Salmond v Sturgeon Round 3 — Comment along with Sturgeon

[PolkadotsAndMoonbeams]

Previous thread here.

@TokyoSushi

Douglas Ross MP *@Douglas4Moray* · 25m John Swinney has finally released some more of the Salmond legal advice.

He told us on Tuesday that he had published the "key legal advice" before Nicola Sturgeon’s appearance at committee.

From an initial reading of these documents, clearly he wasn’t telling the truth.

What now?!

Why was there no uproar to have this evidence available during Alex Salmonds trial? His defence requested it. It was denied.

Tories were quite happy about that then.

None of this is looking especially good mobile.twitter.com/ColSMal/status/1367864595101200388

This is also slightly mad - that there would be no notes for that period in November:
mobile.twitter.com/GrahamGGrant/status/1367866887888068611

More legal docs

I'm still reading through but so far, I've picked up that the reason for the JR court to agree to the need for a open commission (to recover undisclosed docs) was that others (not junior counsel) had redacted emails in an email chain because apparently one email had cc'd in someone or error due to auto typing. So civil servants were trying to cover up an error (leaking information [by mistake]).

So, again, some basic incompetence & poor decisions made by civil service staff which left Scotgov lawyers having to go to court and agree that duty of candour was not met, and the commission then granted. That in itself much have ballooned costs.

Not finished reading but honestly, how Sturgeon could sit and defend her government's staff's actions in this JR is staggering. They sheer stupidity of redacting emails when the court has had to remind you already about your duty of candour & still they thought redacting (another) data leak was the best thing to do.

This is like key stone cops level of errors. 🤦🏻‍♀️

This is from the wings piece on the commission:

"Commission And Diligence process went ahead (it started on the 19th, with witnesses and multiple lawyers for both sides in attendance, all on Christmas-holidays rates – we would be very surprised if the cost was under £50,000 a day), at which counsel was repeatedly forced to humiliatingly apologise to Lord Pentland after solemnly promising him that all relevant documents had been provided, only to then discover, again and again, that they had not. "

Sturgeon was fully aware of this. She appears to be very forgiving of the staff she's protecting for this monumental f*ck up.

An interesting snippet from the Ministerial Code pertaining to the release of legal advice. Clearly states that neither the advice nor who provided it should be made public except in exceptional circumstances.

It's worth reading the entire wings piece on this - it's jaw dropping what this latest batch of documents show

Link to Wings article

Evans refused to give a precognition statement about the charge of apparent bias on her own knowledge of what when on/the 'prior contact' of the IO. My post earlier flagged up that she withheld her own contact with the complainants from counsel & now the new 'dump' confirms Evans avoided a signed precognition statement for her own counsel. She knew back then how bad things were & she wilfully failed in her duty of candour. I cannot believe she wasn't sacked then!

Sturgeon herself was fully aware of all of this. And she still didn't sack Evans, or anyone else involved in this calamitous car wreck of a case.

I don’t understand this at all. Why is John Swinney quoted in the Herald that the government has “ utterly disproved “. the Salmond conspiracy theory. ?

My interpretation is he means "see, look, we were not conspiring at all! We were simply so inept and incompetent, we don't have the brains to have planned this!"

It's an interesting take that's for sure.

Effectively, they're conflating the online conspiracy theorists with what Salmond has said. The online stuff goes way beyond what Salmond has said. Salmond has stuck to accusations he's been able to evidence, or point to where the evidence is.

That's quite different from what Swinney thinks has been debunked from the dump of legal docs.

Thank you Shadowy

Reading through it just now. First thought...what I'd give for a paragraph!! My eyes!!

Wow that Wings article. !

I expect Jackie Bailey is currently pouring over this and cross referencing previous oral & written testimony from a lot of civil servants.

How on earth does the most senior civil servant not get sacked for her actions at the time this all took place? And the person who redacted the email chain trying to cover up the accidental cc'd email? They cost the government £00000s.

Sturgeon felt loyalty to these people & still supports them/defends them now. That's a damning indictment of her leadership. Absolutely damning.

Does she still support them or do they know so much that she HAS to support them? I can't see this being about loyalty and more about the need to maintain her secrets.

What do they know that means they can't be sacked?

For the life of me I can't see what's been debunked by the SNP so far - we've been called misogynists, conspiracy theorists, any other kind of loonies and all I want the government to govern effectively, and for some corrective actions to be taken to avoid these awful outcomes.

We've said before, Scottish government seems to be a safe place to hide if you've made several terrible mistakes. Nicola will say sorry and then Twitter nationalists will accuse people after the truth of anything they can.

What do they know that means they can't be sacked?

Well, exactly. What indeed.

Shall we have a new thread?

Please! I'm on my phone & can't do links etc.

@TheShadowyFeminist

What do they know that means they can't be sacked?

Well, exactly. What indeed.

They are civil servants! You get to know it all.

Salmond v Sturgeon round 4. What next? www.mumsnet.com/Talk/scotsnet/4184018-salmond-v-sturgeon-round-4-what-next

canny keep up wi these threads with work all day as well

but saw on twitter re: the "ploughing on regardless" stuff.

If NS isn't found to have broken the ministerial code, then this whole thing is just one big joke and confidence in the Scottish political system will just be really low

I certainly don’t want independence but there are some very interesting documents on Wings Over Scotland .