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

Thanks!!

Article about Aamer Anwar int he Times today:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/48a9955e-80fa-4f96-812c-1010c3e4cda2?shareToken=f69194bd768ccc80676dd23815a140ef&ver=article

Anwar is a self publicist and a twat, well known in legal circles

I've emailed all my MSPs about the Covid stuff and self ID

SNP ones all send the same replies as decreed by the party

The rate of writing to MPs and MSPs seems high on this thread. I’ve never written to even a councillor 🤐

Maybe you need to engage more with politics?

.

I just sort things out myself. Most of the things you write to MSPs go to eg a LA employee to answer.

It's not something I do regularly. I was so incensed over the blended learning thing though that I coudln't not do anything.

It probably went to the LA to get the wording for the reply. Not trying to be offensive. That was my job for quite a long time.

Just to add that if you want your representative to know how you feel about an issue, then contacting them directly is the best way of letting them know.

In fact, the one time that I wrote to Tricia Marwick it was because SNP canvassers had suggested that I should do so when I mentioned my concerns over the Curriculum for Excellence and CfE qualifications.

For the record, I'm well aware that the CfE was originally implemented by the Labour Party. It's my opinion that the SNP fell for the sunk cost fallacy.

When it was originally mooted, teachers were indeed consulted...but the majority opinion seems to have been ignored. (I participated in the lead consultation for my LA as well as SQA led meetings for my subjects.)

Tricia Marwick replied to me straight away and passed my concerns to Mike Russell.

Mike Russell did reply...and helpfully informed me that teachers had been consulted.

I always thought Aamer Anwar was more about publicising Aamer Anwar than being a serious lawyer. He takes the high profile cases like those two bams at Manchester airport because it gets him airtime (weird choice on their part, Scots Law trained lawyer, but there you go).

Seems a very odd choice on the part of Sturgeon, unless Anwar offered her a deal, knowing the resulting publicity would be great for him.

There no chance Anwar has been tipped the nod for the Advocate General role, is there?

God, can you IMAGINE.

Surely not …he’s a chancer 😦

I really hope not - but it's the kind of ridiculous thing that would happen! I don't know if he has the right qualifications though - but then again, it's the Scottish Govt, so...

I've had superb help from Liam Kerr on behalf of a family member. Clare Baker responded to me positively on single sex spaces when it was still a taboo subject.
I know someone who worked for Jenny Gilruth. Bone lazy, never read a brief, treated staff badly and complained constantly about how she had too much to do. Told me there was a gasp of disbelief when she was announced as Deputy First minister.

Wouldn't have thought so - less chance to play the hero of the dispossessed.

It’s usually not the party as they refer it to the people actually dealing with it.

Usually LAs as people get mixed up who deals with what and think a single MSP can change legislation. They can’t.

However, no matter who gets it, there are only a certain number of ways you can reply to a number of people who send you the exact same complaint in the exact same words (think FWS with their templates as an unhinged example) before just doing one reply and copy pasting their details into it.

It saves tax payers money and means staff can get the time to actually help the people they’re employed to help rather than pander to serial complainers who have nothing better to do than send letters to people who can’t overturn decisions made democratically in parliament.

I think political education should be a core subject in schools. It would save a lot of time, money and angst for the people having to deal with serial complainers who don’t really know who they’re complaining to but just feel like venting.

TBF he is dual qualified

FFS let’s hope not. He is the pet lawyer it seems. Comes across as an ambulance chasing pain in the tits.

That is an interesting list. Who needs all this stuff? Besides maybe the Laphroaig.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/7e7d3b9c-acc9-4742-beb6-6d58012b6e74?shareToken=986c987682a7d2bdfec7905c737e783e&ver=article

Thanks for sharing, interesting reading. Good to have Murrell's salary confirmed as around £80k. Yes, an excellent salary especially for a dual income household with no dependants and in a role where many daily living expenses will be covered (legitimately) through expenses eg lunches and dinners when out and about or as part of meetings. But nowhere near enough to make the additional spending disappear in comparison. I was also surprised to learn that 'his stake in the home he shares with Sturgeon, listed as being worth £83,000.' I'd have expected given their ages, incomes, lack of dependants, that they'd be close to mortgage free.

Well, that makes sense.

She also appears to have a bit of a brass neck, telling teachers that all was fine in education when she must have known damned well from her own experience that that certainly was not the case.

Exactly. They had a very decent joint net income, but nowhere near what was needed for these 'expenses' to simply disappear in amongst all their other normal household expenses.