In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Not true. Not guilty simply means the prosecution failed to reach the requisite standard of proof. That’s as true in Scotland as it is in England. OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Archer were both found not guilty in criminal trials, but few would describe them as innocent. In Scotland Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 of the Edinburgh Worlds End murders, but he was not innocent, as a subsequent change to he double jeopardy laws and his conviction in 2014 shows.
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
Typical unionist, black = white. If you read the court papers you will find he was innocent on all counts, no matter how much you try to twist it. Tried by women and found innocent by women.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Not true. Not guilty simply means the prosecution failed to reach the requisite standard of proof. That’s as true in Scotland as it is in England. OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Archer were both found not guilty in criminal trials, but few would describe them as innocent. In Scotland Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 of the Edinburgh Worlds End murders, but he was not innocent, as a subsequent change to he double jeopardy laws and his conviction in 2014 shows.
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
Archer was found guilty and given four years. It was the civil case where the allegations against him were found not proven.
I think that COVID19 related mortality in Italy, and probably the rest of the world, will be considerably more than those biologically confirmed. Many community deaths, particularly in the elderly, will go unmarked, other than by their families.
From a non medical mans POV, the most fascinating aspect of this time has been the fury that greets any curiosity about how the figures are reported. People are genuinely (actually I don’t think it is genuine) angry with any dissent, despite the countless times initial government estimates have been wrong before.
In any case, whether someone asking the dissenting questions turns out to be wrong or right, unless they are influential in the treatment of the disease and can actually do harm or good, why get huffy with them?
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Not true. Not guilty simply means the prosecution failed to reach the requisite standard of proof. That’s as true in Scotland as it is in England. OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Archer were both found not guilty in criminal trials, but few would describe them as innocent. In Scotland Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 of the Edinburgh Worlds End murders, but he was not innocent, as a subsequent change to he double jeopardy laws and his conviction in 2014 shows.
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
Quite a statement on the global judicial system I must say. What would your suggestion be to improve it?
Hope he never makes judge or there will be mass hangings. A lawyer that thinks those proven innocent are all guilty, you could not make it up. Hopefully he is a conveyancing lawyer and unable to wreck any lives.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Not true. Not guilty simply means the prosecution failed to reach the requisite standard of proof. That’s as true in Scotland as it is in England. OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Archer were both found not guilty in criminal trials, but few would describe them as innocent. In Scotland Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 of the Edinburgh Worlds End murders, but he was not innocent, as a subsequent change to he double jeopardy laws and his conviction in 2014 shows.
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
Not a fan of Salmond, but he entered court an innocent man and it was the job of the prosecution to prove to a Jury otherwise. They failed. He left the court an innocent man.
Whether he was innocent or not now is immaterial. In the eyes of the law he is innocent, that is how it works.
Simón, asked about the state of the ICU: "The percentage of increase in the number of new cases but not of stay is decreasing (...) There are six autonomous communities that are at the limit of their ICU capacity and another three are growing quickly towards that limit, we are trying to ensure that those limits are not exceeded
What do people think about Jeremy Hunt at 66-1 for next PM?
He's been leading the criticism of the government for not testing enough. If, god forbid, the situation in the UK deteriorates beyond expectations, and the government is seen to have failed, might he be the obvious choice to lead a change in policy?
In a cruel twist of fate for Johnson, Hunt might be the pandemic's Churchill to Johnson's Chamberlain.
Trouble is, it is on Hunt's watch that the warnings were ignored and the preparations not made. Of course, it was the failure of Churchill's Norway Campaign that brought down Chamberlain.
To put it bluntly, if Covid-19 forces out Boris one way or another then it is a good price but if not, you are left waiting for five or ten years with no obvious route back to power for Hunt.
Churchill was also of course totally unprepared for war in the Far East, having ignored the threat from Japan to hammer Hitler. Although he had been PM and indeed Conservative leader for some time before it kicked off properly.
We've seen fiction or alternative histories based on Hitler being replaced; it might be more interesting to know what might have been different had Churchill stood down after the tide of the war turned in 1942 or 43.
It is unlikely that Eden would have done anything very differently, although he might have dithered a bit more.
Eden might not have had the same enthusiasm for grabbing various bits of Axis land then being routed because there was no support or supply.
The other thing that Churchill got wrong in the far East was to let down Australia. My Australian relatives took a very poor view of how Australian forces were tied up in the Middle East and Singapore, rather than released for home defence. At the same time the US Navy was in the Coral sea. That was the point that Australia pivoted to America, and the Empire was doomed.
Read an interesting book awhile back - IIRC "The Battle for Australia" - the author's point that while Australians are rightly proud of their troops on the Kokoda trail - in the end it didn't have much, if any influence on the outcome of the war - although not clear at the time, Japan was already losing. Meanwhile their compatriots in the second battle of El Alamein helped change the course of the conflict, but its the former who are lauded and the latter often overlooked.
I agree, that is possibly the case, just as Australians mythologies Gallipolli more than the larger ANZAC losses in Flanders. One of my fathers cousins was decorated for a particularly futile jungle campaign in May 1945, against a Japanese garrison holed up on the New Guinea coast. That is the nature of war.
Psychologically though, Australia felt very exposed in early 1942, with the Japanese surging south, and mainland Australia being bombed. While we see the New Guinea campaign as a minor footnote, to Australia it was their Dunkirk or Battle of Britain moment.
Simón, asked about the state of the ICU: "The percentage of increase in the number of new cases but not of stay is decreasing (...) There are six autonomous communities that are at the limit of their ICU capacity and another three are growing quickly towards that limit, we are trying to ensure that those limits are not exceeded
Simón has returned to emphasize that "the fundamental problem is to guarantee that our ICUs are not saturated". 12:41 The director of the Center for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies of the Ministry of Health, Fernando Simón, stressed that "the number of cases has been falling for several days", although he added that these data should be taken with caution.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Not true. Not guilty simply means the prosecution failed to reach the requisite standard of proof. That’s as true in Scotland as it is in England. OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Archer were both found not guilty in criminal trials, but few would describe them as innocent. In Scotland Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 of the Edinburgh Worlds End murders, but he was not innocent, as a subsequent change to he double jeopardy laws and his conviction in 2014 shows.
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
Not a fan of Salmond, but he entered court an innocent man and it was the job of the prosecution to prove to a Jury otherwise. They failed. He left the court an innocent man.
Whether he was innocent or not now is immaterial. In the eyes of the law he is innocent, that is how it works.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Wait - Salmond was tried under English law?!!!!!
Tut Tut , as you well know I was referring to fact that Dougseal seems ignorant of even English Law. In Scotland NOT guilty means innocent , I assumed same applied in England but apparently not , just means jury are idiots and the innocent person is actually guilty.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Not true. Not guilty simply means the prosecution failed to reach the requisite standard of proof. That’s as true in Scotland as it is in England. OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Archer were both found not guilty in criminal trials, but few would describe them as innocent. In Scotland Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 of the Edinburgh Worlds End murders, but he was not innocent, as a subsequent change to he double jeopardy laws and his conviction in 2014 shows.
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
Quite a statement on the global judicial system I must say. What would your suggestion be to improve it?
Hope he never makes judge or there will be mass hangings. A lawyer that thinks those proven innocent are all guilty, you could not make it up. Hopefully he is a conveyancing lawyer and unable to wreck any lives.
Mac, leave it mate. You're out on a limb with this, and in danger of sawing bewteen you and the tree. I agree that Salmond isn't guilty of any offence, but I wouldn't want my wife, daughter or neice to work in his office if there was much danger of it being just him and her there.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Not true. Not guilty simply means the prosecution failed to reach the requisite standard of proof. That’s as true in Scotland as it is in England. OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Archer were both found not guilty in criminal trials, but few would describe them as innocent. In Scotland Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 of the Edinburgh Worlds End murders, but he was not innocent, as a subsequent change to he double jeopardy laws and his conviction in 2014 shows.
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
Not a fan of Salmond, but he entered court an innocent man and it was the job of the prosecution to prove to a Jury otherwise. They failed. He left the court an innocent man.
Whether he was innocent or not now is immaterial. In the eyes of the law he is innocent, that is how it works.
Just like Jeremy Thorpe.
A man unable to carry out a simple murder plot without cocking the whole thing up.
All of this talk of lengthy lockdowns and social distancing is fine but Italy’s lockdown in just Lombardy started barely a month ago. China’s was eased after six weeks. We have literally no idea how a population will react. This has never been done before.
Not sure it is tenable for months as opposed to weeks. We are talking inconvenience (at the very least) to vast numbers of people. OK, it is to save lives, but how many (and which) lives? This ideally needs to be evaluated against the cost of the measures. Not an easy thing to do. Difficult in practice because the data on both sides of the equation is uncertain, even more difficult in principle because it involves the sort of value judgments about which people are understandably queasy.
Just to illustrate what I mean. Consider the following question -
Is it worth 1 million people each today having a 30 minute not-medically-serious nosebleed if by doing so it means that a fit and healthy (apart from his stent and diabetes) 75 year old man from Basildon dies in April 2025 rather than in April 2020?
Now that's a slam dunk if you are that man - or if you know and love him. But otherwise I don't think it is.
Is it a Yes! or a No! or a DK? - I bet people would answer it differently.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Wait - Salmond was tried under English law?!!!!!
Tut Tut , as you well know I was referring to fact that Dougseal seems ignorant of even English Law. In Scotland NOT guilty means innocent , I assumed same applied in England but apparently not , just means jury are idiots and the innocent person is actually guilty.
I didn’t read it that way, although I assumed you must have meant something like that.
In American law of course it is different, and you can be ‘not guilty’ in a criminal sense and still guilty in civil courts (ask OJ Simpson).
In English law of course there is no verdict of ‘not proven’ which basically means ‘we know you did it but the prosecutors are totally incompetent.’ So it is technically a simple distinction - if you are not guilty, you are innocent.
On topic, in the short term it's not going to make any difference who Labour has as leader (or indeed if they have one at all). No one at this time is interested in anything the Opposition says - Governments are monopolising the media and rightly so as at times like this it's up to Governments to do what it says on the tin.
It also gives Starmer plenty of time and cover to take control and start moving the Party in the direction he wishes. That said, it's a two-step or two-faced process between what needs to be said to the Party faithful to keep them on side and what needs to be said to the wider electorate to get them to consider voting Labour.
If I were advising Starmer, I'd suggest not wasting any time on the past or dwelling on the failures of Corbyn. There's a big prize out there called the future and the crisis has thrown that into the air. A positive, upbeat, confident message around a future where individuals, communities and the Government work more closely and harmoniously is where I would start. Broad and vague themes at this time, the detail will follow.
Whether Johnson's administration will be defined by the virus or whether it proves a temporary aberration remains to be seen - I'm less convinced than some of the profound and lasting cultural changes predicted.
Johnson will have a record to defend next time - both positive and negative - but a successful Labour message is going to be more about the recognition of the value of public service, the strength of communities and the empowerment of individuals or to be blunt "Labour trusts Britain, Britain can trust Labour".
All of this talk of lengthy lockdowns and social distancing is fine but Italy’s lockdown in just Lombardy started barely a month ago. China’s was eased after six weeks. We have literally no idea how a population will react. This has never been done before.
There's a world of difference between a lockdown in a cramped one bed flat or houseshare, with no idea when your "furlough "money will come through or if you will even have a job at the end of it all, or if your landlord will evict you once the three months are up, to spending three months of glorious self-isolation in a nice family home with a big garden, savings in the bank and job security.
Most people will fall somewhere in between these two examples, but for people at the shitty end of this, things are going to be shitty.
Factor in the fact that those most likely to be living in poor accommodation are probably young-ish with less to fear from the virus, and almost certainly at the poorer end of the socio-economic scale, and you have a recipe for widespread civil disobedience by summer. As others have pointed out there are already reports of this brewing in Italy.
I think the Italy issues were in the south and resulted from food shortages and lack if money. As I’ve said earlier the supermarket home delivery van could become a target if funds don’t get to those that need it soon enough.
I think as the situation develops, we will see a lot of problems come out of the woodwork.
In London in particular we will discover just how many people have been living three or four to a room. And how many have been working cash in hand, with no chance of a government handout now.
I think as businesses revise their projections for the rest of the year and start looking at cost-cutting measures to recoup what's left of their business, we will start seeing mass redundancies that go beyond the three month furlough.
And we will see plenty of people struggle for accommodation once the three months are up and landlords start to evict. Mainly because they are effectively just a middle man for the bank, which will want their money in the end - three month mortgage holiday or not.
Mac, leave it mate. You're out on a limb with this, and in danger of sawing bewteen you and the tree. I agree that Salmond isn't guilty of any offence, but I wouldn't want my wife, daughter or neice to work in his office if there was much danger of it being just him and her there.
Come on, who wouldn't mind their wife or daughter getting a nice "sleepy cuddle" from this charmer.
I think that COVID19 related mortality in Italy, and probably the rest of the world, will be considerably more than those biologically confirmed. Many community deaths, particularly in the elderly, will go unmarked, other than by their families.
From a non medical mans POV, the most fascinating aspect of this time has been the fury that greets any curiosity about how the figures are reported. People are genuinely (actually I don’t think it is genuine) angry with any dissent, despite the countless times initial government estimates have been wrong before.
In any case, whether someone asking the dissenting questions turns out to be wrong or right, unless they are influential in the treatment of the disease and can actually do harm or good, why get huffy with them?
The problem is that those minimising the COVID19 deaths as being imminent in any case, are doing so not out of intellectual curiosity, but rather to undermine the biggest acute health emergency effort of my lifetime.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Not true. Not guilty simply means the prosecution failed to reach the requisite standard of proof. That’s as true in Scotland as it is in England. OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Archer were both found not guilty in criminal trials, but few would describe them as innocent. In Scotland Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 of the Edinburgh Worlds End murders, but he was not innocent, as a subsequent change to he double jeopardy laws and his conviction in 2014 shows.
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
Quite a statement on the global judicial system I must say. What would your suggestion be to improve it?
Hope he never makes judge or there will be mass hangings. A lawyer that thinks those proven innocent are all guilty, you could not make it up. Hopefully he is a conveyancing lawyer and unable to wreck any lives.
Mac, leave it mate. You're out on a limb with this, and in danger of sawing bewteen you and the tree. I agree that Salmond isn't guilty of any offence, but I wouldn't want my wife, daughter or neice to work in his office if there was much danger of it being just him and her there.
I am afraid not, the man is innocent and on a personal note if any of my family worked with him I would hope they would have acted professionally , and if he did anything vaguely inappropriate that they would have read him his horoscope or kicked him in the nuts. I would also have hoped that they would not have gone to his bedroom for drinks or made up stupid petty claims about touching their hair , leg , etc. These were not young girls / women , we are talking top of the government and civil service. PS: If the truth hurts on here , so be it.
All of this talk of lengthy lockdowns and social distancing is fine but Italy’s lockdown in just Lombardy started barely a month ago. China’s was eased after six weeks. We have literally no idea how a population will react. This has never been done before.
Not sure it is tenable for months as opposed to weeks. We are talking inconvenience (at the very least) to vast numbers of people. OK, it is to save lives, but how many (and which) lives? This ideally needs to be evaluated against the cost of the measures. Not an easy thing to do. Difficult in practice because the data on both sides of the equation is uncertain, even more difficult in principle because it involves the sort of value judgments about which people are understandably queasy.
Just to illustrate what I mean. Consider the following question -
Is it worth 1 million people each today having a 30 minute not-medically-serious nosebleed if by doing so it means that a fit and healthy (apart from his stent and diabetes) 75 year old man from Basildon dies in April 2025 rather than in April 2020?
Now that's a slam dunk if you are that man - or if you know and love him. But otherwise I don't think it is.
Is it a Yes! or a No! or a DK? - I bet people would answer it differently.
The analogy doesn't get off the ground. Look what is happening in Spain and Italy, with lockdown measures in place. Your supposed equivalent of letting the 70 year old die entails permitting things to be the same but much, much worse, unless you are proposing truly barbaric triaging measures (so that the stress on icu and medical staff doesn't arise because over 65s get access to neither). Is that what you want?
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Not true. Not guilty simply means the prosecution failed to reach the requisite standard of proof. That’s as true in Scotland as it is in England. OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Archer were both found not guilty in criminal trials, but few would describe them as innocent. In Scotland Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 of the Edinburgh Worlds End murders, but he was not innocent, as a subsequent change to he double jeopardy laws and his conviction in 2014 shows.
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
Not a fan of Salmond, but he entered court an innocent man and it was the job of the prosecution to prove to a Jury otherwise. They failed. He left the court an innocent man.
Whether he was innocent or not now is immaterial. In the eyes of the law he is innocent, that is how it works.
Just like Jeremy Thorpe.
A man unable to carry out a simple murder plot without cocking the whole thing up.
Jeremy Thorpe was a charismatic leader, educated at Eton and Oxford. Of course he cocked it up.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Not true. Not guilty simply means the prosecution failed to reach the requisite standard of proof. That’s as true in Scotland as it is in England. OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Archer were both found not guilty in criminal trials, but few would describe them as innocent. In Scotland Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 of the Edinburgh Worlds End murders, but he was not innocent, as a subsequent change to he double jeopardy laws and his conviction in 2014 shows.
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
Not a fan of Salmond, but he entered court an innocent man and it was the job of the prosecution to prove to a Jury otherwise. They failed. He left the court an innocent man.
Whether he was innocent or not now is immaterial. In the eyes of the law he is innocent, that is how it works.
Just like Jeremy Thorpe.
A man unable to carry out a simple murder plot without cocking the whole thing up.
Just about to read the book... A very English Scandal by John Preston..
People are lining up to criticise the government regarding testing numbers and who it tests. Yet there was a medical officer on the radio this morning sayng that testing is not effective unless some symptoms are showing.
If this is correct, what is the point of testing? Testing someone who hasn`t got symptoms will not produce accurate results. Testing someone who has virus symptoms is pointless because the symptoms already show that they have it.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Not true. Not guilty simply means the prosecution failed to reach the requisite standard of proof. That’s as true in Scotland as it is in England. OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Archer were both found not guilty in criminal trials, but few would describe them as innocent. In Scotland Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 of the Edinburgh Worlds End murders, but he was not innocent, as a subsequent change to he double jeopardy laws and his conviction in 2014 shows.
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
Quite a statement on the global judicial system I must say. What would your suggestion be to improve it?
Hope he never makes judge or there will be mass hangings. A lawyer that thinks those proven innocent are all guilty, you could not make it up. Hopefully he is a conveyancing lawyer and unable to wreck any lives.
Mac, leave it mate. You're out on a limb with this, and in danger of sawing bewteen you and the tree. I agree that Salmond isn't guilty of any offence, but I wouldn't want my wife, daughter or neice to work in his office if there was much danger of it being just him and her there.
I am afraid not, the man is innocent and on a personal note if any of my family worked with him I would hope they would have acted professionally , and if he did anything vaguely inappropriate that they would have read him his horoscope or kicked him in the nuts.
Wow, Malc. I had no idea professional standards in the pensions industry included that
On a serious note, hope your wife is continuing to recover and that you’re both keeping safe.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Wait - Salmond was tried under English law?!!!!!
Tut Tut , as you well know I was referring to fact that Dougseal seems ignorant of even English Law. In Scotland NOT guilty means innocent , I assumed same applied in England but apparently not , just means jury are idiots and the innocent person is actually guilty.
I didn’t read it that way, although I assumed you must have meant something like that.
In American law of course it is different, and you can be ‘not guilty’ in a criminal sense and still guilty in civil courts (ask OJ Simpson).
In English law of course there is no verdict of ‘not proven’ which basically means ‘we know you did it but the prosecutors are totally incompetent.’ So it is technically a simple distinction - if you are not guilty, you are innocent.
The not proven means they had no evidence and it was just a he said / she said and on reading what was said it was obvious who was talking mince.
It is easy to forget, but before Jeremy Corbyn turned up Ed Miliband was the worst leader Labour had ever had. One undoubted positive about the current leadership election is that Labour members almost certainly haven’t chosen the worst possible candidate. From little acorns ...
Yet even in 2019 Corbyn did outpoll Miliband by circa 2%. Having managed 33% under Corbyn, what would Labour's vote share have been last December under Starmer?
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Wait - Salmond was tried under English law?!!!!!
Tut Tut , as you well know I was referring to fact that Dougseal seems ignorant of even English Law. In Scotland NOT guilty means innocent , I assumed same applied in England but apparently not , just means jury are idiots and the innocent person is actually guilty.
I didn’t read it that way, although I assumed you must have meant something like that.
In American law of course it is different, and you can be ‘not guilty’ in a criminal sense and still guilty in civil courts (ask OJ Simpson).
In English law of course there is no verdict of ‘not proven’ which basically means ‘we know you did it but the prosecutors are totally incompetent.’ So it is technically a simple distinction - if you are not guilty, you are innocent.
The not proven means they had no evidence and it was just a he said / she said and on reading what was said it was obvious who was talking mince.
Technically it means they had *insufficient* evidence. *No evidence* and the prosecution would never have been brought.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Wait - Salmond was tried under English law?!!!!!
Tut Tut , as you well know I was referring to fact that Dougseal seems ignorant of even English Law. In Scotland NOT guilty means innocent , I assumed same applied in England but apparently not , just means jury are idiots and the innocent person is actually guilty.
I didn’t read it that way, although I assumed you must have meant something like that.
In American law of course it is different, and you can be ‘not guilty’ in a criminal sense and still guilty in civil courts (ask OJ Simpson).
In English law of course there is no verdict of ‘not proven’ which basically means ‘we know you did it but the prosecutors are totally incompetent.’ So it is technically a simple distinction - if you are not guilty, you are innocent.
Not proven does not mean that the Crown are incompetent. The example I usually give is a trial where my late father was on the jury. Sexual abuse, 2 complainers. The first is completely credible, the jury has no doubt she is telling the truth. The second has had a very hard life, possibly caused by abuse, with drug addiction etc. She is all over the place and is not a reliable witness. In Scotland a charge requires to be corroborated. The correct verdict of the jury was not proven in charge 1 and not guilty in charge 2.
Mac, leave it mate. You're out on a limb with this, and in danger of sawing bewteen you and the tree. I agree that Salmond isn't guilty of any offence, but I wouldn't want my wife, daughter or neice to work in his office if there was much danger of it being just him and her there.
Come on, who wouldn't mind their wife or daughter getting a nice "sleepy cuddle" from this charmer.
Be interesting when we see pictures, spectacles must have been lost.
People are lining up to criticise the government regarding testing numbers and who it tests. Yet there was a medical officer on the radio this morning sayng that testing is not effective unless some symptoms are showing.
If this is correct, what is the point of testing? Testing someone who hasn`t got symptoms will not produce accurate results. Testing someone who has virus symptoms is pointless because the symptoms already show that they have it.
I must be missing something.
It’s very simple. Wankers like Tony Blair have spotted that we aren’t testing as many people as some other countries and are using it as stick with which to beat the government.
People are lining up to criticise the government regarding testing numbers and who it tests. Yet there was a medical officer on the radio this morning sayng that testing is not effective unless some symptoms are showing.
If this is correct, what is the point of testing? Testing someone who hasn`t got symptoms will not produce accurate results. Testing someone who has virus symptoms is pointless because the symptoms already show that they have it.
I must be missing something.
The symptoms could be similar, but not be the virus.
I think that COVID19 related mortality in Italy, and probably the rest of the world, will be considerably more than those biologically confirmed. Many community deaths, particularly in the elderly, will go unmarked, other than by their families.
From a non medical mans POV, the most fascinating aspect of this time has been the fury that greets any curiosity about how the figures are reported. People are genuinely (actually I don’t think it is genuine) angry with any dissent, despite the countless times initial government estimates have been wrong before.
In any case, whether someone asking the dissenting questions turns out to be wrong or right, unless they are influential in the treatment of the disease and can actually do harm or good, why get huffy with them?
The problem is that those minimising the COVID19 deaths as being imminent in any case, are doing so not out of intellectual curiosity, but rather to undermine the biggest acute health emergency effort of my lifetime.
I don`t think anyone disputes that this is not the biggest acute health emergency effort of our lifetimes. Doesn`t necessarily follow from this that policy should entirely be health-led without factoring in economics and freedom issues.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Wait - Salmond was tried under English law?!!!!!
Tut Tut , as you well know I was referring to fact that Dougseal seems ignorant of even English Law. In Scotland NOT guilty means innocent , I assumed same applied in England but apparently not , just means jury are idiots and the innocent person is actually guilty.
I didn’t read it that way, although I assumed you must have meant something like that.
In American law of course it is different, and you can be ‘not guilty’ in a criminal sense and still guilty in civil courts (ask OJ Simpson).
In English law of course there is no verdict of ‘not proven’ which basically means ‘we know you did it but the prosecutors are totally incompetent.’ So it is technically a simple distinction - if you are not guilty, you are innocent.
Not proven does not mean that the Crown are incompetent. The example I usually give is a trial where my late father was on the jury. Sexual abuse, 2 complainers. The first is completely credible, the jury has no doubt she is telling the truth. The second has had a very hard life, possibly caused by abuse, with drug addiction etc. She is all over the place and is not a reliable witness. In Scotland a charge requires to be corroborated. The correct verdict of the jury was not proven in charge 1 and not guilty in charge 2.
Putting up such a witness sounds like incompetence to me, David. But then, I’m not a lawyer.
What do people think about Jeremy Hunt at 66-1 for next PM?
He's been leading the criticism of the government for not testing enough. If, god forbid, the situation in the UK deteriorates beyond expectations, and the government is seen to have failed, might he be the obvious choice to lead a change in policy?
In a cruel twist of fate for Johnson, Hunt might be the pandemic's Churchill to Johnson's Chamberlain.
Trouble is, it is on Hunt's watch that the warnings were ignored and the preparations not made. Of course, it was the failure of Churchill's Norway Campaign that brought down Chamberlain.
To put it bluntly, if Covid-19 forces out Boris one way or another then it is a good price but if not, you are left waiting for five or ten years with no obvious route back to power for Hunt.
Churchill was also of course totally unprepared for war in the Far East, having ignored the threat from Japan to hammer Hitler. Although he had been PM and indeed Conservative leader for some time before it kicked off properly.
We've seen fiction or alternative histories based on Hitler being replaced; it might be more interesting to know what might have been different had Churchill stood down after the tide of the war turned in 1942 or 43.
It is unlikely that Eden would have done anything very differently, although he might have dithered a bit more.
Eden might not have had the same enthusiasm for grabbing various bits of Axis land then being routed because there was no support or supply.
The other thing that Churchill got wrong in the far East was to let down Australia. My Australian relatives took a very poor view of how Australian forces were tied up in the Middle East and Singapore, rather than released for home defence. At the same time the US Navy was in the Coral sea. That was the point that Australia pivoted to America, and the Empire was doomed.
Read an interesting book awhile back - IIRC "The Battle for Australia" - the author's point that while Australians are rightly proud of their troops on the Kokoda trail - in the end it didn't have much, if any influence on the outcome of the war - although not clear at the time, Japan was already losing. Meanwhile their compatriots in the second battle of El Alamein helped change the course of the conflict, but its the former who are lauded and the latter often overlooked.
I agree, that is possibly the case, just as Australians mythologies Gallipolli more than the larger ANZAC losses in Flanders. One of my fathers cousins was decorated for a particularly futile jungle campaign in May 1945, against a Japanese garrison holed up on the New Guinea coast. That is the nature of war.
Psychologically though, Australia felt very exposed in early 1942, with the Japanese surging south, and mainland Australia being bombed. While we see the New Guinea campaign as a minor footnote, to Australia it was their Dunkirk or Battle of Britain moment.
Military failure with concomitant futility, suffering and losses always tend to enter national mythologies rather than getting the job done stuff. Losses in the war-ending Hundred Days offensive were comparable to those in the Battle of the Somme, but the former is not much noted by custodians of the national story.
People are lining up to criticise the government regarding testing numbers and who it tests. Yet there was a medical officer on the radio this morning sayng that testing is not effective unless some symptoms are showing.
If this is correct, what is the point of testing? Testing someone who hasn`t got symptoms will not produce accurate results. Testing someone who has virus symptoms is pointless because the symptoms already show that they have it.
I must be missing something.
The symptoms could be similar, but not be the virus.
These are the charts the government should send to every household.
The lines missing from that chart: GDP. Unemployment. Number of businesses that go to the wall.
Those charts suggest there is little gained by extending the lockdown beyond mid april (. graph 2 not so much better than graph 1)t is the ongoing social distancing that seems to really have an effect.
People are lining up to criticise the government regarding testing numbers and who it tests. Yet there was a medical officer on the radio this morning sayng that testing is not effective unless some symptoms are showing.
If this is correct, what is the point of testing? Testing someone who hasn`t got symptoms will not produce accurate results. Testing someone who has virus symptoms is pointless because the symptoms already show that they have it.
I must be missing something.
It’s very simple. Wankers like Tony Blair have spotted that we aren’t testing as many people as some other countries and are using it as stick with which to beat the government.
That`s what I suspect is happening - but I`m interested in the science rather than the politics.
People are lining up to criticise the government regarding testing numbers and who it tests. Yet there was a medical officer on the radio this morning sayng that testing is not effective unless some symptoms are showing.
If this is correct, what is the point of testing? Testing someone who hasn`t got symptoms will not produce accurate results. Testing someone who has virus symptoms is pointless because the symptoms already show that they have it.
I must be missing something.
Its the same problem with frontline NHS staff. They are tested and cleared. For how long? When do you test them again? How often do you test them again? What do you do each time a test is pending?
A test is a point in time. That's all. The presence of antibodies will be much, much more significant.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Wait - Salmond was tried under English law?!!!!!
Tut Tut , as you well know I was referring to fact that Dougseal seems ignorant of even English Law. In Scotland NOT guilty means innocent , I assumed same applied in England but apparently not , just means jury are idiots and the innocent person is actually guilty.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Wait - Salmond was tried under English law?!!!!!
Tut Tut , as you well know I was referring to fact that Dougseal seems ignorant of even English Law. In Scotland NOT guilty means innocent , I assumed same applied in England but apparently not , just means jury are idiots and the innocent person is actually guilty.
I didn’t read it that way, although I assumed you must have meant something like that.
In American law of course it is different, and you can be ‘not guilty’ in a criminal sense and still guilty in civil courts (ask OJ Simpson).
In English law of course there is no verdict of ‘not proven’ which basically means ‘we know you did it but the prosecutors are totally incompetent.’ So it is technically a simple distinction - if you are not guilty, you are innocent.
Not proven does not mean that the Crown are incompetent. The example I usually give is a trial where my late father was on the jury. Sexual abuse, 2 complainers. The first is completely credible, the jury has no doubt she is telling the truth. The second has had a very hard life, possibly caused by abuse, with drug addiction etc. She is all over the place and is not a reliable witness. In Scotland a charge requires to be corroborated. The correct verdict of the jury was not proven in charge 1 and not guilty in charge 2.
Putting up such a witness sounds like incompetence to me, David. But then, I’m not a lawyer.
"In Scotland a charge requires to be corroborated" is surely comprehensible to the layman?
It is easy to forget, but before Jeremy Corbyn turned up Ed Miliband was the worst leader Labour had ever had. One undoubted positive about the current leadership election is that Labour members almost certainly haven’t chosen the worst possible candidate. From little acorns ...
Yet even in 2019 Corbyn did outpoll Miliband by circa 2%. Having managed 33% under Corbyn, what would Labour's vote share have been last December under Starmer?
Corbyn repelled many more voters than he attracted, which is why Miliband lost the popular vote by 6.5% and Corbyn lost it by 11.5%
It is easy to forget, but before Jeremy Corbyn turned up Ed Miliband was the worst leader Labour had ever had. One undoubted positive about the current leadership election is that Labour members almost certainly haven’t chosen the worst possible candidate. From little acorns ...
Yet even in 2019 Corbyn did outpoll Miliband by circa 2%. Having managed 33% under Corbyn, what would Labour's vote share have been last December under Starmer?
Here is a question for Labour supporters to ponder:
If Labour polled 2% more in 2019 than in 2015, and won the same number of seats in Scotland, why did they have 29 fewer seats overall?
Answer - because Corbyn only appealed to those voters in areas that already voted heavily Labour. It was a core vote strategy, like Miliband’s but less effective, because Miliband retained a number of seats in the North and North Wales Corbyn has lost.
Edit - and it might also be worth asking why when they won 6% more of the vote in England than in 2010 they ended up with eleven fewer seats. Or indeed, 4% more in Wales and four fewer seats.
People are lining up to criticise the government regarding testing numbers and who it tests. Yet there was a medical officer on the radio this morning sayng that testing is not effective unless some symptoms are showing.
If this is correct, what is the point of testing? Testing someone who hasn`t got symptoms will not produce accurate results. Testing someone who has virus symptoms is pointless because the symptoms already show that they have it.
I must be missing something.
The symptoms could be similar, but not be the virus.
I can understand the powers that be doing some random sampling to see how many have had it (once the ability to test for people have had it is established). Whether or not they’d want to publish the results if they are not good, is another matter.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Not true. Not guilty simply means the prosecution failed to reach the requisite standard of proof. That’s as true in Scotland as it is in England. OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Archer were both found not guilty in criminal trials, but few would describe them as innocent. In Scotland Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 of the Edinburgh Worlds End murders, but he was not innocent, as a subsequent change to he double jeopardy laws and his conviction in 2014 shows.
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
Quite a statement on the global judicial system I must say. What would your suggestion be to improve it?
Hope he never makes judge or there will be mass hangings. A lawyer that thinks those proven innocent are all guilty, you could not make it up. Hopefully he is a conveyancing lawyer and unable to wreck any lives.
Mac, leave it mate. You're out on a limb with this, and in danger of sawing bewteen you and the tree. I agree that Salmond isn't guilty of any offence, but I wouldn't want my wife, daughter or neice to work in his office if there was much danger of it being just him and her there.
I am afraid not, the man is innocent and on a personal note if any of my family worked with him I would hope they would have acted professionally , and if he did anything vaguely inappropriate that they would have read him his horoscope or kicked him in the nuts.
Wow, Malc. I had no idea professional standards in the pensions industry included that
On a serious note, hope your wife is continuing to recover and that you’re both keeping safe.
ydoethur, She is better than she was but not clearing as Doctor expected and unable to get treatment at present , they still have no clue what pneumonia type she had, and cannot do bronchoscopy to try and find out. Also the heart flutter caused by it is also in limbo , private hospital also seems to be not doing treatments either. However happy to just stay in house till the worst is over and hope for no relapses in interim, glad she is not still in hospital. Thanks for asking.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Wait - Salmond was tried under English law?!!!!!
Tut Tut , as you well know I was referring to fact that Dougseal seems ignorant of even English Law. In Scotland NOT guilty means innocent , I assumed same applied in England but apparently not , just means jury are idiots and the innocent person is actually guilty.
I didn’t read it that way, although I assumed you must have meant something like that.
In American law of course it is different, and you can be ‘not guilty’ in a criminal sense and still guilty in civil courts (ask OJ Simpson).
In English law of course there is no verdict of ‘not proven’ which basically means ‘we know you did it but the prosecutors are totally incompetent.’ So it is technically a simple distinction - if you are not guilty, you are innocent.
Not proven does not mean that the Crown are incompetent. The example I usually give is a trial where my late father was on the jury. Sexual abuse, 2 complainers. The first is completely credible, the jury has no doubt she is telling the truth. The second has had a very hard life, possibly caused by abuse, with drug addiction etc. She is all over the place and is not a reliable witness. In Scotland a charge requires to be corroborated. The correct verdict of the jury was not proven in charge 1 and not guilty in charge 2.
Putting up such a witness sounds like incompetence to me, David. But then, I’m not a lawyer.
"In Scotland a charge requires to be corroborated" is surely comprehensible to the layman?
I think that COVID19 related mortality in Italy, and probably the rest of the world, will be considerably more than those biologically confirmed. Many community deaths, particularly in the elderly, will go unmarked, other than by their families.
From a non medical mans POV, the most fascinating aspect of this time has been the fury that greets any curiosity about how the figures are reported. People are genuinely (actually I don’t think it is genuine) angry with any dissent, despite the countless times initial government estimates have been wrong before.
In any case, whether someone asking the dissenting questions turns out to be wrong or right, unless they are influential in the treatment of the disease and can actually do harm or good, why get huffy with them?
The problem is that those minimising the COVID19 deaths as being imminent in any case, are doing so not out of intellectual curiosity, but rather to undermine the biggest acute health emergency effort of my lifetime.
How do you know their motivation? Why assume the worst of people?
What do people think about Jeremy Hunt at 66-1 for next PM?
He's been leading the criticism of the government for not testing enough. If, god forbid, the situation in the UK deteriorates beyond expectations, and the government is seen to have failed, might he be the obvious choice to lead a change in policy?
In a cruel twist of fate for Johnson, Hunt might be the pandemic's Churchill to Johnson's Chamberlain.
Trouble is, it is on Hunt's watch that the warnings were ignored and the preparations not made. Of course, it was the failure of Churchill's Norway Campaign that brought down Chamberlain.
To put it bluntly, if Covid-19 forces out Boris one way or another then it is a good price but if not, you are left waiting for five or ten years with no obvious route back to power for Hunt.
Churchill was also of course totally unprepared for war in the Far East, having ignored the threat from Japan to hammer Hitler. Although he had been PM and indeed Conservative leader for some time before it kicked off properly.
We've seen fiction or alternative histories based on Hitler being replaced; it might be more interesting to know what might have been different had Churchill stood down after the tide of the war turned in 1942 or 43.
It is unlikely that Eden would have done anything very differently, although he might have dithered a bit more.
Eden might not have had the same enthusiasm for grabbing various bits of Axis land then being routed because there was no support or supply.
The other thing that Churchill got wrong in the far East was to let down Australia. My Australian relatives took a very poor view of how Australian forces were tied up in the Middle East and Singapore, rather than released for home defence. At the same time the US Navy was in the Coral sea. That was the point that Australia pivoted to America, and the Empire was doomed.
Most formal links between the UK and Australia had been ended by the 1931 Statute of Westminster anyway
You must be too young to remember "Kerr's cur" in 1975 when the Governor-General sacked the Australian PM.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Wait - Salmond was tried under English law?!!!!!
Tut Tut , as you well know I was referring to fact that Dougseal seems ignorant of even English Law. In Scotland NOT guilty means innocent , I assumed same applied in England but apparently not , just means jury are idiots and the innocent person is actually guilty.
I didn’t read it that way, although I assumed you must have meant something like that.
In American law of course it is different, and you can be ‘not guilty’ in a criminal sense and still guilty in civil courts (ask OJ Simpson).
In English law of course there is no verdict of ‘not proven’ which basically means ‘we know you did it but the prosecutors are totally incompetent.’ So it is technically a simple distinction - if you are not guilty, you are innocent.
The not proven means they had no evidence and it was just a he said / she said and on reading what was said it was obvious who was talking mince.
Technically it means they had *insufficient* evidence. *No evidence* and the prosecution would never have been brought.
This case should never ever have been brought given the "evidence" we saw. It was not even Carry on Film level.
People are lining up to criticise the government regarding testing numbers and who it tests. Yet there was a medical officer on the radio this morning sayng that testing is not effective unless some symptoms are showing.
If this is correct, what is the point of testing? Testing someone who hasn`t got symptoms will not produce accurate results. Testing someone who has virus symptoms is pointless because the symptoms already show that they have it.
I must be missing something.
The symptoms could be similar, but not be the virus.
That seems very unlikely to me.
It's eminently likely. Some people have very mild symptoms. Others with more severe symptoms may have Covid-19 ot may have the flu, or some respiratory virus.
Our own Dr Foxy is a case in point... until he gets his test result back he doesn't know if he has C-19. If he has, once he has recovered, he can treat patients safe in the knowledge that he is now almost certainly immune and not contagious after an appropriate period of self-isolation. If he doesn't test postivie for C-19, he knows he is probably not currently at risk of infecting those he is in contact with.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Not true. Not guilty simply means the prosecution failed to reach the requisite standard of proof. That’s as true in Scotland as it is in England. OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Archer were both found not guilty in criminal trials, but few would describe them as innocent. In Scotland Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 of the Edinburgh Worlds End murders, but he was not innocent, as a subsequent change to he double jeopardy laws and his conviction in 2014 shows.
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
Quite a statement on the global judicial system I must say. What would your suggestion be to improve it?
Hope he never makes judge or there will be mass hangings. A lawyer that thinks those proven innocent are all guilty, you could not make it up. Hopefully he is a conveyancing lawyer and unable to wreck any lives.
Mac, leave it mate. You're out on a limb with this, and in danger of sawing bewteen you and the tree. I agree that Salmond isn't guilty of any offence, but I wouldn't want my wife, daughter or neice to work in his office if there was much danger of it being just him and her there.
Well, quite. The legal outcomes in the Weinstein and Salmond case, and indeed other similar ones in British politics and corporate life, are starkly different, and as far as I can tell are correct. The law is a rather blunt instrument though for the policing workplace behaviour and how this shades into abusive coercion.
I think that COVID19 related mortality in Italy, and probably the rest of the world, will be considerably more than those biologically confirmed. Many community deaths, particularly in the elderly, will go unmarked, other than by their families.
From a non medical mans POV, the most fascinating aspect of this time has been the fury that greets any curiosity about how the figures are reported. People are genuinely (actually I don’t think it is genuine) angry with any dissent, despite the countless times initial government estimates have been wrong before.
In any case, whether someone asking the dissenting questions turns out to be wrong or right, unless they are influential in the treatment of the disease and can actually do harm or good, why get huffy with them?
The problem is that those minimising the COVID19 deaths as being imminent in any case, are doing so not out of intellectual curiosity, but rather to undermine the biggest acute health emergency effort of my lifetime.
How do you know their motivation? Why assume the worst of people?
I judge their motivations by their actions, I have no window into their souls.
People are lining up to criticise the government regarding testing numbers and who it tests. Yet there was a medical officer on the radio this morning sayng that testing is not effective unless some symptoms are showing.
If this is correct, what is the point of testing? Testing someone who hasn`t got symptoms will not produce accurate results. Testing someone who has virus symptoms is pointless because the symptoms already show that they have it.
I must be missing something.
The symptoms could be similar, but not be the virus.
That seems very unlikely to me.
It's eminently likely. Some people have very mild symptoms. Others with more severe symptoms may have Covid-19 ot may have the flu, or some respiratory virus.
Our own Dr Foxy is a case in point... until he gets his test result back he doesn't know if he has C-19. If he has, once he has recovered, he can treat patients safe in the knowledge that he is now almost certainly immune and not contagious after an appropriate period of self-isolation. If he doesn't test postivie for C-19, he knows he is probably not currently at risk of infecting those he is in contact with.
But still at risk of contracting it when he heads back in to work....
I hope he tests positive, given he seems to be on the mend.
It is easy to forget, but before Jeremy Corbyn turned up Ed Miliband was the worst leader Labour had ever had. One undoubted positive about the current leadership election is that Labour members almost certainly haven’t chosen the worst possible candidate. From little acorns ...
Haven't they? We'll see. Starmer is probably the least charismatic of those who stood, is a paid-up member of London's metropolitan elite, and devised the Brexit policy.
At the risk of pre-empting Alastair's second piece, one could argue that parts of the South East might be happy to vote Labour so long as they aren't led by someone like Jeremy Corbyn. How many seats like Watford, Wycombe and the Milton Keynes seats could Labour flip with a leader who isn't perceived as a threat to their standard of living?
We've seen a realignment in one part of the country, could the same happen in traditionally safe Tory areas?
To some extent that has already happened. Former Tory strongholds now held by Labour include - Enfield Southgate - Putney - Battersea - Croydon Central - Warwick & Leamington - Canterbury - Portsmouth South - Hove - Brighton Kemptown - Reading East - Bedford - Cardiff North - Bristol Northwest . Until the 1990s Cambridge, Leeds Nothwest, Leeds Northeast, Tynemouth and Sheffield Hallam were normally Tory seats. The traffic has not been one way!
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Not true. Not guilty simply means the prosecution failed to reach the requisite standard of proof. That’s as true in Scotland as it is in England. OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Archer were both found not guilty in criminal trials, but few would describe them as innocent. In Scotland Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 of the Edinburgh Worlds End murders, but he was not innocent, as a subsequent change to he double jeopardy laws and his conviction in 2014 shows.
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
Quite a statement on the global judicial system I must say. What would your suggestion be to improve it?
Hope he never makes judge or there will be mass hangings. A lawyer that thinks those proven innocent are all guilty, you could not make it up. Hopefully he is a conveyancing lawyer and unable to wreck any lives.
Mac, leave it mate. You're out on a limb with this, and in danger of sawing bewteen you and the tree. I agree that Salmond isn't guilty of any offence, but I wouldn't want my wife, daughter or neice to work in his office if there was much danger of it being just him and her there.
I am afraid not, the man is innocent and on a personal note if any of my family worked with him I would hope they would have acted professionally , and if he did anything vaguely inappropriate that they would have read him his horoscope or kicked him in the nuts.
Wow, Malc. I had no idea professional standards in the pensions industry included that
On a serious note, hope your wife is continuing to recover and that you’re both keeping safe.
ydoethur, She is better than she was but not clearing as Doctor expected and unable to get treatment at present , they still have no clue what pneumonia type she had, and cannot do bronchoscopy to try and find out. Also the heart flutter caused by it is also in limbo , private hospital also seems to be not doing treatments either. However happy to just stay in house till the worst is over and hope for no relapses in interim, glad she is not still in hospital. Thanks for asking.
Aren’t private hospitals currently under NHS auspices for this emergency? That might be why.
Best wishes to you both, she’s clearly a lot safer at home with you than in hospital right now.
It is easy to forget, but before Jeremy Corbyn turned up Ed Miliband was the worst leader Labour had ever had. One undoubted positive about the current leadership election is that Labour members almost certainly haven’t chosen the worst possible candidate. From little acorns ...
Haven't they? We'll see. Starmer is probably the least charismatic of those who stood, is a paid-up member of London's metropolitan elite, and devised the Brexit policy.
At the risk of pre-empting Alastair's second piece, one could argue that parts of the South East might be happy to vote Labour so long as they aren't led by someone like Jeremy Corbyn. How many seats like Watford, Wycombe and the Milton Keynes seats could Labour flip with a leader who isn't perceived as a threat to their standard of living?
We've seen a realignment in one part of the country, could the same happen in traditionally safe Tory areas?
To some extent that has already happened. Former Tory strongholds now held by Labour include - Enfield Southgate - Putney - Battersea - Croydon Central - Warwick & Leamington - Canterbury - Portsmouth South - Hove - Brighton Kemptown - Reading East - Bedford - Cardiff North - Bristol Northwest . Until the 1990s Cambridge, Leeds Nothwest, Leeds Northeast, Tynemouth and Sheffield Hallam were normally Tory seats. The traffic has not been one way!
You might have added Exeter. A lot of those however are university seats.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Wait - Salmond was tried under English law?!!!!!
Tut Tut , as you well know I was referring to fact that Dougseal seems ignorant of even English Law. In Scotland NOT guilty means innocent , I assumed same applied in England but apparently not , just means jury are idiots and the innocent person is actually guilty.
People are lining up to criticise the government regarding testing numbers and who it tests. Yet there was a medical officer on the radio this morning sayng that testing is not effective unless some symptoms are showing.
If this is correct, what is the point of testing? Testing someone who hasn`t got symptoms will not produce accurate results. Testing someone who has virus symptoms is pointless because the symptoms already show that they have it.
It is easy to forget, but before Jeremy Corbyn turned up Ed Miliband was the worst leader Labour had ever had. One undoubted positive about the current leadership election is that Labour members almost certainly haven’t chosen the worst possible candidate. From little acorns ...
Haven't they? We'll see. Starmer is probably the least charismatic of those who stood, is a paid-up member of London's metropolitan elite, and devised the Brexit policy.
At the risk of pre-empting Alastair's second piece, one could argue that parts of the South East might be happy to vote Labour so long as they aren't led by someone like Jeremy Corbyn. How many seats like Watford, Wycombe and the Milton Keynes seats could Labour flip with a leader who isn't perceived as a threat to their standard of living?
We've seen a realignment in one part of the country, could the same happen in traditionally safe Tory areas?
To some extent that has already happened. Former Tory strongholds now held by Labour include - Enfield Southgate - Putney - Battersea - Croydon Central - Warwick & Leamington - Canterbury - Portsmouth South - Hove - Brighton Kemptown - Reading East - Bedford - Cardiff North - Bristol Northwest . Until the 1990s Cambridge, Leeds Nothwest, Leeds Northeast, Tynemouth and Sheffield Hallam were normally Tory seats. The traffic has not been one way!
True, but sadly for Labour, to compensate for Mansfield et al, they need to start winning in non-metropolitan areas that are relatively affluent.
@malcolmg Innocent and Not Guilty are NOT interchangeable
Noone has ever been found "innocent" in a trial in England or Scotland, the verdict simply does not exist.
you dancing on the head of a pin now, you can procrastinate any way you wish, He is innocent of all charges and a free man , to much displeasure of unionists everywhere. Being pedant , Noone = no-one
It is easy to forget, but before Jeremy Corbyn turned up Ed Miliband was the worst leader Labour had ever had. One undoubted positive about the current leadership election is that Labour members almost certainly haven’t chosen the worst possible candidate. From little acorns ...
Haven't they? We'll see. Starmer is probably the least charismatic of those who stood, is a paid-up member of London's metropolitan elite, and devised the Brexit policy.
At the risk of pre-empting Alastair's second piece, one could argue that parts of the South East might be happy to vote Labour so long as they aren't led by someone like Jeremy Corbyn. How many seats like Watford, Wycombe and the Milton Keynes seats could Labour flip with a leader who isn't perceived as a threat to their standard of living?
We've seen a realignment in one part of the country, could the same happen in traditionally safe Tory areas?
To some extent that has already happened. Former Tory strongholds now held by Labour include - Enfield Southgate - Putney - Battersea - Croydon Central - Warwick & Leamington - Canterbury - Portsmouth South - Hove - Brighton Kemptown - Reading East - Bedford - Cardiff North - Bristol Northwest . Until the 1990s Cambridge, Leeds Nothwest, Leeds Northeast, Tynemouth and Sheffield Hallam were normally Tory seats. The traffic has not been one way!
You might have added Exeter. A lot of those however are university seats.
I overlooked Exeter - and a seat in Plymouth. It is quite a long list, and most of those seats were university linked in the 1980s and 1990s.
On topic, and why not, it seems to me that Starmer's biggest challenge is going to be finding the room in which to have a distinctive voice. Blair gained huge numbers of typically Tory voters by having policies that they liked such as being tough on crime and being "intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich".
But he was an amateur compared with what Boris and Rishi are doing. They are spending public money to support employment beyond the dreams of even McDonnell, they are throwing unlimited funds at the NHS and they are focussing on helping the worst off (eg the £50k exclusion of support for the self employed). They have got rid of the delays in benefit payments, temporarily abolished all sanctions regimes, determined that rough sleepers will be housed etc.
What is left for Labour to say? They can say that the NHS wasn't as strong as it might have been because of Tory austerity. They can say that there are not enough trained police officers to deal with those breaking the isolation rules. They can try to make a fuss about the level of testing etc. None of these is even close to being a compelling reason to even listen to Labour, let alone vote for them.
Off topic - like @Andy_JS I have watched very little TV over the past few years so have missed out on pretty much all the dramas that people praise.
A girl cannot live on Midsomer Murder repeats alone. I’ve just started on Broadchuch, which is very good - though not exactly cheering.
Now, of course, is the perfect time for all that catching up.
A list of PB’ers Top 10 / 20 dramas / films / documentary series would be much appreciated. I have Netflix and Amazon Prime. Thanks very much.
I think you might enjoy Better Call Saul. About a good guy who slowly turns into an ambulance chasing lawyer. It's a spin off from Breaking Bad, though you don't need to have watched the latter to enjoy the former.
I think that COVID19 related mortality in Italy, and probably the rest of the world, will be considerably more than those biologically confirmed. Many community deaths, particularly in the elderly, will go unmarked, other than by their families.
From a non medical mans POV, the most fascinating aspect of this time has been the fury that greets any curiosity about how the figures are reported. People are genuinely (actually I don’t think it is genuine) angry with any dissent, despite the countless times initial government estimates have been wrong before.
In any case, whether someone asking the dissenting questions turns out to be wrong or right, unless they are influential in the treatment of the disease and can actually do harm or good, why get huffy with them?
The problem is that those minimising the COVID19 deaths as being imminent in any case, are doing so not out of intellectual curiosity, but rather to undermine the biggest acute health emergency effort of my lifetime.
How do you know their motivation? Why assume the worst of people?
I think we all try initially to assume good faith. But when you see someone (I don't mean you) put up a minimising argument which is patently moronic at the time it is put up and is shown beyond doubt to have been moronic by the statistics within a couple of weeks, and then the party who advanced it blithely cracks on with another and equally moronic minimising argument, you drop the assumption.
@malcolmg Innocent and Not Guilty are NOT interchangeable
Noone has ever been found "innocent" in a trial in England or Scotland, the verdict simply does not exist.
you dancing on the head of a pin now, you can procrastinate any way you wish, He is innocent of all charges and a free man , to much displeasure of unionists everywhere. Being pedant , Noone = no-one
Malc, I'm agreeing with you ! There is no burden on the defence to prove innocence in any criminal case, it's up to the prosecution to prove guilt. That's the only test
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Not true. Not guilty simply means the prosecution failed to reach the requisite standard of proof. That’s as true in Scotland as it is in England. OJ Simpson and Jeffrey Archer were both found not guilty in criminal trials, but few would describe them as innocent. In Scotland Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 of the Edinburgh Worlds End murders, but he was not innocent, as a subsequent change to he double jeopardy laws and his conviction in 2014 shows.
Let’s put this in way that even you could understand. Say “beyond reasonable doubt” means a 90% probability of guilt. If the prosecution, in the jury’s mind, gets to 60% probability then the individual is not guilty. But that doesn’t equal innocence. It just means there was enough doubt.
Quite a statement on the global judicial system I must say. What would your suggestion be to improve it?
Hope he never makes judge or there will be mass hangings. A lawyer that thinks those proven innocent are all guilty, you could not make it up. Hopefully he is a conveyancing lawyer and unable to wreck any lives.
Mac, leave it mate. You're out on a limb with this, and in danger of sawing bewteen you and the tree. I agree that Salmond isn't guilty of any offence, but I wouldn't want my wife, daughter or neice to work in his office if there was much danger of it being just him and her there.
I am afraid not, the man is innocent and on a personal note if any of my family worked with him I would hope they would have acted professionally , and if he did anything vaguely inappropriate that they would have read him his horoscope or kicked him in the nuts.
Wow, Malc. I had no idea professional standards in the pensions industry included that
On a serious note, hope your wife is continuing to recover and that you’re both keeping safe.
ydoethur, She is better than she was but not clearing as Doctor expected and unable to get treatment at present , they still have no clue what pneumonia type she had, and cannot do bronchoscopy to try and find out. Also the heart flutter caused by it is also in limbo , private hospital also seems to be not doing treatments either. However happy to just stay in house till the worst is over and hope for no relapses in interim, glad she is not still in hospital. Thanks for asking.
Aren’t private hospitals currently under NHS auspices for this emergency? That might be why.
Best wishes to you both, she’s clearly a lot safer at home with you than in hospital right now.
It was only NHS England deal announced. I have not seen anything similar announced in Scotland but assume they will be ready for it. My pet hate with Consultants is that they never keep you in the loop, just ignore and hard to get in touch with. hard to know at times what is happening. PS : as ever BBC don't seem to know that NHS England is not UK, they are pretty dire and report everything as UK.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Wait - Salmond was tried under English law?!!!!!
Tut Tut , as you well know I was referring to fact that Dougseal seems ignorant of even English Law. In Scotland NOT guilty means innocent , I assumed same applied in England but apparently not , just means jury are idiots and the innocent person is actually guilty.
I didn’t read it that way, although I assumed you must have meant something like that.
In American law of course it is different, and you can be ‘not guilty’ in a criminal sense and still guilty in civil courts (ask OJ Simpson).
In English law of course there is no verdict of ‘not proven’ which basically means ‘we know you did it but the prosecutors are totally incompetent.’ So it is technically a simple distinction - if you are not guilty, you are innocent.
Not proven does not mean that the Crown are incompetent. The example I usually give is a trial where my late father was on the jury. Sexual abuse, 2 complainers. The first is completely credible, the jury has no doubt she is telling the truth. The second has had a very hard life, possibly caused by abuse, with drug addiction etc. She is all over the place and is not a reliable witness. In Scotland a charge requires to be corroborated. The correct verdict of the jury was not proven in charge 1 and not guilty in charge 2.
it says "It is simply one of two possible acquittal verdicts and the standard text on Scottish criminal procedure states that juries should not be told anything about its meaning."
Is that right? If so how on earth do the juries know what you are suggesting?
It is easy to forget, but before Jeremy Corbyn turned up Ed Miliband was the worst leader Labour had ever had. One undoubted positive about the current leadership election is that Labour members almost certainly haven’t chosen the worst possible candidate. From little acorns ...
Haven't they? We'll see. Starmer is probably the least charismatic of those who stood, is a paid-up member of London's metropolitan elite, and devised the Brexit policy.
At the risk of pre-empting Alastair's second piece, one could argue that parts of the South East might be happy to vote Labour so long as they aren't led by someone like Jeremy Corbyn. How many seats like Watford, Wycombe and the Milton Keynes seats could Labour flip with a leader who isn't perceived as a threat to their standard of living?
We've seen a realignment in one part of the country, could the same happen in traditionally safe Tory areas?
To some extent that has already happened. Former Tory strongholds now held by Labour include - Enfield Southgate - Putney - Battersea - Croydon Central - Warwick & Leamington - Canterbury - Portsmouth South - Hove - Brighton Kemptown - Reading East - Bedford - Cardiff North - Bristol Northwest . Until the 1990s Cambridge, Leeds Nothwest, Leeds Northeast, Tynemouth and Sheffield Hallam were normally Tory seats. The traffic has not been one way!
True, but sadly for Labour, to compensate for Mansfield et al, they need to start winning in non-metropolitan areas that are relatively affluent.
You are absolutely correct to say that , but it also has to be significant that Labour now holds these former reliably Tory seats - often by comfortable margins - in a year when the Tories enjoyed a vote share lead of circa 11.5% and a Parliamentary majority of 80. In a neck and neck year , quite a few additional seats would be likely to fall.
The analogy doesn't get off the ground. Look what is happening in Spain and Italy, with lockdown measures in place. Your supposed equivalent of letting the 70 year old die entails permitting things to be the same but much, much worse, unless you are proposing truly barbaric triaging measures (so that the stress on icu and medical staff doesn't arise because over 65s get access to neither). Is that what you want?
No, I don't know what I want - apart from the obvious that (i) the lockdown works in the way hoped and (ii) we get a vaccine asap.
The hypothetical was to demonstrate that "It will save many lives" is not sufficient to justify a course of action. It depends what the "It" is. It depends on how many lives. And which lives. And even knowing all that it depends on a deeply subjective value judgement. So it's difficult.
But this evaluation - lives of many versus cost/inconvenience to a bigger many - lies at the heart of this even if it is not being (because it can't be) precisely formulated by anyone.
So I phrased that question to illustrate the point and also the difficulty. And I think it does do that.
@malcolmg Innocent and Not Guilty are NOT interchangeable
Noone has ever been found "innocent" in a trial in England or Scotland, the verdict simply does not exist.
you dancing on the head of a pin now, you can procrastinate any way you wish, He is innocent of all charges and a free man , to much displeasure of unionists everywhere. Being pedant , Noone = no-one
Malc, I'm agreeing with you ! There is no burden on the defence to prove innocence in any criminal case, it's up to the prosecution to prove guilt. That's the only test
Off topic - like @Andy_JS I have watched very little TV over the past few years so have missed out on pretty much all the dramas that people praise.
A girl cannot live on Midsomer Murder repeats alone. I’ve just started on Broadchuch, which is very good - though not exactly cheering.
Now, of course, is the perfect time for all that catching up.
A list of PB’ers Top 10 / 20 dramas / films / documentary series would be much appreciated. I have Netflix and Amazon Prime. Thanks very much.
I have been watching BFIplayer, via their subscription streaming service. £4.95 a month, with a free 2 week trial, and can cancel any time. Some great fare away from the usual Netflix stuff.
I watched Walkabout (1971) yesterday, and what a beautiful and elegiac film it was. Aniara (2019) too, a very thoughtful Sci Fi in Swedish. There are some great French, German and Italian classics too.
Off topic - like @Andy_JS I have watched very little TV over the past few years so have missed out on pretty much all the dramas that people praise.
A girl cannot live on Midsomer Murder repeats alone. I’ve just started on Broadchuch, which is very good - though not exactly cheering.
Now, of course, is the perfect time for all that catching up.
A list of PB’ers Top 10 / 20 dramas / films / documentary series would be much appreciated. I have Netflix and Amazon Prime. Thanks very much.
BBC comedy Detectorists is lovely BBC Ja’mie Netflix When They See Us Sky The Night Of Sky The Sopranos Sky True Detective Seasons 1 & 3 Film Hombre Film Cool Hand Luke Film The Lives of Others Film Closer
Well done to him, but desperate that medics need to be crowdfunding for PPE gear.
#jamesmcavoy has donated £257,000 to NHS medics' PPE crowdfunding appeal A fantastic gesture from the actor. But also points to further evidence of NHS under funding from Westminster
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Wait - Salmond was tried under English law?!!!!!
Tut Tut , as you well know I was referring to fact that Dougseal seems ignorant of even English Law. In Scotland NOT guilty means innocent , I assumed same applied in England but apparently not , just means jury are idiots and the innocent person is actually guilty.
I didn’t read it that way, although I assumed you must have meant something like that.
In American law of course it is different, and you can be ‘not guilty’ in a criminal sense and still guilty in civil courts (ask OJ Simpson).
In English law of course there is no verdict of ‘not proven’ which basically means ‘we know you did it but the prosecutors are totally incompetent.’ So it is technically a simple distinction - if you are not guilty, you are innocent.
Not proven does not mean that the Crown are incompetent. The example I usually give is a trial where my late father was on the jury. Sexual abuse, 2 complainers. The first is completely credible, the jury has no doubt she is telling the truth. The second has had a very hard life, possibly caused by abuse, with drug addiction etc. She is all over the place and is not a reliable witness. In Scotland a charge requires to be corroborated. The correct verdict of the jury was not proven in charge 1 and not guilty in charge 2.
it says "It is simply one of two possible acquittal verdicts and the standard text on Scottish criminal procedure states that juries should not be told anything about its meaning."
Is that right? If so how on earth do the juries know what you are suggesting?
What Juries are told is that there are 2 verdicts of acquittal and that they both have the same effect, which they do. Salmond has been every bit as much acquitted of the charge of which he was found not proven as those of which he was found not guilty. But the words have a self evident meaning and juries sometimes apprise themselves of them as they did in the case where my late father was on the jury. There is a strong move to abolish not proven. Its probably right in that it is an unnecessary confusion.
Off topic - like @Andy_JS I have watched very little TV over the past few years so have missed out on pretty much all the dramas that people praise.
A girl cannot live on Midsomer Murder repeats alone. I’ve just started on Broadchuch, which is very good - though not exactly cheering.
Now, of course, is the perfect time for all that catching up.
A list of PB’ers Top 10 / 20 dramas / films / documentary series would be much appreciated. I have Netflix and Amazon Prime. Thanks very much.
Thank you for this post. I meant to respond to AndyJS`s astonishing post yesterday. How I envy you two - so much truly excellent stuff to watch.
I offer below top-tier must-watch series (in no particular order):
The Sopranos The Wire Breaking Bad Deadwood Godless Unbelievable Fargo
Folks, don`t bother arguing with me - you`ll be wrong.
Of course this might be a good time for me to write my long-planned thinly disguised drama about a City investigator ....... (copyright claimed).
So this is not just self-indulgence but work.
Do you, I mean does your protagonist investigator, have a catchy nickname to serve as the title of this work? Something like 'The Financial Terminator'?
These are the charts the government should send to every household.
The lines missing from that chart: GDP. Unemployment. Number of businesses that go to the wall.
Those charts suggest there is little gained by extending the lockdown beyond mid april (. graph 2 not so much better than graph 1)t is the ongoing social distancing that seems to really have an effect.
There's a nice visual exploration of different mitigation methods here: https://youtu.be/gxAaO2rsdIs The most effective methods in that are - identifying and isolating people with the infextion - increased hygiene - keeping sites where large amounts of people congregate shut.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Wait - Salmond was tried under English law?!!!!!
Tut Tut , as you well know I was referring to fact that Dougseal seems ignorant of even English Law. In Scotland NOT guilty means innocent , I assumed same applied in England but apparently not , just means jury are idiots and the innocent person is actually guilty.
I didn’t read it that way, although I assumed you must have meant something like that.
In American law of course it is different, and you can be ‘not guilty’ in a criminal sense and still guilty in civil courts (ask OJ Simpson).
In English law of course there is no verdict of ‘not proven’ which basically means ‘we know you did it but the prosecutors are totally incompetent.’ So it is technically a simple distinction - if you are not guilty, you are innocent.
Not proven does not mean that the Crown are incompetent. The example I usually give is a trial where my late father was on the jury. Sexual abuse, 2 complainers. The first is completely credible, the jury has no doubt she is telling the truth. The second has had a very hard life, possibly caused by abuse, with drug addiction etc. She is all over the place and is not a reliable witness. In Scotland a charge requires to be corroborated. The correct verdict of the jury was not proven in charge 1 and not guilty in charge 2.
it says "It is simply one of two possible acquittal verdicts and the standard text on Scottish criminal procedure states that juries should not be told anything about its meaning."
Is that right? If so how on earth do the juries know what you are suggesting?
What Juries are told is that there are 2 verdicts of acquittal and that they both have the same effect, which they do. Salmond has been every bit as much acquitted of the charge of which he was found not proven as those of which he was found not guilty. But the words have a self evident meaning and juries sometimes apprise themselves of them as they did in the case where my late father was on the jury. There is a strong move to abolish not proven. Its probably right in that it is an unnecessary confusion.
Thanks, so we can take an educated guess what the jury thinks was the difference, but little more.
If you have three verdicts it would surely make sense to have innocent, not proven and guilty, with innocent having a similar threshold to guilty.
You have frequently said you would have voted for Hilary Clinton in 2016 and would vote Trump against Bernie Sanders which I understand.
Would you vote for Trump against Biden or would the VP nominee make a difference so for instance would you support Trump/Pence over Biden/Warren or Biden/Harris?
I would probably vote for Biden/Harris over Trump/Pence but not Biden/Warren yes. I would have voted for Bloomberg with some enthusiasm but none of the other Democrats did anything much for me, however I am not American so it does not really matter
Thanks - actually pretty much what I expected. As you say, it doesn't much matter - just Sunday lunchtime speculation.
I think the VP picks will have more significance than usual this time. Trump needs Pence to keep the traditional GOP on side and I suspect Pence has had much more influence and involvement in decision making than some VPs.
Pence could well run himself in 2024 (he'd only be 65) but it's not easy for the incumbent VP to succeed a two-term President - I know Harry Truman and George HW Bush did but Gore failed in 2000 and Nixon in 1960 and to be fair Truman didn't contest 1952 and George H W Bush lost in 1992.
Off topic - like @Andy_JS I have watched very little TV over the past few years so have missed out on pretty much all the dramas that people praise.
A girl cannot live on Midsomer Murder repeats alone. I’ve just started on Broadchuch, which is very good - though not exactly cheering.
Now, of course, is the perfect time for all that catching up.
A list of PB’ers Top 10 / 20 dramas / films / documentary series would be much appreciated. I have Netflix and Amazon Prime. Thanks very much.
I have been watching BFIplayer, via their subscription streaming service. £4.95 a month, with a free 2 week trial, and can cancel any time. Some great fare away from the usual Netflix stuff.
I watched Walkabout (1971) yesterday, and what a beautiful and elegiac film it was. Aniara (2019) too, a very thoughtful Sci Fi in Swedish. There are some great French, German and Italian classics too.
It is interesting to reflect that in 2005 - the last occasion on which Labour won a majority of seats in England - they had just 35.4% of the vote. That’s 1.4% more than Corbyn got in 2019.
But with that 35.4% Blair won 286 seats to Corbyn’s 179.
Now admittedly, there were other factors at play. In 2005 the Tories and Lib Dems got 35.7% and 22.9% respectively. The split vote was very important to Labour, and since 2010 it has pretty well vanished. In 2019 the sabres were 47.2% and 12.4%. Not radically different overall, but clearly different in how it was weighted. That has of course brutally hammered the Liberal Democrats and massively helped the Tories.
On a simplistic view, it suggests that Liberal Democrat voters have switched to the Tories. And in some areas, e.g. the West Country (and Wales) that clearly has happened. But what we also seem to see is massive churn. Take Blyth Valley. In 2010 the Liberal Democrats were second. In 2015 they came fourth, with a drop of 22% of their vote. Now, the big risers were UKIP, at 18%. Let us assume, for the moment, that it was not a Liberal Democrat to UKIP switch phenomenon. What seems to have happened is that the Liberal Democrat voters went to Labour, furious at the coalition, and Labour voters went to UKIP, furious at Miliband’s cosmopolitanism.
What should therefore worry Labour outside these areas where they are already strong, is that those UKIP voters ain’t going back. In 2017 two-thirds of UKIP’s Blyth Valley vote went to the Tories. Most of the ones that went to Labour seem to have flipped back to the Brexit Party in 2019, just enough for the Tories to take the seat with only a modest direct swing from Labour.
So it is not surprising that Labour are doing well in areas where middle-class, comfortable Liberal Democrat types live - e.g. university seats, Warwick, Putney, Manchester etc - and crashing spectacularly where UKIP has been strong. The snag is, Labour was already very strong in most of these places, so isn’t gaining any benefit from this churn.
Labour has to start thinking about how it attracts Tory and Brexit voters if it wants to win. It is off to the worst imaginable start with this leadership contest where people who didn’t vote Labour have been labelled ‘traitors’ and candidates have obsessed about transgender rights and the monarchy instead of houses and incomes.
We all project our own tastes! I'd second The Man in the High Castle (Amazon) series 1 and 2, and the Danish dramas The Killing and The Bridge are just as good as nearly everyone said (iplayer, I think) - all three recommended for depth of characters as much as plot. Fleabag was good amoral fun if you're not too shocked by the first 10 minutes.
Two whose names escape me but others will remember (help!) were the US series on a returning American prisoner of Islamic State (has he been brainwashed?) and the one about a woman who falls for a much younger man. The former requires a certain amount of idientification with the CIA as basically good guys, the latter is loved by many (including me) but younger viewers tended to despise it - but the plot in the former is great and the latter is much more subtle than the simple thesis suggests.
The analogy doesn't get off the ground. Look what is happening in Spain and Italy, with lockdown measures in place. Your supposed equivalent of letting the 70 year old die entails permitting things to be the same but much, much worse, unless you are proposing truly barbaric triaging measures (so that the stress on icu and medical staff doesn't arise because over 65s get access to neither). Is that what you want?
No, I don't know what I want - apart from the obvious that (i) the lockdown works in the way hoped and (ii) we get a vaccine asap.
The hypothetical was to demonstrate that "It will save many lives" is not sufficient to justify a course of action. It depends what the "It" is. It depends on how many lives. And which lives. And even knowing all that it depends on a deeply subjective value judgement. So it's difficult.
But this evaluation - lives of many versus cost/inconvenience to a bigger many - lies at the heart of this even if it is not being (because it can't be) precisely formulated by anyone.
So I phrased that question to illustrate the point and also the difficulty. And I think it does do that.
FWIW I would answer it with a DK.
The problem is that it is not a choice between lockdown or business as usual. You cannot consider only the economic cost of lockdown, and not consider that in an unchecked pandemic, that people will behave differently. People will not shop, eat out or go drinking as if nothing is happening, while their partner or parents are gasping their last in a hospital carpark.
Off topic - like @Andy_JS I have watched very little TV over the past few years so have missed out on pretty much all the dramas that people praise.
A girl cannot live on Midsomer Murder repeats alone. I’ve just started on Broadchuch, which is very good - though not exactly cheering.
Now, of course, is the perfect time for all that catching up.
A list of PB’ers Top 10 / 20 dramas / films / documentary series would be much appreciated. I have Netflix and Amazon Prime. Thanks very much.
Thank you for this post. I meant to respond to AndyJS`s astonishing post yesterday. How I envy you two - so much truly excellent stuff to watch.
I offer below top-tier must-watch series (in no particular order):
The Sopranos The Wire Breaking Bad Deadwood Godless Unbelievable Fargo
Folks, don`t bother arguing with me - you`ll be wrong.
Of course this might be a good time for me to write my long-planned thinly disguised drama about a City investigator ....... (copyright claimed).
So this is not just self-indulgence but work.
Do you, I mean does your protagonist investigator, have a catchy nickname to serve as the title of this work? Something like 'The Financial Terminator'?
We all project our own tastes! I'd second The Man in the High Castle (Amazon) series 1 and 2, and the Danish dramas The Killing and The Bridge are just as good as nearly everyone said (iplayer, I think) - all three recommended for depth of characters as much as plot. Fleabag was good amoral fun if you're not too shocked by the first 10 minutes.
Two whose names escape me but others will remember (help!) were the US series on a returning American prisoner of Islamic State (has he been brainwashed?) and the one about a woman who falls for a much younger man. The former requires a certain amount of idientification with the CIA as basically good guys, the latter is loved by many (including me) but younger viewers tended to despise it - but the plot in the former is great and the latter is much more subtle than the simple thesis suggests.
In the words of his own counsel - “If in some ways the former first minister had been a better man, I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, none of us would be here.
“I’m not here to suggest he always behaved well or couldn’t have been a better man on occasions. That would be a waste of my time.”
“You have to be satisfied to that very high standard. There’s only to be guilt in these matters, not because someone could have been a better man.
“There can only be guilt in these matters because of that standard of proof.”
Just because the prosecution failed to reach the required standard of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) does not mean the witnesses were lying, just that the requisite standard of proof was not reached by the prosecution. Indeed if they were prosecuted for perjury, as you absurdly suggest, and cleared, where would that leave Salmond? Indeed what if they brought civil claims (not suggesting they will or at this even could at this point) a la in the OJ Simpson matter and won on the lower standard or proof (i.e the balance of probabilities) and won? The verdicts were “not guilty” and “not proven”. He was not found “innocent”
If perjury prosecutions were brought it would be an international disgrace and would dissuade any sexual assault complainant in Scotland from ever coming forward for fear that if the prosecution ballsed up the case, as here, they would end up in prison themselves. It won’t happen.
You supposedly call yourself a lawyer , 12 NOT guilty verdicts and 1 not proven. The disgrace is that any case was brought in the first place given the total lack of evidence and obvious collusion of the complainants with SNP help before they finally years later went to police , only after as they had previously agreed if Salmond planned a political comeback. They may have kangaroo courts in your area but Scottish justice is still alive and working. When tried by your peers and found innocent it means just that. There will be no civil cases as they know even that low bar would not be reached for sure.
There is nothing in my post which is legally or factually wrong. He was not found “innocent”. As you say, he was found not guilty on 12 counts, and not proven on 1. None of the verdicts however, were “innocent”. His counsel managed to squeeze him under the bar of reasonable doubt, as was clearly set out in his closing, so good for him, the prosecution clearly failed to do its job, but there was no finding of “innocence”. If Scotland decides to prosecute for perjury that will be an utter disgrace.
I’ll not rise to the professional or personal insults.
Your arse , NOT guilty means INNOCENT, NOT proven means it was just bollox between two of them( ie no evidence) so again innocent. Hopefully I never end up with you representing anyone I know. WTF part of NOT guilty does not equal innocent in English Law.
Wait - Salmond was tried under English law?!!!!!
Tut Tut , as you well know I was referring to fact that Dougseal seems ignorant of even English Law. In Scotland NOT guilty means innocent , I assumed same applied in England but apparently not , just means jury are idiots and the innocent person is actually guilty.
I didn’t read it that way, although I assumed you must have meant something like that.
In American law of course it is different, and you can be ‘not guilty’ in a criminal sense and still guilty in civil courts (ask OJ Simpson).
In English law of course there is no verdict of ‘not proven’ which basically means ‘we know you did it but the prosecutors are totally incompetent.’ So it is technically a simple distinction - if you are not guilty, you are innocent.
Not proven does not mean that the Crown are incompetent. The example I usually give is a trial where my late father was on the jury. Sexual abuse, 2 complainers. The first is completely credible, the jury has no doubt she is telling the truth. The second has had a very hard life, possibly caused by abuse, with drug addiction etc. She is all over the place and is not a reliable witness. In Scotland a charge requires to be corroborated. The correct verdict of the jury was not proven in charge 1 and not guilty in charge 2.
it says "It is simply one of two possible acquittal verdicts and the standard text on Scottish criminal procedure states that juries should not be told anything about its meaning."
Is that right? If so how on earth do the juries know what you are suggesting?
What Juries are told is that there are 2 verdicts of acquittal and that they both have the same effect, which they do. Salmond has been every bit as much acquitted of the charge of which he was found not proven as those of which he was found not guilty. But the words have a self evident meaning and juries sometimes apprise themselves of them as they did in the case where my late father was on the jury. There is a strong move to abolish not proven. Its probably right in that it is an unnecessary confusion.
Thanks, so we can take an educated guess what the jury thinks was the difference, but little more.
If you have three verdicts it would surely make sense to have innocent, not proven and guilty, with innocent having a similar threshold to guilty.
Some have suggested that it is the not guilty verdict that should be abolished leaving not proven. I can see the logic of that. The onus is on the Crown to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. If they don't they have not proven their case.
We all project our own tastes! I'd second The Man in the High Castle (Amazon) series 1 and 2, and the Danish dramas The Killing and The Bridge are just as good as nearly everyone said (iplayer, I think) - all three recommended for depth of characters as much as plot. Fleabag was good amoral fun if you're not too shocked by the first 10 minutes.
Two whose names escape me but others will remember (help!) were the US series on a returning American prisoner of Islamic State (has he been brainwashed?) and the one about a woman who falls for a much younger man. The former requires a certain amount of idientification with the CIA as basically good guys, the latter is loved by many (including me) but younger viewers tended to despise it - but the plot in the former is great and the latter is much more subtle than the simple thesis suggests.
The first is probably Homeland? Its good fun but does get sillier the more series you watch, which is true of most high action series.
Comments
The parallel I was thinking of was Conrad Black:
https://youtu.be/PVjSvKNBEro
In any case, whether someone asking the dissenting questions turns out to be wrong or right, unless they are influential in the treatment of the disease and can actually do harm or good, why get huffy with them?
Psychologically though, Australia felt very exposed in early 1942, with the Japanese surging south, and mainland Australia being bombed. While we see the New Guinea campaign as a minor footnote, to Australia it was their Dunkirk or Battle of Britain moment.
12:41
The director of the Center for the Coordination of Health Alerts and Emergencies of the Ministry of Health, Fernando Simón, stressed that "the number of cases has been falling for several days", although he added that these data should be taken with caution.
I agree that Salmond isn't guilty of any offence, but I wouldn't want my wife, daughter or neice to work in his office if there was much danger of it being just him and her there.
Just to illustrate what I mean. Consider the following question -
Is it worth 1 million people each today having a 30 minute not-medically-serious nosebleed if by doing so it means that a fit and healthy (apart from his stent and diabetes) 75 year old man from Basildon dies in April 2025 rather than in April 2020?
Now that's a slam dunk if you are that man - or if you know and love him. But otherwise I don't think it is.
Is it a Yes! or a No! or a DK? - I bet people would answer it differently.
In American law of course it is different, and you can be ‘not guilty’ in a criminal sense and still guilty in civil courts (ask OJ Simpson).
In English law of course there is no verdict of ‘not proven’ which basically means ‘we know you did it but the prosecutors are totally incompetent.’ So it is technically a simple distinction - if you are not guilty, you are innocent.
On topic, in the short term it's not going to make any difference who Labour has as leader (or indeed if they have one at all). No one at this time is interested in anything the Opposition says - Governments are monopolising the media and rightly so as at times like this it's up to Governments to do what it says on the tin.
It also gives Starmer plenty of time and cover to take control and start moving the Party in the direction he wishes. That said, it's a two-step or two-faced process between what needs to be said to the Party faithful to keep them on side and what needs to be said to the wider electorate to get them to consider voting Labour.
If I were advising Starmer, I'd suggest not wasting any time on the past or dwelling on the failures of Corbyn. There's a big prize out there called the future and the crisis has thrown that into the air. A positive, upbeat, confident message around a future where individuals, communities and the Government work more closely and harmoniously is where I would start. Broad and vague themes at this time, the detail will follow.
Whether Johnson's administration will be defined by the virus or whether it proves a temporary aberration remains to be seen - I'm less convinced than some of the profound and lasting cultural changes predicted.
Johnson will have a record to defend next time - both positive and negative - but a successful Labour message is going to be more about the recognition of the value of public service, the strength of communities and the empowerment of individuals or to be blunt "Labour trusts Britain, Britain can trust Labour".
In London in particular we will discover just how many people have been living three or four to a room. And how many have been working cash in hand, with no chance of a government handout now.
I think as businesses revise their projections for the rest of the year and start looking at cost-cutting measures to recoup what's left of their business, we will start seeing mass redundancies that go beyond the three month furlough.
And we will see plenty of people struggle for accommodation once the three months are up and landlords start to evict. Mainly because they are effectively just a middle man for the bank, which will want their money in the end - three month mortgage holiday or not.
These were not young girls / women , we are talking top of the government and civil service.
PS: If the truth hurts on here , so be it.
People are lining up to criticise the government regarding testing numbers and who it tests. Yet there was a medical officer on the radio this morning sayng that testing is not effective unless some symptoms are showing.
If this is correct, what is the point of testing? Testing someone who hasn`t got symptoms will not produce accurate results. Testing someone who has virus symptoms is pointless because the symptoms already show that they have it.
I must be missing something.
On a serious note, hope your wife is continuing to recover and that you’re both keeping safe.
A test is a point in time. That's all. The presence of antibodies will be much, much more significant.
If Labour polled 2% more in 2019 than in 2015, and won the same number of seats in Scotland, why did they have 29 fewer seats overall?
Answer - because Corbyn only appealed to those voters in areas that already voted heavily Labour. It was a core vote strategy, like Miliband’s but less effective, because Miliband retained a number of seats in the North and North Wales Corbyn has lost.
Edit - and it might also be worth asking why when they won 6% more of the vote in England than in 2010 they ended up with eleven fewer seats. Or indeed, 4% more in Wales and four fewer seats.
However happy to just stay in house till the worst is over and hope for no relapses in interim, glad she is not still in hospital. Thanks for asking.
Our own Dr Foxy is a case in point... until he gets his test result back he doesn't know if he has C-19. If he has, once he has recovered, he can treat patients safe in the knowledge that he is now almost certainly immune and not contagious after an appropriate period of self-isolation. If he doesn't test postivie for C-19, he knows he is probably not currently at risk of infecting those he is in contact with.
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus
I hope he tests positive, given he seems to be on the mend.
Best wishes to you both, she’s clearly a lot safer at home with you than in hospital right now.
A girl cannot live on Midsomer Murder repeats alone. I’ve just started on Broadchuch, which is very good - though not exactly cheering.
Now, of course, is the perfect time for all that catching up.
A list of PB’ers Top 10 / 20 dramas / films / documentary series would be much appreciated. I have Netflix and Amazon Prime. Thanks very much.
Being pedant , Noone = no-one
But he was an amateur compared with what Boris and Rishi are doing. They are spending public money to support employment beyond the dreams of even McDonnell, they are throwing unlimited funds at the NHS and they are focussing on helping the worst off (eg the £50k exclusion of support for the self employed). They have got rid of the delays in benefit payments, temporarily abolished all sanctions regimes, determined that rough sleepers will be housed etc.
What is left for Labour to say? They can say that the NHS wasn't as strong as it might have been because of Tory austerity. They can say that there are not enough trained police officers to deal with those breaking the isolation rules. They can try to make a fuss about the level of testing etc. None of these is even close to being a compelling reason to even listen to Labour, let alone vote for them.
My pet hate with Consultants is that they never keep you in the loop, just ignore and hard to get in touch with. hard to know at times what is happening.
PS : as ever BBC don't seem to know that NHS England is not UK, they are pretty dire and report everything as UK.
I offer below top-tier must-watch series (in no particular order):
The Sopranos
The Wire
Breaking Bad
Deadwood
Godless
Unbelievable
Fargo
Folks, don`t bother arguing with me - you`ll be wrong.
https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-jury-research-fingings-large-mock-jury-study-2/pages/8/
it says "It is simply one of two possible acquittal verdicts and the standard text on Scottish criminal procedure states that juries should not be told anything about its meaning."
Is that right? If so how on earth do the juries know what you are suggesting?
The first and (especially) the third series of True Detective. Avoid the second.
Line of Duty.
The hypothetical was to demonstrate that "It will save many lives" is not sufficient to justify a course of action. It depends what the "It" is. It depends on how many lives. And which lives. And even knowing all that it depends on a deeply subjective value judgement. So it's difficult.
But this evaluation - lives of many versus cost/inconvenience to a bigger many - lies at the heart of this even if it is not being (because it can't be) precisely formulated by anyone.
So I phrased that question to illustrate the point and also the difficulty. And I think it does do that.
FWIW I would answer it with a DK.
Bosch on Amazon Prime was good, I do like Titus Welliver (who was also in Deadwood).
Justified was good. Stranger Things is great, if leaning a bit heavy on the 80s nostalgia for some.
If you need to get to sleep The Crown is good as a seditive if nothing else.
The Man in the High Castle is good for a couple of seasons.
Not objectively good but among the silliest and thus guilty pleasure enjoyable historical fiction shows I ever saw was Reign
I watched Walkabout (1971) yesterday, and what a beautiful and elegiac film it was. Aniara (2019) too, a very thoughtful Sci Fi in Swedish. There are some great French, German and Italian classics too.
BBC Ja’mie
Netflix When They See Us
Sky The Night Of
Sky The Sopranos
Sky True Detective Seasons 1 & 3
Film Hombre
Film Cool Hand Luke
Film The Lives of Others
Film Closer
#jamesmcavoy has donated £257,000 to NHS medics' PPE crowdfunding appeal
A fantastic gesture from the actor.
But also points to further evidence of NHS under funding from Westminster
So this is not just self-indulgence but work.
https://youtu.be/gxAaO2rsdIs
The most effective methods in that are
- identifying and isolating people with the infextion
- increased hygiene
- keeping sites where large amounts of people congregate shut.
If you have three verdicts it would surely make sense to have innocent, not proven and guilty, with innocent having a similar threshold to guilty.
I think the VP picks will have more significance than usual this time. Trump needs Pence to keep the traditional GOP on side and I suspect Pence has had much more influence and involvement in decision making than some VPs.
Pence could well run himself in 2024 (he'd only be 65) but it's not easy for the incumbent VP to succeed a two-term President - I know Harry Truman and George HW Bush did but Gore failed in 2000 and Nixon in 1960 and to be fair Truman didn't contest 1952 and George H W Bush lost in 1992.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sails_(TV_series)
But with that 35.4% Blair won 286 seats to Corbyn’s 179.
Now admittedly, there were other factors at play. In 2005 the Tories and Lib Dems got 35.7% and 22.9% respectively. The split vote was very important to Labour, and since 2010 it has pretty well vanished. In 2019 the sabres were 47.2% and 12.4%. Not radically different overall, but clearly different in how it was weighted. That has of course brutally hammered the Liberal Democrats and massively helped the Tories.
On a simplistic view, it suggests that Liberal Democrat voters have switched to the Tories. And in some areas, e.g. the West Country (and Wales) that clearly has happened. But what we also seem to see is massive churn. Take Blyth Valley. In 2010 the Liberal Democrats were second. In 2015 they came fourth, with a drop of 22% of their vote. Now, the big risers were UKIP, at 18%. Let us assume, for the moment, that it was not a Liberal Democrat to UKIP switch phenomenon. What seems to have happened is that the Liberal Democrat voters went to Labour, furious at the coalition, and Labour voters went to UKIP, furious at Miliband’s cosmopolitanism.
What should therefore worry Labour outside these areas where they are already strong, is that those UKIP voters ain’t going back. In 2017 two-thirds of UKIP’s Blyth Valley vote went to the Tories. Most of the ones that went to Labour seem to have flipped back to the Brexit Party in 2019, just enough for the Tories to take the seat with only a modest direct swing from Labour.
So it is not surprising that Labour are doing well in areas where middle-class, comfortable Liberal Democrat types live - e.g. university seats, Warwick, Putney, Manchester etc - and crashing spectacularly where UKIP has been strong. The snag is, Labour was already very strong in most of these places, so isn’t gaining any benefit from this churn.
Labour has to start thinking about how it attracts Tory and Brexit voters if it wants to win. It is off to the worst imaginable start with this leadership contest where people who didn’t vote Labour have been labelled ‘traitors’ and candidates have obsessed about transgender rights and the monarchy instead of houses and incomes.
Two whose names escape me but others will remember (help!) were the US series on a returning American prisoner of Islamic State (has he been brainwashed?) and the one about a woman who falls for a much younger man. The former requires a certain amount of idientification with the CIA as basically good guys, the latter is loved by many (including me) but younger viewers tended to despise it - but the plot in the former is great and the latter is much more subtle than the simple thesis suggests.