Salmond v Sturgeon round 4. What next?

[Cismyfatarse]

New thread.

Wings and Tommy Sheridan as credible sources grin Never thought I'd see the day!

Really is something else, eh?

It’s about taking all the evidence from different sources and looking at it as a whole.

Just because you dislike someone, or think they’re lied about some things doesn’t mean that you just disbelieve everything they say.

I don’t much care for anyone involved in this. But it’s clear from the evidence as a whole that the SG has behaved very badly and cannot be trusted.

Also massive questions over the role of the LA and COPFS. I find this incredibly disappointing as I would never have believed it in a million years.

I agree @wouldbegood. It says something that we are having to get information from these sources but it's good to get it from somewhere.

It may also be worth considering disclosure or duty of candour and why that might be slow.

In this sense it’s important to know that thousands of judicial reviews are filed each year and are concluded without disclosure. The legal arguments are enough.

So that leaves you with a much smaller cadre of cases that do need it. As soon as litigation is in prospect then the government must preserve documents, and the lawyers must find them. That would have been the job of the Scottish Government’s Legal Department, and Rory Dunlop would absolutely have expected that to happen as normal.

The SG took a tactic on disclosure and sent irrelevant or large amounts of documents at first. Standard of disclosure not met.

Critically as the case goes on Dunlop indicates that his reputation is such that it had to be done properly.

Disclosure is not rocket science. In the old world before electronic disclosure you had to have teams of lawyers reading things and deciding. These days the options are far more sophisticated, with artificial intelligence combing huge amounts of data for relevance to a case. You can refine, target and consider much more easily.

Nevertheless duty of candour is not about all possibly relevant documents, but about those essential documents to resolve the case. And those which should have been easily found with the relevant parties because of the very small number of people involved and furthermore the relative ease of processing and considering documents makes this look dire.

A judge would have thought that too. Roddy Dunlop knew that.

Sheridan - I ken, ken.
But he is a neutral.

Sheridan's far from neutral. However when everyone from all sides of the political spectrum and even from inside the SNP and the wider YES movement are all pointing the finger in the same direction ....

I think they should do a Game of Thrones and just have someone standing beside her at all times pointing and saying "confess, confess..."

Ha ha Yes!

Real life events overtook me for the past couple of days so I’m trying to catch up.

FWIW John Nicolson was being wheeled out on radio and TV down here to defend NS and co. regurgitating the party line.
Largely unchallenged.
In part because so many journalists/ rUK politicians either don’t know enough, don’t care or have more pressing issues to be concerned with.

I wonder whether in private, some SNP MPs and MSPs are horrified by this mess.
Presumably, the release of these documents is news to some of them also.

Family members of mine who have been involved with the SNP forever and go way back with some of the main actors in this are genuinely saddened and have gone very quiet on social media.
Others are using the usual deflection, talk about the Tories techniques.

It really doesn't suit many in England for the SNP to have feet of clay. The Tories like having NS as the bogeyman for the accusation that she would be pulling Sir Keir's strings or even better that Sir Keir is a fake next to her genuine article. Labour leaning are daft enough to think the SNP help by amplifying their message of Tories bad. LibDems like anyone to feed the PR narrative.

SNP fall at two N Lanarkshire council by-elections
Labour take both at Fortissat; and Thorniewood

Just thinking about the time bar, and something occured to me.

In her evidence Sturgeon basically claimed that she was "letting him down gently". Their messages show that he had drafted the petition for the JR within the 3 months and she knew this. It looks from their messages like he wasn't fully "let down " until July

She was a lawyer. She would have known of the time bar, surely. Did she drag her heels deliberately so he'd run down the clock

@daisyfraser

SNP fall at two N Lanarkshire council by-elections Labour take both at Fortissat; and Thorniewood

Were those overturns @daisyfraser?

She was a lawyer. She would have known of the time bar, surely. Did she drag her heels deliberately so he'd run down the clock

Jeez @StatisticallyChallenged! Are you saying she would be a bit obstructive deliberately? Surely not.

Re the Lord Advocate - I think the Herald summed up just how rotten, corrupt and partisan this position and its leadership of the Crown Office has become. This, from a couple of months ago, is a devastating, factual article. Like a fish Scotland's Crown office is rotting from the head. www.heraldscotland.com/news/19034561.iain-macwhirter-like-fish-scotlands-crown-office-rotting-head/
Wolffe, the Lord Advocate, being a member of Sturgeons cabinet and clearly directing the prosecution service in a partisan manner in this case is the biggest scandal and threat to democracy. He should be sacked and the roles separated. It's not a good look for NS that she is presiding over such a sham.

That seems to be a continuing theme. I think they wanted to run down the clock so committee couldn't sit due to purdah.

I listened to the TS interview, forgot how much he grates on me.

Overturns in the sense they were held by one party, and now by another, do you mean?
If so Yes

'caused respectively by the resignations of Tommy Cochrane and Steven Bonnar. Both were originally elected for the Scottish National Party, but Cochrane had left the party in 2018 and was sitting as an independent councillor. Cochrane resigned in March 2020 due to pressure of work, having represented the ward since 2012. Bonnar, who is now the MP for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill, had served since winning a by-election in 2015.'
Now held by Paul Kelly and Helen Loughran, both Labour.

@WaxOnFeckOff

She was a lawyer. She would have known of the time bar, surely. Did she drag her heels deliberately so he'd run down the clock

Jeez @StatisticallyChallenged! Are you saying she would be a bit obstructive deliberately? Surely not.

I’m sure she did! But I don’t think NS was ever in practice - or should would have known that given the issues it was a poor point to make.

Interestingly the early advice from Dunlop seems to lean quite heavily on time barring. From a moral perspective at least I think the fact that Salmond was disputing procedure from the outset makes a difference too - if he'd merrily gone along and only complained when it didn't go his way that would seem different but he never did and was trying to contest all along. The time bar in that situation seems somewhat bad faith

According to wiki she was in practice (and also lost lots of elections before getting her toes on the ladder)

Different situation, but I worked for a company dealing with endowment mortgage complaints and they did not apply the time bar for many many years which I guess was partly due to a duty of care and also in terms of trying to maintain their reputation.

Just because you can do something doesn't always mean you should.

Being out of time in JR is such a teeny point! Of course it was a good point at first because that’s what you do as a lawyer in JR.

You take all the procedural stuff first to see if your client can be saved further work, effort etc. If the claim is barred then that’s the end, you get your fee and job done.

So it was a good point but quite limited. And given the issues unlikely to be practically effective!

It's hard to describe just how small the Professional class is in Scotland in terms of who the players are and how the game is being played.

Her 'practice' was maternity cover in the Family dept of the Drumchapel Law Centre - now Drumchapel Money Advice Centre.
She fought five elections - council and Westminster - and lost them all.

Finally she got into Holyrood on the Regional List - ie not elected, just next name to make up the numbers.
Made Deputy Leader SNP
Inherited the post of First Minister because she was then besties with the then FM who was going off in a huff after losing the 2014 referendum
'Elected' into the post by 63 SNP MSPs. Not even the party membership had a say.

And then her first speech she had the gall to stand up and say 'now any wee girl can achieve what I achieved'.
What did she 'achieve' exactly ?
She wasn't even ELECTED.

And all the nation's press fell over themselves to raise her up onto some sort of pedestal as this 'magnificent role model' for all women. And the thinking aware Scots could only look on open-mouthed at their stupidity and the amount of brass in her neck.

You did better than my cursory glance @daisyfraser