Andy Coulson lied under oath, repeatedly, in the Tommy Sheridan trail. He has not been acquitted of lying. He has been acquitted of perjury, by the judge, Lord Burn who ruled that whether he told the truth or not would not have affected the outcome of the Tommy Sheridan trial. It is very important to note it was Lord Burn who took that decision – he dismissed the jury who were given no chance to have their say. So Coulson is protected from a stretch in Saughton pokey, and more to the establishment’s purpose, the conviction of Tommy Sheridan stands.
Coulson lied about phone hacking in the Sheridan trial. Coulson has form. “Lord” David Burn also has form. He was part of the Megrahi “defence” team of advocates who failed to ask a score of glaringly obvious questions about the holes in the prosecution case and payment of witnesses in the fit-up of the century. The Scottish legal establishment is a sewer.
UPDATE
Here is a step by step guide to how the scam was pulled by the excellent Gordon Dangerfield:
” A Very Prescient Raby ”
Hmm, Scottish Law, Scottish Court, Scottish Judge.
Still the fault of the English.
Israel is preparing to carry out a false flag operation in the United States and will blame it on Iran as a strategy to entangle Washington in a war with Tehran, a former US Senate candidate says.
“I have maintained from the beginning that Israel is planning and will in some point attempt a false flag incident probably within the continental United States that will be facilitated by Israeli intelligence and falsely blamed on Iran,” said Mark Dankof, who is also a broadcaster and pastor in San Antonio, Texas.
This lie will be repeated in the American news media time and time and time again to create the furor within the United States, with the American public for triggering an overt American attack on the Iranians.
Craig, I think you are too hard on the lawyers.
Mr. Coulson, with his prior job experiences, must be in a position to know many secrets. He cannot be happy having served time in prison and there maybe those in the establishment/secret police who fear that at some point he might hit back, even though the press is not normally noted for its courage. I would think that organizations like MI5 and MI6 would take an interest in matters that relate to him, whether he wanted them to or not.
As others have recounted, and as I know from hard personal experience, all of our institutions – and I mean all: police, legal, media, parliament, oversight bodies etc. – freeze up in situations where MI5/6 are involved.
Sadly these days, where the establishment might have an interest, concepts like judicial independence are largely a myth put around by lawyers.
From the mods on the previous thread:
“Conga Eel on this thread seems to be the same commenter as Old Etonian on the Coulson thread, and seems to be the same commenter who posts under many different names.”
You might think about not giving such people “little tips” about who to ignore, etc, Mary.
PS You were right, Villager.
Cheer up. You suck less than the USA, ordinally speaking.
http://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-law-around-world
Also N.B. amusing features of this blue-ribbon NGO study, e.g. Venezuela is dead last, and hey, Where’s Israel?!?
Whoever ‘Old Etonian’ is, his/her comment had substance unlike most of yours of late Dreoilin. Try telling us something new or of interest. This is a political blog, not an agony aunt column in a tabloid.
A fair report on the BBC Six O’clock News on the Coulson trial.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-32990169
He speaks on a video above.
Surprisingly a longer report on the Sky News website.
Ex-NOTW Editor Andy Coulson Acquitted Of Perjury
The former News Of The World editor was on trial in Edinburgh for around two weeks before the case collapsed.
http://news.sky.com/story/1495377/ex-notw-editor-andy-coulson-acquitted-of-perjury
“Try telling us something new or of interest. This is a political blog, blah blah.”
I used to Mary. Frequently. Before the best people left and the place changed so drastically. Mostly it bores me stiff now. However, I did post about Nick Robinson on the previous thread.
“Whoever ‘Old Etonian’ is”
Exactly. You haven’t a clue. But you’re going to try and warn him/her off certain posters, as early as you can. It’s deplorable. You have no particular role here, you’re not a mod, you have no authority, but you spend a lot of time attempting to recruit “lurkers” to your “side” before they ever comment. It stands out like a sore thumb.
enough
“I used to Mary. Frequently. Before the best people left and the place changed so drastically. Mostly it bores me stiff now. However, I did post about Nick Robinson on the previous thread.”
_____________________
Oh dear,now Dreolin,has admitted what we all suspected a long time ago,his comments are empty hollow scribbles of waffle.
It would appears Dreolin has caught a severe case of Villageritis.
Mary
“Try telling us something new or of interest. This is a political blog, not an agony aunt column in a tabloid.”
____________________
Coming from you, Mary, the above is particularly rich.
A self-awareness course is needed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cue the courtiers (Republicofscotland, RobG, Mr Goss….)…..
Reading this blog whilst completely sober, last night..it was a little bit like looking down at a toilet bowl …shit mixed with starlight…but it was just about worth doing..cos it made me feel how Charles Kennedy felt…
On that subject..well…It’s survivable to an old age…providing you don’t do it all the time…and do lots of exercise and have lots of love. I am completely sober at least 3 days a week..every week…unless…I am doing something highly unusual..I like being sober…and I like being drunk..These are just two completely different states of mind…but the real excitement if you are not flying a glider, riding a fast motorcycle..or doing a job that is very important..and just has to be done is the transition from sober to drunk. The transition from drunk to sober..unless you drink at least a couple of pints of water before you go to bed..can be quite depressing for 24 hours. I do not do any pharmaceutical drugs..except very occasionally cos they killed my brother and sister..and I do not approve of early death.
As I have been sober since Sunday and also climbed up one of the highest Hills in England today with my wife, I am going to get drunk…
But before that..Thank you so much Mary and Mark Golding for the stuff you write..and for you bastards who could not be nice to Mary..when you knew she wasn’t too well..you guys can join the queue to Hell with ANTHONY CHARLES LYNTON BLAIR.
And you guys who accuse others of RACISM..whilst exhibiting extremely undesirable qualities..well you join that Queue too. I really don’t want to meet you.
You know who you are in that toilet bowl.
I can see The Angels.
Tony
Richard Keen QC defended Andy Coulson arguing there was no case to answer. Coulson was cleared of perjury charges.
Richard Keen QC defended Lamin Khalifah Fhimah arguing there was no case to answer in the Lockerbie trial. Fhimah was found not guilty of the Lockerbie bombing.
Richard Keen QC is Chairman of the Scottish Conservative Party.
Richard Keen QC has just been appointed Advocate-General for Scotland (David Cameron’s adviser on Scots Law).
QED
“A self-awareness course is needed.”
Yep. She’s in a bubble. Her own little Jew-hating bubble. Can barely see beyond her nose.
Burns –
‘During the Lockerbie trial (2000–2002), Burns was one of the advocates representing Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Burns,_Lord_Burns
Many of the Scottish lawyers benefited from that trial it would appear.
Dreoilin Can you desist please. You said ‘enough’. Remember. It was only an hour ago.
I am out tonight so don’t bother with any more of it.
‘During the Lockerbie trial (2000–2002), Burns was one of the advocates representing Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.’
Yes, Mary, Craig already said that in his post. You’re over-anxious to post “something new or of interest”.
“Can you desist please”
Nope. Same answer you gave me when I asked you nicely to put your copy and paste in quotation marks.
I don’t give a damn whether you’re in or out.
Patrick Haseldine @ 7:10 pm.
That’s really intersting Patrick. It looks like they all had a hand in Lockerbie. What a travesty that Lamin Khalifah Fhimah was found Not Guilty and Abdel al Megrahi was found Guilty. There was no way that could ever have been the case. I want to quote Francis A. Boyle on this matter.
Destroying Libya and World Order p141
He goes on to note that while that decision was a travesty of justice the decision to “rubber stamp” the decision at the Scottish kangaroo appellate courts was as big a travesty.
Destroying Libya and World Order p142
“Oh dear,now Dreolin, has admitted what we all suspected a long time ago, his comments are empty hollow scribbles of waffle.”
‘His’ comments? I’ve noticed before that you’re not very observant, RoS. And I love the way you say “a long time ago” as if you’d been here ten years. Plus, who are you speaking for when you say “we all”?
I believe you’re taking sweeping liberties. Not for the first time.
“The final stages of capitalism, Marx wrote, would be marked by developments that are intimately familiar to most of us. Unable to expand and generate profits at past levels, the capitalist system would begin to consume the structures that sustained it. It would prey upon, in the name of austerity, the working class and the poor, driving them ever deeper into debt and poverty and diminishing the capacity of the state to serve the needs of ordinary citizens. It would, as it has, increasingly relocate jobs, including both manufacturing and professional positions, to countries with cheap pools of laborers. Industries would mechanize their workplaces. This would trigger an economic assault on not only the working class but the middle class—the bulwark of a capitalist system—that would be disguised by the imposition of massive personal debt as incomes declined or remained stagnant. Politics would in the late stages of capitalism become subordinate to economics, leading to political parties hollowed out of any real political content and abjectly subservient to the dictates and money of global capitalism.
But as Marx warned, there is a limit to an economy built on scaffolding of debt expansion. There comes a moment, Marx knew, when there would be no new markets available and no new pools of people who could take on more debt. This is what happened with the subprime mortgage crisis. Once the banks cannot conjure up new subprime borrowers, the scheme falls apart and the system crashes.”
The generally interesting Chris Hedges (formely NY Times etc)
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/karl_marx_was_right_20150531
“I believe you’re taking sweeping liberties. Not for the first time.”
____________________
Boo hoo hoo.
What was it you said to Mary,in you’re machoist voice?
Ah yes now I remember.
I don’t give a damn.
If you’re going to dish it out,you must be able to take it.
So don’t cry baby to me about liberties.
Perhaps Lord Burn is a paedophile and the security services know about it, or even helped him in his vile indulgences. If so they have control of him as they seem to have control of so many other “VIPs”
“So don’t cry baby to me about liberties.”
I just love the way you ignored my entire first paragraph. Coward.
I doubt very much if any British politician lies awake at night, unable to sleep for thinking of Megrahi and/or Jean Charles de Menezes. Sickening really.
Excellent Chris Hedges as usual, Tech. I tweeted it.
Dreoilin: he’s good, isn’t he? There was another good piece on Marx and austerity recently by Paul Krugman, the Wire writer:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2015/apr/29/the-austerity-delusion
A few years ago I was dealing with a young intern, who was working over summer as an addition to his university degree. He was quite upset that his course was not teaching anything about Marx – it was nowhere on the curriculum, not even as a basic introduction. He was doing economics at Cambridge.
“it was nowhere on the curriculum, not even as a basic introduction. He was doing economics at Cambridge.”
I wonder how typical that is. I just checked with my husband and asked him if Marx had been on his curriculum (years ago now.) And he said no. He said a possible ‘pen portrait’ in economic history, but that would be all. UCD is very conservative, but nevertheless, he thinks Marx would be included now (one of the current lecturers is a friend of his, but he’s guessing.)