Chaos in Scotland.

[FD2]

Point of law - if he sued her for slander, would he have to prove his innocence or she have to prove his guilt?

[4mastacker]

Point of law - if he sued her for slander, would he have to prove his innocence or she have to prove his guilt?

Why should he have to prove his innocence - he's already been found "not guilty"* in a criminal court? Was Sturgeon stating a fact or just her opinion?



* Although I believe one verdict was "not proven".

[FD2]

She will claim she was talking about the 'not proven' case...

[Undried Plum]

Not Proven is a full acquittal, not some kind of half-way house.

The bastard verdict, as it has been called, is an accident of history. Traditionally a Scots criminal trial called upon the jury to decide whether the Crown has Proven its case or has Not Proven it. No mention of guilt or of innocence.

At the time of the Union of the Crowns, Scotland was brought into line with England in requiring a verdict declaring guilt or no guilt. They formally abolished the Proven concept and replaced it with the English system of Guilty or Not Guilty. Also abolishing the Not Proven verdict seemed to be specious and redundant, so it remained in place by neglect.

I repeat: a Not Proven verdict has the same force of Law as does the Not Guilty one.

Alex Salmond was fully acquitted on all 13 of the trumped up politically motivated charges.

[FD2]

Thanks UP. It was meant as a comment on Sturgeon rather than the Scottish legal system. I'm not sure what the difference is between her and Salmond in terms of ability to break up the Union. Other character aspects I shouldn't comment on.

About 6 years ago I was staying in a B&B in Pitlochry with Mrs FD2 and a Scottish relation and his wife. At breakfast I spoke to a shy young woman whose accent told us that she was from the Gordon area and as it turned out, Inverurie. Her husband, on hearing my English accent, immediately launched into a rant about how successful Scotland was going to be after independence, before he even knew what my opinion was on the matter. It turns out he was one of Salmond's team and a complete fanatic. He got a **** on when I asked him how all the grand plans were going to be paid for - more than anything because he was an annoying tw*t I felt like winding up. Anyway I shouldn't judge Eck by a fanatical supporter but it gave me a little taste of the sort of bilious rhetoric which will be deployed.

Any of us who have stayed in Scotland are familiar with the Not Proven verdict but thanks for reminding me. Personally I'm against a break up but it should be settled in the right manner by the people concerned in full knowledge of real facts and not fag packet versions.

[Pontius Navigator]

Salmond tells Sturgeon to bury hatchet after defections

from the Telegraph. This begs the question:

Where?

[CharlieOneSix]

Scottish law has had some odd quirks over the years as UP describes with the Not Proven verdict in courts. I almost suffered from one of those quirks. Forty years ago I married a Scots lass who had two young children then age 7 and 9. She had lived with the children's father (Mr X) for 11 years and took his surname, although they never married, and she was known locally as Mrs X. The father, also a Scot, and mother separated about three years before I met the mother. He was a very well off guy but for the two years previous to my meeting the mother he had failed to provide financially for the children, nor had he been in contact with them. He worked mainly in Middle East at that time.

After about two years of my marriage – of which the father was not aware – the children expressed a desire to their mother that I should adopt them. Legal advice was that the father need not be consulted as he had abandoned the children. We started the ball rolling but the local Sheriff decided that even though the father had effectively abandoned the children he had to be informed of the potential adoption. The father went ballistic when he was informed.

After a short while my wife received papers from a solicitor in Edinburgh stating that the father intended pursuing a case in the Court of Session to ensure that his relationship with my wife was decreed as having been “an irregular marriage of cohabitation with habit and repute”. This form of irregular marriage in Scotland goes back to the 16th Century. Mr X hoped by bringing the case he could stop the adoption.

As well as getting the marriage confirmed in this way he also sought an immediate divorce on the grounds of my adultery with the children’s mother as our marriage would be null and void and my wife could potentially face a charge of bigamy! I am not joking!! Our barrister told us that a decree of an irregular marriage was usually sought by a woman who had been abandoned by a man after several years of cohabitation. The woman’s intention would be to get financial support for herself and any children. The barrister said that there had never been a case of a man seeking a judgement of an irregular marriage with a woman and the case would create Scottish legal history!

So the whole thing went to the Court of Session in Edinburgh. The children were interviewed separately in the Judge’s rooms. Mr X became threatening and abusive outside the court and my wife and children plus me had to led away through corridors to another exit. A couple of days later I could see the dreadful effect this episode was having on the children and I convinced my wife we should drop the adoption. I arranged to meet on my own with Mr X. The adoption was dropped, Mr X agreed to pay all our legal fees, he agreed to support the children and visit them, and he paid for a private education for them both. Oddly, Mr X and I became quite good friends afterwards and used to meet up if we were both in London at the same time.

The court case happened 36 years ago. Since then Scottish law has changed and irregular marriage by way of cohabitation with habit and repute was removed from the statute books in 2006. That Mrs C16 and I subsequently divorced 10 years after the court case after she left to take up with an old boyfriend.

Ain’t life fun!

[FD2]

Worms turning?

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-sc ... s-56583377

The right wing papers are a little more brutal in their coverage.

[Undried Plum]

Worms turning?

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-sc ... s-56583377

The right wing papers are a little more brutal in their coverage.

Where was Banquo at that gig?

"As the weird women promised, and, I fear, Thou play’dst most foully for’t.”

[om15]

Shamelessly pinched from Arrse, but funny,

1617205322048.png (721.43 KiB) Viewed 494 times

[Undried Plum]

Duly forwarded to the ferrmurr who does the land to the Nor' West of Blackburn.

[Pontius Navigator]

Nicola Sturgeon launches the SNP’s virtual Holyrood electoral campaign with the help of a soapbox. She will hold a series of digital rallies.

Nice picture of wee Jimmy in the Telegraph, I bet that annoyed her.
The vitriol she is heaping on her former friend suggests she is very worried.

[FD2]

Now this will make the 'debates' interesting if it gets approval. Sales of anti-diarrhoea medications rise sharply in Auchterarder!


Scottish election 2021: Alex Salmond demands Alba Party included in TV debates

https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/ ... e=hs_email

[Boac]

Well, he shouldn't have too much of a problem with his Party Political broadcasts with his own TV channel? https://www.bbc.co.uk/tv/bbcalba

[FD2]

MAKE ALBA GREAT AGAIN! https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/0 ... ncy-funds/

Why aren't Scots outraged by Sturgeon's irresponsible use of emergency funds?

Once again, Nicola Sturgeon has pulled a Trump in full view of the media and the public
Tom Harris
1 April 2021 • 5:34pm
Tom Harris

Since the rise and fall of Donald Trump, it is common to attempt to smear one’s political opponents by suggesting they possess one or more of the attributes exhibited by the 44th president during his four tumultuous years in office.

All colours of the political spectrum have attempted to co-opt Trump hatred for their own ends. The British Left try to convince others (and themselves) that Boris Johnson is our very own version of The Orange One. A far more convincing comparison is with Jeremy Corbyn, who upended the Labour Party in much the same way that Trump did the GOP, and put the extremists in control.

There are even valid comparisons to be made between Trump and Nicola Sturgeon: her insistent demands for Scottish independence smack of the same nationalist exceptionalism that so lowered the esteem in which America was held by the rest of the world. The first minister might as well name her manifesto for the forthcoming Holyrood elections, “Make Scotland Great Again”.

But you have to go further back in Trump’s career, to before he won the Republican nomination for president in 2016, to understand the special quality that Sturgeon and the former president share. “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” he told a receptive audience. He then went on to win the general election so he probably had a point.

Trump was talking not about himself but about the loyalty of his supporters. A British example of such narcissistic political chutzpah might be, for example, if the leader of a devolved administration accepted large amounts of cash from central (UK) government that was aimed specifically at helping in the fight against covid and the pandemic, and then that politician using the cash instead to fund electoral bribes for the electorate.

That would be outrageous, right? I mean, surely we haven’t gone so far down the Trumpian road where such behaviour would result in anything other than electoral humiliation and expulsion from office?

Yet according to the independent think tank, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), that is exactly what Sturgeon is doing right now, in full view of the media and the public. What’s more, the consequence of this most cynical and dishonest political sleight-of-hand looks likely to be her re-election for another five-year term of office.

The IFS have found that money sent northwards by the Treasury to help deal with covid will be used instead to fund free school meals for primary pupils and free bus travel for under-22-year-olds – key elements of the SNP’s manifesto. There may well be merit in these policies, but that’s not what the money was intended for. Like the rest of the country, Scotland is on its knees thanks to lockdown. Thanks to social distancing measures and travel restrictions, hospitals may have been able to weather the storm, but the rest of the economy has not fared as well.

The emergency funds supplied from the UK coffers are a vital and welcome benefit of being part of the United Kingdom, but they were always meant to be temporary fixes. If Sturgeon and the SNP use that cash to fund permanent, long-term policies, funding will have to be found from elsewhere in the Scottish budget before long (but fortunately only after the polling places have closed). Far more importantly, that money needs to be spent on ameliorating the immediate threat covid, not on anything else.

Even the “generous” (not a term the health unions would use) four per cent raise for NHS staff that Sturgeon announced at the start of her re-election campaign could be partly funded from the Treasury’s covid money, according to the IFS.

Scots should be outraged at this irresponsible deceit, but polls suggest they’re not too bothered. Perhaps they will be more moved by the IFS’s other major finding – that, thanks to the Barnett Formula, used by the Treasury to calculate the block grant to the nations and regions of the UK, Scotland receives £1.30 for every pound spent in England. This gets to the heart of what devolution is supposed to be about. Too often it is painted as no more than a division of “reserved” and “devolved” powers. It is that, of course, but more importantly it is a mechanism by which any part of the UK which needs financial support can get it through the pooling and sharing of national resources. It is this mechanism which the SNP wish to surrender.

So a nationalist government that wants to end the subsidy paid to it by the rest of the UK is, in the meantime, using that same subsidy – plus the extra cash intended to fight covid – to fund electoral bribes in an attempt to persuade Scots to vote for independence and, therefore, a permanent end to high spending on services.

As an outline for a political satire it requires some work. As an homage to the politician who boasted that however badly he behaved he would always remain popular, it is fascinatingly and depressingly accurate.


Why the hell aren't the English outraged?!

[Pontius Navigator]

Why the hell aren't the English outraged?!

Some are. Most are ignorant. All are impotent.

The politicians daren't ask the UK to vote on Scottish independence. They might have thought we would not have voted for Brexit but they have little doubt how we would support Indy.

[Undried Plum]

What the British government should do is clear, to me.

The Barnett Billions should be paid directly to the local Councils on a Project basis. If a Council wants to improve a road or a school or a hospital or whatever, they should receive their payments directly and accountably and should be required to put up a very large sign at the locus stating that the thing is funded by the British government and there should be a very large British flag on the sign.

That's what the EU did when they gave us a partial rebate to fund something good. We should do the same sort of thing, only instead of the ring-a-ring-of-roses flag there should be the Union flag. It's British money, paid for by fellow Brits in Britain.

We porridgepigs have it pretty good. We have all kinds of freebies, such as free prescriptions etc, that are paid for by fellow Brits, not all of whom are wealthy most of whom are not wealthy. I think our benefactors deserve some recognition and respect.

[Boac]

they have little doubt how we would support Indy.

- enlighten me?

PS I'm not impotent.....................

[TheGreenGoblin]

I do declare that Scotland has not been this chaotic since the Great Iron Bru Riots of 69!

[Undried Plum]

.