UK politics - continuing into 2021

[innonimatu]

Unsurprisingly the SNP leadership has again deployed its pet crown prosecutor to censor the publication of evidence that would expose the lies they used. The excuse: "protecting the identity of the women". The women who made accusations deemed in the criminal court to have been unsubstantiated, in fact contradicted by ample evidence given of witnesses. And let's not forget those accusations that were so utterly absurd as to have been thrown out by the police without even being brought to court. And denounced as false.

Salmond exposes these as moves by the people involved in trying to frame him to obtain the status of "accusers" and have the pet prosecutor protect them from being named, with an abusive interpretation of the court order that prevents the inquiry into the events to name them even in situations unrelated to the accusations they made. If one of the accusers happens to be, say, first minister Sturgeon's assistant, then the inquiry pretends she doesn't exist and any talks she had with the FM don't exist!
Current events prove that reading of the events to be true.

Today parliament pretended to care about "protecting identities" by withdrawing the already published testimony by Salmond (actually, pretending to withdraw, the file remained accessible online) and publishing a censored version. The purpose? To prevent Salmond from mentioning key evidence in his oral testimony tomorrow. Under threat of being prosecuted by the First Minister's pet. Obviously he's not falling for it. He's pointed out that giving testimony under these conditions is absurd.

Please take notice: this move to censor the written testimony has absolutely nothing to do with protecting identities. By withdrawing an already published document and then publishing a censored version the only thing the prosecutor achieved was to highlight exactly what is being censored. The original is still published for comparison.
The purpose of this move was solely to change was is on the record as accepted by the inquiry committee. And to limit Salmon's ability to testimony. The committee is not even pretending to carry out an independent investigation anymore. And the crown prosecutor is not even pretending to be concerned about anything other than suppression of evidence inconvenient for those now in power in the scottish government.

The shameless, sheer scumminess of this is mind-bogging. False accusations. A criminal judgement based on false accusations. A phony inquiry. A "lord advocate" (chief prosecutor) who is also the chief legal adviser to the scottish government (bloody stupid institutional setup there!) acting to suppress evidence politically embarrassing to the people in government. And a party/government leadership that expects to get away with it because "if people dared vote against us they'd be betraying the independence project".
And just today, a parliament that had ruled it fair to publish a document, the contents of which that had already been published with the blessing of the very judge who had set the protective order on not disclosing certain names, and who made it clear that the order only applied to narrow circumstances. Now officially pulling that document and replacing it with a censored version because a prosecutor working on behalf of the sitting government threatened parliament?

The only reason the tories are not exploiting this sordid episode to the full is that they don't want to shine too much light on the kind of thing they are also capable of doing.

 

[Gorbles]

I mean, the Tories are exploiting it, as well as backing Salmond in this affair, which leads me to believe it's slightly more party-oriented than your continual cherrypicking of sources leads the thread to believe.

Naturally, you are right - it's hard to know what to believe when the Crown Office is taking the action it is doing. But that swings both ways - you do not know what was in the redacted report, and what Salmond might have been intending to stir up.

 

[innonimatu]

I do know what was on the redacted report. You can know it too, it's still available in numerous sites.Here you go, specifically what Sturgeon and her pet prosecutor had the comitee censor. It's not about protecting witnesses, it's about suppressing the call for Sturgeon to resign.

30. The First Minister told Parliament (see Official Report of 8th,10th & 17th January 2019) that she first learned of the complaints against me when I visited her home on 2nd April 2018. That is untrue and is a breach of the Ministerial Code. The evidence from Mr Aberdein that he personally discussed the existence of the complaints, and summarised the substance of the complaints, with the First Minister in a pre arranged meeting in Parliament on 29th March 2018 arranged for that specific purpose cannot be reconciled with the position of the First Minister to Parliament. The fact that Mr Aberdein learned of these complaints in early March 2018 from the Chief of Staff to the First Minister who thereafter arranged for the meeting between Mr Aberdein and the First Minister on 29th March to discuss them, is supported by his sharing that information contemporaneously with myself, Kevin Pringle and Duncan Hamilton, Advocate.

One of the paragraphs censored is where Salmond directly accuses Sturgeon of breaking the ministerial code, according to which she would have then to resign. Her pet prosecutor though that saying that would "endanger a witness"?

Also, I commented here on the framing of Salmond back when he was taken into criminal court. It already looked like he had been framed then, and the media was conspicuously silent about the numerous witnesses who denounced the lies of the accusation. There is a reason why, even as Sturgeon was the most popular politician in Scotland and openly hostile to him, even while the "me too" movement was making headlines, a jury of common citizens in Scotland found Salmond innocent. It was because the accusations were transparently false, with plenty of witnesses available to state that the claims were false. And the media lynched Salmond, publishing the false claims (the ones the jury rejected), and decided not to publish any of the statements by the witnesses. It stunk even then.

 

[Kyriakos]

Just because Scotland is trying (?) to leave the evil English country, it doesn't mean they aren't filled with corruption themselves. And wasn't Salmond the face of the fight to become independent in the first place?

 

[innonimatu]

Yes, Salmond was the previous Fist Minister and let the SNP when it fist came into government and got the referendum where Scotland nearly became independent. But that is besides the point.

It is not even the point that people in the current government of Scotland, the First Minister herself, plotted to destroy him politically by slandering him, and setting up an illegal investigation. Illegal because it was found to be "biased", meaning they tried to fit it so he couldn't defend himself. That shows the bad character of those people but it's dirty politics as (unfortunately) usual.

The point is that these people, having failed in their attempt, then in order to cover their tracks raised the stakes by promoting criminal accusations against Salmond. They would imprison an innocent men so that they could hide their failed political plot to get rid of any "threat" they had perceived from the prior leader possibly returning to politics. The accusations, all 13 of them that made it to court (the police threw away others, so preposterous they were) were refused as false in court. In a good legal system this ought to have led to the accusers being sued for perjury, but because of the "protected the alleged victims" thinking the accusers get a free pass at being protected even when their statements to court are rejected by a jury on evidence of other witnesses who show they are lying. So be it.

To make it worse, now the people who pushed these accusers into making the false accusations, who maliciously plotted to have an innocent men imprisoned just to prevent him from exposing their previous attempt at character assassination, are now being protected by the crown prosecution service, which deploys totally bogus claims, see above. They re corrupting the judiciary, at least the prosecutor's office.

 

[Kyriakos]

Reminds me of the unionist slogan: "better together".
Scotland alone would have fewer means for this type of corruption.

 

[Takhisis]

Reminds me of the unionist slogan: "better together".
Scotland alone would have fewer means for this type of corruption.

Poor countries being less corrupt is not somethign that correlates with RL experience.

 

[Kyriakos]

Poor countries being less corrupt is not somethign that correlates with RL experience.

Not less corrupt, just less means of corruption. Albania has no means to speak of, and likely is more corrupt than the UK.

 

[EnglishEdward]

There are many post independence countries where one president or
prime minister or their supporters kills or puts his predecessor in gaol.

Scotland hasn't even got to independence again (yet), but their second 'first
minister' has already tried to put their first 'first minister' in gaol.

Don't think we had that in over 300 years of British Prime Ministers.

Still perhaps they are following the McBeth and Duncan precedent.

 

[Mega Tsunami]

As innonimatu has said, there is something seriously rotten in the state of Scotland at the moment. The term ‘banana republic’ is being bandied about – and for good reason IMO.

It has become so sleazy up north, the Nationalists make the ’97 Tories seem quite tame. It’s not just about a battle between a current and former FM, it appears the Crown Prosecution is very much in Sturgeon’s pocket. And the press up there is either too week or too into independence to be effective at all.

And that’s what’s going on – democracy can go to hell in the pursuit of independence.

And even the lefty press down here don’t seem that bothered, even though an independent Scotland would mean we are even more likely to have a Tory government.

Well you should all read as much of these pieces as you can, written by two Scots in the Tory press, to get an idea of just how bad things are up north.


ANDREW NEIL: Censorship, bullying, threats of jail... how Nicola Sturgeon's storm troops turned Scotland into a banana republic without the bananas

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/...m-troops-turned-Scotland-banana-republic.html



Also The Times (paywall) has a piece entitled “Sturgeon’s Scotland has the stench of decay”
The SNP’s infighting and plotting is as bad as when Labour ruled north of the border like a squalid one-party state

When the Scottish parliament was established in 1999, the idea was that it would become a beacon of democratic accountability and good governance.

Look at it now.

The opposition and some members of the ruling SNP say that Holyrood has become a sewer of corruption centred on an out-of-control executive prepared to suppress evidence and abuse power.
(…)

Alistair Bonnington, a former honorary professor of law at Glasgow University, describes in blunt terms the Crown Office’s intervention this week to censor Alex Salmond’s evidence to the Scottish parliament: “I look on in horror at the present degeneration of the Crown into what appears to be a lickspittle arm of the current SNP government.”
(…)
Today, as in the denouement of Animal Farm, when the revolution is over and the animals can no longer tell the pigs from the humans, the SNP has become what it set out to destroy. It has turned into old Scottish Labour, only much worse and more controlling and cynical than Labour ever was.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sturgeons-scotland-has-the-stench-of-decay-f5qbh5hl5

 

[Samson]

As innonimatu has said, there is something seriously rotten in the state of Scotland at the moment. The term ‘banana republic’ is being bandied about – and for good reason IMO.

It has become so sleazy up north, the Nationalists make the ’97 Tories seem quite tame. It’s not just about a battle between a current and former FM, it appears the Crown Prosecution is very much in Sturgeon’s pocket. And the press up there is either too week or too into independence to be effective at all.

And that’s what’s going on – democracy can go to hell in the pursuit of independence.

And even the lefty press down here don’t seem that bothered, even though an independent Scotland would mean we are even more likely to have a Tory government.

Well you should all read as much of these pieces as you can, written by two Scots in the Tory press, to get an idea of just how bad things are up north.


ANDREW NEIL: Censorship, bullying, threats of jail... how Nicola Sturgeon's storm troops turned Scotland into a banana republic without the bananas

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/...m-troops-turned-Scotland-banana-republic.html



Also The Times (paywall) has a piece entitled “Sturgeon’s Scotland has the stench of decay”
The SNP’s infighting and plotting is as bad as when Labour ruled north of the border like a squalid one-party state

When the Scottish parliament was established in 1999, the idea was that it would become a beacon of democratic accountability and good governance.

Look at it now.

The opposition and some members of the ruling SNP say that Holyrood has become a sewer of corruption centred on an out-of-control executive prepared to suppress evidence and abuse power.
(…)

Alistair Bonnington, a former honorary professor of law at Glasgow University, describes in blunt terms the Crown Office’s intervention this week to censor Alex Salmond’s evidence to the Scottish parliament: “I look on in horror at the present degeneration of the Crown into what appears to be a lickspittle arm of the current SNP government.”
(…)
Today, as in the denouement of Animal Farm, when the revolution is over and the animals can no longer tell the pigs from the humans, the SNP has become what it set out to destroy. It has turned into old Scottish Labour, only much worse and more controlling and cynical than Labour ever was.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sturgeons-scotland-has-the-stench-of-decay-f5qbh5hl5

The Times is firewalled, not clicking on the daily hate.

 

[Senethro]

Some seriously salty grapes in evidence! Do they want Scotland or not?

 

[EnglishEdward]

Who is the "they" in your question?

 

[Senethro]

The English/British establishment, here seen largely talking to itself.

 

[Gorbles]

I do like that the scaremongering has to compare the SNP to Labour specifically, thus showcasing a definite ideological bias that showcases quite effectively the extent to which the Tory party are, in fact, capitalising on the rhetoric.

 

[Senethro]

I like the simultaneous desire/revulsion. "We want Scotland, but we want a compliant Scotland. The ungrateful people of Scotland should choose the Union, unreformed warts and all. Why don't they like us as we are?"

 

[Mega Tsunami]

The Times is firewalled, not clicking on the daily hate.

Just for you, here is that piece by Andrew Neil. You really should read it if you want to know just how bad democracy is in Scotland. As he says, if this was Texas misbehaving in this way, the Feds would have been sent in by now.

Spoiler :

These are dark, even dangerous days in Scotland. The stramash between the country's two most famous politicians, Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, has resulted in vital public documents being censored or banned, important information being suppressed, the media cajoled and cowed, the legal system brought into disrepute, the Scottish Parliament neutered and even bloggers being threatened with jail.

The relentless twists and turns in the Salmond-Sturgeon saga make it hard to follow, not just in the rest of the UK, to which Scotland is increasingly another country, but even north of the border.

So many have just switched off. But that is a mistake because what is happening in Scotland is a clear and present danger to democratic accountability, the impartial rule of law and a free Press – an integral part of these islands.
So let us stand back from the mind-boggling detail and consider the enormity of what is happening.
A former Scottish National Party first minister of Scotland (Salmond) is accusing the current SNP First Minister (Sturgeon) of lying to and/or misleading the Scottish Parliament.

He also claims she was part of a concerted effort, involving the Scottish Government and SNP executives (including the party's chief executive, who happens to be Sturgeon's husband), to destroy his reputation, even to the extent of seeing him jailed.

These are extraordinary claims. But not as extraordinary as the official response, which has insisted that crucial evidence that Salmond thinks corroborates his claims be censored and remain unpublished. This in a democracy. In 2021.

Sturgeon, who continues to ride high in the polls ahead of May's Holyrood elections but has started to look somewhat flustered, emerged from her bunker this week to state to the cameras there was not 'a shred of evidence' to support Salmond's accusations.


Since her own Crown Office –Scotland's public prosecution service – had warned even the Scottish Parliament, never mind the media, not to publish his evidence, it was a wee bit difficult to put either his or her statement to the test.

His claims are being investigated as part of a Scottish parliamentary inquiry into why the Sturgeon Government made such a hash of its handling of sexual harassment accusations against Salmond in 2018 that it ended up shelling out more than £500,000 to cover his legal costs in a judicial review of its actions. The Government lost because the court concluded its procedures were 'unlawful', 'unfair' and 'tainted with apparent bias'.
Two weeks after the Government's case crashed and burned – at huge taxpayer expense – Salmond was arrested and charged with a long list of sexual offences, of which the most serious was attempted rape. He was acquitted on all counts by a jury last March – although that criminal trial forms no part of the current inquiry.

When the parliamentary inquiry was established, Sturgeon promised in January 2019 to 'co-operate fully' with it and to 'provide whatever material' it wants. In the intervening two years the Scottish Government has stymied legitimate evidence gathering on 60 to 70 occasions. When asked for the First Minister's diary for April 2, 2018, for instance, a blank sheet of paper was produced. It turned out to be the day of a crucial meeting with Salmond at Sturgeon's home in Glasgow, during which they discussed the allegations against him for the first time. Blank sheets were also provided for other crucial events.
At one stage the search function of the Scottish Government's Freedom of Information website stopped producing results for certain contentious documents.

The Scottish Government has refused to publish relevant legal advice to shed light on why it persisted in fighting the judicial review case, even when it knew it was heading for defeat. But the most egregious attempts to stop relevant evidence from being published happened this year. When Salmond made his submission public last month the Scottish media was wary of touching it, given all the legal threats flying around.

The Spectator magazine, of which I am chairman, was not subject to any warnings and posted it online anyway. The Scottish Crown Office, the legal arm of the Sturgeon Government, wrote to complain and demanded we take out at least one paragraph. We complied and left the rest online.

The Spectator then went to court in Edinburgh to establish that there was a legal basis for publication. The court agreed. The Crown Office did not object. The Scottish Parliament, after much faffing about (as is its way), decided it could publish the Salmond submission too, thereby paving the way for the former first minister to testify before it. So, all good. Democratic accountability restored.

Not really. The SNP decided to ramp up the argument that publishing the Salmond submission could lead to identifying the women who complained about Salmond's behaviour, and whose anonymity was rightly guaranteed by the court.

It was all nonsense. Anonymity was never at risk. But the Crown Office had used the same argument in the past and it was wheeled out again, oiled by those who had most to gain from it. A group of women who claimed to work for the Scottish Parliament posted identical 'spontaneous' tweets asserting, with no evidence (they hadn't even seen the submission), that publication would enable identification of the complainers. They turned out to work for the SNP, not Parliament, so it's not difficult to work out who was behind that cack-handed pile-on.
The Crown Office dusted off its old arguments and joined the chorus for censorship. In a craven act of surrender, Parliament decided to pull its publication of a submission it had only just posted, then repost it with major redactions as dictated by the Crown Office, shredding what credibility the inquiry had left in the process.

It is no coincidence that the censored bits go to the heart of Salmond's claims about Sturgeon's honesty before Parliament. To mislead it is a resigning matter under the ministerial code. What did she know and when did she know it? That was the crucial question in the Watergate hearings. The chances of the inquiry asking it are now slim.

Salmond cannot now be questioned about these bits of his submission. Nor can Sturgeon when she appears. Nor can the inquiry take into account anything it has not published when coming to its conclusions. So, job done for the Sturgeon camp. The lengths to which they have gone to redact and censor would shame North Korea.
Democratic accountability and transparency in Scotland are choked in a Kafkaesque fog.

The Crown Office, which is meant to be independent, has become the 'lickspittle arm' of the SNP Government, says Alistair Bonnington, former professor at Glasgow University's School of Law. It operates 'at the direct command of the cabal currently at the head of the Scottish Government'.

The Crown Office is in crisis. In a recent case involving the famous Glasgow Rangers football team it was forced to admit to a 'malicious prosecution' – legalese for proceeding with a prosecution even though you've been advised that you don't have enough evidence to secure a conviction.

It's already had to pay out over £20million in compensation and legal fees. The final bill could be close to £100million.

Nobody has been sacked. Nobody has resigned. Perhaps becoming the legal shock troops of the Sturgeon Government in its dealings with the Salmond insurrection is a way to ensure survival.

And to a compromised legal system we must also add a supine press (the Scottish Daily Mail being an honourable exception). The broadcasters are especially compliant, often little more than Sturgeon TV, while Scotland's once powerful big-city newspapers are shadows of their former selves.

They no longer have the editorial resources to hold government to account or the funds to stand up to legal bullying. The Scotsman, for example, now barely sells 10,000 copies a day. The fact it took The Spectator to go to a Scottish court speaks volumes for the sad state of the Scottish media.
If Scotland was Texas, the Justice Department in Washington DC would have sent in the Feds by now to investigate the various breaches of first amendment rights, which guarantee free speech and protect a robust Press.

But Westminster stands by powerless as rights meant to be UK-wide – independent law officers, a parliament prepared to hold government to account, a press strong enough to speak truth to power – are trammelled by the power of a near one-party state.

Scotland's destiny was surely never to resemble a banana republic – without the bananas.

 

[Samson]

Just for you, here is that piece by Andrew Neil. You really should read it if you want to know just how bad democracy is in Scotland. As he says, if this was Texas misbehaving in this way, the Feds would have been sent in by now.

Spoiler :

These are dark, even dangerous days in Scotland. The stramash between the country's two most famous politicians, Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon, has resulted in vital public documents being censored or banned, important information being suppressed, the media cajoled and cowed, the legal system brought into disrepute, the Scottish Parliament neutered and even bloggers being threatened with jail.

The relentless twists and turns in the Salmond-Sturgeon saga make it hard to follow, not just in the rest of the UK, to which Scotland is increasingly another country, but even north of the border.

So many have just switched off. But that is a mistake because what is happening in Scotland is a clear and present danger to democratic accountability, the impartial rule of law and a free Press – an integral part of these islands.
So let us stand back from the mind-boggling detail and consider the enormity of what is happening.
A former Scottish National Party first minister of Scotland (Salmond) is accusing the current SNP First Minister (Sturgeon) of lying to and/or misleading the Scottish Parliament.

He also claims she was part of a concerted effort, involving the Scottish Government and SNP executives (including the party's chief executive, who happens to be Sturgeon's husband), to destroy his reputation, even to the extent of seeing him jailed.

These are extraordinary claims. But not as extraordinary as the official response, which has insisted that crucial evidence that Salmond thinks corroborates his claims be censored and remain unpublished. This in a democracy. In 2021.

Sturgeon, who continues to ride high in the polls ahead of May's Holyrood elections but has started to look somewhat flustered, emerged from her bunker this week to state to the cameras there was not 'a shred of evidence' to support Salmond's accusations.


Since her own Crown Office –Scotland's public prosecution service – had warned even the Scottish Parliament, never mind the media, not to publish his evidence, it was a wee bit difficult to put either his or her statement to the test.

His claims are being investigated as part of a Scottish parliamentary inquiry into why the Sturgeon Government made such a hash of its handling of sexual harassment accusations against Salmond in 2018 that it ended up shelling out more than £500,000 to cover his legal costs in a judicial review of its actions. The Government lost because the court concluded its procedures were 'unlawful', 'unfair' and 'tainted with apparent bias'.
Two weeks after the Government's case crashed and burned – at huge taxpayer expense – Salmond was arrested and charged with a long list of sexual offences, of which the most serious was attempted rape. He was acquitted on all counts by a jury last March – although that criminal trial forms no part of the current inquiry.

When the parliamentary inquiry was established, Sturgeon promised in January 2019 to 'co-operate fully' with it and to 'provide whatever material' it wants. In the intervening two years the Scottish Government has stymied legitimate evidence gathering on 60 to 70 occasions. When asked for the First Minister's diary for April 2, 2018, for instance, a blank sheet of paper was produced. It turned out to be the day of a crucial meeting with Salmond at Sturgeon's home in Glasgow, during which they discussed the allegations against him for the first time. Blank sheets were also provided for other crucial events.
At one stage the search function of the Scottish Government's Freedom of Information website stopped producing results for certain contentious documents.

The Scottish Government has refused to publish relevant legal advice to shed light on why it persisted in fighting the judicial review case, even when it knew it was heading for defeat. But the most egregious attempts to stop relevant evidence from being published happened this year. When Salmond made his submission public last month the Scottish media was wary of touching it, given all the legal threats flying around.

The Spectator magazine, of which I am chairman, was not subject to any warnings and posted it online anyway. The Scottish Crown Office, the legal arm of the Sturgeon Government, wrote to complain and demanded we take out at least one paragraph. We complied and left the rest online.

The Spectator then went to court in Edinburgh to establish that there was a legal basis for publication. The court agreed. The Crown Office did not object. The Scottish Parliament, after much faffing about (as is its way), decided it could publish the Salmond submission too, thereby paving the way for the former first minister to testify before it. So, all good. Democratic accountability restored.

Not really. The SNP decided to ramp up the argument that publishing the Salmond submission could lead to identifying the women who complained about Salmond's behaviour, and whose anonymity was rightly guaranteed by the court.

It was all nonsense. Anonymity was never at risk. But the Crown Office had used the same argument in the past and it was wheeled out again, oiled by those who had most to gain from it. A group of women who claimed to work for the Scottish Parliament posted identical 'spontaneous' tweets asserting, with no evidence (they hadn't even seen the submission), that publication would enable identification of the complainers. They turned out to work for the SNP, not Parliament, so it's not difficult to work out who was behind that cack-handed pile-on.
The Crown Office dusted off its old arguments and joined the chorus for censorship. In a craven act of surrender, Parliament decided to pull its publication of a submission it had only just posted, then repost it with major redactions as dictated by the Crown Office, shredding what credibility the inquiry had left in the process.

It is no coincidence that the censored bits go to the heart of Salmond's claims about Sturgeon's honesty before Parliament. To mislead it is a resigning matter under the ministerial code. What did she know and when did she know it? That was the crucial question in the Watergate hearings. The chances of the inquiry asking it are now slim.

Salmond cannot now be questioned about these bits of his submission. Nor can Sturgeon when she appears. Nor can the inquiry take into account anything it has not published when coming to its conclusions. So, job done for the Sturgeon camp. The lengths to which they have gone to redact and censor would shame North Korea.
Democratic accountability and transparency in Scotland are choked in a Kafkaesque fog.

The Crown Office, which is meant to be independent, has become the 'lickspittle arm' of the SNP Government, says Alistair Bonnington, former professor at Glasgow University's School of Law. It operates 'at the direct command of the cabal currently at the head of the Scottish Government'.

The Crown Office is in crisis. In a recent case involving the famous Glasgow Rangers football team it was forced to admit to a 'malicious prosecution' – legalese for proceeding with a prosecution even though you've been advised that you don't have enough evidence to secure a conviction.

It's already had to pay out over £20million in compensation and legal fees. The final bill could be close to £100million.

Nobody has been sacked. Nobody has resigned. Perhaps becoming the legal shock troops of the Sturgeon Government in its dealings with the Salmond insurrection is a way to ensure survival.

And to a compromised legal system we must also add a supine press (the Scottish Daily Mail being an honourable exception). The broadcasters are especially compliant, often little more than Sturgeon TV, while Scotland's once powerful big-city newspapers are shadows of their former selves.

They no longer have the editorial resources to hold government to account or the funds to stand up to legal bullying. The Scotsman, for example, now barely sells 10,000 copies a day. The fact it took The Spectator to go to a Scottish court speaks volumes for the sad state of the Scottish media.
If Scotland was Texas, the Justice Department in Washington DC would have sent in the Feds by now to investigate the various breaches of first amendment rights, which guarantee free speech and protect a robust Press.

But Westminster stands by powerless as rights meant to be UK-wide – independent law officers, a parliament prepared to hold government to account, a press strong enough to speak truth to power – are trammelled by the power of a near one-party state.

Scotland's destiny was surely never to resemble a banana republic – without the bananas.

Interesting, but could do with some specifics. For example, some documents were not available, but it indicates they are now and therefore that they were being covered up. Why not provide links to them so we can see what was being covered up?

 

[Senethro]

One thing Unionists might want to take away from the failure of Remain is the ineffectiveness of purely negative campaigning!

 

[EnglishEdward]

I like the simultaneous desire/revulsion. "We want Scotland, but we want a compliant Scotland. The ungrateful people of Scotland should choose the Union, unreformed warts and all. Why don't they like us as we are?"

Precisely who is saying that?