aaid

Also doesn't help if you've signed a legally binding international treaty 20 years ago that effectively rules out a clean break.

Shouldn't be, unless you want all the benefits of membership without any of the conditions.

Just throwing this out there, no idea how likely this is but madder things have happened. With Corbyn seemingly refusing to even engage with the UKG, it looks unlikely that they can make any progress towards getting a deal. I wonder whether they - the UKG - might say the only way to break the impasse is to take it back to the people with another referendum *but* put the blame on Corbyn for that. We know Corbyn doesn't want another referendum anyway and this could turn the Brexiteers on him for "ignoring the will of the people".

Nope, my point is that you're claiming that NS is an authoritarian and when asked to provide evidence you stated a policy with which she had no direct hand in and which passed without a dissenting vote and had popular cross party support. You may think that the policy is authoritarian, I don't but that's another argument for another day. With specific respect to NS, if on this basis that makes her an authoritarian then it leads on that almost the entire membership of the Scottish Parliament are as well, I'm not aware at a strong libertarian thread running through the Scottish Tories. You might believe that to be the case but I'm not sure why you're using that example to single her out.

Here's one of those renowned authoritarians from the Lib Dems on the Named Persons legislation.

Minimum unit pricing for alcohol was also passed when Salmond was FM although I think it was probably Sturgeon who was responsible as she was Health Secretary at the time. Interestingly the named persons scheme actually started with the last Labour government, pilots were running prior to 2007 and the incoming SNP government continued and took this through to legislation. I'm pretty sure that it was only the Tories that voted against the legislation. Just checked and it was carried by 103 votes to 0 with the Tories abstaining.

Interesting that you both highlight Named Person - as yet unimplemented - given that was a piece of legislation passed in early 2014 when Salmond was First Minister. I can't recall which minister was responsible but given her brief at the time I doubt it was Nocola Sturgeon. Whatever your views on that legislation I don't think you can lay the blame or responsibility at her doorstep. As for party discipline that has to be looked at in the context of a hostile media which magnifies any indiscretion by an SNP member 100 times more than any ther party.

Out of interest, what is it about Sturgeon that you think is particularly authoritarian? I've always thought she's more of a small-l liberal.

Turned it over 20 minutes ago and they were all banging on "where's your plan B, where's your plan B". I thought I'd been transported back to 2014.

Hard to disagree with any of that.

Here's the actual process as published on 23 August 2018, if you are interested, its worth reading this. https://www.gov.scot/publications/handling-of-harassment-complaints-involving-current-or-former-ministers/ In the first instance, regardless of who is complained against - it is escalated to the Director of People, currently Nicola Richards. In both cases, it is the DoP, not the Permanent Secretary who appoints the Investigative Officer so it seems she has questions to answer as well. It looks like they've failed to follow the process in three major points and not one. Firstly, appointing an investigative officer that had no prior involvement. 10. In the event that a formal complaint of harassment is received against a former Minister, the Director of People will designate a senior civil servant as the Investigating Officer to deal with the complaint. That person will have had no prior involvement with any aspect of the matter being raised. The role of the Investigating Officer will be to undertake an impartial collection of facts, from, the member of staff and any witnesses, and to prepare a report for the Permanent Secretary. The report will also be shared with the staff member. Secondly, by not informing Alex Salmond of the allegations against him and giving him an opportunity to respond. 11. If the Permanent Secretary considers that the report gives cause for concern over the former Minister’s behaviour towards current or former civil servants the former Minister should be provided with details of the complaint and given an opportunity to respond. The former Minister will be invited to provide a statement setting out their recollection of events to add to the record. They may also request that statements are taken from other witnesses. If additional statements are collected the senior officer will revise their report to include this information and submit this to the Permanent Secretary and share with the staff member. The Permanent Secretary will consider the revised report and decide whether the complaint is well-founded. The outcome of the investigation will be recorded within the SG. The Permanent Secretary will also determine whether any further action is required; including action to ensure lessons are learnt for the future. Thirdly, by not informing the FM of the allegations against Salmond in her role both as FM and party leader - The FM has stated that it was AS, and not the Permanent Secretary that informed her of the allegations. 12. For complaints involving a former Minister who is a member of the Party of the current Administration, the Permanent Secretary will inform the First Minister both in this capacity and in their capacity as Party Leader, of the outcome when the investigation is complete. In their capacity as First Minister, they will wish to take steps to review practice to ensure the highest standards of behaviour within their current Administration.

That's absolutely true, however the one group of people you would expect to follow HR processes to the letter would be HR professionals, especially if they wrote the procedures in the first place. That's said, I'm reminded of an HR manager I used to work with who was able to screw a great deal out of the company when they made her redundant as what they'd done was illegal.

Pretty much unsubstantiated guess on my part but it does make sense to me. Judith MacKinnon (JM) seems to be the main actor here and I can sketch out a scenario in my mind that makes sense - to me anyway. She joins the SG in 2017 under the somewhat slightly nebulous job title of Head of People Advice, which sounds like some sort of "Minister without portfolio" role within HR. #MeToo blows up in late 2017 and - in common with most major organisations - the SG decides it needs to review its processes and they give the job - wholly or partly - to review those and come up with a new set of processes and procedures. In my experience, that seems to be the sort of project you give to people with roles that are less undefined. As part of that exercise she reviews the existing policies and then goes back through previous cases to see if there were any cases that were dealt with incorrectly, not from a point of view of reopening any cases but to look at how any future process could be improved - that's what I would do in this case. In there she found the two allegations against Salmond - these were originally dealt with under the previous code and were dismissed. NS said that the contact with the complaints from JM was part of the counselling process or something similar and that might well be the case but that in itself begs a question as to how - when does someone who only joined the SG in 2017 get involved in counselling people over incidents that occurred in 2013/4. I'm going to take it as read unless there's evidence to the contrary that the allegations were genuine, ie. the women involved were sincere in their belief. That doesn't necessarily mean there's any substance to them or that Salmond's done anything wrong, and wrong of course is a very subjective concept anyway. For the sake of argument, let's assume it's was a similar situation to that which G-Man outlined, ie. getting a bit "handsy" at the Christmas Party. There has to be some sort of trigger, someone has to approach the two complainants and put a metaphorical arm around their shoulder and that looks like it was JM. For JM, this is too good an opportunity to miss, to bring down the ultimate alpha male Scottish politician of his generation and that ambition skews her judgement. When this first broke, I had a look at the new investigative process - it's on the SG website - and I commented on an apparent anomaly as to how allegations against current serving ministers were treated and how former ministers were treated. Essentially, for serving ministers they were informed of the details of any allegations - and so capable of providing a defence or explanation - whereas for former ministers they weren't. At the time I thought that might be to do with different sensitivities as to how minsters work. It looks more like this is the "get Salmond" clause. Up until this point, Leslie Evans may well not be directly involved. But having "tee-ed up" the complainants and having been involved in constructing the process, she should have never appointed - assuming she made the appointment - of JM as investigative officer and JM - if she was truly impartial - should never have accepted that role. As I said before, lots of questions to answer but I doubt they ever will be. Especially as the opposition seem to think the biggest problem here is the 2 meetings and 3 phone calls that NS and AS had. Interesting though that the Times leader today - no great supporter of the SNP - is saying that Leslie Evans position is untenable and NS should sack her. Politically, I doubt she can do that at least not at the moment or until the police investigation is concluded. I did think that NS's declaration of "Full confidence" in LE did have the ring of a football chairman about it. I doubt either LE or JM will have long careers in the SG though.

Murray Foote, the former editor of the Record, author of the Vow and all that, a man who "has gone on a journey" and now supports Indy, said there were three possible explanations and I agree with him. 1. That senior individuals had set out to deliberately get Salmond. 2.That the process was deliberately compromised at the start so as to invalidate it and clear him. 3. Incompetence. I don't buy 3 and in this case 2 looks unlikely which leaves you with the obvious explanation of 1. One thing I'd add though based on what's come out in the last couple of days, I think the agenda is more likely to be a #MeToo one rather than an anti-Indy, anti-SNP one.

TBH, that's my view as well. It's worth looking at Salmond's answer to Brian Taylor when questioned after the case yesterday, this ties in with what he's said all along. Brian Taylor - Are you entirely innocent of any claims of Sexual Misconduct? Alex Salmond - I'm certainly not guilty of any criminality, I'm certainly not guilty of what the Permanent Secretary is saying, I've never suggested, incidentally that I was an angel. You can read into that what you want but he's a very experienced politician and always chooses his words carefully and to me that reads that the complaints aren't completely fabricated but that they've been blown up beyond any proportion to what actually happened and I'm prepared to believe that is the case. That doesn't mean that the complainants lied or have made things up but it does look like they've been encouraged to pursue this by those with a different agenda. It used to be said that there is no smoke without fire however these days it seems that the slightest smouldering ember is enough to finish someone's career, particularly in politics..

I don't buy for a second that the first time the SG - by which I mean the Civil Service arm - only became aware of the "potential perception of bias" was when they were preparing the documentation for the case, it may well be that it was the first time the lawyers found out about it and realised the case was unwinnable and that's no doubt why they tried to stop this being disclosed and when that was denied they looked to settle as quickly as possible. I doubt we'll ever get to the point where we'll ever know the reality of what's gone on as - for different reasons, I don't think that any politicians want to pursue it. SNP MSPs who may well believe that Senior Civil Servants have conspired to deliberately target Salmond know that regardless of how much or how little involvement the FM had - and I think she is savvy enough to have had as little involvement as possible - that would reflect badly on her and the Government in general - political side - and so they won't want to go there as it will give opponents political capital. That was evident in the tone and substance of questions to her in HR yesterday. Opposition MSPs won't want to go there either as they obviously it wouldn't suit them for Salmond to be seen as any kind of victim here. As Machiavellian manoeuvring its a bit of genius really.

Fair enough but I don't see how that would work in practice. The point for the SNP to split is after, not before, independence.

Scottish Police Authority and Police Scotland are two separate bodies, important distinction as was made clear to me by someone I know who works at the SPA when I mentioned one of the previous cock-ups of PS to them. The Police Authority oversee the Police. That said, I wonder how big, i.e. how many people it employs, that the SPA is that it needs to have a Head of HR governance which would intuitively be a role for much larger institutions. I'd be amazed if the staff of the SPA were bigger than a couple of hundred, give or take. Therefore I wonder whether the role isn't to ensure HR governance in the SPA but to oversee HR within Police Scotland. ETA. To your point, if the role is purely internal within the SPA, then you would expect that role to have very limited interaction and involvement with Police Scotland itself as an organisation or individuals within it. If its an oversight role on PS, then it would be entirely the opposite. All that said, it beggars belief that a bunch of senior civil servants and apparently experienced HR professionals could have made such a fundamental mistake. It's either incompetence or deliberate and in both cases should be a case for being fired.

How would that be any different from the SNP in respect of its policies?

Salmond calling for Leslie Evans to resign, her jacket does look on a shoogly peg.

Sounds like that's exactly what's been going on, at least's that's what Salmond's advocate is arguing.

You could be right but I was thinking more in general rather than specifically to do with independence or politics. I remember when I went to see him once time in the nineties and the Daily Record had had a go at him that day about something he'd said, I can't remember what it was about but I remember thinking that it was a big of a hatchet job. He went on a - albeit funny - rant about it in his act. He was also on Who Do You Think You Are a while back and he turned out to be a lot more Scottish and a lot less Irish than he'd previously thought so at might have something to do with it as wel.

I wouldn't pay any attention to what the board's resident passive-aggressive bigot has to say - he's much better on ignore, trust me. There's plenty that I disagree with Scotty on but it beggars belief that anyone who knows him would describe him in those terms. He used to go around dressed as William Wallace, FFS.

In the 80s and 90s, Connolly seemed to be in a lot of conflict with Scotland and "Scottishness", he seems in later years to be a lot more at peace with that. I wonder if that's got anything to do with his upbringing, abandoned by his mother and sexually abused by his father.

When you drive across the border from Ontario into Quebec it's very noticeable when the signs changed and it's very odd. I suppose in a UK context a similar situation would be that road signs in Scotland, England and Northern Ireland were in English and Welsh while in Wales they were only in Welsh. That would go down well here Of course road signs are only part of this and in themselves pretty insignificant, the legislation goes a lot deeper and I guess the problem people have is that while the Canadian Federal Government go a long way to protecting the language rights of the francophone minority - which is a good thing - the Quebec government doesn't reciprocate with regard to its anglophone minority as its government only deals in French. At best It does seem to be hypocritical. I was only in Montreal which is much more multicultural and it didn't feel any different from any other North American city, interestingly I was told that linguistically the city splits geographically down the middle of the city, to the east of the Main Street is francophone, to the west is anglophone - or it could be the other way round. Ramy should still get a Sat Nav and pay extra for the Groundskeeper Willie commentary, I think it's £24-80.