Update: So, Alex Salmond has now resigned from the SNP until the matter has been settled.
Immediately after doing so, he launched a crowdfunder to help pay the enormous legal costs involved in his application for Judicial Review of the Civil Service process.
The crowdfunder raised the target sum of £50K in 3.5hours and now stands (9am UK time) at a tad under £65K from 2500 contributors.
I hope I'd be brave enough to say "No, bring it to trial and we'll cross-examine the witness - at length"
Well there's a general problem with that approach, and a particular one with the case under discussion:
Generally, you're nowadays highly restricted in any cross-examination of female accusers where the accusation involves any sexual element and in this case in particular I find it hard to see how there can be any trial at all now that the media has completely prejudiced the case (11 pages in the Mail on Sunday alone).
Some might say that was always the intention.
Nikla is supporting the process of investigation undertaken by the Scottish Government.
Alex is challenging that process and is being funded by Scotnats .
Wonderful!
arsenal (August 30th, 2018)
Allow me to educate you:
Nicola is supporting the process of investigation carried out by the Civil Service Permanent Secretary who sits within the Scottish Govt but who actually reports to the UK Govt and not Nicola. In other words, the Permanent Secretary is a UK Govt plant, put in place to keep an eye on what the Scot Gov gets up to. Nicola has to support her because Nicola signed off on the new internal investigatory process in November 2017.
Alex is challenging that process (as carried out by the Civil Service Permanent Secretary and is being funded by 3500 (and rising) supporters of all Parties and none (albeit most will be Yessers and SNP supporters). The £50K target has now been met and exceeded by a further £37K
There are some very strange circumstances surrounding the complaints and how they came to be made, but the most bizarre element is to see Nicola on tv defending the confidentiality of the process when even Gordon Brown with his one good eye can see it leaked over every newspaper in the land. The Iraqi Colonel who denied on live TV there were any tanks in Baghdad when we could see them trundling along behind him had more plausibility.
Having said all that, it's very tiresome when people outside Scotland profess to know what's happening better than those of us who actually live here.
No doubt yourself and Arsepiece will wish to donate, so:
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/alexsalmond/?
I've always found that argument somewhat specious. People outside Burma, Cambodia or Thailand can know better than those who actually live there what's happening, because they have access to a free press - and that's just one example. Participants don't always see better than observers because they're too close to the action - a well-known psychological concept - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/b...e-you-observerOriginally Posted by scottish-guy
Nate Silver makes a related point in his book The Signal and the Noise. In this case the closer you are, the noisier it is, the less likely you are to discern what's really going on (the signal)
Scottish Guy wrote.
"Having said all that, it's very tiresome when people outside Scotland profess to know what's happening better than those of us who actually live here."
That slightly desperate argument about location applies if we're talking about Goodboys or Eros. It doesn't apply when the story is on the same 24 hour media outlets we all have access to.
It's impossible to think of Salmonella without his lunge for Scottish independence (something I support by the way; its outcomes will feed my taste for schadenfreude for years). The Scottish Nationalists believe in holding the referendum again and again, until they get the result they want. It's rather like the Brexit referendum, and this week's Spectator includes a loving reminder of that. The Remainer agitator Anna Soubry is quoted. This is the lovely Anna before the Brexit referendum: "We are trusting the British people. We will go to the people, and let the people decide whether or not to stay within the EU." That was in 2015. Now listen to her: she backed the referendum "only because I thought we would win. Obviously, I wouldn’t have if I thought we would lose." Democracy is a bugger, isn’t it?
You seem to have overlooked the fact that whilst the Press you read and which helps to form your opinion may be free, it is far from impartial as far as Scotland is concerned. Irrespective of their support for left or right politics, every section of the UK media holds and promotes the same political narrative when it comes to Unionism - they're all for it, Rule Britannia, three bags full and more of the same please.
Now, you're an intelligent guy - well over 50% of Scots are sympathetic to independence and in 2014, following 2 (almost 3) years of Project Fear 45% were still sufficiently motivated to actively vote for it. How then can a cabal of foreign-owned newspapers and a State Broadcaster all promoting (at every opportunity) a political settlement which ~50% of Scots reject, possibly be representative of the mood ?
There is not a single newspaper you read which is Scottish-owned nor one which supports the constitutional choice of roughly half the Scottish population. All the propaganda masquerading as news that you are being fed is being reflected through an English, Unionist prism. Yet you unquestioningly take it at face value? Maybe I should withdraw my compliment about you being intelligent?
Can you imagine the outrage/riots there would be in England if it was decided that henceforth all their news would only be available via German newspapers and Al Jazeera TV? Yet that is deemed good enough for Scotland and promoted as a valid representation of our politics.
Worse still, we now have people on a Thailand forum for Elderly Gay Desperadoes, most of whom have never set foot in Scotland , and whose main interest in life is how much young cock they can get up their battered old cauliflower arseholes before they die (no offence), telling those of us who live here that they're better informed about Scottish politics because they're detached from it, even though they clearly never think about who's feeding them the information?
Can you not see how ridiculous that proposition is?
And your point is, exactly? That I take my views unthinkingly from a non-English but foreign (ie. Murdoch) dominated print media? The weight of the British media was pro-Brexit but more than half of those who voted simply did not believe what their media was telling them. Why is that not also so for views about Scotland?
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