Dear All
If you think back to a few days ago, I was blogging on the
SNP MP Natalie McGarry saga.
On Wednesday, November 25, 2015, I wrote the blog post:
“The Mad, the Sad and the Ugly, SNP MP Natalie McGarry
resigns the SNP whip, her ‘pal’ Shona McAlpine throws accusations about that
WFI are ‘bullies’, and unpopular Nicola Sturgeon refuses to suspend McGarry,
instead of being ‘statesmanlike’ Sturgeon yet again decides to ‘play the
tradesman’, is this the "talent" who think they will lead Scotland to
independence”.
It proved to be quite a popular post with many people coming
to the blog to read the George Laird view.
One of the things which interest me is Law, and especially
Human Rights law, under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, a
person is entitled to a fair trial.
What does a fair trial mean?
In a criminal trial, it means many things, for example, the
Judge must not be bias, the defence is entitled to all the evidence, in advance,
that is to be presented by the prosecution; and the jury has to be selected at
random, and not have any association to either party in the dispute.
That is roughly the general jist as most people grasp it.
Women for Independence
have called in Police Scotland to investigate alleged discrepancies in a
pro-independence campaign group's finances. On twitter, I posed a question,
given that ‘friends’ of McGarry have indicated that the financial arrangements
at the Women for Independence were highly chaotic, my question was, was the
return submitted to the Electoral Commission in order?
The reason, I ask McGarry’s pals claim this was the case particularly
in the run-up to the independence referendum. Instead of closing down one can
of worms, McGarry’s pals have opened up another important issue. Recently you
may remember that Wings over Scotland
aka Rev Stu was recently fined by the Electoral Commission.
When the WFI found alleged discrepancies, this apparently
ran to the tune of circa £30,000, it quickly became known that McGarry was allegedly
at the centre of the controversy, the paypal account was also allegedly controlled
by Natalie McGarry.
Very quickly Women for Independence
were quickly badmouthed by McGarry’s friends including Shona McAlpine. McAlpine
was a follower of the hate account on twitter called @georgemlaird setup by
Tommy Ball who pled guilty on the 29th October, Natalie McGarry
promoted this account and McAlpine along with Jonathan Mackie, who is the
office manager of Chris Stephens both retweeted McGarry’s tweet linking the
account to my blog.
I don’t as I wrote on Wednesday put any weight to what
McAlpine says on anything.
But, let’s get back to Natalie McGarry, at present her
lawyer, Aamer Anwar (who is connected to Nicola Sturgeon) is demanding the release
of an audit report by Women for Independence .
Is Natalie McGarry entitled to a copy of the audit report?
The answer to this is No!
McGarry isn’t entitled at present to anything, because
although there is an investigation, she hasn’t been charged with any criminal
offence. Her human rights therefore haven’t been violated and as much as her
lawyer can scream, it is entirely hot air out of him.
And her lawyer knows it is hot air, no entitlement to
nothing, so when Anwar said he wants to bring in forensic accountants to
examine accounts, this was utter rubbish in my opinion, what exactly were they
going to examine without authorisation from WFI?
Anwar says information held by Women for Independence should be released to his team
to aid the investigation. What does he mean by ‘aid’ the investigation; when
the Police were brought in to this affair; any chance of ‘aid’ by Natalie
McGarry or anyone representing her went straight out the window. Women for Independence aren’t going
to be dealing with McGarry or Aamer Anwar, they won’t be passing on the audit,
and they won’t be having an exchange of views.
Anwar said:
“If Women for Independence
want to get to the bottom of this shambles, it is essential that we are
provided with full details of what they allege the financial discrepancies to
be”.
If SNP MP Natalie McGarry is charged by Police, she will get
full details!
“Nobody has been able to even provide definitive details of
what went wrong. My firm will be approaching Women for Independence to request this. It would be
very helpful to know what the discrepancies actually are and what accounting
methods were used”.
If SNP MP Natalie McGarry is charged by Police, she will get
full details of that as well.
“To date a copy of the so-called audit has not even been
provided to Natalie. Surely natural justice means that she is entitled to such
information and be allowed to answer the serious questions she faces.
Cooperation by the Women for Independence
would be helpful to everyone and stop the damaging wild speculation and trial
by media.”
Natural Justice, is he having a laugh?
Apparently, it has been alleged that WFI tried on multiple
occasions to have their concerns dealt by contacting McGarry regarding the
financial situation, with no luck it appears.
Did Natalie McGarry deny the members of the WFI ‘natural
justice’ by not providing them with enough information to satisfy their
concerns?
This isn’t an issue of natural justice, once the Police
turned up, it became a Police matter, and the Police operate to the law of the
land.
It is in the public domain that the audit was carried out by
two senior Women for Independence
figures and a chartered accountant. Given a chartered accountant was involved,
it must be assumed that WFI felt that a professional was needed to be brought into
this matter in the interests of transparency to allow the board to make a
decision how they should proceed.
Women for Independence
have presumably handed the audit report into the hands of Police Scotland, and
no doubt WFI will have kept a few copies for their files.
This ditto of the saga: did amuse me from a McGarry source:
“People were demanding travel expenses, hotel rooms and
equipment and receipts weren't always provided. It seems everybody is jumping
on the bandwagon and saying Natalie was the only person involved, but that's
unfair. People like Carolyn Leckie, Jeane Freeman and Susan Stewart were all
central in the organisation.”
Tut, tut, tut, trying to rope in other people, does this
source have evidence of receipts weren't always provided? If they do, can they
explain if they made this information available to the Electoral Commission?
Aamer Anwar demands for the report will be ignored; so far
Natalie McGarry’s human rights haven’t been broken by anyone as far as I have
read. The WFI should refer him to Police Scotland and not engage with him, his
firm or Natalie McGarry.
The ‘Natural Justice’ argument is rubbish, and it
really doesn’t look like Aamer Anwar will be directing the WFI or Police
Scotland’s investigations. And as someone remarked to me at the weekend, no one
will be getting 'coached' prior to possibly being interviewed by Police Scotland.
Finally, it has been reported that SNP MP Natalie McGarry paid £6,000 to Women for Independence after getting elected, £6,000 isn't £30,000, and apparently the SNP is refusing to disclose when Nicola Sturgeon first knew of financial allegations involving McGarry.
Finally, it has been reported that SNP MP Natalie McGarry paid £6,000 to Women for Independence after getting elected, £6,000 isn't £30,000, and apparently the SNP is refusing to disclose when Nicola Sturgeon first knew of financial allegations involving McGarry.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at
3 comments:
Something like this, relatively unimportant to the SNP in general, will cause the crash to the House of Cards that is the completely bogus Independence movement.
Sturgeon is on a tightrope and doing not too bad with the balancing act.
But how long to go?
Luck sweeps over in waves. So does bad luck.
you create your own bad luck by supporting and surrounding yourself with idiots.
I expect a lot more bad luck will come in the future.
I'm sure Natural Justice will prevail George hopefully resulting in a spell in cornton vale :)
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