No, I’m with you on that one, I don’t know why I’m so surprised at the way this is playing out, but I am. “surreal” doesn’t begin to cover it. Compared with the arrest and charges against Trump? That all feels perfectly reasonable and sane. This is somehow different and I can’t quite process why.
Perhaps you expect better of your pols than we Yanks do?
I mean Trump was obviously a well-known celebrity conman before he first poked his nose into politics. He came with a great big: “I’m a crook” sign around his neck, so nobody has been all that surprised at how he acted. Surprised he won? Yes. Surprised how his schtick was very popular with half of America? Yes. Surprised at Trump himself? Or his antics? Not at all.
I’m quite amazed to see the degree of sleaze here in SNP. Regardless of whether one supports the Independence cause or not, they seemed like basically honest partisans pursuing their cause. And now this. Lots of observers have whiplash from how quick the story has shifted.
If this were fiction, it would be because the very ANTI-Scottish Independence London government used their spy network and PR people to engineer a scenario that would take Scottish independence off the table for a generation. Alas, human greed and other foibles is probably enough without bringing in any conspiracy theories.
So, boringly, it has been suggested that the reason we saw cops with spades is because they were removing them from the garden shed while searching, not because tehy were digging holes in the lawn in teh search for money, USB sticks, effigies or ferry contracts. This is neither funny nor dramatic but has the dull ring of truth.
Ah! sadly that is tediously plausible.
The big crime scene tent was potentially excitin as well but I’d already rationalised that as a means of sheilding item removal from prying eyes.
I wonder if they have a rented lock-up garage on a council estate somewhere?
Makes sense. I did wonder if some malicious person had phoned in anonymously with a sensational tip-off, or even if Ms Sturgeon was planning on growing vegetables in retirement and wanted some help with the double-digging. But the prosaic answer is usually the right one.
In other news:
Murrell was released without charge last night after 11 hours of questioning under caution. Given that police appearto have removed pretty much every piece of paper in SNP HQ, I wouldn’t read too much into the fact no charges were laid yesterday - they are clearly and rightly being extremely thorough on the grounds that there may be some cases where you can get away with the wrong call but this ain’t one of them. They have in fact said that they will be making a report to teh Procurator Fiscal (Americans, read “DA”) which means letting the prosecutor make the charging decision rather than doing it themselves.
The police are under the spotlight here: apparently allies of Kate Forbes have already suggested that by not arresting Murrell during the leadership contest the police put their thumb on the scales as obviously this would have effected people’s views of the candidates. (Shades of Comey’s investigation into Clinton here). That goes both ways - if they had made an arrest during the investigation, there’d be screams about sabotage as well.
Sturgeon has cancelled a talk at the Edinburgh Science Festival today on the grounds that the focus of people’s attention would not have been on climate change.
Fair, but also (obviously) not wanting to be anywhere a journalist!
Well quite. One can only imagine. Typically when questioned about embarrassing issues, her response is that she can’t recall key details (like when she first learned about her husband’s loan, or about Alex Salmond’s serial mistreatment of women). At this rate, she will soon be saying she can’t recall when she first met her husband.
I’ve been thinking about the comedy response to what has been objectively a very funny month in Scottish politics. And it’s kind of limited. It comes back to the point earlier about the media not really interrogating the SNP - there’s not much in popular culture either. The Janey Godley above, while funny, is typical of her output on Sturgeon - she does a lot of voice over characterising Sturgeon as a put upon housewife, but it’s all very cosy and non-critical. Haven’t seen scourge of consensus Frankie Boyle do much either. Given that Britain and Scotland have a long tradition of irreverent and critical satire of the ruling class, it’s weird how hard it is to find.
E.g. - this guy doing wee videos on Twitter in return for donations is pretty much the only person I’ve seen making jokes with the fundamental premise that the SNP are a bit shit and probably liars.
(There’s a gag in here that is also a great illustration of the pitfalls of doing topical comedy, even iwth a quick turnaround)
It’s not amazing satire, and it wouldn’t be notable if done against the Tories or Labour, but it’s the only remotely truth-to-power stuff I’ve seen.
Maybe the majority of Scottish comedians are strongly pro-independence, and don’t want to take potshots at their own side? I would certainly imagine Boyle, for example, has independence sympathies, though I have no evidence of that beyond his occasional anti-English rhetoric on things like old episodes of Mock the Week.
Married? I have no recollection of every being married. I’m not even sure what “being married” means.
On the subject of comedic takes on this, with all the crime scene tents and shovels I heard comparisons being made to the investigation into mass murderers Fred and Rose West. The main difference being that the West’s did actually seem to get construction contracts done on time and in budget.
Interesting:
Another practical example of why ranked choice voting is superior in any multi-party or multi-candidate situation. If only the UK or US could get with the program. Voting science has progressed since 1600. Really it has.
But wow, that is some candor and/or high-mindedness quite rare to see in a modern pol. He may well have done the UK a favor even as he’s fatally torpedoed his own career as a Tory bigwig.
Of course, he may well be hopin that it puts him ahead of the game when it turns out that people in Scotland vote as much against the Tories as against the SNP (as will be the case in England and Wales, I don’t doubt). Then he can say on election night that they were doing what he suggested, for the greater good of the Union, blablabla.
But if it turns out that they haven’t even held on to the 6 Westminster seats they currently hold, that’s a different question
I think @PatrickLondon has the right of it, but the downside of this approach is that it makes it really easy for the SNP to use this to attack Labour as Red Tories.
In other fun news:
The SNP are looking for a new set of auditors, the current form having decided as part of a regular review of their client list that this was an opportunity which could perhaps be safely left to others.
And best of all, it turns out that at the same time the polis were raiding Peter and Nicola’s house, they also paid a visit to Peter Murrell’s mum’s house and removed from the premises a camper van worth somewhere around £100K. It’s a shame that this 92 year old woman won’t be able to get drive this multi ton vehicle up and down Scotland’s windier roads as she was no doubt wont to most weekends, but apparently there’s something suspicious about the whole set up.
At least no one has a trident. Yet.
Turns out this is worse than it looks, and it already looks pretty bad. We learn today:
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The auditors didn’t just quit in the last week or so: they washed their hands if the whole affair in October. The SNP, a UK political party required by law to submit audited accounts every year, have been without an auditor for six (6) months. Audited accounts are due in July.
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Yousaf only learned of this after his election.
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The National Executive Committee - the party’s ruling body - weren’t told either! It’s not quite clear, but it looks like they only found out after Yousaf did.
Again, the NEC is on paper where the buck stops. They are in a legal sense ‘the SNP’. But obviously they’re not actually in control and haven’t been for a while, which raises all kinds of interesting questions.
And another one… At a wild guess there’s a bit of pass-the-parcel going on. In whose hands will it explode?