed to be doing their job.

Two people plus the auditors resigned but still Nicola did not direct a proper investigation instead trying to cover up issues.

This is where her fault lay. I don’t think she realised dodgy Pete was using SNP funds to purchase personal items.

id also like to know when it did eventually dawn on her. She was very cagey about that in the interview.

Agreed, why are people so focussed on blaming a woman for her husband's crimes! Focus on him!

@Purpleturtle45 it’s not that I’m most concerned about - it’s the shutting down of other people’s concerns about party finances that I think she needs to be hauled over the coals for. The ostracising of anyone who dared dissent. This is well documented and she isn’t answering that. The terrible governance at the top of the party - with her at the helm.

For someone who dined out on her astute canny politician act, why did she not exercise good judgement and - even when advised - not see that being leader of a party, and having your husband continue as chief exec was highly questionable?

Why did she allow that situation to exist?

Why did she discourage scrutiny?

With the big job comes big responsibility, but as always with the SNP, they claim credit for the good stuff and shift the blame for the bad to anyone else.

it’s so obvious the party line has gone out “Peter acted alone, we’re the victims”. I pity anyone daft enough to not see through this.

Ah I see where your frustration lies.

You have mixed up criticism and people highlighting her awful behaviour and potential culpability with ‘treating her like a criminal’. We are not treating her like a criminal in wanting answers.

and she, and no politician, deserves the treatment she is getting now.

She’s a politician with huge responsibility being held to account for her known actions, and with a strong suspicion that she’s being economical with the truth.

Do you think that all politicians should not be held to account for their actions? Or just Nicky?

Fwiw I also was appalled and disgusted by the witch hunt against Jeremy Corbyn when he was leader of the Labour Party.

Say no more - I see why you are so strong a supporter of Nicky. You call it witch hunt, as a non Labour supporter I call it democratically removing a man who did enormous damage to the Labour Party. He was anti democratic in his methods, called the terrorist group Hamas ‘friends’ and has now now thankfully gone off into his party of very strange people who can’t stand each other or, apparently, Western values in general.

Hopefully he’ll give up politics soon and be far more productive making jam from his allotment.

No one is accusing Nicola of embezzling the money.

If you read the thread, she is being accused of either knowingly creating the situation where embezzlement by her husband was enabled, or of being so mind blowingly incompetent at her job that it happened inadvertently.

Either way, she’s not being open or forthcoming in her answers and is embarrassing herself by falling back on the ‘I’m a poor little woman’ plea accompanied by tears. The truth is obviously very bad if Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, ‘feminist to her fingertips’ and famously fierce woman is prepared to humiliate herself like that to try and deflect.

Key sentence from the article linked in the Courier:

"Sturgeon may not be responsible for Murrell’s crimes, but she is accountable for the culture in which they were able to go undetected for so long."

It’s not just Nicola Sturgeon who is in the wrong here in signing off the accounts. Johnson Carmichael clearly haven’t performed their role as auditors adequately here. I predict that they’ll be handed a hefty fine as punishment in the future.

That Courier article is spot on (want to avoid any further derailing so not applying a percentage).

Nicky???

You just can't help yourself can you?

Hahaha! Classic example of SNP supporter grievance-mongering, as described above!

It's once again the bunker mentality of the SNP base playing out. This weird tendency to make SNP and Indy your personality at all costs, even at the expense of facts.

Its a peculiarity of Scotland I've written about before in relation to this - the tribal mentality, pick-a-side (could be Indy/proUK, Rangers/Celtic, catholic/protestant ) and brook no criticism of any of it no matter how badly behaved - or just plain incompetent - some elements are.

Scots used to be praised for being canny, well educated, critical thinkers, inventors of great stuff. It makes me sad to see what Holyrood is (and what it encourages in Scotland) - because it is not bursting at the seams with quality of this type.

There is nothing grievance- mongering
about recognising the total contempt and ridicule displayed in the pp's use of this diminutive
I wouldn't give the pp the satisfaction of replying to the rest content of their post. What's the point?

It's the whole ethos of the SNP too - no dissent. Agree with us, or get chucked out of the party. So everyone toes the line and is too scared to raise concerns or challenge the leadership/exec. That's not a good atmosphere to run any sort of organisation.

You don't have to have a political agenda to call out wrong doing in public office. It's an easy way to try and close it down making these accusations. Trump is the master of this. His response to genuine questions about his corruption is that it is just a political campaign against him. The threads on here are not a political campaign, they are expressions of incredulity about what Nicola Sturgeon claims are the facts surrounding her husband's corription.

As has been repeated ad naseum Nicola faced a thorough police investigation and no charges were brought.

BTW the news is talking about further information becoming public when Murrell attends court today. It will be interesting to see what happens today.

This is what I mean by the emotional technique. A criticism of a leader is a criticism of independence, and therefore an attack on a person’s feelings.

Everything is construed via the tribal position. It means people’s abilities and indeed their flaws are not addressed.

That is irrational. Scotland is the home of the Enlightenment. Better thinking is available.