A joke someone made yesterday reminded me of a friend I had in the FCO, Emma Nelson, who died terribly young about 20 years ago. I wanted to say a few things about her that occurred to me in the context of the Alex Salmond case. In doing so I am conscious that Emma’s family might see this, and I want to be plain that no disrespect is intended at all. Quite the opposite.
Emma worked under me as a clerk, when I was Head of Maritime Section at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. She was about fifteen years younger than me and a long way junior in the service. There were several people between me and her in the hierarchy, but I saw a great deal of her every day because, the way the FCO then worked, everything was on paper and she produced all the papers and both filled and emptied my trays, and magically found all kinds of old documents from my vague descriptions of them.
Emma was Scottish, very good looking, found many of the absurd pretensions of the FCO funny, and mocked my forgetfulness and untidiness relentlessly. We got on well. In the run up to the first Gulf war, we were both seconded to the Embargo Surveillance Centre, where I headed the FCO section of a joint department (MOD, FCO, GCHQ, DIS, MI6, DTp, Royal Navy), set up in a NBC bunker in Marsham Street that had originally been Bomber Command in the Second World War and was known as “the Citadel”. It had been re-equipped as a logistics HQ for NATO in WW3. Lots of the old WW2 maps etc were still on the walls in odd places. The Citadel is a warren; there were tunnels connecting underground to Whitehall departments. It was a 24/7 operation. I led on intelligence analysis and action with foreign governments. We slept there. At one stage I did not leave the bunker at all, not for a moment, for 4 weeks. It all went on for several months.
Working in that pressured environment, you get closer to people and social barriers drop. We did very, very occasionally get a break, and one evening I went on a pub crawl with several staff which ended with Emma and I, arms round each other’s waist, high kicking our way around Central London while belting out hits from Cabaret. Not at all sober, we got back to the bunker and slept in the same little cell on separate camp beds.
It was not a romantic relationship. We never kissed. It was certainly not sexual. On a further occasion, when we were out for lunch with another young woman who worked with us, she asked Emma direct if we were linked. “Naw”, replied Emma, “Craig’s a’ mooth and nae troosers”. Working in the FCO, where everyone gets reposted every two or three years, you get inured to fleeting friendships and after one of us was posted out we were very seldom in touch. It came as a shock to me when, a very few years later, I got a letter from Emma who was, from memory, posted in South America, saying she was seriously ill. Very shortly thereafter, I received notification she had died.
There has been a major outbreak on social media of people claiming that Alex Salmond’s relationship with female staff was very bad even if not criminal. But the large majority of what was described was far less physical than Emma and I high kicking together to Cabaret (remember, there were allegations of pinging someones hair, putting hands on shoulders over clothes, touching a knee over trousers and putting an arm round someone who was crying).
What worries me is this. By the standards of politically correct behaviour which social media on the Salmond case appears to state ought to be the norm, my relationship with Emma Nelson was wholly inappropriate if not criminal. I was much older than her and very senior. I had a power relationship to her. We therefore ought by these standards never to have had our arms around each other high-kicking, and certainly should not have been getting drunk together. Inappropriate. Inappropriate. Inappropriate.
But does that not merely enforce snobbishness? Is that not simply reinforcing class and social barriers? If I could not interact in that way with Emma because I was senior to her, is that really the world we want? And is it not enforcing a bitter joylessness on life? What kind of world is it going to be if fun interaction is only permitted with people of your same social level – which is what “power relationship” effectively means?
Nobody will ever convince me there was anything wrong in my relationship with Emma. But I can see precisely how the extraordinary prevalence of misandry now would seek to misconstrue and portray it.
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Thats what diversity and sexual politics is about, look at who is funding all of this, its about division, it’s about class war, its about creating borders and barriers and policing and reinforcing them. Who funds the think tanks, the NGOs! It’s the same people funding the colour revolutions and the coups abroad. It is in the establishments best interest and the corporate oligarchy that do not want change, whatever awful things lay ahead for us due to their greed and intransigence, they want to stay in power and prevent any one movement becoming a focal or rallying point where ALL people can coalesce and then challenge the status quo. Better to have a myriad groups all exclusively staking their claim, competing for attention, rights and money and angry at each other than to have them agree that the only way we will see beneficial change for the many is by overthrowing the people in charge who run everything for the benefit of the few.
The old divide and concur, in which Whitehall became a master in the Asian and African parts during the Empire. Presently they can only practice it themselves inside the UK. The game is now to secretly assist globalist billionaires with their NGOs to keep divisions alive abroad. Strong independent but cooperating nations are a threat to global profit making and tax hiding.
That’s right, and the globalist billionaires’ conspiracy had the picture of them which someone tried to paint on a mural CENSORED, so no-one will ever know if Warren Mitchell or Karl Marx (without his wig) were among them. Mwah hah hah hah hah!
PS. The above is a joke, and regarding the mural, “All characters and other entities appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons or other real-life entities is purely coincidental. All characters and other entities appearing in this work are fictitious.”
What’s more, I swear that no global billionaires’ conspiracy paid me to write this.
I’m a man who has been strongly and strictly in favor of gender equality and women rights throughout his life.
And I’m appalled by the abuses exposed by the metoo movement, although we always knew all along that something along that line was happening.
Yet, if we got to the point that anything that Craig describes about his relationship with Ms. Nelson should be regarded as “inappropriate” in any way, time has come to pause for a serious reflection.
I need hardly recall that such a mischaracterization of absolutely normal conduct, and an overly biased inclination to believe one side, regardless of what the facts and the evidence suggest, is hardly a matter of a mere moral or rethorical exercise, but it can have devastating social as well as political consequences.
The Salmond and, more importantly here, the Assange case are in plain sight to demonstrate just as much.
As a long time researcher and analyst of intelligence operations, I also need to share one bite of information.
Professional intelligence, as well as certain law enforcement agencies and even organized crime, have always used sexual situation for entrapment. Some of them, feel free to not believe it, even have rigorous and extensive training programs for that purpose.
Any inclination to overblow or misrepresent the type of conduct referred to by Craig can play very gravely into the wrong hands. It’s an angle that we should all bear in mind.
More generally, it seems to me that it’s well reckoning time for more of a sober and cool minded approach to this issue.
The principle of presumption of innocence, one should also note, is not regarded as a cornerstone of democracy and civilization for nothing. Respecting it is a duty lots of us frequently fail to comply with because we have been lucky enough never to live in a place where it’s not a right.
My thoughts exactly Gerald. And in a nutshell! My only questions are is the funding coming from the Corporations or the States (or are they the same these days) and who is training the agents provocateurs?
yes, yes, and yes to your questions at the end! politically correct thinking ruins everything and takes the joy out of life… i don’t believe these people pushing it recognize just how bad it is or they would cease and desist… thanks for the personal story and viewpoint craig!
The people pushing it desire precisely these outcomes. Realizing how bad it is would simply make them pop open more bubbly. Ultimately this is a form of trauma-based mind kontrol designed to create a population paralyzed by illogic and cognitive dissonance, a blank slate of isolated human-pods suitable for programming by ze kontrollers, unable or unwilling to debate ideas, share wisdom, or question authority. Trust and casual camaraderie die and a snitch, virtual society is born, which does the thought policing and enforcement for zem. Difference of opinion are internalized and lie festering beneath the surface.
Rowan Atkinson made some quite profound observations on cancel culture here: https://www.rt.com/news/511557-rowan-atkinson-social-media-polarization/
“[PC / cancel culture legislation would lead to] a society with a veneer of tolerance concealing a snake pit of unaired and unchallenged views”
thanks… maybe…
What is “problematic” in this sad story, from the point of view of the woke mob, that is, is that the lady in question is no longer around to refute Craig’s claims.
What ‘claims’? And Alan Morrison has posted to confirm Craig’s recollections, including of the night in question.
Craig I meant to try to catch you early on your next article but page 2 might be a bit late. I see you were looking for a copy of Daisy Walker’s timeline on WoS recently to use in preparing your defence. But things have been moving so fast there recently that she might well not have seen your post.
There is another poster – Contrary – who is also keeping a timeline. I don’t know if you have conversed with her in the past. I suspect hers might be more comprehensive and up to date than Daisy’s now. I think she posts here too but I don’t see her on this thread. But she is easy to contact on Gordon Dangerfield’s blog as she often posts there. I will let her know that you are looking.
I assume from Craig Murray’s recounting of his time painting London red with Emma Nelson, that he hadn’t been singing Sally Bowles’ lines and Nelson hadn’t taken the part of the Master of Ceremonies.
Levity aside, it’s amazing how the #MeToo woke crowd increasingly resemble the Victorian prudes who resisted giving women the same rights, responsibilities, freedoms and opportunities as men did, and who also regarded class and social hierarchies as sacrosanct.
I personally think it’s great that there are wise women out there, ready to take up the cudgels on behalf of other adult women in their 20s, 30s and beyond.
Fiona Robertson, for example, who has built a whole career out of this sort of thing. Fiona offered her wisdom on Twitter about the liaison between Alex Salmond and the other person concerned, loud in her condemnation that what might appear to that woman and the rest of the world as a consensual relationship was only “technically consensual” (her expression) because of the “imbalance in the power dynamic” between the two.
I think this is such a great idea that I want to see it extended to other groups of vulnerable women. Ugly fatties for example. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. An ugly fatty might see herself in a normal consensual relationship. What I see is a vulnerable woman being abused by a man who is taking advantage of her desperation to exploit the imbalance in the power dynamic.
So who better than me to police the relationships of ugly fatties whom I don’t even know, deciding on their behalf whether their relationships are “genuinely” , or merely “technically” consensual? And woe betide any person who falls on the wrong side of the divide – my social media lynch mob and I will be tireless in their pursuit!
From an external perspective I might come across as a nasty, nosy, jealous, spiteful, interfering, censorious busybody. But from my perspective – which is obviously the only one that matters – I see a fearless and selfless crusader for justice, defending my victims I mean my ugly fatty beneficiaries from the consequences of their weakness and folly…
So here’s to me and my noble campaign! I have no doubt Fiona Robertson and all her wokey pals on social media will be rallying to the cause…
I agree totally with the points of this story.
But I worry that playing into the “boys will be boys” and “#metoo has gone too far” arguments in relation to Alex Salmond will detract from the main story in that case. The main story isn’t that Alex Salmond’s actions did or didn’t cross any lines between normal human interactions / creepiness / criminality – it was proven beyond a doubt they didn’t. By a judge and jury of mostly women in a legal system stacked to favor the powers that be, no less.
The main story is how he came to be accused in the first place. How witnesses, evidence and laws were prepared in advance with the aim of destroying the man. Who was involved in putting together those unreliable witnesses and evidence into a prosecution that was not only shown to be too weak to convict, but actually proven to be based on falsehoods. I think exactly what Nicola Sturgeon knew and when is crucial, not just a point of parliamentary process she may have got on the wrong side of. I think the details of that are not getting enough coverage in the press right now as Sturgeon battles to keep inquiries away from the darker corners of what happened.
Craig – please keep banging that drum. For those who were perhaps not memorizing every point of your excellent but very long reports of the court proceedings. For any additional evidence that may be reported since the court proceedings.
DavidH
Since we are talking about a couple of exuberant young Scots, could I just say that to this southern Englishman at least your politicians look nice and talk sense. Fanciability is a sure sign of inner, spiritual resilience.
By contrast, English politicians and especially the political commentaries all appear to be spiritually and intellectually dead. The reworking of Empire2 snobbery, the hyper-saturated lies of the BBC, the fatuous narrowmindedness of the ERG, cheapness of the antisemitism scam, even the pure wanked out exhaustion of heroes like Jeremy Corbyn.
The UK is totally bereft of energy or ideas.
At least you had a trial, and a verdict of not guilty. In bankrupt Britain, politics is like processed and flavoured algae, or some other fungal.mucus. MPs talk like robots, doctors talk like I speak your weight machines
One thing England is not is vibrant. So.please be thankful in Scotland that you are far enough away from this morally and intellectually bankrupt collapsing galaxy which is about to expire with a wheeze and a final gasp.
Giyane,
I’m not Scottish, but take it as a compliment you thought perhaps so. I did visit Edinburgh once and had a really grand time. Almost froze my behind off, though.
Ha – much could be discussed on the concept of fanciability in relation to political morality. You’d think fungal mucus almost by definition to be unfanciable, but Boris Johnson doesn’t seem to do badly for himself and I’ve always been amazed at the number of women voters that Mr Trump manages to attract. One female Trump supporter even dying for his cause just recently.
“Almost froze my behind off, though”.
Serve you right for wearing a kilt! Only Scots born and bred can tolerate the refrigerated ventilation of their nether regions in a Scottish winter. (And in Edinburgh of all places!)
Just came across this article from Robin McAlpine….. Really sums it up well.
Source News – Robin McAlpine: Nicola Sturgeon, this is a matter of the integrity of Scotland as a nation
DavidH: it is not the place of the defence to prove that anyone lied. That might be deduced, it might be hinted at, it might even be suggested, but, at the end of the day, the case will be decided (criminal, that is) on the ‘beyond resonable doubt’ criterion, which means just that. It is a standard of evidence, not a standard of human behaviour. It all comes down to what can and cannot be led as evidence, what can and cannot be offered as proof, and who the jury believes. It is just as bad to state that the women lied, knowingly, as it is to keep on writing articles about Mr Salmond’s acquittal where there might be “no smoke without fire”. They are both intolerable situations. He was acquitted in accordance with all known tenets and tests of the law of evidence, and the women’s evidence fell far short, and that is the end of it. Anything else is speculation and silly game playing and does no one any good whatsoever. The sex of the jury members has no bearing either, or, indeed, the sex of the judge in the case.
Lorna:
I get your point and appreciate your views in other posts.
Certainly, in the Salmond court case it was Salmond’s actions that were being judged and the verdict of what was proven or not proven is in relation to his guilt alone. The witnesses were not on trial so there’s no verdict on their testimony per se.
But, to quote Robin McAlpine, whose blog Craig links:
“…the testimony of Woman H, by far the most serious of the charges presented (attempted rape). Here the prosecution led no properly admissible evidence that she was even in the building where the alleged attempted rape took place. The defence led multiple pieces of evidence including reliable eye-witness testimony that she was never there.”
I find it difficult to conclude any differently than Robin:
“The circumstances around this testimony are deeply concerning and it seems to be clear perjury.”
So again, though there’s no specific verdict on that from this court, it does seem fair to say from what happened that prosecution evidence was not only shown to be too weak to convict, but actually proven to be based on falsehoods. To go one step further even: falsehoods that should have been evident to those organizing the prosecution well before the case got to trial.
Indeed, a judicial verdict on that will have to wait for a different prosecution. Hopefully in the not too distant future.
Craig: “And is it not enforcing a bitter joylessness on life?”
The world is full of people who are desperately afraid that
there exist people who are not as miserable as they are;
and see it as their duty to eradicate them from public life.
Photios
Snap!
What could be more mentally exhausting than the concept of universal spying and Algorithmic processing of millions of private lives?
You probably breathed some of her germs. That’s a £1000 fine. You probably didn’t take personal responsibility for your immune system. The sentence for that is death or disease.
We are literally millimetres from a new Puritanical age.
“…..a new Puritanical age”
————
The Puritans were a bunch of pussies compared with their Scots contemporaries, the Covenanters. These were described as “Scotland’s Taliban” by that country’s leading historian, Sir Tom Devine. Their baleful legacy remains with us to this day, in both a direct form and one mutated into the grotesque choreography behind the Alphabet Coven.
Ref Rebecca Chance. See Craig’s Twitter. She has a nerve!
Lauren Milne Henderson is an English freelance journalist and novelist who also writes as Rebecca Chance. Her books include “glamorous thrillers”/bonkbusters/chick lit, mysteries, Tart Noir, romantic comedies, and young adult. Wikipedia
Born: 30 September 1966 (age 54 years), London
Education: University of Cambridge, St Paul’s Girls’ School, Hammersmith, North London Collegiate School
Nominations: Anthony Award for Best Young Adult Novel
Thanks For the Detective Work Mary…Cos I was Wondering..I read some of that Twitter Thread..With Horror..
What a Vile Specimen she is…. It was good to see people trying tell her to Shut the Fuck up.
It goes without saying that Nadira is FAR MORE ARISTIC than that $@+£%&X.
I Enjoyed Watching Nadira’s Film – Locked Out ‘ in Nadira’s company – at DTRH..Beautifully told Film…If heartbreaking – The treatment of Desperate refugee couple.
Forget Her Craig and Nadira… Aint worth it.
From the few things you have said, Mr Murray, it would appear that Miss Nelson was not in the least in awe of you, did not in any way feel a sense of power being exerted on her and actually enjoyed a harmless flirtatious relationship with you which is what makes happy workplaces go around.
Now if you were a trumped up, self-righteous, narcissistic middle-aged git, being called ‘all mouth and no trousers’ in front of other female staff would have led to an immediate political purge. You know, putting the word about that Emma was a bit free in her sexual favours, was mislaying key papers which are only allowed to be mislaid by the Sir Humphreys of this world etc etc. A campaign over 3 months to rid yourself of the lippy gobshite who didn’t kiss your ass, imitate Monica Lewinsky nor generally tell the world that Craig Murray should become the Permanent Secretary of the FCO by 2000 or else….
But because the two of you engaged in enjoyable, harmless banter, that didn’t matter. You knew that she didn’t literally mean what she had said, it was undoubtedly said with a twinkle in her eyes and a smile on her face and you all probably burst into uproarious laughter.
That’s the test of proper relationships, Mr Murray. Not the literal words, but the context.
Miss Nelson sounded like a fine colleague, just what the world could do with right now. A no nonsense, shooting from the hip Scottish woman telling the Great and Good what a bunch of tosspots they truly are…..
With respect, I think this contrasts with the Alex Salmond situation. Primarily, in Alex’s case, you have a group of women alleging misconduct and non-consensual physical contact. I think you yourself got into bother about a satire on the approach in the Alex Salmond trial of the prosecution throwing a lot of mud, an overwhelming amount of mud which would convince a jury of Alex’s alleged wrongdoing.
You had an endearing friendship with your colleague, but say, hypothetically, she alleged wrongdoing on your part. A single complaint without witnesses or proof, her case would have been weak.
That contrasts with Alex’s situation.Though of course, it should be said Alex has been acquitted of the accusations.
But I share your nostalgia for the old days when there were many instances of consensual physicality in the workplace which both genders enjoyed. Not in your case, but in some cases, that physicality became sexual but what harm, if both parties consented, frankly it’s one of life’s joys.
There was also misconduct in the old days and I think it’s fair to say the vulnerable, mostly women, had hellish ordeals in some instances with no prospect of redress or justice.
Eoin
Alex has been acquitted of the accusations, but the vexatious persons who made them have now withdrawn communication in a very passive aggressive manner, and used The Lord Advocate to make additional false accusations about Craig. This is from wiki about Passive-aggressive behavior@
Passive-aggressive behavior is characterized by a pattern of passive hostility and an avoidance of direct communication. Inaction where some action is socially customary is a typical passive-aggressive strategy. Such behavior is sometimes protested by associates, evoking exasperation or confusion. People who are recipients of passive-aggressive behavior may experience anxiety due to the discordance between what they perceive and what the perpetrator is saying.
A fine example of passive aggressive behaviour is when governments like ours deploy agents to foment unrest in sovereign countries like Syria or Iraq, and then wait for their pet dictator to start suppressing the unrest with legal sanctions and then force. When force is used , this is taken as an excuse for illegal invasion and colonisation of the country.
So this passive aggressive syndrome is quintessentially political in nature. It has nothing to do whatsoever with wrongdoing, it is merely a psychological tool in the political toolbox for achieving something which they have not been able to achieve in the normal way, such as sending in UN WMD inspectors, or fitting up Alex Salmond.
A very recent example of passive aggressive behaviour put me in a very bad mood yesterday. I caught a part of the Home Secretary’s threats tp use the police to crack down on those breaking covid rules. The government itself went against Medical advice by opening up the economy and schools before the vaccine was ready, and particular emphasis was put on the need for exercise and addressing the needs of children,
When two women went walking in Derbyshire in the outside they were fined. In the abscence of a single piece of stationary advice, the threat of a fine is going to override sensible decision making by normal citizens.
Pritti Patel is the epitome of passive aggression and she should not be Home Secretary.
Have a look at the criterion for harassment “the employer takes the dislosure of a perception of harassment for the fact of harassment.
I suppose the important distinction between innocent, playful contact and harassment is whether they’re welcome. It can get messy when this ‘consent’ (if we must get so legally formal about platonic relationships) is withdrawn retrospectively, of course – perhaps when someone is convinced by someone else that they were in fact a naive victim of some sinister sexual power-play. It must be incredibly difficult for those who were convinced and even reassured that they were on a friendly, equal footing, to be told that they were in fact abusing their position by a society which has since shifted the goalposts.
It’s a shame that what’s no doubt been a very important movement for many genuinely voiceless victims of sexual harassment has also made everyone suspicious of others’ intentions. The hedgehog dilemma is stronger than ever – and we can see that loneliness amongst adults is becoming a growing problem. I suppose this is the collateral of a movement in which correctly judging someone’s intentions and the unspoken (and often unexplained) rules of social context are so vital to get right, and can still be changed in hindsight. I’m seriously considering carrying consent forms.
As a younger generation entering the workplace, I quickly learned that for your own career safety, you don’t talk religion or politics; don’t ask too many personal questions; don’t make the first move for physical contact; keep your personal and professional relationships segregated; if you go to a pub social, don’t drink or talk too much. It’s safe, but it’s certainly not fun. With cancel culture and extreme political polarisation taking hold, I feel like this safety behaviour is bleeding into purely social circles too. Is this really what we want?
I still have hope that the original sentiment of feminism that encouraged women to be outgoing, vocal about their intentions and confident in their own sexual agency will overturn this new wave of picking through the past to find evidence of their ignorance and exploitation – if only for the fact that it must feel anything but empowering. That we have a legal system which takes their cases seriously when their assertions against unwelcome attention are ignored is still vital to this, however. It’s a tricky balance.
A wonderful article yet again Craig, but one which makes so many pertinent points. I fear the MeToo movement has had, in many cases, the opposite effect to which many women intended and we are seeing with the Salmond saga, despite his convincingly winning both civil and legal case, a continuing vendetta. For those still posting falsehoods, the verdict of the civil case and that of a jury (female majority, female judge and even female majority defence witnesses) means nothing to them and the accusation is the evidence. I hope I’m wrong, but it looks like his reputation will never fully recover from this.
Another disturbing truth here, is that Sturgeon’s public statements since the verdict show she clearly hates him. This is despite the fact he mentored her for two decades and gifted her a party in great health, despite the devastating referendum defeat. One might be tempted to ponder why such hatred and where did it emanate from? Some have pointed out to tension in 2004 when he returned as leader and she had to settle for second prize, but she continued under him for a decade thereafter. Was she a longtime agent provocateur, or simply someone who was eventually corrupted by power and greed?
Either way, she and her co-conspirators have done immeasurable damage to genuine victims of sexual assault, who never saw justice and in some cases were never believed. Despicable actions.
Chris Downie
Passive aggression has no connection to and is no indication of any wrong doing on the part of the recipient. It is a purely political strategy to de-humanise the recipient by cutting off direct communication and exerting accusations pressure
It is the new plaything if very right wing politics.
It is also going nowhere, because de-humanising humans is the essence of anti- social behaviour
Unfortunately there seems to be an incredible amount of bad faith within the MeToo/ BelieveHer movement, which is undermining a very important cause. In Scotland it has been harnessed to destroy the senior statesman of the independence movement, which does not seem the cleverest thing to do if you are genuinely committed to independence. The bad faith is equally pronounced across the Atlantic where certain rapists must be revered. BelieveHer could not be applied to either Tara Reade or Juanita Broadrick, both of whom were trashed and demonized by the MeToo mmovement. A movement that has sacrificed all credibility for anyone paying attention.
Indeed, Chris. You nail the problem. Had everything been done above board, none of it need have happened. Except that some people wanted it to happen (allegedly). As in so many situations like this, the women become the background. I am sure that Mr Murray himself, in his own previous situation when he had to leave his job (not the one cited here, of course) would not say that it was the sexual context that was the crucial one, but the political one. The sexual one (false) was the means of ousting him, not the reason he was ousted. Do you see? Whether Mr Salmond did act inappropriately on occasion, as he admitted (and this was cleared up with apologies) is not the point at all. The point is that perceived inappropriate behaviour (already settled, but revived) was used (allegedly) as the excuse/means to ensure he kept his head below the political parapet. It was never the actual reason, albeit it was intended to appear to be the reason.
The flawed and illegal (and retrospective, that’s also crucial) procedure leading to the Judicial Review, from which the SNPG withdrew, then the criminal procedure (which probably had to go ahead, given the circumstances) and the acquittal point to a runaway train which will probably crash into the FM’s office at Holyrood, bringing down two FMs. Now, who benefits from that self-inflicted mess?
Oh, and two of those women had been offered similar careers at the same salary, but out of Mr Salmond’s path, yet they opted to stay and continued to work with him. This is where the supposedly irreconcilable tensions sort of fade out, and, even if they were still angry and felt they had not been vindicated, they chose to accept the status quo, along with an apology, at the time. I can see that happening in similar situations, but you do not then go on to give evidence in a criminal trial that can see the person go to prison for a long time. The situation of women in law is not a good one, but this kind of thing just makes it a helluva lot worse.
Lorna Campbell
Your life experience differs from mine.
I married my long term girlfriend in 1978 in a family church gathering. Within a few months my wife declared that she saw no reason why it made any difference to me who she slept with. Why did it have any effect on me? I thought she was playing sexual politics and I chose not to grovel to this bullying. I.put up with it for 12 years before having a 4 year breakdown.
In 1991 I moved from our farmhouse, now brothel, to Birmingham where I saw the Muslim.population practising Islam. Within a few years I became a Muslim and took another wife, whose deference to men differed both from my own family’s Ferminism and this weirdowomsn I had picked up by myself.
The abuse I receive on a daily basis from the Muslim community is another story, connected to 300 years of abuse from the British Empire. I’m happy to tell you that I have learned in life not always to take the blame for everything people try to stick on my shoulders. In fact in many ways Craig Murray is a role model for me because he always defends Truth and Reason.
In short, I perceive Alex Salmond’s false accusers in the light of my own experience of being mobbed and harassed by women. You’re fully entitled to interpret things in the light of your own experience. But that leads you to a totally different understanding to mine. To me , Alex Salmond is a hero who has held his head up high in a ferocious multiple assault from a gang of reckless women. Well done him!
Giyane: I make no apologies on behalf of the women in Mr Salmond’s case. Only they know why they did what they did. I am saying that ‘honeytraps’ (or the effect of such) are the way many men are caught or are brought low because they are susceptible. However, at the end of the day, it is not misandry because the purpose and reason behind the ‘honeytrap’ (or the effect of such) is not anti men. It is wholly and totally political, and the women are used to a achieve the political end.
I was not applying that to your personal circumstances because I don’t know them. I daresay many men are hurt by women; I don’t doubt it. It is not, though institutionalized misandry, as misogyny is institutionalized against women. The whole basis of discrimination of, ill-treatment of, women derives from their born sex. Their human relations with men is one of masculine control to some degree or other, and when women refuse to be controlled, trouble often follows in the form of violence or men feel completely shattered by the loss of control.
Many men appear to be incapable of seeing women as autonomous human beings who owe them nothing except to treat them with decency as fellow human beings. To deny that is to deny reality. We are in the midst of an age when reality is actually shifting to become very like unreality. The emancipation of black slaves meant that they became autonomous human beings (albeit the discrimination continued, through fear, jealousy, anger, loss of control, loss of feeling superior, whatever) and that meant that they were no longer controlled by white folks.
Some day, women are going to free themselves from the control of men and become the full human beings they are not allowed to be today. Only then will we have a real idea of what the two sexes really are, because men, too, will be freed from the patriarchy and also be allowed to be themselves. Gender roles, as opposed to sex roles, have defined and confined both sexes and they are imposed by society and patriarchy, which is why women are so outraged at transgenderism which relies solely on gender stereotypes.
If things did happen – and Mr Salmond himself admitted that he had, perhaps, not always acted appropriately – then, perhaps the women were still resentful and were easy meat, and gullible enough, for those who wanted to use them for their own ends. That is not misandry. That is manipulation for a political end laced, perhaps with resentment against Mr Salmond, not because he was a full-blown predator, but because, like so many men, he did not see that his behaviour, however mild, was misogynistic and controlling. By the time he came to apologize to those women, I think he did understand that he had overstepped the mark, and that is why I find it hard to condemn him, although I still believe the women were manipulated for very different reasons.
Lorna Campbell
Humanity is not changing.
OK the exhilaration of sexual liberation has taught some women to bully , as it previously mostly taught men to bully, because before contraception only men paid no penalty for expressing their sexuality.
But female sexual bullying is not humanity changing, it may be social change. Yes, I agree with you that some men are now exposed to sexual bullying that previously mostly women may exposed to, but that omits men on men bullying which was buried under the carpet by the law.
Humanity remains the same. It’s just that women have been enabled to be as completely objectional as men. How appalling for the children that they now have total chaos instead of partial chaos to grow up in.
My ex had no chance of sexual freedom in her teens because from 11 she was carer for an extremely sick mum. Her personal sexual liberation took off when her mum died, but she now had children.
Society needs to decide pretty quickly whether it can tolerate children being brought up in by sexually promiscuous women. At the moment the fossilized brains of judges have decreed that women are ALWAYS stable and men are ALWAYS .promiscuous and destabilising for children.
simples. If you ladies want to fill your children’s homes with predator men who you bono all night in joyous fashion in front of your children, the fossilised dinosaur brains of judges need to adapt to that dangerous new reality.
On the evidence of Dinosaur, bought and paid for Lord Advocate of Scotland, the legal profession is cast as a fossil in molten rock, because it refuses to register the new species called homo sapiens that needs safety below the age of maturity of about 35 years of age.
I’m no male controller of women’s freedom. They can fuck who or what they like when they like. Boring. But they cannot be allowed to damage their children while they are exercising the prerogative of sexual liberation.
The Lord Advocate with his gold collar stud in his starched Victorian uniform is trying to imply that Alex Salmond is a male bully, but the alphabet women are all innocent of suspicion. What a total srsehole .
Then he tries to pretend that social media is party political broadcast.
What really spent help is legal professionals trying to pretend that nothing in society has changed. If you deny change, you deny reality. If you deny reality, you are the problem.
Of course his Humbugness doesn’t deny reality. He just wants to argue that Victorian reality applies exclusively in Holyrood. Bonkers
Giyane: “… The Lord Advocate with his gold collar stud in his starched Victorian uniform is trying to imply that Alex Salmond is a male bully, but the alphabet women are all innocent of suspicion. What a total srsehole… ”
That is not the legal position, albeit it might appear to be. It was for the police to gather and provide enough evidence for the prosecution to bring a case against Mr Salmond. They, and the prosecution fell woefully short. They did their job and, at the end of the day, their case fell apart because it was too weak and should never have been brought, but there is such a febrile atmosphere around alleged sexual offences these days that I think there was little choice in the matter once the procedure was in place – flawed and illegal and retrospective as it was.
It was at the procedure stage that the process against Mr Salmond should have been stopped precisely because the procedure was flawed, illegal and the retrospective element could only be interpreted to be biased against Mr Salmond. It still is almost beyond belief that they carried on even when they had been told, by Mr Salmond himself no less, that the procedure was flawed, etc.
Yet, this is a pattern right across the board: the GRA reform bill and the Hate Crime bill (complementary, whatever they try and claim) were not fit for purpose. Inciting hatred against anyone is not to be tolerated, but we have the Common Law to deal with that, and the penalties can always be upped. It was the ‘intent’ element of the Hate Crime Bill that was the biggest bugbear because intent is a necessary – essential – part of any criminal act, and must be proved by whatever means.
Coupling that bill with the GRA reform bill makes it appear that women are to be prosecuted for objecting to anything the trans lobby throws at them, while the trans lobby has a clear field. Just a little research around the trans issue would have highlighted hundreds – perhaps even thousands – of instances of the trans issue being used improperly by predatory men. The impact on children and young people was not really considered. The trans lobby captured the SNPG through its acolytes and pseudo ‘wokists’ all around the FM, and it is their baleful influence that has poisoned the discourse.
As well as that, the slightest stretch of the imagination would have shown that trans rights (already secure in the 2004 GRA) if expanded to make self-ID the norm, would cause an existential crisis in women’s rights, so no, this government was not pro women, far from it. It was pandering to a class (or classes) of men (trans) and not natal women. What on earth were these advisers and party apparatchiks thinking? There appears to be a massive amount of sheer incompetence and total short-sightedness, not to mention a sickening kind of self-righteousness, at the heart of the SNPG.
Lorna Campbell
You might as well be a Britnat with all your smearing of Salmond.
I saw the NewsNight hatchet job on Salmond. I did not sit through the trial so did not hear all the evidence but my reaction was that his behaviour was rather sleazy, and the sort of thing that nowadays could result in a disciplinary in a work environment, but not criminal. The jury agreed. Very upsetting for the women who’d had to relive an unpleasant experience but I don’t think they were disbelieved as NewsNight implied, just that the behaviour didn’t reach the threshold of criminality.
Deemac
Newsnight can hardly be considered objective about Alex Salmond because they are still claiming no smoke without fire. The court proceedings discovered no smoke, no sleaziness, no misogynist discrediting of the women’s testimonies. The court found that nothing at all remotely untoward happened. In some cases the woman wasn’t even there when the event is supposed to have happened.
For the third time this afternoon I find myself repeating that biassed innuendo has absolutely no connection to facts. The government wants to crush Salmond’s image in order to discredit Scottish Independence. It was a purely political trial which found no evidence whatsoever of any abnormal or unacceptable behaviour.
I too was fooled at first by The persistent lies of the MSM and English government.
Case closed. Apologies from the accusers are long overdue. In British justice nobody can refute the conclusion of a jury if all the evidence has been heard.
Giyane; thank you for your pertinent contributions to this and other discussions on Craig’s blog. I make a point of carefully reading all of your interesting and stimulating comments. In your statement “.In British justice nobody can refute the conclusion of a jury if all the evidence has been heard.” the key element is “…if all the evidence has been heard.”. It is undeniable that British juries have got the verdict wrong again and again, most notably in high profile cases such as that of the Birmingham Six, the Guildford and Woolwich 4, the Carl Bridgwater murder, and many others.
Also in low profile cases, such as one where I was a juror, the verdict may be wrong, in that there no evidence was produced of any wrong-doing on the part of the defendant. In the case where I was a juror, I doubt if more evidence would have changed the verdict. Most of the jurors seemed more anxious to get home before the weekend than to consider whether the evidence was sufficient to justify a guilty verdict. Does it make any difference that all 12 jurors were ‘white’, while the defendant was, well, dusky? And that the court was in a majority non-white district of London? I don’t know. I only know that the verdict was wrong.
Coldish
Kind words. Thanks. Feminism is just another form of racism sometimes. Your fellow jurors wouldn’t have listened to the evidence if even if it had all.been heard and even if she is objective as she claims to be, Nicola Sturgeon is not listening to the evidence of the trial. She is either convinced by her fellow female accusers of Salmon, or she is keeping some very personal grievances against men or one man, very well concealed.
Watching from a very long way from Scotland, we see the political chicanery in London regularly do hatchet jobs on their pet dictators, prior to re-colonising the countries they lost control over after WW2. Why would these Empire2 marsupials not try to re-assert their colonial inheritance to Scotland in the same way after conceding Scotland to devolution?
The accusations against Alex Salmon are equivalent to the demonizing of Saddam and Gadafi. Pure political elbowing out of a political obstacle to total hegemony.
Britain always oppressed its neighbours first, then attacked those sovereign states further afield. It’s the Anglo Saxon way of doing war. Deprecating the ignorance of red Indians or Africans before carving up their property amongst themselves.
Deemac,
You are suffering from getting information from the MSM rather than the very detailed accounts on this blog.
There was no “sleazy behaviour”. The large majority of the complaints were shown – not on the word of Alex Salmond, but by independent eye-witnesses – not to have happened at all. On the most important charge, it was conclusively shown that the accuser was not even present on the occasion. Why she has not been charged with perjury is beyond me.
How you express it – sleazy behaviour below the level of criminality – is precisely how the mainstream media and political establishment is now regrouping to attempt to trash Salmond. It is simply a lie.
Mr Murray: as in the Salmond trial, different forces are gathering, using the same tools, to present a parallel trial with the same political motive but to achieve a different outcome.
As I pointed out above, that was the danger of opening up a discussion on “#metoo has gone too far” with reference to the Alex Salmond case. As you know, the Alex Salmond case had nothing to do with #metoo going too far, but #metoo being totally misused from the get-go.
Even talking about the lines between normal human behavior / sleaze / criminality with reference to his case plays into the hands of the people who set Salmond up. It encourages the narrative that Salmond really was guilty and sleazy (no smoke without fire, eh?) but the evidence available wasn’t strong enough to convict. When in fact the jury (of mostly women) made plain that they found some of the major pieces of evidence false, not just too weak to convict.
So what’s Salmond going to do now? I wouldn’t blame him at this point if he never wants to see another courtroom in his life. Go off and run a B&B or nice little pub on a quiet bay somewhere. Any mere mortal would feel that way but obviously Salmond is a fighter by nature and perhaps made of stronger (madder?) stuff…
DavidH: I actually hope that Mr Salmond will return to the fray, eventually. I have no doubt that he has learned a valuable – and costly – lesson, and I feel very angry that he is still being hounded today when he was acquitted. That should be the end of it. Those who continue to suggest that there’s no smoke without fire need to wind their necks in. The old saw: he/she who is without sin, throw the first stone still holds good today.
Lorna Campbell
” Those who continue to suggest that there’s no smoke without fire need to wind their necks in.”
Have a read at some of your own posts and then start winding.
Are there two Lorna Campbell’s?
Deemac.
If there’s anybody you should listen to on the Alex Salmond trial, its Craig Murray he physically reported on it in a very truthful and eye opening manner, and for doing so he’s being fitted up. Forget the MSM.
Deemac
I am afraid to say that your response is exactly what the perpetrators of this evil persecution of Salmond and of course the Britnat media hoped for. Namely, the old sad and lazy “no smoke without fire”. It is your human right to believe what you want. Others have a right to tell you that you have been manipulated by lies, smears and propaganda.
It is very important to remember that Alex Salmond did not commit the alleged offences he was accused of – that is what Not Guilty means! His accusers either lied or fabricated a narrative that made something criminal out of virtually nothing ….
Having said that, I totally agree the many women are exploited and intimidated by men in the workplace and this culture has to change. Alcohol often plays a key role and it is high time alcohol was banned at office place parties…
Let’s preserve what’s left of our humanity and celebrate relationships and how we dance with each other in daily life…. Abuse is abuse and it’s always apparent. It’s clearly not the case with Alex Salmond and yourself from what has been stated.
F?!k political correctness and the suffocating pretentiousness of the ‘woke left’ and ‘wounded feminism’ which are an insult to genuine socialism and feminism. There’s something incredibly sinister behind that, which is attempting to make people afraid of being naturally human and celebrating life.
“Abuse is abuse”, eh? A prominent New York lawyer might disagree: “Abuse is not abuse!”
So who decides if it’s abuse or not? The man? His mates? A prosecutor? A judge? A jury? These days the “victim’s” perception is considered paramount for purposes of determining an alleged offence. Mr Salmond can thank his lucky stars that the Scottish jury system restored a bit of common sense.
“F?!k political correctness”? Sounds like evil hate speech to me!
James Hugh= cancelled (no, not really)Agreed. There are lots of examples of ‘apparently’ positive innovations in the workplace brokered by the Human Resource Nazis, that turn out to be the opposite of their stated intention.
Who for example could be opposed to the “Respect” agenda at work, for example?
Well, that is until it is used by HR (Human Remains) to close down all legitimate criticism and questioning of dubious and bullying management practices.
“You are being disciplined for disrespecting your manager by suggesting that she is treating you like a piece of shit, and forcing you to do work in dangerous conditions, and covering for understaffing to the danger of your health”.
This is not made up – I have seen it happen as a Union Rep in a Scottish university.
The abusive, dysfunctional and indeed criminal HR methods so obvious in the Salmond case is sadly pervasive in public institutions throughout Scotland.
It is not misandry, Mr Murray. There is no man-hating wave of feminism because, if there were, you would see headlines about women hoarding stacks of crossbows and machetes to deal death to handy-andies instead of deranged men boasting about their plans to kill ‘bitches’ who don’t open their legs at the glimpse of a Y chromosome, and it’s all their own fault, by the way.
What we are seeing is a breaking on the shore of a wave of anger – rage, even – against the in-built misogyny that exists on every plane of life. To put it simply: women have had enough. I would recommend the excellent programme televised last night about the bias against females in all areas of clinical medicine. All medical trials are done with men as the default, meaning that certain medicines are not picked up as being toxic and life-threatening to women whose physiology and biological sex is very different to men’s. It is the casual, not-even-aware lack of thought towards women that angers us, as much as the blatant misogyny.
I very much doubt that Mr Salmond’s case had anything whatsoever to do with actual misandry, or women getting back at someone they felt had taken them for granted, but everything to do with keeping a man with Salmond’s towering abilities as a politician at bay. The inappropriate behaviour, which he himself admitted to, was, I think, the jump off point, and the women, at least, some of them, were persuaded to bring fresh complaints, albeit most of them had been dealt with and an apology made. If I were one of those women, I’d feel used.
The reason I do not believe that misandry played any part is because the SNPG is not ‘woman-friendly’ when it comes down to the nitty gritty. Not in reality. Even the ‘all girls together’ ethos stops short at any woman who does not fit the bill – that is, women who do not support the mantra that trans women are women, the whole pseudo ‘woke’ agenda. You might have noticed that misogyny is also missing from the Hate Crime Bill as a category, but trans protection is right in there. Someone like me wouldn’t last five minutes because I won’t kow tow to the orthodoxies and because I can see very clearly where we are going with trans rights (they have them all already, but want more than anyone else) and it ain’t to a pretty place for women. I don’t flatter myself that I’m clever than anyone else. What can often appear to be ill-thought-out policy is sometimes intended to pan out exactly how it pans out. That explains a lot about the SNPG. Pro woman it is not.
Men and women will be able to be friends – real friends – when men stop seeing women as not quite them, but with boobs and bits, and when women stop expecting men to see them as them, but with boobs and bits. We are very different in many ways, and very alike in many others. We had slavery precisely because white people believed that black people were inferior to them. By the same token, many men view women as inferior. You have to, to expect them to be the world’s unpaid domestic servants. You have to see them like that to imagine you have some absolute entitlement to women’s bodies, to pay women less, to treat their work as being of less value than yours. If anything, this pandemic has shown that women’s work is actually far more important in many ways.
In the end, whether male or female, politicians are politicians, one of the areas where they are very alike, and Mr Salmond got caught in a political net, as did the women. The case was utterly weak and should never have come to trial. The Judicial Review before that should never have been necessary either, because the procedure itself was flawed and illegal. What on earth those civil servants and others were thinking about in pushing matters to the extreme they did we might, perhaps, discover or partially discover when all the mud settles. The whole sorry mess could have gone to arbitration, as Mr Salmond suggested, and, perhaps, everyone involved would have felt he or she had received some kind of justice. As thing stand, no one has, not at all, the civil service in Scotland is under scrutiny, the SNPG is under scrutiny, the women have been sidelined and Mr Salmond has still lost something of his reputation. What, in the end, was it all for?
Wishing you the very best in your own forthcoming case. I am still hoping that they drop the case against you, and that it doesn’t get that far.
Wow, that was an impressive peroration. Thank you, Lorna Campbell.
Where are all these truly awful men coming from? Either they don’t have mothers and fathers in their lives to help them with their manners, in which case I suppose we ought to pity them. Or perhaps a fully commodified and class-based education system is to blame. Only in Britain!!! I don’t know any men like those Lorna describes, far from it, so I guess I have been very protected from them. I only get a glimpse of them when I read news that has something to do with jackasses like Trump, Handcock, IDS, piggy-lover Cameron, or Boris, which suggests to me that the truly awful men that Lorna describes are by and large in positions of celebrity or power? With such amazing political role models though, I suppose we have a lot more misandry and misogyny to look forward to, which is a wonderful thing for neoliberals because we will all continue to be so divided about silly things like gender as to make it impossible to fight against ecocide and the mass-murder of our children’s future.
Marmite
These men are not imho in positions of power and celebrity. They are often in family or pub. They very cynically exploit young men and women for sex, leaving them emotionally scarred. After that they learn to exploit men.
It is really quite embarrassing that a senior judge who sees the whole of life passing through the courts on a daily basis, the Lord Advocate of Scotland, can pretend not to understand the emotional squalor of humanity and the corrupt squalor of politics, and put his name to the ridiculous charges against Craig Murray.
The Lord Advocate’s Capitol Hill moment in which he pushes fantasy into reality like sperm into egg, just to establish his slavery to London. What does he want? A seat in the House of Lords at Craig’s expense?
If you don’t want it mate, I’ll take it for you.
Sorry that wasn’t meant to be a question. That’s how the British establishment works. Pork swords in piggies mouths. And off we go virtual fox-hunting on the polished leather benches of fallen empire. Parah! Parah! Oompa! oompa!
“I. me. woman. I. me. victim?” Loadsa rhetoric, not so loadsa evidence. You aren’t working class are you?
If you are talking to me, Squeeth, I have never appropriated victimhood. Why would you think I do? If you want evidence for misogyny on an industrial scale, just open your wee peepers, mate, and engage your brain. We are going nowhere as a species (and God help all the other species around us and the planet itself) if we don’t sort this out. The rest will fall into place when patriarchy falls and allows us all to be who we are and to contribute according to our lights. You have nothing to lose but your fear. Don’t be a victim, take back control – of yourself, not women. Am I working class? I dunno. You tell me.
Come come now, your class is a function of your relationship to the means of production, distribution and exchange. Your gender analysis is facile; the recruitment of women into petty management posts has demonstrated that it’s power, not gender that is the perversion.
Congratulations on Becoming a Grandad Craig.. Welcome to the Club.
“Oh, and two of those women had been offered similar careers at the same salary, but out of Mr Salmond’s path, yet they opted to stay and continued to work with him.”
Lorna from what I recall reading Craig Murray’s blog I thought there was just the one such incident, the fully-clothed “sleepy cuddle”. What was the other one? I likewise find it difficult to believe that a woman who had been raped or subjected to an attempted rape would happily continue working for her rapist at close quarters. I also read in a newspaper story (can’t remember which one, sorry) that Alex supposedly admitted in court to a sexual relationship with one of the other complainants (not the “cuddle” woman) some time prior to the alleged incident she was complaining about. I don’t remember reading that in any of the coverage of Alex’s trial at the time. Do you or anyone else recall this and if so provide a link? I suspect it’s just another smear from the MSM.
BTW I think it’s a bit rich that the female in this situation can consensually participate in a romantic encounter one day and complain about the other party the next as if they had no choice in the matter. It takes two to tango. If the situation is reversed and I as the male subordinate had a sexual encounter with a female boss, I would have put it down to my own bad judgement. If I as a male had officially complained about it I’d have been a laughing stock and I doubt that my complaint would be taken seriously, an example of the double standard that gets applied. I do think it was unwise of Alex to drink alcohol that affected his judgement and lowered his inhibitions. In my professional life even when I was single I always tried to avoid getting involved with work colleagues because it would make things awkward afterwards if it didn’t work out and even if it did work out between us make things awkward with other colleagues through the perception of favouritism. However I do understand how when people are working long hours you spend more time with work colleagues than your family and the lines become blurred. As Jesus said “let those without sin cast the first stone”.
‘If the situation is reversed and I as the male subordinate had a sexual encounter with a female boss, I would have put it down to my own bad judgement. If I as a male had officially complained about it I’d have been a laughing stock and I doubt that my complaint would be taken seriously, an example of the double standard that gets applied.’
These double standards are all over the place, and so obvious to anyone who gives them the time of day, anyone who has the time for these kind of inversal thought-experiments. Britain is by far the most sexist country I have ever lived in, sexist in a way that hurts both men and women alike, playing them off each other like pawns; it is also the country that exhibits the most anger about the sexism that it manufactures, and the country that weaponises it most for political ends. I really don’t think the USA even competes with us on that front.
But we should all go on bickering about which gender is the worse off, the one that suffers from a higher suicide rate or the one that doesn’t get paid enough money, because that bickering allows us to keep the wool over our eyes, in exactly the same way that all our colonialist wars take attention away from the more urgent struggles.
I would hazard the guess that there is exactly no incentive to hold wicked men and women responsible for their gender violence, precisely because it is needed by the state to maintain all its smoke screens.
I believe there were two, what were termed “more serious” (allegedly) cases, and I believe both were dealt with quickly by line managers (or a line manager) and that was when Mr Salmond made the apologies. To my mind, that should have been the end of that, and, yes, the only reason I can think of for not accepting a different job at the same salary and status would be because you felt that the matter had been dealt with adequately or that the kudos of working for and with the FM as Mr Salmond was, was too great to part with. I really do not know.
I think the women may have been gee-ed up to make fresh complaints. Again, I don’t know. Perhaps they were told that they could revisit the whole episode with the new, retrospective procedure? I don’t know. Why they would even contemplate that, again I do not know. I would bet they are regretting it now, though and must be wondering why they did it because no one has come out of this unscathed. At the end of the day, Mr Salmond was acquitted and that should be that. End of.
The trawling by the police, to come up with weak incidences of pettiness to back up the two allegedly more serious cases and to use the Moorov Doctrine backfired because that is not how it should be used. If you look at the Manuel case, it was used, in the absence of conclusive evidence, to show a propensity and pattern of behaviours that were very, very serious and very, very dangerous. I think it was misused in the Salmond case because even the alleged “serious incidents” could not have been proved to have taken place because there was no corroboration, and the prosecution offered none, apart from the Moorov Doctrine weak incidents which, themselves, had not been corroborated.
Sorry Lorna but I think you are a bit confused. There were 2 very serious accusations involving rape. One situation was described by Mr Salmond as a sleepy cuddle resulted in an apology and the lady in question continued to work with Mr Salmond. There is no doubt in my mind that she was nagged into making this a criminal matter by Leslie Evans and her squad.
The second serious charge made against AS was false – the jury found AS not guilty as her story was built around an event which it turned out she did not even attend. This is the woman who tried to advance her political ambition through AS but was rebuffed because she wi nae up ta it! A scheming besom as ma mither would say!
I think that it what I said. An acquittal at any trial means that the prosecution could not prove the case. That is not the same as saying that the women all deliberately lied. That is as bad as saying that Alex Salmond must have done what they said he did. Both positions, in light of the case, and in law, are untenable, Achnababan. You have outlined the two very “serious” instances that were led by the prosecution. That is what I said.
Achnaban
In my opinion Lorna Campbell has filled this thread with a large amount of text, a lot of which contradicts itself and leads to confusion and misunderstandings by readers. Not to mention Lorna’s continual smearing of Salmond.
StuartM
Let those without sin cast the first stone.
I have another piece of dubious apocrypha for you: ” They don’t like it up ’em “.
Rather than back down and accept that all the allegations made against Alex Salmond were proven to be lies, the Scottish commentariat, from devolved parliament Ministers to Queens Counsel, have reinforced the lies. The BBC consistently reports that all of the allegations against AS were thrown out because the BBC and its political masters accept the verdict of the jury .
What that tells me is that the Scottish newspapers, and Newsnight, and the Tory funders of Ms Gravielli have set themselves up as a rival Scottish judiciary, paid for by business to subvert the will of the ruling party in Scotland the SNP to a right wing, privatisation agenda not shared by the SNP.
We have already had our membership of the EU hijacked by billionaire financiers. Do we now accept the same billionaires to privatise Scotland by demolishing supporters of Scottish Independence against the decision of the Scottish judiciary?
Then po-face Rees-Morgue down in London can declare that the Scottish humans are happier under private enterprise than under the management of the SNP. Dream on, ERG.
The BBC owns Newsnight. Same way as the Tories own the ERG. This is the way British institutions are able to say that they respect the Law, while simultaneously undermining democracy.
Giyane: that is not what the verdict said. All criminal trials are evidence-led. The evidence was simply too weak to stand up to scrutiny and the ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ criterion. That is not the same as saying that all the women lied. How could they all have lied when Mr Salmond himself admitted he had acted inappropriately on occasion? That does not mean that he acted as they claim he did, from their perspective. There are always two sides to any case, and in cases of sexual impropriety, those two perceptions can become very muddied. To my mind, the case should never have been tried. It is that simple. The evidence just was not there, and the Moorov Doctrine was never intended to shore up a weak case. On the contrary, it was intended to be used where the circumstantial evidence around the accused is very strong.
You are looking at things as a lay person and letting emotion get in the way of the facts. All that needs to be understood is that Mr Salmond was tried and acquitted and cleared of all charges. End of. I agree that the constant retrials by media are infuriating and utterly despicable. The “there’s no smoke without fire” homily is the excuse of the avid gossip and malevolent person to keep stoking the speculation. The Scottish/British media are guilty, beyond reasonable doubt, of behaving like the ill-intended, self-righteous village gossip, and we all know why, don’t we?
Lorna Campbell
I’m not a politician, but I’ve been told by a politician that one way getting a person to do something they don’t want to do is to fit them up and make them feel guilty.
I am 100% certain that the civil servants who had amorous moments with AS were not thinking about their high-paid job-spec when they did it, but it is very conceivable given that they were lukewarm about AS’ politics that they planned even if subconsciously to set a honey trap for him.
One party has very strong political convictions which the other party finds ridiculous. Some people believe you can change another person’s fundamental beliefs through sexual intimacy. personally I think that is tripe. So the lady was not attracted to his beliefs or personality, but by the prospect of making her political life easier by winning him over to the concept of Devolution instead of independence.
In that case all the deceit is on her part. Her only complaint against him would be that she was stupid enough to think she could uproot his lifelong, passionate convictions by tickling his tummy or even his willy and it didn’t work.
In plain English, and fully respecting your courtesy in this discussion with me , I totally disagree with you. I believe these ladies were being extremely unprofessional by mixing politics with friendship and extremely devious in deceiving the First Minister into thinking they had affection for him , when they wanted to make their work life easier by castrating his political convictions by ‘lerv.’ The police have a duty to take all accusations of sexual bullying seriously. They did that. They don’t have a duty to make the accused person agree with their accusers when they don’t agree, in fact they have a very strong moral duty not to do that.
You want the police to help make AS admit guilt and you are unhappy they acted professionally and refused to do so. Old matey with an eye on a hereditary title to.pass on to his family in perpetuity is potentially malleable to your hopes that AS can be mildly hung drawn and quartered, if the bung is big enough and his kids sit in the House of Lords for the next two centuries.
This week he [the Lord Advocate] is going to get a nice kick in the huevas and a strong reminder that a Queens Counsel cannot be bought. I look forward to his deep embarrassment. Some people are mad for scrap and start removing gas boilers still connected to the gas. Others are mad for money like gamblers of the ERG.
It’s perfectly possible for him to use his clout and pervert the course of justice both with Craig’s case and the ongoing saga of the female civil servants which is connected to it, but he will pay for it when the police see him do it. They work hard for justice for ordinary people and they will not allow an ambitious Beak to frustrate the honest public service they are trying to do. When he needs them, they won’t help him. In my only , fleeting encounter with Police Scotland I didn’t see any malice or impoliteness. Why should they risk their jobs and their self-respect to serve the likes of him? I don’t think so.
Craig’s story of his friendship with Emma Nelson is a welcome reminder that genuine, life-enhancing, enjoyable, playful, non-exploitative relationships can exist between powerful men and women who are in less senior positions within an organisation. It would be a really terrrible thing if this was not allowed to happen. However, the analogy with Alex Salmond is not entirely valid. Emma Nelson did not make a complaint. In respect of Alex Salmond, several women made complaints.
And yet those complaints were dismissed as unworthy by female witnesses, jurors and judge. So ask yourself why he was brought to court. Any ideas occur to you?
Many – possibly even the majority – of women who have made complaints of sexual assault or harassment have their complaints ‘dismissed’, in the sense of no sanction being taken against the alleged perpetrator. Many women do not even put themselves through the stress of making a complaint, for that reason. So the fact that the jury did not find Alex Salmond guilty is not an unusual occurence in that context. If what you are getting at was that the case pressnted in court was weak – I completely agree with you. I do not understand why the case was ever brought to court. I find it hard to believe that the police officers and fiscals who were involved in taking the case forward could have been part of a political conspiracy. Why would they do that? I am interested in whether you, or any other readers of this blog could explain why they would risk their professional reputations by doing such a thing. I can only assume that they genuinely believed that there was a significant degree of likelihood of a prosecution.
John McLeod
Are you unaware of malicious prosecutions in Scotland?
I agree, John. The whole thing is a mystery as far as the actual criminal case went. I do not think the case warranted prosecution because it was so weak. Maybe they were trying to show that even a FM could not be above the law? From the moment that flawed and illegal, retrospective procedure was introduced, and they refused to drop it, there was no real way the criminal case could be avoided, though. This whole thing took on a life of its own and Frankenstein had created his/her monster. Even now, with Mark Hirst and Craig Murray’s cases, there is a refusal to let the matter rest, and the sheer determination to get someone to prosecute – because that is how it comes across – seems to be unstoppable. I hope that Mr Murray is not the one on whom all that public spending will be hung – or there will be hell to pay.
Lorna Campbell
“There was no real way the criminal case could be avoided” – you do not say why you think this.
The two complainers did not want the case to go to the police – this was stated by attendees at the Committee hearings and also by one of the original complainers at the criminal trial. Evans decided to pass the details to the Crown Office against the wishes of the two complainers. The other complainers then appeared to bolster the police case by Moorov.
Evans and/or Sturgeon could have stopped it. In fact it can be argued both of them should have stopped it as they have a legal duty to prevent the Scotgov acting unlawfully.
Cubby: because, in criminal law, it is not the person who had been (allegedly) hurt/traduced/whatever, nor, indeed, the person accused of so doing (allegedly) who has any input. It is up to the police and fiscal/Lord Advocate, on behalf of the state/polity) whether a case will go ahead, on the evidence available. I personally think that they had such a weak case that it should not have come to trial. Once Mr Salmond had been accused and the procedure used against him – shown in a Judicial Review to have been flawed and illegal (and retrospective) – I don’t think there would have been any choice because what he was being accused of were criminal offences. Once the evidence was accumulated, it would have been decided whether a case was worth prosecuting, but, nowadays, in the public interest, most alleged offences of a sexual nature, will be brought to trial unless the case is so weak it needs crutches. Some of the lesser alleged offences were certainly in that category, but the two more serious accusations would have made the case at least, on the face of it, prosecutable. It had, and never had, anything to do with the two accusers whether it would go ahead. Without the application of the Moorov Doctrine, the two more serious alleged offences would have been very difficult to prove, and, in the end, not even the Moorov Doctrine could save them from falling for lack of evidence.
Lorna Campbell
With all respect I know all that. The point I am making is that the evidence and the decision report passed to the Crown was based on an unlawful procedure which both Evans and Sturgeon knew was the case ( although the formal judgement of the judicial review had not yet happened) so they were wrong in law to have attempted to pass it to anyone nevermind the Crown Office. Evans did not even follow the procedure which said it should be passed to the Police not the Crown Office. People acting in good faith would not have passed on this report. People acting in good faith would not have leaked the details of an unlawful investigation to the Daily Record either.
It was only unavoidable because Evans and Sturgeon wanted it to happen. They were the people who publicised the complaints and made it unavoidable. They pushed the complainants in to perjuring themselves in a criminal trial.
Cubby: the procedure was undoubtedly flawed and illegal, but it was in-house until the Judicial Review (civil law) ruled that it was such. The allegations themselves, as made, were made within the criminal law. There was no opportunity for the women to cross over from an in-house procedure that went to a civil law Judicial Review to refusing a criminal case. It was out of their hands. It actually went out of the hands of the SG. The complaints the women had made were of a criminal nature under the canon of criminal law in Scotland. They are not the only people who have tried to stop a criminal prosecution taking place when they realized the implications, and they won’t be the last. Had the women gone to arbitration under the procedure (and the procedure had not been flawed, causing Mr Salmond, quite rightly, to deny its efficacy), there would have been no Judicial Review in civil law or a trial in criminal law. It is not up to anyone else but the police and the fiscal/Lord Advocate to bring prosecutions (unless you get a very, very, very rare private prosecution). I’m sorry, but I don’t believe anyone passed anything to anybody; there was no choice at that point. The allegations were criminal in nature, no arbitration had been agreed at the procedure stage, and the civil case was widely publicized.
In the public interest, allegations of serious sexual assaults have to be investigated and prosecuted, if evidence exists. Corroboration was sadly lacking but the other, less serious allegations backed the more serious ones to allow prosecution to take place. I’m not putting any value judgement on that. I do not believe that the case was strong enough to go to trial. That is just how it is.
I have always thought that this was meant to have dealt with Mr Salmond at the procedure stage, to ensure that he wouldn’t put his head above the political parapet again, but it all went pear-shaped because the procedure was flawed and illegal (and retrospective, which is very important because it lent, and lends, weight to the allegation that the net was sprung to catch Alex Salmond).
Stupidly, whoever it was, decided to dig their heels in, and we had the Judicial Review, from which the government withdrew because it knew perfectly well it would lose. There was no stopping the runaway train after that, however, and the criminal case, or at least a criminal investigation, was a foregone conclusion.
That is the pattern with the SNPG: it just will not back off when there is nowhere to go; vested interests seem to dominate the discourse; and stupid, stupid decisions are made that need not have been made. GRA Reform will be the next fight, if the SNPG survives this, past May, and tries to reintroduce it, because there are still people in the SNP who just will not give in and leave this alone. It, too, is fundamentally and irrevocably flawed and illegal (totally contrary to the 2010 Equality Act and human rights legislation) and can do no other than take away the human rights of women and hand them to the trans lobby for reasons that escape sensible people. They have learned absolutely nothing from the Salmond case.
Lorna Campbell
“I’m sorry I don’t believe anyone passed anything to anybody”
Evans testified she passed the decision papers to the Crown Office and not the Police as stated in her own procedure. At least one other senior civil servant also said it was Evans.
Other(s) also passed the gory details of the investigation report to the Daily Record.
It’s hard to get it right. I worked in a large manufacturing facility with many female staff. My sister once asked if I had trouble working with so many women and I said that I never saw them or treated them as women and as far as I was concerned, they were just other engineers. “You’ll be very popular” she said sarcastically.
I think that’s a point that both men and women are still quite undecided on, in reality: the women’s rights and equality movement may have happened but there’s still a lot of confusion about just how equal people want their inter-gender relationships to be.
My mother raised me to have traditionally ‘gentlemanly’ values, with a hundred little unspoken rules that I was told would be expected of me and appreciated. You’d think it would be my father who taught these often archaic values, but it was her who believed in them so strongly. Meanwhile the rest of the world had largely moved on, as well as my own views.
I made a good friend in a female colleague when I first entered the workplace, and we initially had a few awkward moments where I’d try to insist on walking on the traffic-facing side of the pavement (my mother advised me it was better for me to get hit by a veering car than a woman) or constantly offer to carry heavy boxes for her. She was quite rightly independent and capable, and I was happy to respect that (in fact I liked that about her), but I always had this nagging conditioning in the back of my mind that I was somehow being disrespectful – and what might others think of a fairly big guy letting a petite young woman lug around a piles of boxes up to her chin?
Conversely, I still get the sense that many other women still expect this chivalrous treatment – perhaps by their own parents’ conditioning too.
It seems that in easing these traditional distinctions between male and female roles, we’ve sown a lot of confusion about where we each stand now too. It’s still better in the grand scheme, of course, but it was at least nice knowing ‘the rules’.
I suppose, as with everything, we just have to take people on a case-by-case basis and communicate.
Talking of Alex Salmond, according to the Daily Rectum one of Alex’s accusers has been named on Twitter and Twitter are refusing to remove the post.
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/twitter-alex-salmond-sex-assault-23315434
“Alex Salmond sex assault” – you really got to laugh at that. Alex was aquitted on all charges. Get over it DR!
Interesting post of yours, Craig, you write very well. But even broaching the subject now is a political and gender minefield. What happened to Salmond seems to have been a weaponising of claims of abuse or unwelcome behaviour which are hard to tell from the real indignities that almost all women will suffer at some time in their lives. Your friend, Julian Assange, is the ultimate horrible example of this. But it happens to be true that many, many women do suffer inappropriate and unwelcome attention of a physical nature at work and just have to keep quiet about it because of a perceived or often real effect on their careers. . Women have the right to be free of any duress of this sort and to be treated as equals. The “MeToo” movement didn’t arise out of thin air, but like many such movements, can be hijacked by those at the extreme with more ulterior motives and indeed some underlying misandry, as you suggest. . The problem is that in human relationships, particularly between the sexes and of the more intimated kind, there’s no pathology department or blood test we can perform to derive the truth or otherwise of claims of injured parties or those accused. We may regret the disappearance of the rather easier going times (that mostly suited the male sex) that you describe in your post, but gender inequality is such a real issue, and our best defence is to make sure that there is as little of this in our society as possible. Perhaps then we can all relax a bit more, and have mutually agreed forms of enjoyable interactions between the two sexes both at work and at leisure without suffering a distorted form of Victorian prudishness and moralising in its modern guise. .
A very engaging thread, with some great insightful responses, but I wonder if we’ll ever get to the bottom of why Sturgeon so callously stabbed her mentor in the back? She is of a law background, I believe, and she must have been privy to the “evidence” in the case, yet remained up to her neck in it – and has since made thinly-veiled statements implying he’s guilty. Clearly there is great resentment there and I can only wonder whether it was good old fashioned politicking, brought on by his continuing presence in the spotlight (and perceived overshadowing her) or whether there was something deeper underneath it all.
“…She is of a law background, I believe, and she must have been privy to the “evidence” in the case, yet remained up to her neck in it – and has since made thinly-veiled statements implying he’s guilty. Clearly there is great resentment there and I can only wonder whether it was good old fashioned politicking, brought on by his continuing presence in the spotlight (and perceived overshadowing her) or whether there was something deeper underneath it all…”
An obvious conclusion is that she “knew better”, having been there herself and that the other complainants were by way of being surrogates. This of course may well be the product of a delusion rather than experience.
The real problem is that complaints of the nature proffered in the court case, whether real or imagined, were almost certainly of a triviality (‘he touched my hair between floors, m’lud’) that would normally-as a opposed to in 2020-21- never end up in a court of law.
A lot of “Holy Willies” posting on this thread.
Never knew there were so many perfect human beings.
A `Holy Willy’ – do you mean a circumcised member? Yeah – there are a lot of willies posting here.
James B
No that is not what I mean. If you really do not know then I refer you to the works of Robert Burns.
I was also a Secretary in the seventies. I had the same experience as you, Margaret. There were creepy men in every office. Groping, unwanted touching, lewd comments. There was nothing to be done about it. And I was very young and shy in those days and unable to stand up for myself.
Harassment continued through the years, the final incident in 2013 when a colleague who I didn’t know at all crept up behind me as I was sitting at my desk in a new department and suddenly jabbed me in my ribs. I nearly jumped out of my skin! This time I didn’t hesitate to confront him and warn him of the consequences if he touched me again. It took me 40 years to get to this point where I had the confidence to say NO.
This is not to be confused with Craig’s example of work friends having friendly and sociable contact in an entirely consensual situation. So-called political correctness doesn’t prevent friendliness or physical contact or dancing or any other consensual actvity. It’s all about consent.
A number of older men have expressed the view that you can’t go out socialising with your work colleagues nowadays or say or do anything because of political correctness.
It’s as if they don’t know the difference between unwanted groping of women they barely know and friendly, affectionate contact between great friends.
Excellent post, Isabelle.
Isabelle
Somebody touched my friend in a scrapyard. He said if the person who touched me does it again, I’ll hit ’em and then their nose will be coming out the side of their face instead of the front. Why couldn’t the woman whose hair AS touched not have said. You want it , you can eat it , Alex. Maybe the jury threw out the charges against Alex Salmond because it is totally preposterous to imagine the genial FM could possibly take offence at being told off in public.
Women simply don’t behave in that way, Giyane. Men are ‘allowed’ to be aggressive if traduced/threatened/attacked. Girls are brought up according to a gender stereotype – the same one that the trans lobby says makes trans women, women – that does not allow them to smack someone in the teeth, although that is changing. Generally, they freeze at the time and seethe afterwards. That is proven fact in the psychology of women, and now applies in law where women are accused of murder. The ‘late reaction’ syndrome is a well-known phenomenon in females. Battered women and women who have suffered years of physical and mental abuse can snap and kill the alleged perpetrator. Until fairly recently, these women were handed down life sentences, while men, whose defence for killing their spouse might have been that she nagged incessantly, were handed down culpable homicide sentences.. Now, being battered senseless for years on end until you snap will see women being tried under the same standards as men have always been tried. The difference in approach to women right across the board is extremely detrimental to their well-being and, in fact, how women react to medicines, how they suffer illnesses different, how they present differently (in autism, for example), how they react psychologically to various pressures, etc. have all been ignored by society, and man is the default. Things are changing, but slowly – too slowly to save many women – but at least they are changing.
Come off it Lorna, you need to get out more. Apropos, in what circumstances do you think women should be held responsible for their behaviour?
Lorna Campbell
Of course what you say is true. But a new generation of women who want to work with men have to find the bottle to confront things like touching or sexism on the first occasion. The man will be so shocked that they won’t know what to do. If they choose go silent, the women should then find the bottle to call them out immediately in public. ‘ this person thinks I come to work to be touched or spoken to in a sexual way .. I’m going to talk with my line manager. Bye.’ . There will be no second time , and if you lose the job, the job wasn’t having anyway.
Giyane,
This issue comes up again and again. Why can’t a woman or young girl behave more like a man?
The answer is because she’s not a man. Women are different.
Boys and girls are socialised entirely differently from each other. For example, in my day girls didn’t play aggressive sports like boxing and rugby, we were not allowed to ‘answer back’ or challenge authority in any way. It was impolite to openly disagree with others or get into arguments. The idea of hitting someone or having a fight in the school playground was out of the question …. I don’t think these differences have disappeared now in the 21st century. Look at all the women who were assaulted by Weinstein and never said a word. And then, if course, there’s the tendency of women to blame themselves.
And yet men say well why didn’t she fight him off, or make a complaint, as if they don’t know that women are brought up to be amenable, especially towards men, and not to assert themselves. Don’t they know what happens to whistle-blowers?
Are men usually bigger and more powerful than women, physically and in status? Yes. Will there be a back-lash if you confront them? Yes.
Isabelle
My wife orders shoplifters to remove the stolen items from under their skirts and chases them down the road if they refuse. Not the same with men though. Her boss pays less than half the minimum wage and no furlough which he claims. But he leaves her alone and respects her. So no time lost stressing about abuse and no time lost for me dealing with the irritation of male stupidity.
It’s a purely financial decision. Being in work under a male boss who repects you is empowering and mildly lucrative. Being in work under a male boss who thinks it’s his job to go through the entire company methodology closeted in a small office with him for hours on end every day is abusive, stressful for the woman and damaging to her marriage.
White men particularly enjoy abusing female staff in this way because they know that our Muslim culture specifically forbids it. It turns out that’s another excellent reason for being a Muslim.
All they need to do is say, when invited to join a one to one brainwash with a man is say ‘So sorry my religion doesn’t allow me to sit in private with a man’ . Job done. Most men would realise that they have been rumbled and give up. The hijab is a clear statement to a man that he is not going to have permission to get the keys to her brain.
Isabelle – well, that’s exactly what the trial of A.S. was trying to establish – and the jury, mostly women, probably respectable Morningside types, who really hate Alex Salmond’s political views, decided that the accusations against Salmond were a pack of lies.
Do we have to go over that again?
No, James, what juries are empowered to do is decide whether the evidence is strong enough to convict someone beyond reasonable doubt. It is not their place to state that anyone lied. That is as bad as saying that there is no smoke without fire in Mr Salmond’s case. They might have lied, they might have exaggerated, they might have been mistaken, they might have had an entirely different perception. The only point to consider is: was the evidence strong enough to convict? No, it wasn’t. Ergo, acquittal. I often think that the old Scottish verdicts of Proven and Not Proven are far more applicable that Guilty and Not Guilty because they reflect the reality of criminal trials, not the perception that the lay person has of them.
Lorna – as I understand it, they did use the `Not Proven’ verdict in the one case where the evidence was not strong enough to convict beyond reasonable doubt. They gave `Not Guilty’ in the others. That seems to be how this jury (women, who are probably respectable Morningside ladies, pro-union, who would be naturally disposed against Alex Salmond) used the verdicts.
They seem to have used `Not Proven’ where there was reasonable doubt about his guilt and they seem to have used `Not Guilty’ when they were convince he didn’t do it and was being fitted up by a bunch of mendacious liars.
And that was a jury of women who didn’t like Salmond very much.
James B
Not guilty and not proven are the same. The judge will have told them that.
Your “they seem…… ” is just speculation.
James B: every study done in the US, Canada and here point to the fact that predominantly female juries tend to acquit in sexual offences cases. I’m not saying that is what happened in Mr Salmond’s case. I am saying that the jury in Mr Salmond’s case simply could not convict him, quite rightly, in my opinion, on such a weak set of evidence. It would have been a travesty of justice to have done so. It would have been a travesty of justice had it been a jury of all men, all women, half and half, all black, all Asian, etc. All women are not necessarily kind to all other women.
I won’t go into the historical details, James B, but Guilty and Not Guilty are English Law verdicts. To cut a long story short, a Scottish jury once thought they were being terribly smart by using Not Guilty (with a great deal of justification, I must say) to emphasise their verdict and to thumb their collective nose at the establishment. Unfortunately, we have been left with a set of b*****d verdicts, with Not Proven in the middle. Not Proven is still technically Not Guilty, but it is intended to show that the jury had a few doubts, but not enough to convict. Pragmatically and realistically, the Scottish Proven and Not Proven are far superior and reflect what actually happens. I wish they would bring them back. Guilty and Not Guilty tend to give people the understanding that the person acquitted is wholly innocent and the witnesses unmitigated liars. In reality, those circumstances are as rare as hen’s teeth, and Mr Salmond, by admitting that he might have acted inappropriately without acting in a criminal fashion, or without having any intent (mens rea) basically to act in a criminal fashion, was saying just that. Basically, James, very few things in life are black-and-white.
Lorna Campbell
They did lie. It was proven in court.
People transposing their personal experiences on to the political persecution of Salmond is inappropriate. Thought I would use inappropriate as this seems to be the in vogue word to use to smear Salmond. Used by Sturgeon Swinney and many others.
Cubby – yes – it’s just speculation, but there must have been some reason they chose `not proven’ for one of the charges against `not guilty’ for all the others – even though the judge told them it was exactly the same thing. The `speculation’ is actually pretty close to the `speculation’ made by Craig Murray in one of his blog posts.
Technically it is the same thing, but it does have different connotations c/f `The Scotch Verdict’ in `The Law and the Lady‘ by Wilkie Collins.
It was not proven in court, Cubby. The defence will posit the suggestion that witnesses lied, but there is rarely proof of lying. It is a tactic to suggest that people are lying. The prosecution will also suggest that the accused is lying. It is almost always a case of two sets of interpretations, two sets of perceptions. It depends on which set the jury believes. If the evidence does not support the ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ hurdle, the case should fall or a grave injustice will have taken place, and the judge will direct the jury that way. It is far more prosaic than you think.
Lorna
I am surprised that you take this line. They did lie – evidence showed that. I am sorry to say that you have consistently taken the line that there is no smoke without fire. It was a political fit up and evidence in court showed that.
” there is rarely proof of lying. ” that may be the case and you may have carried out studies to come to that conclusion but once again you are off on the tangent of discussing general situations and then transposing them on to the Salmond case and then that becomes your truth.
My advice to you Lorna would be stick to the facts about the Salmond case when discussing the Salmond case.
Try to stop smearing Salmond with your inappropriate comments it is inappropriate . As is your comments on not proven being a middle ground verdict. Just more smearing of Salmond.
The question is why are the alphabet women not being charged with perjury.
Ps I have been a juror on three criminal trials.
James B
What value is this kind of speculating? Speculating on what jurors think? I prefer to look at the actual evidence in the trial.
In an attempted murder case where I was the head juror two women on the jury said they weren’t interested in the evidence, said the guy was a thug and he was guilty but would accept a not proven verdict as they needed to get home to make the tea. Is this relevant to the Salmond trial – not directly but it illustrates that not all jurors act and think the same and speculating just adds to the continual smearing of Salmond.
There is the Britnat smearing and then there is the Holy Willie smearing of some independence supporters. Sick of it.
Lorna saying “it was intended to show the jury had some doubts ” is just a subtle example of smearing and is wrong.
Cubby – I more or less agree with the sentiment, but am uneasy.
Firstly – I followed Craig Murray and Grousebeater – from their accounts, it seemed clear to me that Alex Salmond was fitted up and was innocent (by the way I’m against independence for Scotland – so I don’t have any political reason to favour Alex Salmond).
Secondly – I do think that the jury were genuinely convinced of his innocence and that it wasn’t just a `we can’t convict because the evidence was insufficient’ – no – I get the impression that they genuinely found him innocent.
I’m sorry that you had such bad experience of juries when you were doing jury service – but it is by far the best thing that we have. Do you imagine that they would have acquitted A.S. if it had been a judge without a jury? So I think you should be careful before you trash the jury – you’re giving ammunition to those who want to eradicate juries and replace them with people like Vanessa Baraitser.
By your own admission, in the case where you were involved, there were only two duff jurors – so presumably the other 13 were conscientious and genuinely trying to separate truth from lies.
The jurors were much closer to the trial than anybody else.
James B
I never said I had a bad experience of juries. I was on three juries and I mentioned an example of two women out of 3 juries of a total 45 people and you transpose that to me being against juries and wanting people like Baraitser to decide. My point was speculating how jurors thought about a case is next to worthless.
I will politely say to you that you should think again about what you posted because you completely misrepresented what I posted.
James B,
My comment wasn’t to do with Alex Sammond. I don’t know anything about him and didn’t follow his trial and have nothing to say about him.
If we allow ‘our’ government to pervert the concept of “womanhood” in Scots law and make natural language a hate crime, then that’s pretty much it for open democracy in Scotland.
Developing Who I Am: A Self-Determination Theory
Approach to the Establishment of Healthy Identities
selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2009_LaGuardia_EP.pdf
Fair comment, Craig.
Times change.
Have we forgotten already how blatantly sexual music vids were for example, even as recently as Eric Prydz, Call On Me from 2004?
Not saying it’s ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, just pointing out how things change.
.
.
Corruption in the Scottish judicial system, isn’t a new thing.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newsscotland/al-megrahi-family-devastated-as-lockerbie-appeal-court-judges-uphold-conviction/ar-BB1cMmHu?ocid=msedgntp
RoS (15.57): I don’t know about corrupt, but certainly prejudiced. If Scotland does gain its independence it will have an urgent need to clean out the Augean stables of its justice system.
Coldish.
The evidence against al-Megrahi, hinges on the testimony of one man who was coaxed by security agencies, and shown a picture of al-Megrahi prior to picking him out as the suspect who purchased clothing that was found in a suitcase with a planted detonator inside it. The so called witness was even promised American citizenship.
I’m flabbergasted that the Scottish appeal court judges, batted out this appeal for a third time, but then again if al-Megrahi was found innocent, and the latest patsy who was named by US officials not that long ago failed to be prosecuted for the atrocity questions would begin to mount up on who actually committed the crime, and which countries (and there are several) are covering this up, this latest upholding of al-Megrahi’s conviction makes a mockery out of Scottish justice, and show our judiciary in a very bad light.
Hopefully my support of cognitive democracy is not considered spamming, as all I’m doing is trying to support the potential for justice in and for Scotland. Unfortunately, the only way I know how to do that is by pointing folks towards the science of human judgement. So I won’t please those who seek to eradicate Hume and a cognitive conception of the law, from Scotland’s social consciousness.
Gender differences in cognitive Theory of Mind revealed by transcranial direct current stimulation on medial prefrontal cortex
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep41219
It looks, Cameron, as if both physiological and psychological differences between the two SEXES, not genders, are going to become absolutely crucial to the next forward phase of medicine, and if we don’t acknowledge that there are differences, both SEXES are going to suffer. Apparently, overall, women are 40% more likely to survive virus attacks and other kinds off attacks on their bodies because they produce an immune response that kills off the virus much earlier. Some scientists are now looking into women’s immune responses to try and help men fight off viruses at the early stages – because more are coming. So, no, Cameron, I think your stuff is interesting and helpful, although it is Mr Murray’s blog and he has the say, not any of us. If we scrap SEX and replace it with GENDER, we are going to be in big trouble, or so say the scientists.
It may appear self-serving but I have to agree with you Lorna, as there is certainly an element of Scotland’s government and legal Establishment who pose a serious threat to public health and open democracy. Anyone who seeks to deny the legal significance of biology, or supports any form of legal pseudo-science, simply can’t be considered a supporter of democracy. So that us stuffed in Scotland, if we can’t defend a cognitive account of our legal identity from ideologically dogmatism and legal parochialism.
Gender on the Brain: A Case Study of Science Communication in the New Media Environment
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0110830
Hear, hear. The MeToo crowd are all ultra-conservatives posing as some sort of enlightened cult. A pox on them.
I know I said I only know how to support cognitive democracy by pointing folks towards the science of human judgement. You’ll need to forgive me, as I’m very, very rusty. I was forgetting that the value of this insight is only fully realised through linking it with legal method.
If Scotland’s is not a democracy that is underpinned by cognitive law, Scots does not enjoy democracy. Our legal Establishment might appreciate this better if they weren’t “ambivalent” to cultural authenticity. Or subourdinate the Natural law to Westminster’s unsubstantial claim to legal authority over Scotland. Which is the cause of ‘our’ justice system’s stunted deformity and incapacity to support open democracy.
The Role of Language Cognition in Legal Method
https://www.juridicainternational.eu/index.php?id=12456