I had no idea that such a campaign was ongoing but it seems a China-based writer has been resolutely pursuing the Electoral Commission to understand why the body dropped the case against Wendy Alexander.
One's first thought is why would anyone want to rake up old coals but that is easily countered with the recognition that no quest for the truth should ever go unimpeded.
That said, I can't help but hope that a minor issue surrounding an ex-leader who was unchallenged for the role stays outside the main debate, particularly in an election year.
Scotland is at its best when it's looking forwards rather than backwards. There is a policy discussion void to be filled over the coming months and one can only hope that something unproductive doesn't fall into that gap.
Salmond vs Trump
17 minutes ago
7 comments:
sigh
Quite happy to let sleeping dogs( Wendies) lie BUT if the Electoral Commission has acted improperly then they must be nailed to the wall and assured that they can't make it up as they go along.
I must admit that I have grave concerns about their impartiality.
Jeff
Just imagine Alex Salmond had received this "donation" Do you think that it would be seen as a minor issue and should be kept out of the main debate especially in an election year?
The thing that was never made clear was , just why someone from the Channel Islands would want to donate to a Scottish leaders election?
The even bigger picture is of course the Electoral Commissions roll in this and why has it not released reasons for it decision.
The most telling quote from Ferguson is "The Electoral Commission has fought tooth and nail for three years to prevent any information at all on the matter from being made available to the public whose interests it supposedly serves."
He has a point in the sense that no explanation was given, except that the EC considered it was not in the public interest.
At the time I was really taken aback by that. It is not a function of the EC to decide whether it is in the public interest to prosecute a particular case. That is the job of the Procurator Fiscal.
It would be interesting to hear the EC's rationale but I don't see it becoming a big political issue.
Jeff
I kind of agree with you about looking forward and not back. However, I reckon if Labour think about flinging the proverbial dirt about some past alleged SNP sin, they may now think twice about it. After all, Wendygate was well within the life of the current parliament.
Although I don't see too much benefit in dragging up old news from the past, I agree with Dubbieside.
Had this been an SNP politician, the Labour party and their unionist media supporters would've made far more of this controversy. The story would have run on forever, there would've been many resignation casualties, possibly the whole government would have been brought down and that STILL wouldn't have been enough to satisfy them. Labour would still drag the issue up in 50 years time to scare voters about the SNP.
We also seem to have forgotten about Iain Gray's barbecue-gate / marquee-gate story, will we ever find out if anything came of that? Were those allegations true or not? Somebody who could be first minister in a few months should be under a great deal of scrutiny, but we know this will never happen when Labour have the BBC and all newspapers firmly on their side. That's why if the facts are to be discovered, people end up having to take the task on themselves.
If a private individual wishes to investigate the pretty murky circumstances of this for himself, then I wish him all the very best of luck, but I don't think the SNP need to be involved too closely with this process, we've got more important things to worry about than getting distracted by Wendygate.
It was Charlie Gordon who solicited the donation from the man who was behind the Braehead development and Glasgow Harbour. So he had considerable links with Labour in Glasgow
Post a Comment