Peter Murrell embezzlement trial

[Sunnnyday]

Peter Murrell is in court in Edinburgh today. This is for the preliminary hearing which was postponed from before the election. It will be interesting to see how the criminal proceedings proceed.

www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/peter-murrell-arrives-at-court-ahead-of-hearing-on-embezzlement-charges/ar-AA23Ybuy?ocid=msedgntp&pc

Very stupid. Very stupid indeed.

I did laugh out loud at the response to a comment that the donor doesn't care if the SNP spent their money as it's all for the independence cause:

"Exactly how does two hairdryers help us get independence?"

😂😂😂

Always liked Mr Hague, he skewers every daft Nat argument he comes up against and they like to call him names. He cares not a jot 😂

So despite protestations that this is an internal SNP matter by a previous poster, this does matter to the tax paying population. Firstly, they had to foot the bill for the investigation, using up precious resources.

Secondly, if our ruling party can’t manage their own finances then how can we entrust them to have the competence to run affairs at a national level.

So yes, this should be of concern to all in Scotland.

If the Westminster government had been behaving in this way, the Nats would be baying for blood 🤷🏼‍♀️

To be fair, I've always thought those bits on the side of the parliament look like hairdryers, so maybe the more hairdryers, the more independent the parliament?

Yes

and it matters that our government is corrupt, from finance to refusing to obtemper the law of the land by being found in contempt

Murrell ‘trying to protect’ Sturgeon over items dropped in plea deal

https://www.thetimes.com/article/9eae66db-f2e1-4221-8857-e309bdbdda90?shareToken=fdde7b1e5cebedb7c2fab1a06e90a63e

This is extraordinary. So, things obviously connected to her were deleted. I assume the prosecution resisted some (hairdryers……) but allowed others to be missed off. Journalists are having a field day.

Interesting article on bbc website. England has open prisons for this type of offender. First offence embezzlement. However Scotland has no identical prisons for first offenders straight from court. The open prisons are for moving on from a closed prison prior to release. They speculate that he might go to Dumfries.

The BBC also suggests he will be required to pay the money back. Obviously there’s depreciation and some goods not available for resale. So does he have other substantial savings? They think he does but these might be marital assets so perhaps a pension raid might be needed. Interesting times.

Neil Gray managed it in the same year.

Yes I’m sure the Sloggi knickers were for Peter 😊

I can imagine the negotiation between the parties on this list. I suspect the deal was…if you get to £400k then we will accept that with your guilty plea and write off the rest because frankly, we can’t be arsed with this anymore. With that, the SNP will claim that the £400k is the extent of the thieving, however, this shows that is not the case to all but the most deluded SNP foot soldiers. The same ones claiming Nicola was “exonerated” when she was not.

I would indeed like an investigation into how the SNPs public money has been accounted for (ie funded from us tax payers) …short money and policy development grants, as embezzlement to the extent of Murrell’s surely indicates some degree of reckless financial management that should be investigated. I think it is an entirely reasonable assumption that he’s taken money where he can get it. Swinney reassuring us that there is nothing to see here, surely cannot be taken seriously given the lies that and misinformation that he and the SNP have been spinning on this for years.

I just think it's even more evidence that he has agreed for whatever reason to carry the can and be the fall guy.

Also the moving of the court date till after the election, I still have not heard how that came about , it’s vote rigging plain and simple.
Murrell being told to plead guilty but only after we’ve safely got our votes in so no scandal while electioneering. This is so shady but no one is questioning it.

I think the problem is that lots of people are questioning it…but nobody in authority is willing to actually do anything about it. We have an entirely feeble and impotent opposition in the Scottish parliament. The SNP led Scottish government itself is culpable and so will not be “investigating”. The only realistic option is a Westminster investigation and that I fear, would just cause the nationalists to explode in fury and outrage about Westminster having no right to interfere in Scottish politics and thus raise the likelihood of another referendum. So…basically catch 22. It’s disgusting that we are in this situation. Frankly I’m embarrassed to be Scottish. I can absolutely see the case for removing the Scottish parliament altogether given we’ve demonstrated we are entirely hopeless and as corrupt as Westminster. At least then we would only have one set of useless politicians to complain about.

It was the previous Holyrood election when Jo Cherry was blocked.

@GTTSR I couldn’t agree more 👏

No it wasn't. It wasn't. It was 2021.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-53607198

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Gray

I'm not sure the opposition are feeble @GTTSR but they are impotent - although through no fault of their own. The voting system here does not accurately reflect the voter numbers - for example, Labour got more than half the SNP votes but less than a third of the number of seats the SNP got, Reform got around half of the SNP votes and less than a third of the number of seats, the Tories got a third of the SNP votes but one fifth of the number of seats the SNP got. The diehard will have you believe that Scotland is overwhelmingly in favour of the SNP - but far more people don't vote for them than do. The majority of Scottish people are absolutely sick and tired of them - and have enough of the common sense they were born with to see through their lies.

@SirChenjins If anyone wants rid of the SNP, only one alternative in a constituency is how to do it. The system favours a 2 party system, not 4 or 5 parties. England and Wales will have the same issues. We have 33% voting Labour at the last election but look at the majority! There’s no answer if we don’t have a form of votes resulting in MPs representing voting patterns.

I agree - the voting system lets voters down. However, I was responding to the claim that the opposition is feeble and impotent, which I think is incorrect. The opposition regularly take the SNP to task very forcefully, so far from feeble, but their impotence arises because of the voting system which means that yet again, an incompetent and corrupt SNP Govt 'runs' our country.

👏👏👏

The impotence arises from the fact that the SNP are propped up by the “useful idiots, the Greens”

@SirChenjins yes! A classic case of the empty vessel makes the most noise

Who people vote for...