The Alex Salmond Trial - Page 2 - Politics - Tartan Army Message Board Jump to content

The Alex Salmond Trial


exile

Recommended Posts

On 3/9/2020 at 5:08 PM, Caledonian Craig said:

And where are Ted Heath and that other eminent Tory supporter Jimmy Savile in that sequence of photos?

Surely Salmond will be seeing this rag in court very soon.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have been following the trial on and off and was interested to see the difference made when Craig Murray was reporting, relative to the mainstream media. It seemed to me that the MSM headlines always emphasised the charges over the defence arguments. Most of the reports seemed to be "Salmond accused of X" or else "Salmond denied X." - in each case emphasising the connection to the alleged crimes X. If you only ever read the mainstream/Unionist press, it's no wonder that so many comments are saying things like "Really?" or "Surprising verdict". 

A few things struck me today, - how soon the verdict was reached; how it would have been easy for the jury to make more or all of the charges "not proven" (if they sort of thought he did it but couldn't prove it, or shied from putting him in jail) - but that only happened once; and a point made by Wings over Scotland, that if it's true the prosecution went fishing for evidence down the years, it's surprising that no evidence came from Westminster - all those years of living and working in London (where, remember, journalists have successfully trawled for and found indiscretions among other SNP MPs) - they didn't find any independent accusers there - or anywhere.

So now the boot is on the other foot - not only any of the accusers colluding in perjury, but all those who made defamatory accusations right through the trail and before and after...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Jim Beem said:

Ludicrous waste of time and money, how can it go to a criminal case when it didnt even get through a civil case

Two totally different cases about totally different things.

The civil case was a judicial review into the process carried out by the SG in their investigation, it was nothing to do with any of the allegations.  In fact the Scottish Government investigation only covered two complaints and I've no idea if these were even amongst those that went to court.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

34 minutes ago, aaid said:

Two totally different cases about totally different things.

The civil case was a judicial review into the process carried out by the SG in their investigation, it was nothing to do with any of the allegations.  In fact the Scottish Government investigation only covered two complaints and I've no idea if these were even amongst those that went to court.

Second paragraph, fair enough. 👍 Cant agree with your first though bit of a stretch IMO  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting that some pro-Salmond sympathisers are gunning for Sturgeon as she must have been complicit in pushing the allegations, while anti-SNP critics are gunning for Sturgeon as she must have been trying to cover them up!

Edited by exile
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, exile said:

Interesting that some pro-Salmond sympathisers are gunning for Sturgeon as she must have been complicit in pushing the allegations, while anti-SNP critics are gunning for Sturgeon as she must have been trying to cover them up!

Everybody seems to think she was behind this, is there clear evidence she was involved. I think she was just trying to be fair and be impartial so that justice could be done. Was sturgeon one of the accusers? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

34 minutes ago, mccaughey85 said:

Everybody seems to think she was behind this, is there clear evidence she was involved. I think she was just trying to be fair and be impartial so that justice could be done. Was sturgeon one of the accusers? 

Sturgeon seems way too canny to get involved directly or indirectly in something so cack-handed as this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, mccaughey85 said:

Everybody seems to think she was behind this, is there clear evidence she was involved. I think she was just trying to be fair and be impartial so that justice could be done. Was sturgeon one of the accusers? 

I don't know, and was not implying she was. My guess would be that faced with the allegations, her instinct was to listen to the complaints and support her staff/colleagues (or whoever they are) and be seen to follow due process, even if it put her mentor in a difficult position. Rather than be actively plotting. IMHO. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, mccaughey85 said:

Everybody seems to think she was behind this, is there clear evidence she was involved. I think she was just trying to be fair and be impartial so that justice could be done. Was sturgeon one of the accusers? 

If she was an accuser, wouldn't people have spotted her missing while attending court? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
2 hours ago, aaid said:

In what would be the least surprising news of the day, Craig Murray has been charged with contempt of court over his reporting of the Salmond trial.

Do we know yet the detail of what he revealed that the newspapers already hadn't?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well I read all of Craig Murray's reporting on the trial and I was not able to really pinpoint any of the accusers. Sure I had a few suspects but I really cant say who they were based on his articles. Can anyone quote what they think was the alleged contempt of court?

The only time I think I was able to nail one accuser down for sure was when Wings reported all those MSM journalists for identifying one of them as an attendee at a meeting with NS and AS on a certain specific date. Apparently that made it easy to identify one of them. So will all of them be getting accused of contempt as well I wonder. :rolleyes: 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Dave78 said:

Do we know yet the detail of what he revealed that the newspapers already hadn't?

I've no idea and for pretty obvious reasons I doubt that will ever be in the public domain.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's a shambles loads of newspapers had an article which easily allowed the identification of one of the accusers, and nothing is done and it was reported multiple times.

Again it's all to do with maintaining the status quo.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From recollection the closest Murray got was saying that 8 out of the 12 accusers were from NS's "inner circle".

That was important to report at the time to make sense of AS's defense lawyer saying there had been a conspiracy from within the SNP's upper echelons to keep AS from coming back into politics. He really had to report that IMHO but we will see how the judges view it (I think I read on his blog that contempt is a judges only trial.)

At most it gave you a basket of people who might be an accuser assuming you knew who saw NS regularly enough to qualify as a member of her "inner circle". I did not. I tried and I was not able to say who any of them were with any level of certainty. I have a few suspects but that was from the previous judicial review fiasco. 

So hopefully they have a hard time proving this as I don't think he actually crossed over the line and his reporting was invaluable compared to the one sided shite in the MSM. No doubt a crowd funding page coming to help with legal fees...

Edited by thplinth
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it is one of these funny things whereby if you already knew who the accusers were anyway (by being already hooked into the SNP for example) then it would have felt like Murray was identifying them with the jigsaw bits of information. He might have thrown out the odd piece of the jigsaw but nowhere near enough to pin any of them down for sure IMHO. I say that because I genuinely did not know who they were and tried my bestest to work it out and I don't think you can based on Murray (or Wing's) posts. (Yes on Wings reporting others but not on anything he directly said at the time). 

Edited by thplinth
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...