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The fall out from the fruitless pursuit of Alex Salmond by Nicola Sturgeon

Sturgeon’s legal background was questioned during and on conclusion of the Holyrood inquiry into her handling of harassment complaints against Alex Salmond who successfully challenged her government’s “unlawful” and “biased” investigation at a judicial review, with the debacle costing the taxpayer up to £1m.

Rape Crisis Scotland also got involved after the event with its public support for two civil servants who at the time they came forward had said they desired only to speak with Sturgeon expressly ruling out any formal complaint of sexual harassment against Alex Salmond.

Their wishes had been ignored by Sturgeon’s government and when the judicial review ruled its actions unlawful and biased their cases were referred to the Crown Office against their will. And adding insult to injury in an act of gross betrayal, one of their names was leaked by a member of Sturgeon’s team to Alex Salmond’s former chief of staff. And to date, no one has been held to account for any part of the debacle.

The revelations of Rape Crisis Scotland also prompted a press response from a lady who alleged she had previously been on the receiving end of rough justice from Sturgeon at the time she was a solicitor with Stirling law firm Bell & Craig.

She said: “The way the women were let down was Sturgeon’s responsibility and it was completely wrong. The outcome of the judicial review was devastating for the government and wholly unsatisfactory for the two women who had made complaints. It goes back to my story; there was no responsibility taken. How can you sail through life like that and not admit any responsibility for when things go wrong? When she told me she was moving on to politics, an alarm bell rang and I immediately thought, that’s why I’m getting nowhere. She was focused on herself and her own career. To me, that’s what she is doing now as well. Where was her focus on the two women who complained about Alex Salmond?

Nov 1997: Sturgeon was investigated by the Scottish Law Society:

Sturgeon worked at Stirling law firm Bell & Craig when the client a battered wife turned to the newly-qualified solicitor for help in July 1996 after years of abuse at the hands of her husband.

Over the next 14 months, despite the woman being followed, threatened and physically attacked, it was claimed Sturgeon did not seek a court order against the woman’s violent partner. The matter was still unresolved when Sturgeon left the company for a new job in Glasgow.

A new solicitor was appointed and briefed by the client that Sturgeon had failed to send off her legal aid application despite claiming that she had done so. The unsent application was subsequently discovered in the client’s file. In stark contrast to Sturgeon’s inaction, the new solicitor immediately secured both legal aid and an interdict with the power of arrest against the husband ending his stalking and threats.

The client wrote to the Law Society in November 1997, saying: “I sincerely hope that you look into this case as I certainly would not wish Sturgeon to ill advise further matrimonial cases which she is clearly not capable of dealing with. The following month, the client’s outstanding fees totalling £542 were waived by Bell & Craig as a “goodwill gesture”.

A year later, in December 1998, the Law Society sent the client a five-page report which stated that her complaint would be investigated in the professional misconduct category. The three individual allegations were:

1. Failing to raise the interim interdict against the ex-husband.
2. Misleading the client about the legal aid application.
3. Failing to properly take her financial circumstances into account.

The Law Society of Scotland appointed a case manager, a solicitor, now Sheriff Olga Pasportnikov to investigate.

In a five-page report, dated Dec 1998, Olga Passportnikov concluded:

“Ms Sturgeon’s failure to provide competent legal services qualified as professional misconduct by breach of code of conduct and conduct unbecoming a solicitor.” She identified three counts ‘of professional misconduct by breach of code of conduct and conduct unbecoming a solicitor’. They were:

1. Failing to raise interdict.
2. Misleading client about legal aid application. The legal aid form had been completed and signed by the client and the client’s employers but not sent.
3. Failing to properly consider the client’s financial circumstances.

The Law Society of Scotland subsequently concluded that there should be no further action since Sturgeon had left the legal profession to contest a seat for the Scottish National Party entering politics without an on the record finding of professional misconduct by the Law Society of Scotland.

2018 The Professional misconduct story resurfaces

According to now-deleted tweets from a former journalist which has now been widely published online a story on the complaint regarding Nicola Sturgeon’s failure to provide adequate legal services to a victim of domestic violence, and the identification of several counts of professional misconduct against her by currently serving Sheriff Olga Pasportnikov had support from the editor of the Daily Record to be published that is until David Clegg the papers Political editor voted the story down.

The deleted tweet went on to allege that sometime later, the “Record” was leaked details of the harassment complaints against Alex Salmond and the investigation by Police Scotland which subsequently led to Alex Salmond being charged with multiple offences. He appeared in court on 21 November 2019 and entered a plea of “not guilty” and at the subsequent trial, Mr Salmond was cleared by a jury trial – heard by Scotland’s Lord Justice Clerk Lady Dorrian.

2015: Olga Pasportnikov the lawyer who previously found Nicola Sturgeon guilty of misconduct was appointed Sheriff of Inverness by the Queen on the recommendation of the First Minister

2021: The Justice Committee hearing of the Register of Judges Interests Petition PE 1458

This is the same Judicial Interests Register petition Nicola Sturgeon has tried to undermine and block since she became First Minister. If a Register of Judges’ Interests did become a requirement Sheriff Pasportnikov who found Nicola Sturgeon guilty of professional misconduct may be forced to list that fact and other details of her service to the Law Society of Scotland.

On Wednesday 3 March 2021 – the Judicial Office for Scotland was asked the following questions:

A currently serving Sheriff – Olga Pasportnikov – conducted an investigation of complaints lodged about Scotland’s current First Minister Nicola Sturgeon while she was a solicitor at a law firm identified as Bell & Craig. Ms Pasportnikov was, as the Judicial Office will be aware – a case manager for the Law Society of Scotland from September 1998 to March 2003.

In a five-page report released in December 1998, Olga Pasportnikov said: “The complaint, in this case, has been identified as professional misconduct by breach of code of conduct and conduct unbecoming a solicitor.”

Olga Pasportnikov found Ms Sturgeon guilty of 3 identifiable counts of professional misconduct: They were: failing to raise interdict as instructed, misleading the client about legal aid application, failing to properly consider the client’s financial circumstances. Ms Sturgeon quickly left the legal profession.

Noting Ms Pasportnikov currently declares her time at the Law Society of Scotland on her Linkedin page as a “case manager” – along with other career attributes including a term at the Crown Office as a Procurator Fiscal Depute, and her current role as a serving Sheriff. Does Sheriff Pasportnikov have any comment on the following questions:

Why she does not list her role in investigating complaints against solicitors?

Why did she find Ms Sturgeon guilty of 3 identifiable issues of professional misconduct?

Why did no regulatory punishment take place upon Sheriff Pasportnikov’s findings?

Does the Judicial Office have any comment on the above events and any comment on the impact of a currently serving Sheriff with a long history as a solicitor, prosecutor and now a judge – having found Scotland’s current First Minister Nicola Sturgeon guilty of three counts of professional misconduct to which no sanction was ever applied by legal regulators and never declared in any register of interests?

5 Mar 2021: The Judicial Office Response

(JOFS) issued a statement to the media claiming Sheriff Pasportnikov had forgotten she had investigated a complaint case involving the current First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. A spokesperson for the Judicial Office said:

“The Sheriff was one of a number of case managers working on the Law Society for Scotland’s Client Relations Team from 1998 – 2003. Her role was limited to that of gathering and categorising information as the first step in a much longer process. She did not produce any reports or make any findings. Covering a volume of work, she would not remember specific names in routine cases, including where a solicitor was cleared entirely.”

Comment: A response to the foregoing Judicial Office statement was submitted querying the JOFS claim, and confirming that material now in the public domain does confirm Sheriff Pasportnikov did, in fact, investigate a complaint against Nicola Sturgeon and that Sheriff Pasportnikov identified several breaches of professional misconduct by Ms Sturgeon.

To date, no reply to the additional query has been received, nor has the Judicial Office disputed the terms of questions & information supplied to JOFS staff. It would be difficult to believe a case relevant to the current First Minister was forgotten about by the investigating reporter Sheriff Pasportnikov as there is obviously only one Nicola Sturgeon in Scotland – the current First Minister.

A legal expert comments

An expert in law assessed the material now in the public domain and the deleted tweets from a former journalist who names the Scottish newspaper and a “spiked” story on Ms Sturgeon.

He said: “I hope the Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints will now scrutinise the information available and ask further questions of the First Minister in view of suggestions on social media platforms that a former journalist held this information for a number of years before approaching several newspapers seemingly without success. People may reasonably expect questions to be asked of why this story has not come to light until now and the method of travel to the media.”

Adding

“Was there a motive in withholding this story involving Scotland’s First Minister, either by a newspaper, a political party or a journalist? I am curious to find out. However, I am also curious as to why no one with the information offered the material in evidence to the long-running Scottish Parliament investigation of issues involving Alex Salmond given the First Minister responded to questions on what appear to be references to the investigation of Ms Sturgeon and a newspaper deal. MSPs should ask rigorous questions of anyone involved in this matter given the situation we face where information now exists alleging the Sheriff complaint probe of Scotland’s First Minister was allegedly swapped for a story on harassment complaints and a Police investigation of Alex Salmond in the summer of 2018”

A Judicial Interests Register would have required declaration of Sheriff’s role in FM Complaint:

It has been previously reported Nicola Sturgeon personally intervened to block the Judicial Register petition during a long-running investigation by the Scottish Parliament’s Public Petitions Committee. The surprise intervention by the First Minister in the bid to bring transparency to Scotland’s secretive judges came to light after a failed attempt by her then Legal Affairs Minister – Paul Wheelhouse – to overturn the petition with claims that ‘gangsters’ could misuse the information in a judges register. In the letter – dated 30 March 2015 – Nicola Sturgeon also revealed Legal Affairs Minister Paul Wheelhouse had a secret meeting in February 2015 with Lord Gill to discuss the petition and the Judiciary & Scottish Government’s concerted opposition to creating the Judicial Register.

More here: (http://petercherbi.blogspot.com/2021/03/first-interests-judge-recommended-for_8.html)

Rhiannon Spear Glasgow City Council Councillor and SNP politician is quitting politics blaming “relentless abuse” for her decision.

About Rhiannon Spear

Education: 2017 – 2021: the University of Glasgow LLBLaw (Doubled up as the SNP Councillor for Pollok)
2008 – 2012: University of Glasgow MA Creative and Cultural Studies Film and Television (summer workplace experience in television production)
2002 – 2006: Rothesay Academy. Highers (A, A, A, B, B) English, History, Maths, Art, Physics

Personality: She is strikingly attractive, highly intelligent and gifted with a natural ability to attract attention, unfortunately not always to her benefit. She is feisty, strong-willed and determined to succeed at any task she is minded to take on. She is media savvy and possesses first-class skills including the production of excellent graphics for social media presentation and discussion. One of her many character weaknesses is her abject inability to accept criticism and her single-minded approach to her work. She needs to learn that political life is not a Religion and she is not the Pope.

Relationships: Her partner, is Rhys Crilley, a native of Wakefield in West Yorkshire. A gifted academic, prolific writer and university lecturer at Glasgow University whose primary interests are in war, militarism, scandals and outrage. He also maintains close political relationships with senior SNP leaders and actively supports the policies to which his partner and the SNP are committed.

Politics: Joined the SNP in 2011. Jointly founded Generation Yes, the national youth campaign for independence in the run-up to the 2014 referendum. National Convenor of YSI for two years from 2015–17. Elected to the SNP’s NEC in 2016. Scottish Parliament Candidate for the Glasgow List in 2016. Elected Councillor for Greater Pollok in 2017. Successfully proposed motions at SNP Conference on all-female lists, inclusive education and raising the age of military recruitment to 18. Chairs TIE the LBGTI government-funded charity which is remitted to support Scottish Education bodies providing LGBT-inclusive education in Scottish Schools. Actively promoted the #Metoo movement denouncing sexual harassment on campus at the University of Glasgow.

LBGTI: She is the driving force behind WOKE campaigning individuals, groups, charities and formal groups promoting and implementing the WOKE agenda in all state schools in Scotland. The bulk of WOKE activities, including resources and staffing, (£3-5M) is funded by the Scottish taxpayer through the SNP government. The unhealthy influence of WOKE minded politicians is being planted across all aspects of Scottish society as each day passes.

2008-2014: Glasgow Unversity

Speaking about her experiences from 2008 until 2012 at the University of Glasgow where she was a Creative and Cultural Studies student said, “My experience of university was that rape culture was commonplace and male sexual aggression was normalised.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it since, trying to come to terms with that environment, and it has been a long process. I was sexually assaulted. I had naked pictures taken of me while I slept which were shared in group chats. That was common for girls, and people don’t realise how common it is.

Hyper heteronormative shows of masculinity by young men in their late teens and early 20s fuelled by lots of alcohol and a need to perform in front of friends. Groping hands, pulling off clothes and men exposing themselves to you on the dance floor in the union were all part of a night out.

Then there were the darker things that happened behind closed doors which were definitely not consensual that I am only now coming to terms with. At one event a guy dragged me into a cupboard, exposed himself to me and demanded I had sex with him. I remember saying that I didn’t want to touch him, and I wanted to get out. I did get out and I wanted to report it at the time, but I knew there was no point.

Then there was waking up to a guy having sex with me, I was sick as soon as I realised what was happening. I am only now able to call that what it really was.” (Glasgow Evening Times)

Young Scots for Independence: Young Scots for Independence (YSI) (SNP Youth) is represented on the SNP National Executive Committee and sends delegates to meetings of the SNP Annual National Conference.

Many YSI activists have since risen to prominence in the SNP, including Rhiannon Spear, Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney and Fiona Hyslop.

In 2012, Humza Yousaf then a member of the YSI, was promoted to Government as Minister for International Development.

The YSI first flexed its muscle at the annual conference in 2012 when the Party debated NATO membership. The YSI decided on opposing membership because it was a nuclear alliance. Despite gaining 48% of the vote, the anti-NATO group lost and the SNP policy is now pro-NATO membership.

Jan 2014: Generation Yes

Generation Yes was established in January 2014 by Rhiannon Spear and Kirsten Thornton to campaign for a yes vote amongst young voters in the referendum on Scottish Independence. Despite the defeat, a poll taken after the 2014 referendum showed 71% of teenagers had voted yes. Spear said: We will continue to campaign for full enfranchisement in all elections for people aged 16 and 17.

Time for Inclusive Education (TIE)

2015: Founded by Jordan Daly (now with Stonewall) and Liam Stevenson, TIE raised awareness of the isolation and bullying faced by young lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Scotland. In 2017, the Scottish Government launched a TIE led working group with the task of embedding LGBTI-inclusive education in the schools’ curriculum of Scotland.

Nov 2018: Scotland became the first country in the world to include compulsory LGBTI issues in school curricula after the government accepted in full a report from Time for Inclusive Education (TIE) outlining 33 recommendations on how to tackle LGBTI bullying in schools.

Scottish Deputy First Minister John Swinney said that state schools across Scotland will be required to educate pupils on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex issues, including LGBTI history, terminology and identities, and ways of tackling homophobia and prejudice. Other recommendations include providing training programs for teachers and offering new teaching materials to tackle LGBTI issues.

The First Minister gave the group her personal endorsement at Holyrood, telling MSPs: “I am a supporter of the TIE campaign, not just in their objectives but in the spirited way they go about trying to make sure that their objectives are taking forward. They will work with decision-makers, produce curriculum resources, and deliver services for teachers and pupils to raise awareness and heighten knowledge.” Swinney promised to fund the new programmes and additional teaching resources to support LGBTI-inclusive education.

All state schools now have to teach LGBTI equality and inclusion as part of the curriculum, including the teaching of LGBTI terminology and identities, tackling homophobia and prejudice, and the history of the equalities movement.

TIE was granted charitable status and appointed a Board of Trustees led by Rhiannon Spear who on her appointment said: “The campaign has challenged us all to think about what is possible. Although The Scottish Government’s announcement to Parliament, that LGBT-inclusive education will become a reality, has been the culmination of three years work – it is truly just the beginning.”

2019: TIE, the charity launched less than a year ago is in deep financial trouble as it prepared to upscale its operations. A spokesperson said that funding promised by the Government had not yet been provided and money was needed to fund the “massive demand” for its services.

The dissolution of TIE is a certainty without sustainable funding, of staff and resources. Expectations are that the charity will need to be supported by recurring annual funding of around £500,000.

A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “We are fully aware of the funding difficulties currently being experienced by the TIE Campaign. We are carefully considering all options to further support the TIE Campaign in its important work with schools in Scotland.” The charity got its money and some.

Aug 2018: Loud, white men must get with the times: In a Tweet, Rhiannon Spear said: This week, I pointed out that an all-male panel at a political event was inadequate and called for at least one woman to be a voice. In response, I was called sexist and a fraud, sworn at, accused of being a BBC plant and labelled anti-independence by an online cohort made up overwhelmingly of white, older men. Apparently, being an elected representative of the SNP and dedicated campaigner for Scottish independence doesn’t meet the bar set to be a Yes voter.

Jan 2019: Rhiannon Spear, SNP Councillor scolds Andy Murray’s mother for Sharing a Pro-Women’s Rights Article: Scotland’s most eminent Women’s Tennis Coach, posted a link to an article on Twitter from Scottish newspaper, The National, about the importance of learning the lessons about the impact of transgenderism on women in Canada. Responding Spear took Judy to task for sharing a “transphobic and 14 years out of date article” hinted that she had not read the article in its entirety.

Spear’s response was met with an onslaught of criticism, for the sanctimonious and patronising tone of her tweet (for implying Murray shared something she hadn’t read) and the implicit ageism (suggesting she was out of touch with modern Scottish attitudes) and misogyny (assuming she didn’t fully understand what she had tweeted because, if she did, then presumably she wouldn’t identify with it because of the fact she’s a woman) in her tweets. She was also admonished for being out of touch with, and completely failing to comprehend, the relevant legislation she accused Murray of being out of step with. Her response to criticisms was less than acceptable.

Spear leads the government-funded TIE campaign in Scotland, which promotes gender ideology in our schools and the thought of this woman having any influence on school children is of increasing concern to many parents. Also of concern is her oft-repeated assertion that feminism is wack because it reduces womanhood to genitalia and reproductive ability. Then when a Scottish journalist offered that reducing womanhood to genitalia was already happening as a direct result of trans activism, not feminism, she accused the journalist of whipping up mob hysteria by fear. https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3489880-Glasgow-Councillor-Tries-to-Scold-Judy-Murray

Jan 2019: Comments: Moll: This is very much her modus operandi with respect to every political topic she gets involved with: You’re either with her or against her. The last time she publicly maligned a popular pro-Scottish independence blogger as a transphobe and got exactly the same reaction. She maligned his 56k followers as being “part of the problem”, a huge portion of which belongs to her own political party and share her political ambitions. She’s very much of the view that if you don’t agree with her, then it’s because you need to reflect more. In my view, she’s a toxic extremist. And for all her qualms about not being reduced to her reproductive capacities, she wasn’t above using her miscarriage to garner up sympathy for herself and get her sycophants to go after a man she couldn’t have a reasoned discussion with.

Apr 2019: SNP politician accused of “promoting” sex work: Councillor Rhiannon Spear, chair of the TIE campaign which has successfully lobbied for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender education to be embedded in Scotland’s schools sparked claims from SNP colleagues she was “advocating” prostitution by posting a controversial tweet and a selfie with fellow SNP Councillor Christina Cannon, dominatrix Megara Furie and another unnamed woman at Glasgow City Chambers, saying “brilliant meeting Megara Furie + bringing sex workers into the City Chambers. Sex workers rights are human rights.”

Following up on social media she added, “Yesterday I met with Megara Furie to talk all things sex work. Did you know sex work includes trixs, submissives, cam work, phone + text services, dancers, masseuses, porn, escorting etc it’s not all street-based sale of sex?”

Another tweet from Spear enraged colleagues who said it questioned the law on pimping. She wrote “It’s currently illegal for workers to work together. It is illegal for a man (but not a woman) to live on money earned through sex work. So it would be illegal to live with your boyfriend. Does that sound safe?”

But SNP sources angrily claimed the tweets “promoted” sex work which SNP policy condemns as a form of violence against women. An SNP insider who withheld her name hit out at the tweets, saying they were “advocating prostitution”. and added “her views are not the views of the SNP nationally, or Glasgow’s SNP group.” and another said: “Given her youth education role with TIE, it is not appropriate to be promoting S&M.”

And Megara 35!!!: She recently set up a sex workers’ branch of the GMB in Glasgow, allowing prostitutes to join a union for the first time. Her Mistress Megara Furie website promises “endorphic exhilaration and absolute submission”.(https://twitter.com/rhiannonv/status/1114510091431161856?lang=en-gb)

Feb 2019: Joan McAlpine is an unlikely rebel against the Scottish political establishment. The SNP MSP is chair of Holyrood’s culture and external affairs committee and a former parliamentary aide to Alex Salmond. She is gender-critical, or, in the prosecutorial terms of her detractors, a trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF).

Recently she began asking awkward questions about the campaign to give the force of law to relatively new and largely untested theories about sex, gender and identity only to be denounced by SNP councillor Rhiannon Spear, chair of the LGBT education lobby, TIE who accused her of “stoking a fire” and “wilfully ignoring the advice of service providers who have been working in the industry for decades”.

It is not the first time Joan has fallen foul of the SNP gendarmerie who police the views of feminists and other gender dissenters. In February, her committee recommended that the sex question in the Scottish census “should remain binary” and posted a Twitter thread outlining their concerns, which were:

Including a “non-binary” option risked devaluing the data on a protected characteristic (sex) under the Equality Act. They also wondered why so many women’s groups, especially those in receipt of taxpayers’ money, had dogmatically adopted the transgender ideology while failing to represent women who disagreed.

This prompted an extraordinary 1,400-word open letter in which some of Scotland’s leading third-sector groups took her to task over the Twitter thread. Signatories to the statement, which rebuked her for “sharing an inaccurate, partial, and negative assessment” of their work, included Close the Gap (which received £205,000 from the Scottish Government in 2018/19), Engender Scotland (£225,350) and Equate Scotland (£331,019).

Even in the unforgiving world of Scottish politics, the backlash against Joan was vicious. She told the press: “They try to shut you up by labelling you and othering you, by using extremist language. This isn’t just about trans people’s rights; they have the same human rights as everyone else and extra protections in the Equality Act and hate legislation, and that’s quite rightly so. This is about women’s rights and how the changes being pushed for impact women.”

Joan may be a Nationalist bomb-thrower but on gender, she has been moderate and measured. No one sincerely interested in a debate can credibly dismiss her thoughtful interventions or her temperate tone, including on proposals to amend the Gender Recognition Act to abandon medically-supported gender recognition certificates in favour of self-identification.

For the most part, Joan’s campaign has been a lonely one. Other MSPs agree but have hitherto been reluctant to invite controversy. No wonder. Only a few days before, the contents of private messages between three female SNP MSPs were leaked, exposing them as critics of Nicola Sturgeon’s breathless enthusiasm for the trans agenda.

The backlash served as a warning to other women not to step out of line if they don’t want their political careers jeopardised. The trans movement has co-opted the gay and lesbian struggle to convince doubters they are on “the wrong side of history”.

The tactic is a parallel of their ideology’s efforts to conflate sex and gender but the two are not the same. Maleness or femaleness is a fact of biology while masculine or feminine identity is the product of social conditioning and performance. Sex is data, gender is narrative. (https://twitter.com/JoanMcAlpine/status/1101251118611525633)

Aug 2020: Councillor Rhiannon Spear to spearhead the new SNP women’s mentoring programme: In a statement, she said, “Women make up over half of the population in Scotland but only 35% of those elected to the Scottish Parliament. That needs to change. Women are impacted by every decision that is taken in any parliament or local authority in Scotland. To allow decisions to have the best outcome for women our elected members should be representative of the communities they represent and made up of as many diverse voices as possible. So in order to encourage more women to stand the SNP has put in place measures that will remove the barriers that women face when they stand for election. Starting now any woman thinking of standing will be supported through the candidate self-assessment process through the SNP Women’s Mentoring Project. The project that I am leading is specifically for women who are interested in standing in the Local Government Election in 2022. The aim is that by the end of the project they will be confident enough to successfully stand to be selected and elected.”

Apr 2021: The Equality Network: Is a government-funded lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) equality and human rights charity. Its influence over SNP policies and many areas of Scottish society is absolute. Political Party’s will be expected to conform to the LGBTI agenda or face oblivion at the ballot box.

But the electorate may not subscribe to the changes without consultation of which there has been very little, to date. People are afraid of change and this might well be reflected in the way in which they cast their votes in the council elections in May 2022. In response to the possibility of dissent the commitment of political parties in Scotland to social and changes in the laws of Scotland, their network is being monitored so that conformity can be maintained.

May 2019: Ukraine Anti-Corruption President Elected

Ukraine from the date of its independence in 1991 has had five presidents. The political legacy of all was one of political intrigues, corruption, dancing to the tunes of oligarchs and foreign powers and devoid of any popular support from the long-suffering and impoverished Ukrainian people. The present incumbent is 41 year old, Jewish born Volodymyr Zelensky, who before taking on the role of President on 20 May 2019 enjoyed a career in the entertainment industry including participation in a popular televised comic student-led quiz show the success of which provided him with public exposure as a comedian, actor and screenwriter. In his campaign for the Presidency, he declined to align himself with any political policies in preference for popularist addresses to the public in which he said that he represented a fresh start for Ukraine and he would end the graft, criminal influence and power of corrupt politicians and oligarchs who illegally transferred the wealth of the nation to personal off-shore accounts and properties all over the world. He was elected to office by 73% of the electorate.

Aug 2019: Stewart McDonald MP for Glasgow South

Stewart McDonald’s interest in Ukraine and Russia is quite remarkable. Until 2018, he showed little or no interest in the countries, but then, following an opaquely funded and organized jolly to Ukraine, he suddenly transformed into an ardent opponent of Moscow. He also became a passionate supporter of the British establishment position on foreign policy. Perhaps it was the chicken Kiev that turned his head. But he was rewarded for his efforts with the presentation of the “Third Class of the Order of Merit of Ukrainian” award from President Zelensky for his significant personal contribution to strengthening the international prestige of Ukraine, the development of interstate cooperation and fruitful public activities.

Oct 2021: President Zelensky and the Pandora Papers

As the avatar of reform, Zelensky promised to take down the oligarchs with their untouchable offshore assets and break their magic walls of influence throughout the country. But Some things never change in Ukrainian politics, where power brokers with offshore wealth hold the reins. the revelation that Zelensky has his own impregnable offshore assets of ambiguous legality is yet another blow to his already damaged reputation.

The 12 million files analyzed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists revealed, among others, the international financial schemes of 38 highly placed Ukrainians, the most of any country. The papers show that Zelensky and his friends set up their chain of offshore companies long before they ever considered going into politics.

When Zelensky was about to be elected president in 2019, he handed his share over to his closest adviser, Serhiy Shefir. But the papers revealed that under the arrangement, dividends would keep flowing to a company owned by Zelensky’s wife Olena. Much of these assets went undeclared. What’s also troubling is that there’s also evidence that Zelensky’s offshore companies received payments from entities connected to Ihor Kolomoisky, the billionaire oligarch that airs Zelensky’s shows.

Some of that money may have been stolen by Kolomoisky through PrivatBank from Ukrainians. Thus far, Kolomoisky has faced no criminal charges in the $5.5 billion bank fraud that forced Ukraine to bail out the nation’s largest bank and take ownership in 2016, although he faces civil lawsuits and at least one criminal investigation in the U.S.

These revelations show that far from being different, Zelensky is a lot like his arch-rival, the oligarch and former President Petro Poroshenko, who was revealed to have a massive offshore network in the previous Panama Papers leak in 2016. Zelensky is not dissimilar to other oligarchs he vowed to take down.

More here: https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/self-servant-of-the-people-zelenskys-offshore-schemes.html

Keir Rodney Starmer:

Born in Southwark, London on 2 September 1962. His parents were Labour Party supporters, and named him after the party’s first parliamentary leader, Keir Hardie. Raised in Oxted, Surrey he attended Reigate Independent Grammar School, then graduated from Leeds University with a BA(Law) in 1985remaining in education he gained a postgraduate BA (Civil Liberty) from Oxford University in 1986.

He became a barrister in 1987 and was appointed Queen’s Counsel (QC) on 9 April 2002. From 2003–08, he was the human rights adviser to the Policing Board in Northern Ireland before taking up a similar role with the Foreign Office.

Education and politics 1962-2008:

He excelled at school and at university achieving excellent grades and qualifications in law and civil liberties and his career as a lawyer was praiseworthy in part due to the human rights causes/trials he successfully supported/defended,(many pro-bono). In the years before university his political leaning was similar to that of Jeremy Corbyn. His views mellowed at university and he identified more with the political ideology of Gordon Brown.

He married Victoria J Alexander b1963, in 2007. They have 2 children and live in Camden North London. Victoria is Jewish and has family in Tel-Aviv, Israel. the couple’s children are being raised in the Jewish faith.

Speaking to the Jewish Chronicle about his family he said “As you probably know my wife’s family is Jewish. On her father’s side there are bar mitzvahs, synagogues there’s all the traditions. On Friday’s my wife’s family gather at our Camden home for supper. It is about just being with the family.

He told the Jewish news: “I absolutely support the right of Israel to exist as a homeland. My only concern is that Zionism can mean slightly different things to different people, and to some extent it has been weaponized. I wouldn’t read too much into that. I said it loud and clear and meant it that I support Zionism without qualification.” He also told the Jewish Chronicle: “If the definition of ‘Zionist’ is someone who believes in the state of Israel, in that sense I’m a Zionist.”

afternote: Starmer is reputedly very protective of his wife and family and has withheld information from the public, other than the scant details already in circulation. I possess the knowledge but  honouring his wishes I will not reveal it. 

2008-2013: Poacher turns Gamekeeper

He was appointed Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and Head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in 2008, and held these roles until 2013. Abandoning his work as a private practitioner for a high profile career in the employ of the State was risky and surprised many since his exposure to criminal law and personnel management was limited and taking charge of over 8000 employees was a daunting task even for an experienced professional.

The CPS under the previous DPP, had started allocating advocacy work in-house and Starmer fast tracked the process determined to enforce the policy regardless of criticism and/or opposition, claiming the benefits of financial savings and consistent prosecutions to be paramount. The DPP and the CPS under his leadership merged and transformed into a state run investigation and prosecution agency, similar to the FBI.

The Chairman of the Bar, was not convinced the changes were in the public interest and expressed concerns that the transfer of the bulk of prosecution work to employees of the State could compromise the independence of process provided by self employed counsel. In his inaugural speech he said:

“the ever expanding monolith of the state prosecutor may have detrimental consequences for the independence of the prosecuting service or at least the perceptions of its independence.”

This early warning of the potential excesses of a state run command and control, centralising, leader,  is to be found in the conduct of the FBI and J Edgar Hoover:

“For years the FBI was widely suspected of using questionable or illegal methods to gain information. Its counter intelligence programme penetrated suspect organizations and used state resources to disrupt and discredit them. After Hoover’s death a congressional committee investigated and documented the FBI’s surveillance of groups and individuals, many of whom had done no more than exercise their First Amendment rights to criticize the government. The committee concluded that the FBI had often abused its powers, spying illegally on U.S. citizens persecuting those who opposed the will of the State.”

https://scotland.openrightsgroup.org/blog/

Widespread abuse of the public by British police infiltration of environmental and anti-capitalist protest groups

In 2011, the trial of an environmental activist accused of plotting to break into Ratcliffe power station collapsed after it emerged that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had withheld vital evidence. The evidence was comprised of a number of recordings an undercover spy-cop named  Kennedy, had made of planning meetings.

20 people previously prosecuted from the same evidence had their convictions overturned and a further 29 people convicted of blocking a train carrying coal to Drax power station also had their convictions quashed due to Kennedy’s involvement.

Starmer who was present in court the day the case was thrown out later said that the spy-cop’s actions were not systematic. But they were. In 2015, it was reported that 83 people could have been wrongfully convicted after evidence of spy-cop involvement had been withheld. And details of exactly how systematic it was are still surfacing.

The campaign group “Opposing Police Surveillance” claimed “If the 150 or so officers under investigation have similar tallies (as Kennedy), it means about 7,000 wrongful convictions are being left to stand. It may well be that “spy cops” are responsible for the biggest nobbling of the judicial system in English history.

The scandal wasn’t just the police. Released papers showed the Crown Prosecution Service had been deeply involved. They knew about the plan before the arrests and they worked with the police to withhold evidence from the defence and the courts.

Starmer as DPP, promoted the report and agreed to be interviewed on television by Jeremy Paxton. Clearly untrained for media appearance’s his rapid eye movement under questioning was clearly evident when he lied.

Paxman opened by asking if Starmer could be sure there were no other cases of spy cops being in prosecuted groups of activists apart from Kennedy. Starmer did the blinking thing and said that the public had to accept the discredited conclusions of the report. Which was not an answer to the question, so Paxman asked again….It made for excruciating viewing.

Starmer went on to say “if anyone suspects a co-defendant might have been a spy cop, tell me.” But identifying an undercover cop is akin to getting burgled, finding a fingerprint and the police saying “come to us if you know whose print it is”. It is a proven fact that police officers deceived the courts and orchestrated wrongful convictions for decades, and they did it with the active collusion of the Crown Prosecution Service.

As head of the CPS, Starmer knew this but, rather than try to expose it, he covered it up, saying it was only rogue officer Kennedy who had been involved even though the public knew this to be false.

As DPP, Starmer also worked with Nick Paul, the CPS National Coordinator for Domestic Extremism, even though that term had no legal definition and thus no meaning in law. As the Undercover Research Group reported, Paul was in a powerful position of control from the start, overruling senior police as he steered the case.

Which raised unanswered questions about his role in other cases. He had already helped create another miscarriage of justice the previous year, securing the wrongful convictions for the ‘Drax 29’ group of climate activists. The CPS refused to reveal which other cases he had handled. And this raised questions about Starmer’s suitability for Labour’s top job, particularly for anyone who was ever photographed or filmed attending a protest and could be loosely labelled a domestic extremist.

Police working “deep” undercover were encouraged to establish long-term sexual relationships with female suspects and their supporters.

Mae Benedict, mother of a young child who was spied on said “This is about my people, our people, us. It’s hard to explain to generations below us the immense damage that these bastards did to us, not just as activists, as a community, but on a personal level, and much more so for those closest to them.

This will never, ever be forgiven or forgotten. Starmer was head of an organisation that supported and enabled political policing. And even if he didn’t have an oversight of what was happening with spy cops, he was happy to be part of the system. Starmer’s work as the DPP is a classic case of poacher turned gamekeeper. (The Canary)

In at least 27 cases, British police officers deceived women and entered into intimate relationships with them in undercover missions. According to a verdict handed down the police force in charge also interfered with the physical integrity, privacy and political activities of those involved. (https://digit.site36.net/2021/10/01/undercover-operations-uk-special-court-sentences-police-for-sexual-relations/)

Armed police execution of Jean Charles de Menezes

On 7 July 2005, 52 people were killed and more than 700 people wounded in coordinated suicide bombings across the London’s transport system, the deadliest terrorist incident on British soil since the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. Two weeks later, the capital was targeted again, but the explosives failed to detonate. Police found a lead for the suspects in the unexploded bag – an address in Scotia Road, Tulse Hill.

Menezes, who had been working as an electrician in London since 2002 and lived on Scotia Road, was wrongly identified as (Hussain Osman) one of the suspects, Police followed Menezes to Stockwell station and onto a train, where they pinned him down and shot him seven times in the head and once in the shoulder.

Scotland Yard was fined £175,000 for breaching health and safety laws, but the CPS said there was less than a 50% chance of convicting any individual officers, based on insufficient evidence that an offence had been committed.

The inquest jury decided that Jean had not been killed lawfully, that many terrible mistakes had been made and they did not accept police officers’ accounts of the incident.

The jury returned an open verdict after the coroner said it was not possible to conclude with certainty, that Menezes had been unlawfully killed. More here: (https://netpol.org/2017/02/23/cressida-dick/)

On review the CPS agreed that there had been inconsistencies in the officers evidence to the inquest jury, but pointed out that there were also inconsistencies in other witness accounts. The reviewing lawyer said: “I concluded that in the confusion of what occurred on the day, a jury could not be sure that any officer had deliberately given a false account of events.”

The officer in charge of the operation and gave the order to use extreme force was Cressida Dick. Later appointed Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/topic/cressida-dick?)

In the first few months following his appointment Starmer, in a High Court appeal lodged by the family upheld the decision not to prosecute the officers who had executed de Menezes. Stating that there was not enough evidence which would make him reconsider the earlier decision not to prosecute more senior officers for negligence. Full story here: (https://gizmonaut.net/blog/uk/menezes_health_and_safety.html)

The Unlawful Killing of Ian Tomlinson

On 1 April 2009, in the midst of a huge protest against the G20 summit in London, newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson, was violently assaulted by Metropolitan police officer, Simon Harwood causing severe internal bleeding and his death. The incident was captured on video, and there were multiple witnesses.

Intent on justifying the assault the police lied, claiming protesters had thrown missiles at them when they were applying first aid to Tomlinson. They also instructed journalists not to talk to Tomlinson’s relatives and withheld information from his family. The so-called ‘Independent’ Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) repeatedly failed to handle the case correctly.

The police selected pathologist Freddy Patel to perform a post-mortem examination and asked him to “rule out any assault or crush injuries associated with public order”. Patel incorrectly concluded that Tomlinson had died from a a heart attack a finding crucial in preventing any conviction of Harwood. But two further examinations suggested Tomlinson had actually died of an abdominal haemorrhage caused by blunt force trauma to his back. Patel was struck off a few years later following a GMC investigation of 29 allegations of incompetence. Too late for Tomlinson.

In July 2010, Starmer announced the decision not to prosecute police officer Harwood in relation to the death of Ian Tomlinson leading to accusations by Tomlinson’s family of a police cover-up. After a subsequent inquest found that Tomlinson had been unlawfully killed, he announced that Harwood would be prosecuted for manslaughter. The officer was acquitted in July 2012 by a jury, but dismissed from the police for gross misconduct. Afternote: Three weeks after the announcement of the not guilty verdict the press released this information which had not been provided to the jury:

“PC Simon Harwood had a disciplinary record littered with complaints of aggressive behaviour and misconduct and once admitted being sent into “red mist mode”, In August 2001, a note was entered on his record to say that he would not be disciplined but he would be compulsory retired on medical grounds because of ongoing problems purportedly arising from a 1998 car accident. Three days after leaving the service he was reemployed by the Metropolitan Police Force as a member of its civilian staff. In April 2003 Harwood, (despite his record) successfully applied to join the Surrey Police Force as an officer. In January 2004 yet another allegation of aggressive behaviour was made against him, this time by one of his own colleagues.” So much for British justice.

2011 Rioting and Starmers “Lock em up” policy

During the 2011 riots, he intervened and introduced a policy prioritizing the rapid prosecution and long term incarceration of rioters, which he justified saying that the policy had been instrumental in bringing “the situation under control.”

Later that year following the revelations of police infiltration of environmental and anti-capitalist protest groups, he was forced to order a review of the convictions and invited protestors convicted of aggravated trespass to appeal their sentences. But he declined to authorise a wider enquiry, after a report from Judge Rose said issues arising were attributed to individual fault rather than a systemic problem.

The DPP/CPS and Jimmy Savile – The belated review of the police investigation and CPS indecision

In 2007 and 2008, Surrey Police investigated three complaints that Savile had “engaged in sexual behaviour with young girls”. During the same period, Sussex Police investigated a similar complaint involving a young woman.

Savile was interviewed under caution by police in October 2009 and denied wrongdoing. He was not arrested. No prosecution was brought in relation to any of the four complaints, on the grounds that none of the victims were “prepared to support any police action”, for example testifying in court.

Savile died in October 2011. After his death, it emerged that he sexually abused hundreds of children and women at locations including hospitals, schools and the BBC.

In January 2013, when news of his abuse was revealed, an investigation into whether the CPS had been right not to charge Savile in 2009 was published by Alison Levitt QC. who reported that she had “reservations” about the prosecutor’s decision not to press charges.

She said: “On the face of it, the allegations made were both serious and credible; the prosecutor should have recognised this and sought to “build” a prosecution.” She said the police treated the victims and the accounts they gave “with a degree of caution which was neither justified nor required”. Three of the victims told her that had they had received more information from the police at the time of the investigation and particularly if each had been told she was not the only woman who had complained they would “probably have been prepared to give evidence.”

Ms Levitt said that, in the case of two of the allegations, there would have been a “realistic prospect of conviction” if the women had given evidence. “Having spoken to the victims I have been driven to conclude that had the police and prosecutors taken a different approach a prosecution might have been possible,” she wrote. Ms Levitt was critical of the approach taken by both the CPS’ reviewing lawyer and the police in failing to build a prosecution against Savile in 2009.

2011: Operation Elvden – The Wtch Hunt

Starmer authorised a legal witch hunt by the Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service’s against journalists of the Sun newspaper, using as an excuse, an almost unheard of 13th century law “misconduct in a public office”.

The hunt (Operation Elvden) included dawn raids and searches on suspects’ homes. He attempted to shift the blame onto his successors when the botched £30 million probe fell apart.

Despite acknowledging that not a single one of the 24 Sun journalists arrested were convicted, he would not say sorry. Yet he was in charge when the five year process was launched. Senior MPs from across the political divide called for an investigation into the catastrophe and changes in the law so that the abuse of the public by the state would not be repeated. (The Sun)

2013: Benefit cheaters in his sights

Starmer introduced new sentencing guidelines threatening individuals found to be guilty of improperly claiming welfare benefits with up to ten years in prison. His critics levelled against him, the claim that he was the most contemptible of Labour archetypes, “the class traitor.”

Nov 2010: Jack Straw Labour MP for Blackburn Alerts the UK to Sexual abuse of young white girls by Pakistani men

A gang of men were convicted of systematically grooming and sexually abusing teenage girls in Derbyshire. Many of the victims were given alcohol or drugs before being forced to have sex in cars, rented houses or hotels across the Midlands. One girl described a sexual assault involving at least eight men. The nine men were convicted during three separate trials at Leicester Crown Court.

Straw said increasing numbers of Pakistani Muslim men view white girls as “easy meat” for sex abuse and highlighted it was endemic in Blackburn and in many other areas with significant Muslim populations across England.

Aug 2014: Pakistani Grooming gangs reportedly raped near a million underage non-Muslim girls and the CPS failed their pleas for justice

Jack Straw’s warning was ignored by the DPP and the CPS. Four years and 1 million more rapes later the UK public was outraged and angered by party political attempts shift the blame away from the State onto the victims. Reports suggested that there were around 1,400 raped Yorkshire children, (a conservative estimate) given there were multiple rapes on each child. Adding in the Pakistani Muslim grooming operating in Oxford, Bradford, Rochdale, Newcastle and other cities in England takes the count of rapes committed by Pakistani Muslim men against white children into the millions.

The judge in the Oxford case said the brutal rapists demeaned their victims because they did not share the men’s “religion and culture”. Nor is it a “small number” of Muslims. It is an endemic problem in Muslim-dominated towns and cities. The UK public needs to see justice. That means more than “historic abuse” “no blame game” “no party politics” “look to the future” and all the other rubbish politicians wheel out. We don’t need “the police”, “the council”, “the CPS”. We need names and prosecutions.

Police officers who abetted rape of children need to go to jail. And another thing who will be responsible for prosecuting members of the CPS for their misconduct? Keir Starmer, the highly politicised Director of Public Prosecutions, said his CPS did not prosecute because they made assumptions about the credibility of the evidence of victims. So the DPP and the CPS took on the role of judge and jury and failed the abused children. Why?

It was Labour who did this in Rotherham and Rochdale to win Muslim votes. Labour police, Labour PCCs, Labour councillors, Labour-leaning prosecutors. The Rotherham report says a Conservative councillor brought his concerns to the leader but was told not to make it public. Head of Children’s Services Joyce Thacker told The Times she would punish the leaker and in 2008 Labour gave her an OBE. For Services to Young People. Labour’s greedy, sleazy pandering to Muslim votes brought us Sharia tribunals. Labour set them up in law. Postal vote fraud, uncontrolled immigration, Trojan Horse schools, and now this sick hell.

The Pakistani immigrant community has not fully integrated into British life. Instead of spreading out over the country and adopting British values whilst retaining their own religion they have been encouraged to massively dominate a few towns where they attempt to impose their culture on others. Social planning needs to address the undesirability of one community” taking over an English town or city. We have seen that with our mixed Afro-Caribbean heritage Britons, with Jewish-heritage Britons and all classes and races up until now.

Politicians, the Media and the Press are persistent in their use of the expression “The Pakistani Community” providing confirmation of the  failed immigration policy of the labour Party who actively encouraged mass uncontrolled immigration of Pakistani immigrants so that they would be able to gain their votes in future elections. Reference to “the community” should address all citizens regardless of ethnic origin.(The Sun)

White girls abused by Muslim child rape gangs should shut their mouths for the good of diversity

Labour Party leader, Sir Keir Starmer has promoted MP Naseem ‘Naz’ Shah, who infamously shared a tweet stating “Those abused girls in Rotherham and elsewhere just need to shut their mouths for the good of diversity”. The British-Pakistani Labour MP for Bradford West liked and shared a tweet in 2017 admonishing white, English girls who spoke out about being raped and sexually enslaved by organised gangs of Muslim paedophiles.

The UK has been rocked by a never-ending stream of scandals involving predominantly Muslim men targeting white English girls from working class backgrounds for sexual exploitation.

Most shockingly of all is the fact that authorities and the mainstream media were aware of this for years if not decades but refused to act, even when girls and parents pleaded for help, for fear of being accused of racism by PC fanatics.

The Labour MP for Rotherham, a town where Muslim child raping gangs were allowed to operate for years with impunity, Sarah Champion, has said that up to 1 million English girls are likely to have fallen victim to Muslim rape gangs as of 2016.

Keir Starmer Aided by The John Smith Foundation To Launch Their Assault on Scotland

The Leader of the Labour party, Sir Keir Starmer will launch a new devolution deal for Holyrood as part of an attempt to revive Labour’s fortunes in Scotland. The pressure has been building in within the Labour movement pushing the party towards a “devo-max” proposal that would see the Scottish Parliament take control of more powers and would also include the reform of the House of Lords to give greater representation to the UK’s nations and regions at Westminster.

In his address to the John P. Mackintosh Memorial Lecture on Friday 11 December, he will give the first indication of his constitutional offer to Scots before next May’s Holyrood election.*

*Cancelled due to covid lockdown.

He is also rumoured to be planning to displace Richard Leonard who will be forced to give up his role as leader of the Labour Party in Scotland.

So a full-on fightback is in the wind and I expect the John Smith Foundation and its supporters will muster all guns in their support. This is a do or die moment in their history and the 5th columnists and 77 Brigade will be active. Read on and get a more informed view of past events.

Judged by the Company they Keep

Effective political strategy nullifies opposition and is usually revealed after the event  But the SNP under the leadership of Nicola Sturgeon and her supporters are so confident they have absolute control and that any challenges to their political agenda can be first contained then eliminated.

A number of vociferous individuals in the “Sturgeonista Group” only joined the Party within the last ten years and their pedigree and political affiliation are questionable.

Fifth Columnists and the Havoc They Generate

The Westminster, London based Zionist financial cartel loosely titled the Government of the people is well versed in the art of deception and its response to the scare of the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum was swift and decisive.

Remedial action was necessary to maintain unionist control and this required that the SNP should first be neutered then merged with the Labour Party branch in Scotland. The mission would be achieved over a period not exceeding ten years through the use of fifth Columnists who would join the SNP and operate from within bringing about fundamental changes to the pursuit of Scottish independence.

What follows is conjecture but is based on my near 60 years of political activism in Scotland. If only 20% of what I offer up is true then the SNP government will be forever dammed by its actions and betrayal of the founding principle of the Party, namely full independence for Scotland and divorce from the Westminster Zionist elite that control it.

Westminster Strategy Exposed

Glasgow University, a safe haven for Unionists for over 300 years has been selected by Westminster to be the operational control centre. Baroness Smith, the master spy and widow of Bilderberger, the Late John Smith, has set up the John Smith Centre to operate from there.

SNP members are linked to the discredited charity, a front for the Fife-based Integrity Initiative and 77 Brigade Spying organisations controlled and funded by the Foreign Office in Westminster.

See: (https://caltonjock.com/2019/05/08/tried-and-tested-and-successful-secret-services-tactics-designed-to-damage-credibility-of-scottish-independence/)

The SNP spokesperson for Defence & Member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Stewart McDonald MP, Douglas Chapman MP, Chris law MP and SNP frontbench adviser Neal Stewart, enjoyed a fully-funded trip to Ukraine in 2018. The funding source has never been revealed. In Westminster afterwards, they regularly took up parliamentary time criticizing Russia. But contributed not a jot about Scottish Independence.

Members of the group and its leader Alyn Smith MP also featured in the November 2020 paper from the SNP Westminster group submitted to the UK Government integrated review of foreign policy and defence. Amid the verbiage, there is a clear shift towards multilateralism, a disingenuous softening of the party’s commitment to unilaterally ratifying the UN Treaty on Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons, and a call for Lossiemouth to be the hub for combined Scottish, UK and US P-8 maritime bombers. This is causing deep concern among veteran anti-nuclear campaigners inside the SNP. See: (https://www.conter.co.uk/blog/2020/11/17/snp-the-week-the-gloves-came-off)

Gethins features in a blog: (https://caltonjock.com/2020/09/24/stephen-gethins-forgot-his-purpose-and-lost-his-seat-at-westminster-now-heading-for-kinross/)

SNP Links to the British American Project

A number of SNP MSP’s succumbed to the temptation of the American dollar and followed trails previously trod by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in the 1990s when they left the UK as staunch supporters of Unilateral disarmament only to return two weeks later as confirmed Multilateralist inline with the policies of the USA. In Jul 2016, Labour Party Leader Kezia Dugdale MSP, Jenny Gilruth MSP, Nicola Sturgeon’s Civil Service chief of staff (the Executioner) Elizabeth Lloyd and Daily Record Journalist David Clegg enjoyed a two-week working holiday in the USA.

The invitation to attend the all-expenses-paid jaunt had been extended by the organisers of the USA Government-funded International Visitor Leadership Programme. The inclusion of a pseudo civil servant and a tabloid journalist surprised some. Clegg would go on to later exclusively reveal intimate details of charges of sexual harassment against Alex Salmond. The government official that leaked the information has never been revealed.

Not long after their return Dugdale ended her engagement with her partner and entered into a relationship with Gilruth. An event that raised many eyebrows. See: (https://caltonjock.com/2017/03/16/the-british-american-project-wields-power-over-scotland-through-scottish-born-daniel-defoes/)

Gerrymandering the Membership of the NEC By the NEC

The election of the NEC in 2020 had the potential to bring about a fundamental change of the party in its present form since its NEC will decide the future direction of the party. The choice for independence tactics will be polarized between two factions. The WOKE activists who favour the “Gradualist” approach” or the “Fundamentalists” who prefer direct action.

Anticipating the election of a significant number of “fundamentalists” the NEC imposed new and restrictive rules on branch management ensuring that NEC would be enabled to veto and force changes to candidate shortlists so that a marked prevalence of WOKE activists would be listed as candidates. The process was duly adopted early in November.

This is the real reason the present NEC membership, choc-a-bloc with WOKE activists postponed the Party conference from June until late November 2020. The NEC needed to be sure the fundamentalists had been castrated.

Where were we 6 months short of the next Scottish General Election?

The issue of Scottish independence is no longer a negative factor and if the political scene remains as it is the campaign will yet again pit the SNP against the Tory Party. The Green’s will gather second choice votes sufficient to ensure the return of a similar number of list MSP’s as will the Liberal Democrats. The Labour Party will be squeezed further and might suffer more losses resulting in its relegation to fourth Party status at Holyrood. But tactical voting might yet dictate a different outcome.

A new Party pledged to the cause of Scottish Independence, without compromise might yet emerge and persuade the electorate to transfer their second vote from the SNP to it which would ensure a parity of voting providing Nationalists with a significant majority over all other party’s. This approach would add strength to the cause of independence since Unionists arguments would largely fall on deaf ears.

ALBA was formed only a few weeks before the Scottish election but failed to achieve a breakthrough due to negative campaigning against it by the WOKE motivated SNP leadership.

And What About Indy Ref 2?

The question is best answered by harking back to the 2014 referendum when only 2 days before the vote the Unionists played their final card and offered Devo max, an option just short of total independence, for a “no” vote. Scots were attracted by the ploy which was publically supported by the entire Unionist community and the Queen herself. Gordon Brown issued a solemn promise stating “There will be no backtracking on the promise, my iron fists will prevent it.”

Gentle John Sweeney, led the Nationalist team in the subsequent negotiations and was completely outflanked by the Unionists who reneged on many of their “Devo max” pledges. Nothing was heard from Gordon Brown or any of the other Unionist leaders. Scottish voters were furious at the betrayal but unable to reverse the outcome of the referendum they bided their time until the next election only 6 months on and decimated the Unionist party’s in Scotland returning a nearly full house of SNP MPs to Westminster with a clear mandate to pursue the cause of independence yet again.

A mandate commitment was undertaken by all parties to the negotiations in Edinburgh only a few months before. This is the statement:

“Reflecting the sovereign right of the people of Scotland to determine the form of government best suited to their needs, as expressed in the referendum on 18 September 2014, and in the context of Scotland remaining within the UK, an enhanced devolution settlement for Scotland will be durable, responsive and democratic. And it is agreed that nothing in this report prevents Scotland from becoming an independent country in the future should the people of Scotland so choose.”

A summary of events is here: (https://caltonjock.com/2020/09/19/little-bo-peep-is-losing-her-sheep-is-it-et-tu-for-nicola-sturgeon/)

And What About the Secret Service presence at Glasgow University?

This is a concern given the increasing number of SNP politicians who are in close association with Baroness Smith and her team. It raises the possibility that measures approved by the Bilderbergers in the USA, will be put in place providing a way forward to limited Scottish independence tied to a merger of the SNP and Labour under the leadership of Nicola Sturgeon. Impossible!!! Wait and see!!!!

2010: Save the Children

Justin Forsyth and Brendan Cox were appointed to the board of Save the Children. Forsyth was the former Director of Strategic Communications for Gordon Brown. Before that, he was a Special Advisor on environmental and international development for Tony Blair. His ex-Labour government colleague Brendan Cox appointed Director of Policy was previously a special advisor in Gordon Brown’s cabinet team. In 2012 the organisation was in financial trouble. Lacking funds it was forced to conduct its first-ever public fund-raising campaign in Britain.

Forsyth left Save the Children to take up the post of Deputy Executive Director at Unicef from which he was forced to resign following media revelations about his mishandling of a former subordinate’s sexual misconduct and his own previous behaviour when it was revealed that when Chief Executive of Save the Children he faced three complaints of inappropriate behaviour towards female staff. The complaints included sending inappropriate texts and commenting on what young female staff were wearing.

He was also accused in 2015 of mishandling allegations of sexual harassment and abuse against his close ally and subordinate at Save the Children, Director of Policy, Brendan Cox. Save the Children said the complaints against Cox were investigated in accordance with its procedures and confirmed that Cox had been suspended and a disciplinary process began but he had resigned before it was completed. Cox has since quit the two charities he set up in memory of his late wife Labour MP Jo Cox. (The New Humanitarian)

2014: Ex-Labour SPADS campaigning against the government via charities

Save the Children caused quite a stir after deciding to award former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, with a “Global Legacy” award. An online campaign was started, demanding that they revoke the award, stating that it was inappropriate because of the role he played in the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was also raised that the Chief Executive of Save the Children, Justin Forsyth, used to be a special adviser (SPAD) to both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The charity has been criticised in the past for its support of Oxfam in its highly politicised campaign against the government.

Part of the rules that govern which charities are given charitable status, which includes generous tax relief and the ability to claim extra money from the treasury via Gift Aid, is that they remain politically neutral and do not get involved with political campaigning. This raises an interesting question: Can somebody who was so involved with the previous government really put aside their own personal politics and become politically neutral for the sake of their job? Just how many former labour SPADS are now involved with charities or think tanks? The two charities covered in this article, Oxfam and Save the Children fit the bill. (save-planet-earth-world-globe-map-children-around-world-30468826)

Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (Cafod)

Cafod appointed Damian McBride former spin-doctor for Gordon Brown to the post of Head of Media after he was forced to resign his position following allegations posted to a political blog that he and another prominent Labour Party supporter, had exchanged emails discussing the possibility of disseminating rumours McBride had fabricated about the private lives of some Tory Party politicians and their spouses. McBride returned to the Labour Party in 2014 as its Head of Political Strategy for the Shadow Foreign Secretary.

Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (Aveco)

Head of the charity bosses’ trade body, the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, Sir Stephen Bubb was a Labour Party member of Lambeth Borough Council for Clapham Town ward from 1982. He was chairman when the Labour group protested against rate capping by refusing to set a rate and was among 32 Lambeth councillors who were surcharged for causing the council a financial loss by wilful misconduct. An action that disqualified him from being a councillor for five years from the end of March 1986. He came under scrutiny in August 2013 after it was reported that his 60th birthday bash in the House of Commons had been partly financed by ACEVO. And this despite the charity paying him a salary in excess of £100,000, In his defence he stated: “it seemed just right to celebrate my 60th with a tea party in the House of Lords on Monday”.

National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC)

The Director of the NSPCC, Peter Watt was previously Labour’s General Secretary. He resigned following the revelation that he knew that a property developer David Abrahams had donated almost £600,000 to the Party through third parties over four years. Under the law, those making donations on behalf of others must give details of who is providing the money.

Royal Society of the Arts (RSA)

Matthew Taylor was the Director of the left of centre think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research between 1998 and 2003. In 2003 Tony Blair appointed him head of the Number 10 Policy Unit and gave him the task of drawing up the Labour Party’s manifesto for the May 2005 General Election. Following the re-election of the Labour government, he became Chief Adviser on Strategy and was involved in several initiatives engaging the public with the political process. He also had a key role in developing the Labour Party’s “Big Conversation” discussion forums. In 2006 he was appointed Chief Executive of the charity, the RSA, enlightenment, apolitical organisation committed to finding innovative practical solutions to social challenges.

National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA)

Formed in part thanks to the vision of Oscar-winning director David Puttnam, who recognised the UK’s failure to capitalise on its globally recognised talent for innovation and invention. The country was poor at turning inventions into marketable applications.

In an effort to reverse this, the UK’s first-ever publicly supported national endowment was created with £250 million of National Lottery funding (later supplemented, in 2006, with a further £75 million of Lottery funding drawn down over five years).

The idea was that a secure income source would enable greater risks to be taken with UK-based innovations, which could be backed over the long term without being at the behest of government funding cycles and shifts in the political wind.

Geoff Mulgan who was a special adviser to Gordon Brown from 1990 to 1992 when he was shadow Trade and Industry secretary described himself as ‘the Clinton campaign’s link to Labour, which involved lots of telephone calls with the Americans’. He was also part of a 1995 ‘secret committee’ led by Peter Mandelson ‘to examine policy changes, that were central to the modernisation of the Labour Party.

The group had been set up just before Blair flew to meet Rupert Murdoch in 1995 was officially described as outside experts ‘helping to write sections of speeches and background papers’ for the Labour leader. But some senior MPs noticed that the committee was actually an exclusive policy-making forum.

Mulgan went on to discharge a number of key roles in the Labour Government between 1997 and 2004 including director of the Government’s Strategy Unit and head of policy in Tony Blairs’s office. He was appointed Chief Executive of Nesta in 2010. Under his leadership, in April 2012 it became an independent charity and its focus shifted towards innovation for public benefit as it concentrated its policies on tackling social problems in the public and voluntary sectors. He was awarded a knighthood in the 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours in recognition of his work to advance social innovation.

International Rescue

International Rescue based in New York is supported financially by the UK, the US and other governments and billionaire, & political manipulator, George Soros.

David Milliband, President and Chief Executive of “International Rescue” based in New York from 2010, cost the charity £1m in his first year (taking into account his £300,000 salary, relocation fees and other costs, together with the costs of importing his sidekicks, Ravi Gurumurthy and Ollie Money, his former political strategist and PR man.

Miliband has never come cheap. In one year as the MP for South Shields in South Tyneside, he grossed £288,000 in outside earnings on top of his parliamentary salary of £65,000.

In 2018 the organisation hushed up 37 sex abuse, fraud and bribery allegations leading to the Department for International Development cutting off funding based on claims of fraud, bribery and sexual misconduct among groups awarded funds.

Tony Blair and the Africa Governance Initiative (AGI)

With offices in presidential departments in Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Liberia and Guinea Blair expanded his AGI empire to include oil-rich South Sudan and appointed David Brown, who worked for five years under him to head up the South Sudan operation.

Blair and his AGI charity faced questions over his and its role as advisors to Malawi President Joyce Banda following a corruption scandal dubbed as ‘cashgate’ which forced Britain and other Western donors to withhold budgetary aid. Tory MPs and campaigners in Malawi demanded to know whether Blair and his team had been aware of the corruption allegations. They also wanted to know whether Blair had been warned about corruption and if so what he did about it. If his team was ignorant, it raised embarrassing questions about what AGI’s “governance” programme was meant to achieve. (The Telegraph)

Oxfam

Oxfam was reported by the Tory Party in 2014 to the Charity Commission, for publishing a faux film poster, headed “Lifting the lid on austerity, Britain reveals a perfect storm and it’s forcing more and more people into poverty.” Showing a broiling sea under clouds titled: The Perfect Storm. Added were the words “starring zero-hours contracts, high prices, benefit cuts, unemployment, childcare costs”. And a post on Twitter which invited readers to hear how Oxfam “investigated the reasons why so many people were turning to food banks in Britain 2014”.

The late Jo Cox, former “Head of Policy” at Oxfam, was previously an advisor to Gordon Brown’s wife Sarah and also worked for Baroness Kinnock, whose husband Neil was the leader of the Labour party between 1983 and 1992. Also worthy of note is that David Pitt-Watson, Oxfam’s honorary treasurer, was also a special advisor (SPAD) for over 20 years and was Assistant General Secretary of the Labour Party from 1997 to 1999. (Civil Society)

2014; The Office of Sarah and Gordon Brown

Piecing together some 133 declarations made in Gordon Brown’s parliamentary register of interests, a picture of the until-now private accounts of the company, the “Office of Gordon and Sarah Brown” revealed that “The Office” is not a registered charity, it is a private limited company.

Brown declared to parliament that the total amount paid to the company since 2010 was £3,605,197. According to a recent announcement on the company’s website £912,702 has so far been given to charity. This leaves over £2 million to be accounted for when according to the latest available records the company had only £160,978 in cash at the bank. You can see an itemised spreadsheet here: (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m06erj5LpOktUV3g95ePimcArREmJWR8VZhQxxKXmOo/edit?pli=1#gid=0)

The company admits it budgets £550k-a-year for expenses to meet salaries, accommodation costs and staff expenses.

Brown can be paid as much as $100k for a single speech to investors at finance conferences in the US. And by funnelling his speaker fees through the company he avoids tax on his income, even though it covers the £10k weekly expenses for Gordon and Sarah to maintain the jet-set premier lifestyle they were accustomed to when in Downing Street, travelling first class around the world and staying in top five-star hotels attended to by flunkies. Something Gordon would not be able to do on his backbench MP’s salary (http://order-order.com/tag/wheres-gordon/page/2/)

2014: Sarah Brown and the Global Business Coalition for Education charity

In 2009 when he was Prime Minister, Gordon Brown said: “The old tax havens have no place in this new world. We now call on all countries to apply international standards,” a statement worthy of highlighting since his philanthropist wife made an odd choice of the home for her charity.

Sarah Brown is the founder and Executive Chair of the charitable organisation whose members include heavyweights such as Accenture, Chevron and Tata. The organisation admirably aims to bring “the business community together to accelerate progress in delivering quality education for all of the world’s children and youth”.

But the GBCfE is based in one of the most secretive tax jurisdictions in the world. Delaware, a state affectionately known by tax lawyers as “the Cayman Islands of North America”.

The charity’s registered office is 1209 North Orange Street, a single-storey building that is the legal address of 285,000 businesses according to the New York Times.

The New York Times profile said that 1209 North Orange Street is home to “big corporations, small-time businesses, rogues, scoundrels and worse”.

What might have drawn Sarah Brown to such an infamous site in so controversial a state? And is there enough desk space at 1209 to house more than a quarter of a million tenants? Should Sarah Brown be more patriotic and back the British tax system, which treats recognised charities very generously indeed.

More here:
(https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/sarah-brown-s-unpatriotic-office)

(Q) Why, if it is a charity would it need to be registered in a tax haven? (A) Perhaps it is not actually registered as a charity – at least not in the UK.

Many celebs register their “charities” in Delaware because their annual filings are kept confidential and there is little or no oversight. So if saving the planet requires travel via private jet, luxury accommodations, staff of well-paid flunkies and so on, no one’s the wiser. UK Charities risk having their operations and accounts scrutinised by the Charity Commissioner and Delaware is even dodgier than the Dutch Antilles or Panama for funny money.

Trussell Trust

The high profile Trust runs a national network of food banks. Chris Mould joined the Trust in 2003 and was later appointed Chairman. He left in January 2018 to concentrate on his work with the Foundation for Social Change and Inclusion which operates in The Balkans as well as in Bulgaria.

But there is more to the Trussell Trust and Mould than meets the eye. Full story here: (https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/well-trousered-philanthropists-tory-party-chums-and-food-parcels-for-poor/)

2008: The Munchkins Need Feeding

In 2008, Gordon Brown changed the rules so charities could join political campaigns. In theory, they could support any party but as Brown knew, very few charities would use the new powers to demand smaller taxes. It was a masterstroke. Many charities are stuffed to the gunwales with Labour Party placemen an action completed by Gordon Brown before he left office aimed at preserving the political clout of the Party. Britain’s charities nurture a colourful, talented and efficient anti-Tory alliance.

Charities are hungry monsters that need ever-increasing amounts of taxpayers money to support their charitable ambitions and around 27,000 are dependent on the government for 75% or more of their funding. Without this cash, many would collapse. Claims are made that nearly 90p in every pound donated is spent on “charitable activities” but the reality is that at least 50% of donations are spent on management, strategy development, research studies, campaigning and fundraising not what reasonable people would consider good causes.

2012: Brown’s secret army could defeat the Tory/Libdem Coalition welfare and education reforms

Long after the 2010 General Election election defeat came to the realization that Brown really was a clever planner. In his last two years in office, he started preparing for a new kind of opposition. Labour might be turfed out of government, but it would carry on the fight through charities, quangos and think tanks. At one time Brown had a team in Downing Street devoted to appointments in public bodies, carefully building what would become a kind of government-in-exile. If the Tories tried anything radical like welfare reform then Labour’s new fifth columnists would strike.

Another clever move by Brown was his deal with the unions which was tumbled when government ministers observed trade union officials armed with security passes entering their departments. Investigations revealed that from the NHS to the MoD, civil servants were effectively being paid by the Government to work for the trade unions. It all added up to (revealed by the Tax Payers’ Alliance) a staggering 3,000 union officials being funded by the taxpayer. It was in effect a subsidy of around £86m to the unions, which they donated to the Labour Party. An ingenious scam. Brown took side bets that Cameron would not bother to dismantle the scheme and he was right. So the Labour Party entered a new golden era of preferment. But the Tory Party would hit back. (The Guardian)

2013: The Tories gag the charities

The Tory Party’s controversial lobbying bill, otherwise known as the “charity gagging bill” was rushed through parliament with unseemly haste. The intention was to limit the ability of non-profit charities and similar groups to campaign on issues of public interest. Specifically, the amount charities, unions and campaign groups are permitted to spend on work that might have a political impact in the 12 months prior to an election was cut by over 60%.

At the same time, the definition of electoral expenses was broadened from the cost of election-related leaflets and posters to include many other costs such as staff wages and other overheads, so a reduced budget was needed to cover a great deal more. The hugely increased bureaucratic burden is particularly onerous for small, local campaign groups, and a lack of clarity on which aspects of specific activities count as electoral led to the Electoral Commission describing the changes as unworkable.

And the restrictions do not only apply to explicit party endorsements. Campaigning for a new hospital or against one being closed, for or against a new bypass, free school or bird sanctuary, or any issue on which politicians or their parties have expressed a view, is electioneering, and the government intends that the electorate will be doing a lot less of it. And what about the new rules and corporate lobbyists? They are unaffected. Large companies are not reliant on elections and public opinion to sway politicians. They gain results from informal one-to-one chats in corporate hospitality boxes, fact-finding missions to exotic locations, and the occasional quiet country supper.

So long as there is an absence of a lobbying transparency bill the best hope the public has of discovering who is influencing their elected representatives is constant questioning and probing from charities and campaign groups. And the best hope for causes that might be opposed by big money interests is those same charities and campaign groups. And so at a stroke, the charity gagging bill removed the single biggest restriction on the power of corporate lobbyists and replaced it with a register covering less than 20% of the industry a percentage that was reduced further as companies avoided scrutiny by taking their lobbying in-house. The bill privileged undemocratic, behind the scenes influence over open, public debate. The Tory Party delivered the next great political scandal. A piece of legislation intended as a watchdog for corporate lobbyists, stopping them from hijacking legislation was hijacked by corporate lobbyists. (The Guardian)

2014: Tories condemn the revolving door

Half of Gordon Brown’s special advisors in the last Labour Government are working for charities or left of centre think tanks, many of which now spend their time lobbying the government. Figures show that 11 out of the 25 special advisers who worked directly for Gordon Brown in 2009 now work for supposedly neutral think tanks or charities many of which speak out against the Government or lobby ministers to change laws.

The media disclosed that one such organisation the Institute of Public Policy Research, once dubbed Tony Blair’s favourite think tank is being informally investigated by the charity watchdog for its close links to the Labour Party. There is also increasing concern among Tories that charities and think tanks are being used as vehicles for a pro-Labour agenda. Tory MPs said there was evidence of a “revolving door” between Labour and charities.

The Justice Secretary is concerned that supposedly neutral charities and think tanks are being misused saying: “An extraordinary number, moreover, are drawn from the ranks of the Labour Party. If you read through the CVs of its candidates a substantial proportion have worked for pressure groups and as trade union campaigners. It’s now the career route of choice. they use that platform to attack the Government and make their name, lining up alongside former special advisers, MPs and councillors to argue for more spending, or to spread scare stories that are often exaggerated or wholly untrue.” Adding: “Britain’s professional campaigners are growing in number sending emails around the country, flocking around Westminster, dominating BBC programmes, and usually articulating a Left-wing vision which is neither affordable nor deliverable and wholly at odds with the long-term economic plan this Government has worked so hard to put in place.” (The Telegraph)

2015: Labour to put charities back at the heart of society

The reality of the Tories “Big Society” is evidenced by ever-lengthening queues at food banks, run by overstretched charities dealing with the fallout from its political choices. The Lobbying Act, supposed to bring more transparency to the lobbying industry and politics instead restricted the ability of charities and campaigners to speak out. Judicial review is much restricted, employment tribunal fees have been hiked and legal aid has been slashed. Charities and other civil society groups act as a buffer between the individual and the state and consistently speak truth to power. Society needs the strong voice of charities at the heart of society. (Huffington Post)

Mar 2003; Alex Salmond’s contribution to the debate

Fundamentally, the debate is not about Iraq, Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction or even oil, though oil is certainly a factor. The debate is about new world order, with an unrivalled superpower adopting a doctrine of pre-emptive strike, and how we accommodate that and come to terms with that new world order. Eighteen months ago the United States had an atrocity committed against it and it is still in trauma. The point was made a few minutes ago, and it is undoubtedly correct.

On 12 September 2001, the day after the attack on the twin towers, the United States was at its most powerful. In its moment of greatest extremity, the United States was at its zenith. In addition to its unrivalled military might, it carried total moral authority throughout the world. A hundred or more nations signed messages of sympathy, support or solidarity with the extremity that the United States had suffered.

Now, 18 months later, that enormous world coalition has been dissipated. I do not take the position that it was only a gang of four who gathered in the Azores. I accept that there are more countries—or at least countries’ Governments who are signed up, but the coalition of the willing for the campaign against Iraq is very narrowly based. Anyone who wants confirmation of that should just count the troops: 300,000 United States and British troops, and I understand that 1,000 Australians have been asked for, and 100 Poles have been offered. That is a very narrowly based coalition indeed.

The Prime Minister believes that the way to accommodate the situation is to accept that the United States will be predominant and that the rest must fall into line. They can try to restrain it, but they will have to fall into line with the views of the United States Administration. That is a wrong-headed policy, and it is taking people into ridiculous positions.

In his undoubtedly powerful speech today, the Prime Minister argued that the weapons inspection process had never worked. He came close to saying that it had all been a waste of time. I remember a speech in October last year at the Labour conference in which another powerful speaker went into enormous detail to show how successful the weapons inspection process had been in the 1990s and how it had led to the destruction of chemical weapons, the chemicals used to make weapons, the armed warheads and the biological weapons facility. He concluded that “the inspections were working even when he(Saddam Hussein) was trying to thwart them.”

I watched that speech on television as did many others. The speaker was President Bill Clinton. The television was doing cutaways to Ministers, including the Prime Minister who all nodded vigorously when President Clinton said that through the 1990s that policy worked and destroyed far more weapons of mass destruction than were destroyed, for example, in the Gulf war. The Prime Minister is now denying what he accepted only last October.

We are told that the majority of the Security Council would have voted for the second resolution if it had not been for the nasty French coming in at the last minute and scuppering the whole process. Let us get real. Have we listened to what other countries were saying? The Chileans proposed an extension of three weeks, but they were told by the United States that that was not on. In the debate in the General Assembly, country after country expressed their anxieties about not letting the weapons inspectors have a chance to do their work. They were told that the nasty French—I am not sure whether the Conservative party dislikes the French more than the Liberals, or vice versa were being extremely unreasonable, but the French position, and the Chinese position in order to become acceptable, resolution 1441 had to be amended. Everything has been consistent in the opposition of countries that are against a rush to military action.

Somebody should speak up for the French because their position has been consistent, as has that of the Russians and the Chinese. The Chinese, the French and the Russians issued a declaration on the passage of resolution 1441. It sets out exactly how the British and the United States ambassadors agreed that it was not a trigger for war. The reason that those countries did not want a second resolution was not that it would be a pathway to peace I wonder who dreamed that up in Downing Street. The reason was that they saw it as a passport to war, so obviously they opposed a resolution drawn in those terms. The majority of smaller countries in the Security Council and the General Assembly countries did not want to rush to war because they saw that there remained an alternative to taking military action at this stage of the inspection process.

We are told that the Attorney General has described the war as legal. We could go into the legalities and quote professor after professor who has said the opposite, but one thing is certain: when the Secretary-General of the United Nations doubts the authorisation of military action without a second resolution, people can say many things about that action, but they cannot say that it is being taken in the name of the United Nations. (1)

The argument is that it will be a salutary lesson, that a dictator will be taught a lesson and that that will help us in dealing with other dictators. I suspect that the cost of the action — I do not doubt the military outcome for a second will be so high in a number of ways that it will not provide a platform for an assault on North Korea or Iran, which form the rest of the “axis of evil”. I do not think that the policy of teaching one dictator a lesson and then moving on to other dictators can work. Most of us know that it will be a breeding ground for a future generation of terrorists. That is not the case because people like Saddam Hussein. The images that will be shown throughout the Muslim world will not feature him, although, without any question, he will be more attractive as a martyr when he is dead than he has ever been while alive. The images that will be shown are those of the innocents who will undoubtedly die in a conflict that will be a breeding ground for terrorism.

Will the nation-building work? The record of the United States has not been impressive. Let me say something about one of the other countries that are being reviled at present Germany, which commits far more troops as a percentage of its armed forces to helping to secure the peace in the various trouble spots of the world for the United Nations.

We are told that the Prime Minister, (this is the essence of his case) will try to restrain some elements in the United States Administration and make them take a multilateral approach, but that, if that does not happen, when push comes to shove he has to go along with their policy. I say that there is a broader United States of America than the United States Government. I believe that many sections of opinion in America would welcome a vote from this Parliament today that says “Not in our name” because the real America wants to see a stand for peace, not a rush for war.

(1) The UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan said that if the US and GB went ahead with an invasion of Iraq it would be in breach of the United Nations charter.

Extracts from other contributions to the debate

Dr. el-Baradei and his teams of inspectors reported to the UN that Iraq did not possess nuclear weapons and its biological and chemical weapons stocks and productivity was severely diminished. This being the case from where is the immediate intent to attack the United Kingdom, the United States, neighbouring states or other states to come from?

It has been suggested that Iraq might not intend to attack anyone but that it could pass them to terrorist organisations. But George Tennet, on behalf of the CIA said: “it is important when talking about what connections countries have with terrorism to distinguish between unconditional terrorist organisations, which would be liable to wish to use weapons of mass destruction, and political terrorist organisations, such as the Mujaheddin-e Khalq Organisation and Hamas, of which there is evidence that Iraq has had connections, would not have a purpose in doing so. And  there is no verifiable evidence of any connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.”

Blair said the question is how Britain and the world face security threats of the 21st century which is a weird statement since in the context of the debate he was referring to weapons of mass destruction and the political belief of UK parties is that such matters should be resolved through non-proliferation and multilateral disarmament.

The Bush Administration has adopted a strategy of counter-proliferation. Saying; “It is okay if our friends develop nuclear weapons, but not if our enemies do,” and they choose who are the friends and who are the enemies. In this context, it needs to be remembered that Iraq was regarded as a friend and was supplied with weapons and munitions by the US and the UK during the 1980s.

Of more concern is that the policy of the Bush Administration says; “We can develop new nuclear weapons or try to make nuclear weapons more usable, and we can decide to breach the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and the security assurance that we gave under that treaty.” That is a serious aspect of the overall problem of weapons of mass destruction, especially when it is added to the doctrine of pre-emptive war.

Blair made the point that war on Iraq was not on his agenda when he became Prime Minister in 1997, and he said that George W. Bush had told him that two days before 11 September it was not on his agenda. It was on other people’s agenda namely, that of the hawks that George Bush appointed to his Administration.

Blair said that the UK needed to view the US as a major power and partner. But there are major misgivings if it means that the United States takes the decision and the UK is expected to follow suit. That is not a partnership. 

If the House of Commons votes for a pre-emptive war against Iraq, the question of precedence needs to be first discussed and resolved because the hawks of the Bush administration have already said that there are plans for other pre-emptive divisive wars.  The US plan of the world of the future identifies closely with the vision set out by Blair in Brighton in 2001, when he spoke of, “the moral power of a world acting as a community”.

President Clinton’s Powerful Speech to the labour party Conference in Blackpool October 2002, (6 months before the invasion of Iraq

https://www.c-span.org/video/?172964-1/foreign-policy-issues

His advice, readily embraced at the time by Tony Blair and all of his ministers was ignored in the rush to war. Bush and Blair ordered the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and the terrible consequences of this have been visited upon many nations of the World, (in particular Afghanistan and the Middle East).

Blair and Bush are now retired and very wealthy earning financial fortunes from speeches, advisory activities in support of many governments around the world and other businesses.

But many thousands of our armed forces were killed or returned home maimed through physical and or mental injury. The remaining years of their lives will be spent in pain and poverty as will the many thousands of families who lost their sons and daughters.

But Blair got his reward from the Queen. Now, Lord Blair is readying himself for a return to government should the Labour Party displace the Tories at the next General Election.

The late Sir Jeremy Heywood was the cabinet secretary to David Cameron and leader of the UK’s civil service. He wielded immense power and used it in defence of the UK government and in furthering his own agenda.

Edward Snowden worked for the US National Security Agency (NSA) but became disillusioned with it considering its policies counterproductive, invasive and illegal.

He gathered together sensitive information and disappeared from his office surfacing first in Hong Kong where he leaked copious amounts of information to the “Guardian” newspaper who released much of it to the UK public.

The “sh-t hit the fan” and there were many accusations, denials, warnings, threats and government pursuit mainly featuring Heywood and his actions against the Guardian which were designed to bring an end to the revelations of Snowden who subsequently took refuge in Russia.

There was considerable press coverage and some of the content is disturbing but is a true reflection of the activities of the US and UK government’s secret services.

3 Jun 2013: latest documents from Edward Snowden revealed British spy agency collected and stored vast quantities of global email messages, Facebook posts, internet histories and calls, and shared them with the NSA. (https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/21/gchq-cables-secret-world-communications-nsa)

6 Jun 2013: NSA collected phone records of millions of Verizon customers. Top secret court order required Verizon to hand over all call data showing the scale of domestic surveillance under Obama.
(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order)

7 Jun 2013: UK security agency GCHQ gathered information from the world’s biggest internet firms through the US-run Prism programme. (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jun/07/uk-gathering-secret-intelligence-nsa-prism)

7 Jun 2013: Top-secret directive stepped up offensive cyber capabilities to advance US objectives around the world. (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/07/obama-china-targets-cyber-overseas)

8 Jun 2013: Authorities in the US have been mining data from companies such as Google, Apple and Facebook gaining access to emails, photos and other files allowing analysts to track peoples movements and contacts. The US president insisted the surveillance programmes struck a good balance between safety and privacy. (http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/jun/08/obama-internet-surveillance-video)

9 Jun 2013: Edward Snowden. “I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things” – video interview.
(http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/jun/09/nsa-whistleblower-edward-snowden-interview-video)

9 Jun 2013: Then foreign secretary, William Hague, said reports that GCHQ was gathering intelligence from phones and online sites should not concern people who had nothing to hide. Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, Hague claimed all intelligence gathering done by the UK to be governed by a strong legal framework. When asked directly about the UK’s links to Prism, the NSA’s secret surveillance programme, Hague declined to either confirm or deny it existed.
(http://www.theguardian.com/uk/video/2013/jun/09/data-snooping-law-abiding-citizens-nothing-fear-hague-video)

10 Jun 2013: Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations – The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA’s history explained his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows.
(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance)

11 Jun 2013: The NSA’s powerful tool for cataloguing global surveillance data–including figures on US collection.
(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-boundless-informant-global-datamining)

11 Jun 2013: Edward Snowden’s girlfriend Lindsay Mills: Her blog in which she described life with her boyfriend in Hawaii was taken down after Snowden was identified as the source of leaks
(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/11/edward-snowden-lindsay-mills-guardian)

17 Jun 2013: phones were monitored and fake internet cafes were set up to gather information from allies in London in 2009.
(http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/16/gchq-intercepted-communications-g20-summits)

8 Jul 2013: Edward Snowden. ‘The US government will say I aided our enemies’ – video interview.
(http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/jul/08/edward-snowden-video-interview)

1 Aug 2013: Secret payments revealed in leaks by Edward Snowden. GCHQ expected to ‘pull its weight’ for Americans. Weaker regulation of British spies a selling point’ for NSA.
(http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/01/nsa-paid-gchq-spying-edward-snowden)

6 Sep 2013: NSA and GCHQ unlocked encryption used to protect emails, banking and medical records. $250m-a-year US program worked covertly with tech companies to insert weaknesses into products. Security experts said programs ‘undermined the fabric of the internet’.
(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security)

25 Oct 2013: Claims were made that Tory MP Julian Smith endangered national security following the publication of photos of staff at GCHQ. (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/25/conservative-mp-julian-smith-national-security-nsa-leaks)

25 Oct 2013: Leaked memos revealed GCHQ efforts to keep mass surveillance secret. (http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/25/leaked-memos-gchq-mass-surveillance-secret-snowden)

25 Oct 2013: The NSA scandal put Europe to the test. EU member states have a duty to protect their citizens from snooping. There is surely more to come. (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/25/nsa-scandal-puts-europe-to-test)

25 Oct 2013: NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders after US officials handed over contacts. (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/24/nsa-surveillance-world-leaders-calls)

28 Oct 2013: Cameron makes a veiled threat to media over NSA and GCHQ leaks. (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/28/david-cameron-nsa-threat-newspapers-guardian-snowden)

19 Dec 2013: Official response to Snowden’s revelations celebrates journalism and calls for real change. But in Britain, the picture is rather different.

Last summer the British cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, entered the Guardian’s London office and told the editor there had been enough debate and reporting on the business of intelligence agencies. But a US government report on the Guardian’s revelations about the US NSA said it was informed and thoughtful and went beyond the privacy-versus national security platitudes of the debate in the UK. It did not blame journalism for providing information to the public and the authors of the report were not hand-wringing liberals numbering a former CIA deputy director; a counter-terrorism adviser to George W Bush and his father; two former White House advisers and a former dean of the Chicago law school.
(http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/19/obama-nsa-review-britain-debate-possible)

24 Dec 2013: The NSA, founded in 1952, is the USA’s signals intelligence agency, and the biggest of the country’s myriad intelligence organisations. and maintains a strict focus on overseas, rather than domestic, surveillance. It is the phone and internet interception specialist of the USA and is also responsible for codebreaking. (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/the-nsa-files)

26 Dec 2013: Israeli PM condemns US and UK spying on the predecessor. (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/23/netanyahu-condemns-spying-nsa-gchq-unacceptable)

29 Dec 2013: NSA ‘hacking unit’ infiltrates computers around the world.
(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/29/der-spiegel-nsa-hacking-unit-tao)

5 Jan 2014: The government’s role is vital, but an arrogant and centralised state is as big a problem as the out-of-control market. (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/05/left-silent-state-power-government-market)

31 Jan 2014: Footage released of Guardian editors destroying Snowden hard drives. GCHQ technicians monitored journalists at the Guardian taking angle grinders and drills to computers after the cabinet secretary, Jeremy Heywood told the editor to destroy records and equipment and to stop publishing articles based on leaked material from American’s NSA and GCHQ. Heywood told the editor: “We can do this nicely or we can go to law. A lot of people in government think you should be shut down.” (http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/jan/31/snowden-files-computer-destroyed-guardian-gchq-basement-video)

27 Feb 2014: The intelligence services commissioner repeatedly refused to address the home affairs select committee on disclosures over the US NSA mass digital surveillance programmes. The clash came not long after the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, called for a major overhaul of the oversight of Britain’s intelligence services, including reform of the commissioners’ roles as part of his campaign against, “unaccountable power”.
(http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/27/mps-summon-security-services-watchdog-mark-waller-snowden)

28 Feb 2014: Secret documents revealed Britain’s surveillance agency GCHQ, aided by the NSA intercepted and stored webcam images of millions of internet users. In one six-month period in 2008 the agency collected webcam imagery including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts.
(http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/gchq-nsa-webcam-images-internet-yahoo)

28 Feb 2014: Three US senators are to investigate any role the National Security Agency played in its British partner’s mass collection of Yahoo webcam images. The senators described the interception as a “breathtaking lack of respect for privacy and civil liberties”.

7 Aug 2014: Edward Snowden given permission to stay in Russia.
(http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/aug/07/edward-snowden-given-permission-stay-russia-video)

17 Oct 2014: Edward Snowden on GCHQ, Facebook and his new life in Moscow. (http://www.theguardian.com/membership/video/2014/oct/17/edward-snowden-gchq-facebook-moscow-video?INTCMP=mic_233824)

19 Oct 2014: Documentary follows Edward Snowden as his leaks about the activities of the NSA shock the world.
(http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/oct/19/citizen-four-review-edward-snowden-nsa-engrossing)

29 Oct 2014: UK government admits GCHQ routinely views data with no warrant.

Comment. The Snooper’s Charter simply legitimized what was already happening. The government pretended to believe in the rule of law but it just saw it as a means to an end. The public was never meant to know about the eavesdropping and gathering of data. Had the Guardian not broken the story the government would still be pretending that data gathering would start only when safeguarding legislation was in place. Evidently, the government has little respect for free speech.
(http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/29/gchq-nsa-data-surveillance)

 

The Independence Of Scottish Charities

Devolution affords Scottish charities opportunities to forge their own relationships with MSPs providing them with access to parliament in a way they have never had before. This freedom of access does not have the support of many UK, (London) controlled charities who are unwilling to cede power to their Scottish branches.

In 200* The Scottish ******** ******** charity management team, submitted a proposal, to its UK  controllers that the charity should be autonomous of England, including control of financial contributions made in Scotland. This was rejected leaving the Scottish management team and staff well and truly deflated.

A significant number of people, who had been volunteers actively supporting the charity resigned and the Scottish management team was suspended

An important patron who, in addition to providing moral and physical support, had also made many significant financial donations resigned citing distracting and demoralizing endless internal rows with the London office. Paraphrasing the statement of resignation the Patron said;
“I have not taken the decision to quit my position as patron lightly. In the last year, the Scottish team and I initiated and attended mediation sessions, in the hope of sorting out long-standing and escalating conflicts between the Scottish management team and officers in London, driven by the imposition of changes from England. Unfortunately little was achieved. With mounting frustration and disappointment, I have been witness to the resignations of immensely dedicated people within the Scottish ******** ******** and the increasing demoralization of staff whom I have come to know and admire over the ten years of our association.”

The suspended, soon after ex-Chairman of the charity in Scotland briefed staff that the patron might be persuaded to reconsider standing down if the charity cut its ties with London.

The London office warned the charity in Scotland that any breakaway would result in the loss of £550,000 research grant finance.

A postal ballot was conducted and around 75% of the membership either abstained or voted to be independent of England. So London retained control.

There was much to admire about the leadership of the Scottish charity and the strongly-worded statement of the patron, who clearly fully supported a Scottish charity separate from  London.

The patron!! JK Rowling. The Charity!! The Multiple Sclerosis Society Scotland. The Source!!

(http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rowling-quits-multiple-sclerosis-charity-over-angloscottish-feud-1666842.html)