Scottish Independence

[noel]

One election over and another on the way.

UKIP flyer arrived today for the local by-election:

"Labour and Liberal democrat led-councils failed to protect young WHITE working class girls from years of abuse"

No mention of Europe so they are obviously concentrating on "local issues"

I'm not going to vote UKIP on the back of this, but it is an undeniable truth. Pretty shocking really.

[Witton Park]

Funny to see how some are now complaining at the prospect of a devolved England.

[Llani Boy]

An Independent QC, James Hamilton, finds that Nicola Sturgeon did not break the ministerial code.

He states that she gave an "incomplete narrative of events" but it was "a genuine failure of recollection".

Now that's a different way to describe lying.

Have a guess who asked the QC to investigate?

Errrr Nicola Sturgeon!

[Fellbeast]

An Independent QC, James Hamilton, finds that Nicola Sturgeon did not break the ministerial code.

He states that she gave an "incomplete narrative of events" but it was "a genuine failure of recollection".

Now that's a different way to describe lying.

Have a guess who asked the QC to investigate?

Errrr Nicola Sturgeon!

Er... isn’t that how independent reviews work? You know, when Boris Johnson requests an independent review into his government’s handling of covid (cough) he’ll appoint an independent barrister or judge to do do it?

[Mike T]

From The Press and Journal, re James Hamilton:

"The qualified barrister was first appointed as an independent adviser to the Scottish Government’s Ministerial Code in 2013 by former first minister Alex Salmond and reappointed by Ms Sturgeon in 2015.

The first minister, who denies breaching the code, would go on to refer herself to Mr Hamilton in January 2019 to allow him to carry out an independent inquiry into her conduct."

Who else was she meant to ask?

[Llani Boy]

From The Press and Journal, re James Hamilton:

"The qualified barrister was first appointed as an independent adviser to the Scottish Government’s Ministerial Code in 2013 by former first minister Alex Salmond and reappointed by Ms Sturgeon in 2015.

The first minister, who denies breaching the code, would go on to refer herself to Mr Hamilton in January 2019 to allow him to carry out an independent inquiry into her conduct."

Who else was she meant to ask?

I don't know who she could have asked but your post makes me even more sceptical about the independence of the QC.

He has been earning, no doubt, a substantial crust from the Scottish Government since 2013 appointed again in 2015 by Nicola Sturgeon.

To find that someone, who is renowned to be on top of detail in everything she does, had a "genuine failure of recollection" in something as important as sexual abuse allegations about her predecessor seems a bit fishy to me.

[Mike T]

I don't know who she could have asked but your post makes me even more sceptical about the independence of the QC.

He has been earning, no doubt, a substantial crust from the Scottish Government since 2013 appointed again in 2015 by Nicola Sturgeon.

To find that someone, who is renowned to be on top of detail in everything she does, had a "genuine failure of recollection" in something as important as sexual abuse allegations about her predecessor seems a bit fishy to me.

Even the specially convened Holyrood committee, which voted 5 to 4 that she misled the house, declined to say that she did so "knowingly".

From the Guardian:

"That finding has stopped short of ruling Sturgeon misled parliament “knowingly”. Knowingly misleading parliament would be a clear breach of the ministerial code and a resignation matter."

As has been said by many others, it is rather strange that standards in Scotland are expected to be so much higher than those in Westminster.

[Mike T]

From the BBC:

A vote of no confidence in First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has been defeated by 65 votes to 31, with 27 abstentions.