Bullshit 1, Justice 0

Although the future is unknowable, I can offer Whining Willie Rennie at least one guarantee: he and his morally vacuous mince-cluster of Lib Dems will be given a comprehensive seeing-to at the 2016 Holyrood elections.  That apart, it remains to be seen exactly what the fallout from today’s “he’s a lying scumbag, but that’s actually legal, so shut it, Nats” Carmichael court decision will be.  But what the heck, let’s give it a go.

As BBC Cringeland marks the outcome with its traditional parade of whey-faced Unionist chortlers, and the rest of us are left resisting the temptation to go out and uproot lamp-posts with our teeth, the immediate priority is clear.  We must support the Orkney Four, monstered at the start of proceedings as vexatious politically motivated agitators, and now facing the prospect of the same tedious spittle-gauntlet again.  As if Carmichael’s smear, and his subsequent lie, weren’t “politically motivated”, and the “political” nature of that lie wasn’t the essence of his beetroot-faced defence!

More pressingly, stupendous as the Four’s crowd-funding total may look, if Carmichael is awarded costs they still stand to lose everything, including in one case the ability to pursue a career.  That justice is denied to ordinary folk by being so far out of their price range that it’s visible only to the Hubble telescope is a disgrace, and a reminder that after independence the hard work will just be starting.  For now, whatever it takes, even the equivalent of two Wings crowd-funders in one outrageous go, we simply can’t allow the Four to go under.

Moral victories may be as much fun as a rub-down with caustic soda, but the quartet really do need to be commended for having the initiative to bring this case, and the fortitude, staying power and downright cojones to see it through.  As sages such as Lallands Peat Worrier always warned, the legal task they faced was equivalent to attempting the world pole vault record using a garden rake.

In the event, they established, officially and on the record, that Carmichael lied.  They forced him to display, for all the world to see, what a mediocre, evasive, self-serving scrote he is.  That the world will doubtless turn a blind eye simply illustrates how pin-headed that world can be, and that they failed only to prove that lying was an offence under the Representation of the People Act just shows that the law couldn’t be more of an ass if it were offering rides on Millport Beach.

If this were fitba’, it would be like leading 2-0 after playing the other team off the park for 89 minutes, only to have both goals chalked off and a last-minute penalty awarded against you because of an arcane FIFA rule about half-time pies being insufficiently hot.  It may not be an Establishment fix, but it’s a brain-contorting legal travesty.

Justice may yet be served by a Parliamentary Standards enquiry, in the sense that my nine-year-old niece may one day be the first woman on Mars.  But it shouldn’t even come to that.  If Carmichael were a sensitive human being instead of a self-important fart cushion, he’d unobtrusively take the Chiltern Hundreds and bog off to Patagonia for five years’ rehabilitation as a goat-herder. 

No such luck.  As long as he doesn’t make the mistake of standing in another election, he’s all set to hop back aboard that well-known choo-choo, gravy-guzzling pail in hand and smug how-jammy-am-I-mammy grin on his face.  Could there be a nice furry cloak in his future, even though sane people wouldn’t even recommend him for membership of the Tufty Club?  In a world where Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown, the Laurel and Hardy of the indyref campaign, slide effortlessly into sinecures in the high-powered financial shafting sector, and wee Dougie Alexander becomes Bono’s personal sanctimony adviser, surely anything is possible.

In the meantime, any chance of a teaspoonful of contrition from Carmichael amongst the Desmond-style inundation of self-exculpatory guff?  Nope, thanks for asking, folks, but hard luck.

“I’ve been vindicated,” orates the puffball, when the word he should have used is “vindictive”.  “It was all a plot by the Nationalists,” he asserts, as if he’s on the shortlist for an Iain Duncan Smith Victim-Blaming Mendacity Award. “Scottish politics since the referendum has been so polarised,” he whines, when he’s the one who made a pole arise, somewhat forcefully, up the back passage of democracy.

But, hey, what do you expect now that smearing and lying has been enshrined in law as acceptable behaviour?  Enjoy the temporary gloat, Unionist scoffers who made a meal out of our “grumpiness” this morning.  One day very soon, one of these bastards will be doing the same to you.

If you'd like to donate to the Orkney Four fund-raiser, you can access it here.
 

Note From the Management

Apologies, readers, for the radio silence of late.  Long-time followers will be aware that this happens from time to time:  I get heavily involved in other stuff, and it takes more and more of my time until I can hardly think straight, let alone blog anything worth reading.  So here we are again!

With things now beginning to ease off, I expect to be back in harness on To September And Beyond at the beginning of December.  My Vow, which at least can’t be less credible than the Daily Record version, is to produce shorter posts on a more frequent basis, which may help me avoid running into the buffers again.  And, where the subject matter demands it, maybe there’ll be the odd post that doesn’t have quite so many jokes in it.  (If the brilliant Frankie Boyle can do it….)

Anyway, please do stay tuned, and in the meantime enjoy the hell out of the aforementioned Mr Boyle, Wee Ginger Dug, Peat Worrier, Bateman and the many others who make the new media the effervescent joy it is.  I’ll see you soon.

Xi

There's always been one thing missing from the world of state visits: the yearning tones of Charles Aznavour.  Last week David Cameron finally put that right.

Xi may be the face I can't forget
Disgrace the voters will regret
When people notice what a price they have to pay

Xi may be the Queen's new special friend
Inward investment without end
And, since it's best not to offend
I must be careful what I say

Xi may build a flagship nuclear plant
Or an obscene white elephant
On terms that mean your household budgets feel the heat

Xi may prove a costly man to please
Renewables are on their knees
Because we've slashed their subsidies
To keep him sweet

Xi, whose reputation can't be seen to fail
Whose enemies are swiftly thrown in jail
No-one's allowed to hear their shrill protest

Xi, who if you wave a 'Free Tibet' placard
Deploys his goons to hit you good and hard
That's the leadership I love the best

Xi may dump his bargain-basement steel
While Cambuslang and Scunthorpe squeal
Without a pang of sorrow anyone can see

Me, I'll take his piles of tainted cash
For all my pervy chums to stash
While you lot face austerity
My sugar daddy will be
Xi

The Wicked Witch of Edinburgh West

Mibbe she’s guilty,

Legally or morally,

Or mibbe she’s no’.

Thought you might like a summary of the Michelle Thomson affair in haiku form.  Just for a teensy-weensy bit of variation after the media’s non-stop drone assault of the last three weeks.  God, I knew they were biased, but I didn’t suspect they’d try to bore us into submission.  Do they realise the latest YouGov poll is screaming at them that this approach isn’t working, or is there a longer-term plan to dissolve our brains with repetitive drivel?

Gary Robertson, who’d be a baby-faced assassin if he weren’t two syllables short, was the latest to crank the well-worn handle on Friday morning. With SNP membership at its highest ever (despite, in shock news for UKOK zoomer Adam Tomkins, other parties being available), the conference buzzing and feisty delegates limbering up to tweak the leadership’s nose on land reform, Gaz still managed to waste 40% of his Good Morning Scotland interview with Nicola Sturgeon on what she knew about Thomson, when she knew it and why she endorsed her instead of melting her with a death stare.

Hi, Gary, welcome back to the remedial class.  Some of the following words have more than one syllable, so this may hurt a bit.  Bit of background to start with.  As you may have spotted, Jockistan’s temerity in electing 56 fewer Unionist stooges than its cereal-packet instructions dictated has set the Establishment’s hackles bristling like a giant lavvy brush.

Such is the panic that GCHQ has invoked the emergency “National Anthem protocol”, demanding that sedition be hushed and rebellious Scots crushed.  Unfortunately Fluffy Mundell is a piss-poor substitute for Marshal Wade, unless the intention is to bleat us all to death, so step forward Plan B:  discredit the SNP at all costs, before those uppity North Brits banjax everything by giving them a second majority in Holyrood.

Accordingly, an informal cabal of Unionist ne’er-do-wells has spent the summer rummaging through the SNP’s bins, nostrils twitching at anything with weapons-grade whiff potential.  Now, here’s a wee question. How did it take them a gobsmacking four months to come up with anything on Michelle Thomson, whom the Ashley Madison smearette, reading between the lines, had already identified as someone with serious enemies? 

Either the witch-hunters have the brains of a chipolata, or Ms Thomson’s alleged wrongdoing wasn’t as flamin’ obvious at selection time as some unctuous castigators of the SNP’s candidate vetting procedures would have you believe.  (Yes, I refer to Jackie Baillie, who if hypocritical bollocks could drive a turbine would single-handedly revolutionise Scotland’s renewables prospects overnight.)

In that light, it’s overwhelmingly likely that all Nicola knew about Michelle when she endorsed her was that she was prominent in Business for Scotland, ran a property company and, since she didn’t come across as a complete numpty, was probably aiming to make profits.  Furthermore, ladies and gentlemen of the trial-by-media lynch mob, it remains possible that Ms Thomson herself wouldn’t have gone beyond that assessment.  You’ll search in vain on her LinkedIn profile for anything that says, “Wicked Witch of the West, cackling hoarsely as she dances through the ruins of gullible householders’ dreams”.

As to whether she, or indeed anyone, broke the law, I don’t have a scooby, and nor does grinning Gary or sanctimonious space-hopper Jackie.  But, in truth, the last thing the baying mob wants is for her to be found guilty of a crime.  It would introduce certainty, always a bugger for those who profit from chaos, and after the obligatory flash-fire of embarrassment Nicola would simply push her under a fleet of buses packed with children singing Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam and the SNP would step gaily into the healing process.

The morality issue, now the main focus of opposition chuntering, is harder to pin down.  That’s largely because of the guff-riddled smokescreen the Herald has been farting out on a daily basis, in pusillanimous attempts to tarnish Business for Scotland, Ivan McKee, the Law Society and just about any SNP figure who’s ever bought a house that’s subsequently risen in value.  

Now, the Herald has been skating tipsily on the edge for years, but this collapse into bampottery is hair-raising even by its lamentable standards.  Did Michelle once wheedle Magnus Gardham into accepting 50p and a book of luncheon vouchers for a maisonette she subsequently flogged to Donald Trump for a million? You honestly have to wonder.

It seems clear that the Thomson strategy included picking up bargains from mortgage-throttled home owners desperate to chuck it in and start again. You could argue that that's a vital component of the financial eco-system, and profit margins visible from outer space simply reflect the balance of risk and reward, but it’s a difficult case to make without sounding ever so slightly like an automaton. What if the SNP, driven by enough of its 114,121 consciences, were to propose radical reform of said financial eco-system?  Would Michelle blithely vote for that, then invite all her chums round to toast marshmallows in the flames enveloping their business model?

On the other hand, it’s odd that Michelle’s alleged “victims” spent five years somehow failing to notice they’d been ripped off, before the media’s serpentine whispers gave them a crash course in disgruntlement. And, if she’s so patently guilty, why did her accusers need to sex up the evidence against her by taking some vaguely aspirational froth from her company web site and wrenching it mercilessly out of context until she looked like Cruella de Ville’s twisted sister?  When Ruth Davidson goes into full indignation mode at First Minister’s Questions, with a face like fizz, it’s a dead giveaway that the underlying argument is pish.

Perhaps the SNP should take it as a compliment that they’re being held to such high standards by Labour, who have just ennobled a convicted pyromaniac, and the Tories, who still employ double-dealing shape-shifter Grant Shapps in a senior role, and the Lib Dems, who’ve got not only the over-promoted buffoon Carmichael, but a gallery of grotesque weirdos going back to Jeremy Thorpe and beyond. 

Michelle, scandale, sont des mots qui vont très bien ensemble.  So the smearathon grinds inexorably on, with truth and due process lying dazed in the gutter, wondering what’s just clobbered them. 

Meanwhile the world turns, and the voters yawn, scratch their nether parts and continue waiting patiently for May 2016, when they’ll vote the way they’ve been planning to all along.