Oddquine

Be fair....that 3% was for a party 3/4 days old at the time....the field work was done on on 29th/30th March, and Alba with Alex Salmond was only announced on 26th. Seems to me that 3% is a good start. Why wouldn't Douglas Ross be in the H&I list? Most of Moray was put in the Highlands & Islands region on devolution, bar the Keith/Cullen end which is in Banffshire and Buchan Coast and on NE Scotland list for Scottish Elections. If Douglas Ross hadn't been top of the Tory list, I maybe would have voted Tory1 to try and elect Tim Eagle and maybe help lose Douglas his list seat..but that is unlikely particularly given the numbers of Tories in Moray....so it looks as if I'll have to do as I'm told by Alba and go for SNP1 (firmly holding my nose) and Alba2..and hope that the SNP don't get their top list candidate elected as she's an SNP placeperson, not the person voted to be top of the list by the membership.

Possibly because you didn't mention Alex Arthur, and Alba is being called the Alex Party on FB....but I'd likely have replied in much the same vein even if you had, because I'm not really into blanket abusing everybody for the actions of one person. It does just go to show how easily offence can be taken online though, doesn't it? I suspect the police are going to have their work cut out coping with the volume of the "abused/offended" who claim they have been subjected to hate crime/heard someone in their living room being non-PC/was offended by reading a non-PC post on FB.

Cheers for the abuse, Kingsmills. I've never considered myself semi-literate, as I got 6 highers in the days when Scottish Education was considered very good, racist, unless you think criticism of the Israeli Government is racist, vaccine sceptical, as I had my first dose a while ago, and, as far as I can see, the former bover section of society has more than enough representation in the form of trans activists, people shouting SNP1 & 2, people who think Nicola walks on water and continually abuse those of us who don't.....and unionists. But, hey, if you don't mind being dead, as it looks as if I will, before Nicola gets round to doing something about another referendum, if you have no problem with cross-dressers, (because that is all men who self-id as women but won't have reassignment surgery are), usurping the rights of women because the Greens and SNP have decided to redefine sex/gender/ biology and if you are happy to remain perfectly PC and watch what you say in private, just to be on the safe side of the Hate Speech Bill, that's your choice. But it's not my choice....sorry.

I can see what you are saying, Kingsmills..but by the same token - a lot of us pro-indy people, while maybe not being keen on Alex Salmond, as I am not....see Nicola as the toxic one...and much of that opinion is based on the way she has bad-mouthed him...just because she has the public platform to do it. How come he has been "a man behaving badly" all the time she was deputy FM, but she never noticed or heard any rumours? Sure the SNP currently is the only political party in a position to do anything about independence, and has been for seven years now, but to date has done little more about it than putting it every election manifesto since 2014..and then sitting on their hands.... bar the ridiculous "Growth Commission" report, which reads as if it was their brains they were sitting on at that time. As you say Alex Salmond is not daft and realises that the SNP is the only game in town, and could get a majority on constituency votes alone - hence the call for Alba members like me to vote SNP1 Alba2 (and I'm thinking of buying a clothes peg for my nose to make my constituency vote)..but it rather looks as if Nicola'd rather be held to ransom by the Greens to get the GRA done and dusted than be held to ransom by Salmond to make some real effort to get independence. Me...I'm hoping that, even if Alba don't get a lot of list seats this time, that they get enough to make an impact and form an opposition who will actually oppose the SNP in the next parliamentary term, while preparing to challenge the SNP for the consituency vote in the following election. And before you say that would split the vote and let unionists in...I'd rather that, after 52 years voting and working for independence, than live in a Scotland made by the SNP and Greens to suit their joint gender identity ideology. Maybe Nicola might get less votes in May, if she decided to scrap the computer/tablet freebie for children in Scotland and put that money to better use by making gender re-alignment easier to access....and telling cross-dressers that if they don't want to have the operation, then they are not women with penises but men with problems and stopping any idea of allowing them to usurp the women's spaces, jobs and rights that generations of women fought hard to get. Re Angus MacNeil...who knows...but there's a couple of days yet before list candidates have to be nominated, isn't there? .

A big difference in attitude to Alex Salmond who has not resorted to personal abuse and has accepted the deliberations of both the committee and Hamilton without using them as an excuse to bad-mouth Nicola for her actions.

The Greens losing out might well be the one thing that will encourage me to vote SNP 1st vote after all, whilst holding my nose firmly, seeing that Alba recommends that....and purely by dint of AS being the public face of it, it is likely to get more votes than either of the other list options....but I'll make up my mind about both my votes nearer the time.Only thing I'm certain about right now is that I wouldn't vote Green if you paid me.

Convince me that "going well from her point of view" doesn't mean coming up with more excuses to put independence off again and again and again.

I can't blame him, tbh, and at least he is not playing tit for tat and specifically targetting Nicola Sturgeon, which in his place, I would have done, given her public comments about his actions, despite the verdict of the court. Unacceptable behaviour is not necessarily criminal behaviour...and certainly wasn't in the 20th century despite FB abounding with grown women "metoo"ing because they got their bra straps pinged in school. This whole PC stuff has gone from the reasonably sensible to the absolutely insanely ridiculous, culminating in the GRA which redefines biology and the Hate Crime bill which airbrushes women out of protection from hate crime in much the same way as Alex Salmond was airbrushed out of SNP history. If the women involved have been forgotten, it hasn't been for want of them reminding us about their plight. Nicola has already endangered his life's work...I suspect a lot of women won't be voting SNP in May, I know I won't be, after 52 years of voting for them, and I also suspect if she had put the GRA and Hate Crime propositions in her manifesto last time round, she wouldn't have managed a majority even with Green help and we would have been spared all this angst.

Maybe if Nicola Sturgeon and the Alphabet Women had done the same, and accepted the trial jury's verdict, instead of trashing the judge, jury and/or Alex Salmond at every opportunity the whole thing might not have been as divisive as it has become.

And despite the committee report, Leslie Evans has Nicola's full confidence and will not be resigning. Quelle surprise! My problem with Hamilton's report is the level of redactions which make it difficult, if not impossible, to come to any definite conclusion as to his thinking and it all boils down, on his remit regarding misleading Parliament over the 29th March-18th April meetings, to the he said/she said part of the evidence, particularly that from Aberdein that we are not allowed to see anywhere. As Hamilton comments in clause 6.11. I find it very hard to know what to make of this story about the birthday party. Mr Aberdein’s account to me was very convincing. Equally the First Minister seemed both convinced by and convincing in her account. It may be that [Redacted ] It may simply have been [Redacted ] However, this is speculation and it would probably not be right to place too much significance on the matter. I'd have thought more of Hamilton if he had qualified his decision as "on the balance of probabilities" as opposed to a definite "nothing to see here" report. That wouldn't have diminished the gloating on FB by the pro-Sturgeonites, but may have made those of us who don't think Nicola walks on water feel less let down at the whole debacle...and less worried as to what independence, with the SNP probably in charge initially (if they ever get round to doing anything but talk about getting independence just before elections) is going to mean if they can't even be honest and transparent when devolved, even knowing that Westminster/the MSM will pounce on anything that shows them in a bad light.

Both reports were the whitewashes I expected, though the committee one did, albeit without the support of the SNP members (though I didn't expect the four turkeys with no backbones to vote for Christmas anyway) find she did mislead them, but without the courage to say whether it was deliberate or inadvertent.... (though I struggle to see how so many redactions of information on submitted evidence, and acts of non-co-operation in providing evidence could be inadvertent.) . The report did however, in clauses 731-734, say that it did not have enough powers to hold the SG to account and recommended the establishment of a commission to review the relationship between the executive and the legislature and make recommendations for change. Luckily the SNP lost their ex-green swing vote, or the report wouldn't even have contained the word mislead, and certainly not the clauses complaining about SG reluctance to co-operate. I won't, however, hold my breath waiting for either independence or a commission to make the oversight committees less weak. . But, as usual with this SNP Government, nobody is to blame for anything...so no highly paid heads roll. Job done as planned!

Given everything in AS's submission to the Committee which cites Aberdein and his trial evidence, and confirms Nicola lied to the Scottish Parliament has been redacted......we are still on course for the whitewash of the SG's actions they have been frantically working towards, as AS can't speak to anything the Committee hasn't published... because if it hasn't been published by the Committee, the evidence is not deemed to exist, however many times it appears on the internet in other places. Nothing to do with protecting "vulnerable women" as far as I can see, (having a copy of both the submission and the SG redacted version)....much more to do with protecting Nicola. I noted with interest that the FM who has previously refused to answer non-covid oriented questions at Covid Briefings was quite happy to use yesterday's Covid Briefing to say regarding AS that he was “Found not guilty but that doesn’t mean the behaviour they complained of didn’t happen” and also pretty much said that AS wants to make claims without ever subjecting them to the proper scrutiny of the inquiry..when she knows damn well that anything which could finger her in any dubious actions has been removed from that scrutiny altogether. The whole "inquiry" is a farce for show, with the outcome, as far as I can see, decided in advance, given that, as far as Nicola is concerned, "co-operating fully" with the inquiry into the SG's handling of the allegations against AS has translated into between 58 and 71 separate obstructions to the work of that committee. What is she trying to hide?

Kingsmills, I'm not holding my breath waiting for indyref2, because on current SNP enthusiasm for independence, bar as the occasional sound-bite to remind us they are entitled to all the pro-indy votes, being the only show in town (much in the way that Labour felt entitled to all the working-class vote..and see where taking their vote for granted has got them now).....I don't see indy2 happening in my lifetime. If the SNP decide to make the 2021 election a plebiscite on independence...then I will vote SNP in the constituency....but if not, I won't cast a first vote at all. I was never keen on Alex Salmond, but did think Nicola, when she was a teenager at annual Conference, was a rising star, so was happy enough when she was anointed SNP leader. Seven years on, and I have gained the impression that her star has risen as far as she wants it to go and she is now all about consolidating power as the big fish in the Scottish devolutionary pool, with full control over what used to be a member focused party.

It isn't AS doing "this" whatever "this" is "now"...it was NS and the SG doing it in 2017/18 and it only came to court in 2020. Given AS was found not guilty on all but one of the charges, and not proven on another at his trial, the logical person would have assumed he was not guilty of the charges, or at the very least, that the police, despite putting a LOT of men onto digging up dirt on him for a long time and despite Moorov's Doctrine, which encourages women to come forward by making the name of the accused public, while offering anonymity to the accusers, couldn't come up with a decent prosecution .....but ever since, the women, and the SG funded Rape Crisis Centre, have been, given half a chance, more or less proclaiming the judge and jury were asses for not finding him guilty, the SG "investigation" into the Scottish government's handling of the original complaints against Mr Salmond has turned into an embarrassing farce to the extent that it has simply become yet another way to attack AS. What is he meant to do? Just stand there and take it? Really? His situation just confirms the reason that I think that if the accusers get anoymity forever..then so should the accused until he/she is found guilty...that is equality. after all. For the first time since I was old enough to vote in 1969, and despite having been an active SNP branch member/office-bearer for nearly forty years after that, I won't be voting SNP in my constituency this time round....not because I don't want independence.....but because I don't want independence at any cost.....and too big a cost in my opinion, given the cult of Nicola which exists, is the distinct possibility of the SNP being in charge of negotiations with Westminster( bearing in mind that farcical "Growth Commission" production) and of forming the first independent Scottish Government, if we use the currebt electoral system, allowing them to continue with their biology denying social engineering by implementing any idiotic brainfart they can term "progessive".

How are the numbers particularly high for Scotland? The headline death statistics in the UK are only for deaths among confirmed cases, usually hospital deaths and by that yardstick, Scotland has fewer deaths per 100,000 to date than the UK as a whole does, doesn't it?