Salmond v Sturgeon Round 3 — Comment along with Sturgeon

[PolkadotsAndMoonbeams]

Previous thread here.

My take on it.

Endless rambling

Fog swirling round everyone

I know Malcolm tucker is real but omg I wish he had made an entrance today

I am no clearer today than I was yesterday

The bottom line for me is, if they were so certain of their case, so certain their decisions were correct & so certain that they lost on a mere 'technicality' with their process not being unlawful (despite the judge's comments), she'd have come armed to the teeth with evidence, diaries, records & slapped it all down in front of the committee with confidence. Instead, she's basically bored us all into disinterest.

Goading Salmond to produce the evidence of his allegations when she couldn't provide anything to support her own says it all. That wasn't a smart move at all, especially as he has given corroboration. Instead, everyone else lied. And she's been let down by Salmond 🤨

Isn’t *

The legal advice was based on what the lawyers been told which was not all the information available to the Scottish Government which was instructing them.

Once they found out the truth they were very very clear that the case was not good and should be dropped

[quote Scottishskifun]@WaxOnFeckOff all civil servants are aware that any correspondence including notebooks and emails can be part of a freedom of information act request so yes they know to keep them for a certain time period.[/quote]
But then they aren't particularly known for co-operating with FOI requests and never have been so perhaps LE just though "fuck it" and tossed them in the shredder (and I'm sure NS knew nothing about it, didn't tell her to do it, can't remember if she was even there and most definitely had recused herself from the whole notebook process...)

Can you do a FOI request on any meetings between the FM or PM and a civil servant?

"what came out was how disingenuous Salmond had portrayed the legal advice, giving the impression they'd been told it was dead in the water from the start, which wasn't the case. When they actually went through it in full showing the timings it gave a fuller picture and showed they didn't 'go against legal advice'"

Were we watching the same evidence session? Bailey covered why the decision to continue beyond 31st Oct was the point where they made a decision which was against both the public interest (cost implications) & the complainants interests (they could reset the process & investigation at that point too).

Salmon was guessing at what had been said re legal opinion for scotgov - he certainly oversold his opinion but he wasn't privy to it & was guessing based on his own counsel's opinion (which was proven correct). The legal advice that's been released more or less supported Salmond's claims.

I might endure further torture & rewatch it to check but nothing that was said today by sturgeon was convincing on the basis of the decisions made, when & why, as implied (as in being correct/well judged etc.).

So excuse my ignorance but what happens now??

No don’t torture yourself

Have a 🍻 instead

Anyone who sat through that deserves it

@StarryEyeSurprise

Can you do a FOI request on any meetings between the FM or PM and a civil servant?

You can FOI on information held by the government as long as there isn't a valid reason for refusing the request such as commercial sensitivity, security reasons etc. They also can be refused if not specific enough e.g requesting all correspondence for a decade on cars for instance. They also get redacted to protect identities or sensitive information.

And here's the kicker. Even after all this Craig Murray confirming he's still both votes SNP. What a waste of time.

@TheShadowyFeminist

"what came out was how disingenuous Salmond had portrayed the legal advice, giving the impression they'd been told it was dead in the water from the start, which wasn't the case. When they actually went through it in full showing the timings it gave a fuller picture and showed they didn't 'go against legal advice'"

Were we watching the same evidence session? Bailey covered why the decision to continue beyond 31st Oct was the point where they made a decision which was against both the public interest (cost implications) & the complainants interests (they could reset the process & investigation at that point too).

Salmon was guessing at what had been said re legal opinion for scotgov - he certainly oversold his opinion but he wasn't privy to it & was guessing based on his own counsel's opinion (which was proven correct). The legal advice that's been released more or less supported Salmond's claims.

I might endure further torture & rewatch it to check but nothing that was said today by sturgeon was convincing on the basis of the decisions made, when & why, as implied (as in being correct/well judged etc.).

This reflects what I saw too. I read the legal advice too (most of it, it was bloody lengthy)

Yes critically Salmond didn’t have the Scottish Gov’s legal advice to comment on. You can’t say he oversold it, he hadn’t seen it and would have relied on his counsel to give their view.

And when you start looking at a case, as a lawyer you are cautious. You don’t have all the facts. As you get more faces and evidence from your client, you refine the risks. Basic litigation; and the flow of information was erratic to lawyers. They did their job and the progress of the case was professional given what they were told.

Therefore you cannot give the benefit of the failure to provide information early as evidence the lawyers felt it was a good until very late. That is what NS would like you to think!

“a good case”

The legal advice was based on what the lawyers been told which was not all the information available to the Scottish Government which was instructing them.

whichever way, they followed the legal advice by pursuing it as long as they were being told they had a 'stateable case'. Then conceded in later months when advised they no longer had a 'stateable' case. Therefore they didn't ignore legal advice.

I still think Salmond was disingenuous in the way he portrayed it as being a no goer from the start. when you look at it with the timings, that's not the full story

@Dinnafashyersel

Orcadianrythms I take entirely the opposite view. As a woman of similar age and professional standing to Nicola and her and Alec's senior staff I never needed anyone to step in and fight my battles. It is naive in the extreme and deeply patronising to assume on balance these professional women did. Ime that would not be the norm. We are not talking about starry eyed 16 year old ingenues on the casting couch.

There is another prevalent double standard at play. Why is it OK to refer to Alec as "difficult" or "bullying" when he was 100% measured in his public dealings, including on Friday but not OK to refer to Nicola's hectoring and snide (yes bitchy) insinuations?

Sorry - life got in the way so just catching up. I appreciate your view @Dinnafashyersel but your missing the point. I too am of a similar age and at a senior level in the workplace ( not government ) and my point wasn't about women's need for rescuing by men but rather the type of man who cannot accept woman as equals and needs to keep her in her box (whatever that may be) If you haven't come across this in your professional life I'll be amazed. Like you, I don't accept it but I've been referred to as difficult, hormonanally challenged, a ball buster and even a bitch. Just because you and I can deal with it doesn't make it right and it's not a badge of honour to have endured it. It's poor behaviour and should be called out. I don't accept the poor me act from Salmond - i'm saving my sympathy for the women who came forward and have been so poorly served by ALL in this debacle.

This is quite as the key points from today and neutral in tone

www.politico.eu/article/5-takeaways-scotland-nicola-sturgeon-evidence-alex-salmond-probe/

On the 31st October counsel said that "I consider that this represents a very real problem indeed"...(petition on basis fair procedure instituted then followed, if my interpretation correct then)..."an express embargo was ignored in a way which may well vitiate the entire proceedings"

So at that point they had legal advice telling them the IO issue was potentially a disaster. So, what did they do. Did they
A) try to get to the bottom of it, providing as much evidence as possible to their counsel quickly so they could make a more certain judgement on whether to concede
B) hide as much as possible, leading to their counsel being "professionally embarrassed"

Counsel may not have had the full details but SG were reading this advice in the full knowledge of what had gone on. They knew full well how much contact had occured, when, and between who.

Giving straight answers would maybe have stopped the questions being repetitive?

I get that AS wants his name cleared and justice to be done or whatever but if you're right @Motheroffourdragons and it is the demise of the SNP/Independence then it strikes me as odd that AS would want to see something he's worked on for his whole political career go down the pan especially with independence potentially so close?

Andrew Neil who for some reason does not remember he is also Scottish

Can you explain what you mean by this?

So as it stands today no one admits that there has been a bit a fuck up and no one has been held accountable. The fuck up being that £500k of Scottish taxpayers money was paid to Salmond.

Now that is very poor leadership in that. As a taxpayer that is not acceptable.

Why is Andrew Neil accused of having forgotten he is Scottish? Is this standard if Scots disagree now?