William Wallace did not turn to Andrew Murray at Stirling Bridge and say “I am not fighting alongside you, I hear you’re hard on your tenants.”
A declaration of interest. At the SNP conference in Glasgow in March I was feeling very down. Having been rejected at candidate vetting by the SNP leadership, and the fact leaked to the press with resulting brouhaha, I was effectively cold-shouldered at what was a very managed loyalist mass rally. I spent a lot of time on my own and people I knew were positively walking away to avoid me.
As regular readers know I am bipolar, and I know that when I am severely depressed my perception can be wrong. But in the SNP club a few weeks later a very sensible gentleman told me he and his wife had been appalled at the way I was treated at the conference. I am pretty confident it was not a distorted perception.
Anyway, I was sitting on my own in the conference hall when Michelle Thomson came and sought me out, sat with me and chatted to me. I have no doubt that her motive was simple personal kindness. I should add that the next day Chris Law did much the same.
In Scotland we have had five days of Michelle being treated by the media as though she were the Yorkshire Ripper. The BBC, who never once managed to ask Jim Murphy about the Henry Jackson Society, have been on 24 hour Thomsonwatch, including aggressive doorstepping a la Sky News.
I am not going to set out the detail of the case here, but highly recommend that you read Wings on the distortion of the issues, and Lallands on the legal position. Both are excellent, but to me neither quite clearly delineates the most essential point.
To preface that point, let me restate that Michelle is not under investigation, and her own role is unclear.
The key point is that at no time was any vendor selling their house ripped off. This is not a case of distressed people dispossessed, and the attempts by media and politicians to make it appear that way are tendentious.
The worst that allegedly happened is this. A and B are in cahoots. Mr Smith sells his property to A for an agreed market price. A then sells to B for market price plus 20 grand. The bank gives a mortgage for this, but A quietly gives the extra 20 grand back to B under the table.
The fraud is on the mortgage company which has been tricked into giving a higher mortgage than it otherwise would have. The fraud in no way harms the original vendor. The fraud does not even harm the mortgage company provided the mortgage is paid – and there is no accusation of default. What the mortgage company has lost is that it has as security an interest over a property with a false value.
But again, unless there were a default, it has actually helped the mortgage company too as in the weird world of banking its larger loan is an asset not a liability on its books.
So it is a fraud, but not one perpetrated on poor vendors. It is a trick played on the ludicrous banking system. Clever, dishonest but not morally outrageous. I repeat again, there is no evidence or even legal accusation that Michelle Thomson was involved in any of this. But in any case it is nowhere near as immoral as starting an illegal war with consequent deaths of millions of people. Lets get a grip.
I have never claimed to be perfect. All of us have done things wrong in our past. For me the Independence referendum campaign transcended all that. It was a millenarian movement, a time when people envisaged a world renewed and more just. That phrase about living in the first days of a better nation carried enormous resonance. It was the defining moment of my own life despite coming in its Autumn. Those of us in the frontline of the Yes campaign underwent a kind of emotional rebirth. Sins were wiped clean. It was a sacramental experience, and will lead on to that better world in an Independent Scotland in short time.
It sparked England’s chance for change with Corbyn.
I don’t care what mistakes people made before the Yes campaign. By dedicating themselves to that social movement, they wiped the slate clean.
Which leads me on to Tommy Sheridan. Neither Tommy nor Michelle will thank me for lumping them together, given the very different circumstances. But the continued shunning of Sheridan by pro-Independence organisations from Rise to the SNP is ludicrous.
Most ludicrous of all is the language parroted by the left about Sheridan, that “A space containing Tommy Sheridan is not a safe space for women.” You find it here in the comment by Edward Bonobo. You find it in this article by Tommy Ball. I have had it repeated to me several times.
One answer to this is that it is even more dangerous to be in organisations that teach members to parrot catchphrases, as opposed to think.
In what way precisely is proximity to Tommy Sheridan dangerous to women? If it were true that he has a Svengali like irresistible sexual appeal – which appears to be the nub of the accusation as far as I can make out any sense from Tommy Ball’s article – then surely there is not a woman in Scottish politics not warned against it by now? Is it not rather demeaning to women to argue they would not be capable of protecting themselves from Tommy Sheridan? What precisely about being in the same “space” as Tommy Sheridan is unsafe for women? What does “space” mean in this context? Room, meeting, city? The argument about “safe space” is clearly a nonsense.
I do not know the truth about the sexual shenanigans of which Tommy was accused by Murdoch. Nor do I in the least care if they were true. I have done all that kind of stuff. Often before tea. I do know that Sheridan was jailed for perjury, and that Coulson lied in court at the same trial but the judges ruled that it was OK for Coulson to lie, but not for Sheridan. I know there are allegations that Sheridan pressured other people to lie for him. I do not know if it is true, but I have had so many friends – of both sexes – ask me over the years to give them an alibi for marital infidelity I am not shocked by that. I am afraid to say that in my younger days I have asked that myself.
None of which explains the sheer hatred and bile poured out at Sheridan. This is a man who liberated poor families from the destitution and humiliation of warrant sales, who led the anti-poll tax campaign, who sparked the Murdoch phone-hacking revelations and has been repeatedly arrested and even jailed outside Faslane – trying to make the world a “safer space” for everyone. This tribute is undoubtedly true:
You supported individuals in the community; both in parliament and in the street, you were able to use your undoubted powers of oratory to press home your cause; you led the Scottish Socialist Party to considerable electoral success; and your contributions to the anti-poll tax campaign and the abolition of warrant sales will become part of the fabric of Scottish social and political history.
It was said by Lord Bracadale as he sentenced him to three years in prison for perjury in the Murdoch case.
Tommy Sheridan proclaims his innocence, but in any event he has undoubtedly made mistakes in life. But his achievements are very important, and the continued vindictiveness of the sex-negative feminists and their followers on the Left is extreme. Tommy has been to jail. Is offender rehabilitation only something the political classes claim to believe in because they don’t actually expect to meet any ex-convicts in their sphere of life? The attempt to dress the vicious vindictiveness up as warding off a present danger to women from Tommy Sheridan is intellectually ludicrous.
I shared a platform with Tommy Sheridan at Caird Square, Dundee on Sunday. I was not asked to speak until the gloaming, when 95% of those attending had gone home, but I accepted that and got on with it because I will do anything, anywhere to promote the cause of Independence. The SNP boycott of the event because Tommy was there cannot possibly be helpful if Independence is really the aim.
The Independence movement has a vast and powerful army arraigned against us. The entire British state, their corporate masters, the transatlantic neo-cons, both state and corporate media, the security services. For God’s sake, we need to be absolutely united if we are to reach our goal.
We need all of us. We must value all of us; as people, not robots. We should not be trying to project some corporate media image of a totally fake and hypocritical groomed perfection.
We have tremendously powerful enemies. We only have each other.
Our enemies lie before us. We should not look askance at our allies.
Hi Jon, yes, absolutely, I think they should definitely offer support and reassurance. But maybe avoid trying to offer advice, unless it comes from a genuine understanding of what the person might be going through, as opposed to, say, stuff like ‘Have you tried baking a cake?’ (I’ve heard that.) Better perhaps to read one of the many harrowing first hand accounts, such as William Styron’s Darkness Visible. After reading something like that you would never say, ‘How can you be depressed on such a beautiful day? ‘ (Imagine saying how can you have diabetes on such a beautiful day?) Since you’ve been there you obviously know this. Best wishes.
You can report what you like about him, RobG. He’s dead. You’ll hope some of it sticks because he *looked* like a creepy perv and unlike Lord McAlpine he’s no longer around to sue your sorry little arse.
“With that loan secretly repaid in full while Healey was still Chancellor, came conditions including marketisation i.e. sell-off of public services which Thatcher and the Tories later would claim to be still bound by,”
Evidence?
Defending the tribe is getting more comical by the minute!
Comprehension is not its thing is it?
VIP what it stands for again?
“Stay off sugar and all the things that are full of sugar, including carrots.”
Avoid quacks
https://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=&oq=sugar+content+of+carrots&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGNI_enGB603GB604&q=sugar+content+of+carrots&gs_l=hp..0.0j0i22i30l4.0.0.0.10734………..0.MnsOryC2n40
If you want to eat a tomato as well – fine
“I know there are allegations that Sheridan pressured other people to lie for him. I do not know if it is true, but I have had so many friends – of both sexes – ask me over the years to give them an alibi for marital infidelity I am not shocked by that”. You do not say whether you did lie for your friends, but if you did it is in a different league than if your ‘so called friends’ asked you to lie [perjury] in front of a jury for which both you and Sheridan could have received 3 years in prison.
”
Ben
10 Oct, 2015 – 9:36 pm
Brillant article. God damn it Craig you’re seriously the best political writer out there right now. on the fuckin money, day in, day out.”
_______________
I agree in general.
One might not always agree 100% but there is no doubt of Craig’s sincerity and style of writing, as an artist, driver from a *natural* flair.
What you do need to do Craig is find a viable business model through which you can monetize this ‘talent’.
At the risk of John Spencer-davis’s approval: once you do, you might send off your depression.
If we are all being allowed to put in our tuppence worth on healing then perhaps I might as well. There is a chapter in Sir Paul Duke’s long out of print book The Unending Quest, which explains some simple facts about some aspects of healing.
How the events get written off without anyone noticing!
Last week two Naval Vessels (probably destroyers) both involved in the war on Yemen by the Saudi lead forces have been destroyed. Yet this is not making the news, what will it take before the imposed war on Yemen by Saudi makes the news?
Craig,
I just love the title of your piece. It’s the word “lie” and of course the possibility of ambiguity in the meaning of the term.
And so to Lord Bracadale and his pronouncement from which you quoted; I just wonder if the learned judge wasn’t using the word “fabric” with a similar notion in mind.
Where’s your evidence to the contrary RD? This is all well known stuff now. It was actually worse than I described as they only took a first instalment of the amount ‘loaned’ then quietly returned it with interest also paid and with the gruelling conditions, including a timescale for ransacking of the profitable parts of the public sector maintained.
The Independence movement has a vast and powerful army arraigned against us. The entire British state, their corporate masters, the transatlantic neo-cons, both state and corporate media, the security services. For God’s sake, we need to be absolutely united if we are to reach our goal.
United we stand of course against our own home grown neo-cons. Just the other day Admiral Lord Alan West, a man I have a certain respect for, said, “‘We need all-pervasive strategy against ISIS involving everyone” – everyone decent that is.
Alan commanded HMS Ardent in the Falklands war and at Gratham Sound on the 22 May 1982, completely exposed without effective anti-aircraft systems, Ardent was attacked by Argentine aircraft and suffered fatal damage to the ship’s stern and lost 22 of the crew to this enemy action. As dusk fell HMS Ardent was abandoned, Alan being the last to leave his ship.
Alan divulged Britain had secret agents working inside the murderous assortment pack ISIS, a CIA terrorist group trained in Jordon and committed to destroying the Assad government.
https://www.rt.com/op-edge/317926-syria-russia-isis-terror/
Try Lobster issue 64 RD (issue 34 has more too but requires a subscription) for an introduction, even Healey himself in a deathbed limited hangout said it was all because they were outright duped and lied to by the Treasury (they pulled a similar stunt on Ramsay MacDonald in 1931) and the IMF (who even unilaterally changed the conditions of the loan after it was negotiated), the media created a storm of nonsensical stories of ‘economic mismanagement’ over nothing of any significance and Labour in turn duped and lied to the public and went on compounding their lies with even more elaborate barefaced opportunist ones piled on top. They were awash with surplus cash, embarassingly so, whilst pretending the country was broke and denying modest pay rises, even interfering in private sector wage negotiations, provoking the public sector and other strikes that ended the reign of Callaghan and Healey ignominiously, destroyed the Labour Party and ‘lost’ Scotland then too forever inevitably and quite deservedly.
Glenn,
As long as your impression of me is cast iron and what you really think Glenn who could argue-or run away like Billy-O!
Im glad that’s what you really think Glenn.
Isn’t it?
Oh how glorious it might not otherwise be Glenn,eh?
Apparently Strathclyde plod spent a fortune in nailing Sheridan, a total waste of money that should have seen heads roll, but naturally didn’t. Shagger Sheridan may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but he was royally shafted by our legal system, whilst Murdoch-lackey, Coulson, appears to have gotten the slap on wrists treatment meted out to those who, gangland style, cover for their bosses. Given his bosses were Murdoch and our idiot PM, this is somewhat troubling. And the ginger harridan was also found not guilty. I’ve no real idea what she was found not-guilty off, given she was guilty as hell – perhaps she wasn’t guilty of being a remotely competent editor?
As to the SNP, professional politicians work hard at distancing themselves from anything that resembles Democracy. Possibly for monetary and career reasons, but also, I think, because many of them are just arrogant arses, who consider themselves a cut above. They really aren’t though.
50 labour MPs to vote for bombing Assad in defiance of Jesus Corbyn. Wtf. Nobody told the stupid fools labour membership doubled after JC election, with new membership alone exceeding ENTIRE con party membership? Or has bliar promised them a share in the Ghawar like mega Golan oil find?
DESELECTION NOW !!!
Lofty principles, gracious pardons and a braveheart fighting for justice. Now if only those sublime values were to trickle down the page into the sordid comments section. #fictionvsreality
Sheridan ‘show’ trial cost £5Million instigated by Blair/Murdoch,, the illegal war criminals who caused millions of deaths. If Coulson hadn’t lied at the show trial Tommy would have been found not guilty.
Murdoch was illegally hacking phones, bribing public officials and using private detectives to intimidate people. Bribery and corruption. Blair and Murdoch should be in jail. The MSM is owned by tax evading non Doms, some are resident in the UK. Mail,Times, Sun, Telegraph, Express etc. Guardian run by Oxford graduates paying themselves gigantic salaries.
Thatcher gave over the Press to right wing tax evaders like her and her son. Crooks and criminals. Thatcher had over million unemployed and interest rates at 15%. Demutualsed the Building Societies, owned by their members. Sold off to the banks. Deregulated the Banks. Secretly and illegally took the Oil revenues and built Canary Wharf and Tilbury Docks etc. Coal is now half the cost of imported Gas or Nuclear. Sold off utilities now owned by foreign State Companies French and Spansh. £Billion contracts with Norwegian State Gas Companies. Thatcher cancelled a pipe line wasting the equivalent of £Billions of Gas. The Gas was burnt off.
Osbourne is now pimping off nuclear and rail to the Chinese, to benefit his associates, putting up the debt. Ruining the Oil sector losing thousands of jobs. The Oil sector is taxed at 55% despite the fall in Oil price. While (foreign) Internationals tax evade through the City of London.
At least Sheridan shagged women.
The antics of Tommy Sheridan and active members of left wing politics shows just how unfit these sleazebags are for public service. Indeed, the whole process needs some effective means of applying a character test to filter out creeps, weirdos, liars, cheats and deviants. Banning lawyers and company directors from high office would be a good start.
Hints here that MI6 intervened to discredit the Labour Party and helped them lose the election, it was 90 years ago, but I don’t suppose they’ve modernized their ideas much over the last century!
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/10/outcast-mi6-agent-zinoviev-letter-alexis-bellegarde
TonyM
I’ve read Lobster 64 and looked again at Andy Becket’s book on which it is largely based – and I’m afraid there is nothing there to support the specific accusation you made i.e “came conditions including marketisation i.e. sell-off of public services which Thatcher and the Tories later would claim to be still bound by, with which lie the Labour right to a man acquiesced in.” and which I challenged. You also made a new claim, which you I suspect you threw in to cover your original claim “even Healey himself in a deathbed limited hangout said it was all because they were outright duped and lied to by the Treasury” which again is demonstrably untrue as Healey made this clear many years before he died – as Lobster and Becket’s book (which was published back in 2009) both demonstrate ( although I believe Healey made the same point many years before).
I am sure that as always you take the view that the ends justify the means (which is of course the view that Craig is taking in a slightly more subtle form) – but please note that yet again your embellishments and distortions have yet again been exposed.
“Where’s your evidence to the contrary RD?”
A well known technique when you make claims that you are incapable of substantiating – as always what is stated without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. The Tories were more than happy to privatise without saying that they were forced to do so IMF conditions.
Sunday Morning Live is actually interesting today—Louise Mensch saying our allies Saudi are behind ISIS. Adamant that Cameron was wrong when he said Saudi was helping to prevent terrorist attacks here.
“50 labour MPs to vote for bombing Assad in defiance of Jesus Corbyn. Wtf. Nobody told the stupid fools labour membership doubled after JC election, with new membership alone exceeding ENTIRE con party membership?”
Yes, I think what a lot of people liked about Corbyn was that he was a rebel prepared to vote against the party whip.
The Lobster account of the IMF programme is interesting, also for what it leaves out. It was not only the lack of investment in manufacturing that prevented the UK following the German economic model. The Trades Unions also had no interest in playing a constructive role either (as seen in their reaction to the Bullock report on industrial democracy) because they were in the grip of people who believed that this was just going to delay the imminent proletarian revolution.
There was also the problem of sterling balances – whenever the UK devalued we did not only devalue our own currency but also a large part of the foreign reserves of those Commonwealth countries stupid enough to bank with us. The size of the IMF programme had a reserve margin in it to cope with possible withdrawals on a scale larger than actually materialized. And everyone repays the IMF with interest. It’s always part of the deal
Now it looks like Michelle Thomson was doing her dodgy accounting in the referendum as well.
“The Electoral Commission, which polices the rules on campaign expenditure, has confirmed it will examine a complaint about the influence of Peter Murrell, the SNP’s chief executive, over pro-independence group Business for Scotland, which Thomson led.”
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/article1618238.ece
Aldous Huxley`s letter to George Orwell.
http://off-guardian.org/2015/08/30/huxley-to-orwell-contrasting-dystopias/
Peter Murrell aka Mr Sturgeon.
Kinda Ot.ish..
But Here be a wee bit of Sunday enlightenment,
a reporter losing it Big time, And telling the real news 🙂 🙂
https://www.rt.com/news/318277-reporter-uncensored-spoof-video/