Some things like pens and watches unless you are really into those things they could easily think they cost a few £100 compared to a few £1000 (or more). 3 brand new vehicles turning up on the drive way including a winnebago, no questions or discussions to be had? Also we have amazon / google, so it takes 5 seconds to check cost of consumer goods like £5k coffee machines while you are waiting for it to make you a cup.
IMHO the best ways of making coffee are very inexpensive, apart from the cost of the coffee. One of my children has something that looks like a Martian baby that makes coffee. No idea how it works or why.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
It seems to me quite possible that Sturgeon knew nothing. They had a large income. While she was focusing on failing to secure Scottish independence, she may have devolved all household finance matters to him.
Though not comparable, if you asked my better half what her income (or mine) was, what any of our bills were, or indeed about any household financial matter, she would be utterly clueless. Her strength lies in her spending, not in her accounting.
Your don't think your better half would say anything at all about your spending if a brand new winnebago, jag and golf appeared on the driveway?
No. We don't have a driveway.
So her first question would be, ‘where did the driveway come from?’
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
It seems to me quite possible that Sturgeon knew nothing. They had a large income. While she was focusing on failing to secure Scottish independence, she may have devolved all household finance matters to him.
Though not comparable, if you asked my better half what her income (or mine) was, what any of our bills were, or indeed about any household financial matter, she would be utterly clueless. Her strength lies in her spending, not in her accounting.
Your don't think your better half would say anything at all about your spending if a brand new winnebago, jag and golf appeared on the driveway?
No. We don't have a driveway.
So her first question would be, ‘where did the driveway come from?’
Nice couple of Polish lads, did it for a fiver....
34.8C at Kew Gardens today. Beating the previous May temperature record by a massive 2C.
The “yeah, it was hot in 1976” crowd are kicking themselves it was Kew rather than the hot-runways-and-aeroplane-exhausts Heathrow (which actually has almost identical historical stats to Kew).
It's just normal summer weather. Nothing to get exercised about.
"In respect of any items I was aware of Peter having purchased, I had no reason to doubt that he had used his own money. We were both earning high salaries and, due to the responsibilities of my job, rarely socialised or went on holidays. We had separate bank accounts and I had no access to his financial records.” - Nicola Sturgeon
His salary was high but not exactly investment banker / footballer money at £100k.
She was the leader of the SNP and her husband was its CEO.
Regardless of their social life or holidays, she was in charge and should have known what was going on, especially given all the very firm statements she was making about the SNP's finances. How did she know that what she was saying was true?
Business is not a strong skillset of Ms Sturgeon.
She has always been very fond of her working class Ayrshire background, I'd have assumed that living a life with luxury and high ticket items around you wouldn't have been her bag. Of course if she didn't know their cost, that may be a different story.
I'd like to think if I was in a relationship with someone who had their fingers in the cookie jar so often, I'd maybe spot some subtle signs as the penny pinching got worse. This may be the reason the camper van was parked at Murrells mothers house.
Her best alibi in this is to make out she didn't know, appear a bit gullible that the fancy stuff was normal and hope for the best.
As far as debt recovery goes, my guess is the advent calendars have long been scoffed but perhaps the tea set thing can make a bob on ebay.
Some of the stuff on the list I could only laugh at.
As far as the taxpayer is concerned, all I can say is at least it wasn't public money.
Some things like pens and watches unless you are really into those things they could easily think they cost a few £100 compared to a few £1000 (or more). 3 brand new vehicles turning up on the drive way including a winnebago, no questions or discussions to be had? Also we have amazon / google, so it takes 5 seconds to check cost of consumer goods like £5k coffee machines while you are waiting for it to make you a cup.
IMHO the best ways of making coffee are very inexpensive, apart from the cost of the coffee. One of my children has something that looks like a Martian baby that makes coffee. No idea how it works or why.
However I secretly covet a conveyor belt toaster.
A La Marzocco machine is pretty much what every "proper" coffee shop has. They are about £10-20k, but there are models no longer in production that some people think were the best ones so there is a big trade in second hand ones that have been refurb'ed.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
But what if you were crazy busy running the country and the time spent with your (also in politics) spouse was limited and more focussed on the political than the personal?
She might well have known/suspected something but I don't find it hard to believe that she didn't.
In order not to come across as a crook she now has to present herself as a moron. It's a defence I've often seen used, strangely among people who will bore the pants off you telling you how brilliant they are and why they deserve so much money for apparently knowing and noticing nothing.
How does that tally with what she wrote in her autobiography called "Frankly" - without any apparent irony.
It's embarassing for her but she hardly has to be a moron to not have known what he was up to. Maybe she trusted him and was wrapped up in other stuff. I don't know. You'd need knowledge of their relationship, how and how often they interacted and spent their time, the relative split of domestic v politics etc. I don't have this. So, from what I do have, the reporting, my assessment is maybe she did and maybe she didn't.
"In respect of any items I was aware of Peter having purchased, I had no reason to doubt that he had used his own money. We were both earning high salaries and, due to the responsibilities of my job, rarely socialised or went on holidays. We had separate bank accounts and I had no access to his financial records.” - Nicola Sturgeon
His salary was high but not exactly investment banker / footballer money at £100k.
She was the leader of the SNP and her husband was its CEO.
Regardless of their social life or holidays, she was in charge and should have known what was going on, especially given all the very firm statements she was making about the SNP's finances. How did she know that what she was saying was true?
She trusted her husband. Without evidence to the contrary it's not an outlandish position for a person to have.
And if she'd looked at the accounts herself, would she have been able to see the fraud? Would you? Would I?
Since I led the investigation team on what remains the UK's biggest fraud I think the answer to the question you addressed to me is yes.
But that's not the point. She was in charge: she should have put in place proper governance arrangements to prevent this sort of fraud going on for so long. There was, for a start, an obvious conflict of interest having her husband as CEO. And when she made statements about the finances being fine, on what basis did she say this?
Yes. She should have anticipated that fraud was possible and that the SNP needed arrangements to ensure that fraud could be detected.
I've seen in my testing of computer code that many people are remarkably uninterested in how systems might react to things going wrong, or unexpected input being entered. There's a belief that things will work because they're supposed to work.
Unlikely Greens hold balance of power in future GE - but if they did could this be a sign of things to come?
It was often the same in the days when liberals and later LibDems began to break through on local authorities. Labour and Tory are two cheeks of the same arse that has condemned us to their cosy two-party stitch-up for decades, with votes for any other choice commonly just cast into the WPB. The two symbiotic parties would rather deal with each other than contemplate allowing anyone else to join their little game.
34.8C at Kew Gardens today. Beating the previous May temperature record by a massive 2C.
The “yeah, it was hot in 1976” crowd are kicking themselves it was Kew rather than the hot-runways-and-aeroplane-exhausts Heathrow (which actually has almost identical historical stats to Kew).
It's just normal summer weather. Nothing to get exercised about.
Normal midsummer weather, in spring.
The good news is that the weird unconscious alliance of greens and technologists has probably already done enough to.swerve the worst future consequences- though there's still some inventing and a lot of implementation to do.
The bad news is that a certain amount of baking is... erm... baked in.
For a little context on today’s temperature in Kew (34.8C), the estimable TA Harley British weather website has max temperatures of the year since 1875.
The annual maximum exceeded 34C on 29 occasions, so that’s once in every 5 years on average. But nearly a third of those have been since 2013. Until then it was 1 in 7 years.
16 of those hit 35C or more, which is likely somewhere in the East Midlands or East Anglia tomorrow.
So this late spring heatwave has exceeded the peaks of June, July and August in 80% of years, and could end up exceeding the peaks of 90% of years.
Heh, Nicola Sturgeon dealing with her husband's finances.
In my experience, a great many intelligent, professionally qualified women, are clueless about financial matters, leaving all the household finances to their husbands, and they do not have a clue where those husbands got their money from.
This is especially true of wives who are litigated against in Proceeds of Crime Act cases.
In fairness, I think there definitely is a breed of wife who is supprisingly incurious about things financial. I know, because I have one. She did accounting and finance at uni, then was an incident manager for a large investment management company before we had children, so she's quite capable of being financially aware.
In reality, her knowledge of my financial activities boils down to "My husband has a engineering company, some money from which lands in his personal bank account fairly regularly". If I turned up with say a newish sports car*, she'd probably have little conception of it's likely cost, or of if I could have afforded it. She'd also have no idea if the whole thing was actually front for organised crime, rather than a legitimate business.
Sturgeon's problem is that, unlike my wife, she was effectively CEO of the business her husband was plundering - so she not only missed that his lifestyle was substantially above their means, but also appears to have taken little interest in why the SNP never had the amount of money in the bank one might have expected given their income.
*she might have some idea on a camper van as she has "vanlife" asperations, and has watched too much YouTube content about them. One day I'll buy her an actual campervan and she can find out first hand how awful an experience it is.
34.8C at Kew Gardens today. Beating the previous May temperature record by a massive 2C.
The “yeah, it was hot in 1976” crowd are kicking themselves it was Kew rather than the hot-runways-and-aeroplane-exhausts Heathrow (which actually has almost identical historical stats to Kew).
It's just normal summer weather. Nothing to get exercised about.
Normal midsummer weather, in spring.
The good news is that the weird unconscious alliance of greens and technologists has probably already done enough to.swerve the worst future consequences- though there's still some inventing and a lot of implementation to do.
The bad news is that a certain amount of baking is... erm... baked in.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is the big one. Will it stay or will it go now? If it stays there will be trouble, but if it goes there will be double.
For a little context on today’s temperature in Kew (34.8C), the estimable TA Harley British weather website has max temperatures of the year since 1875.
The annual maximum exceeded 34C on 29 occasions, so that’s once in every 5 years on average. But nearly a third of those have been since 2013. Until then it was 1 in 7 years.
16 of those hit 35C or more, which is likely somewhere in the East Midlands or East Anglia tomorrow.
So this late spring heatwave has exceeded the peaks of June, July and August in 80% of years, and could end up exceeding the peaks of 90% of years.
Here in Italy they are complaining that summer temperatures have arrived in spring. Which is the same as I remember having been here in 2022 when the same thing happened. Mind, Italy in May 2023 saw exceptionally heavy rainfall and flooding in many villages in the north,
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
But what if you were crazy busy running the country and the time spent with your (also in politics) spouse was limited and more focussed on the political than the personal?
She might well have known/suspected something but I don't find it hard to believe that she didn't.
In order not to come across as a crook she now has to present herself as a moron. It's a defence I've often seen used, strangely among people who will bore the pants off you telling you how brilliant they are and why they deserve so much money for apparently knowing and noticing nothing.
How does that tally with what she wrote in her autobiography called "Frankly" - without any apparent irony.
It's embarassing for her but she hardly has to be a moron to not have known what he was up to. Maybe she trusted him and was wrapped up in other stuff. I don't know. You'd need knowledge of their relationship, how and how often they interacted and spent their time, the relative split of domestic v politics etc. I don't have this. So, from what I do have, the reporting, my assessment is maybe she did and maybe she didn't.
There must have been a cumulative effect though. One or two extravagant purchases: 'Oh Peter, what have you gone and bought now?', but as they rack up and then the winnebago arrives, you'd have to be really stupid not to know something was not right. And NS is definitely not stupid.
A once great political career has ended in total ignominy afaic.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
But what if you were crazy busy running the country and the time spent with your (also in politics) spouse was limited and more focussed on the political than the personal?
She might well have known/suspected something but I don't find it hard to believe that she didn't.
In order not to come across as a crook she now has to present herself as a moron. It's a defence I've often seen used, strangely among people who will bore the pants off you telling you how brilliant they are and why they deserve so much money for apparently knowing and noticing nothing.
How does that tally with what she wrote in her autobiography called "Frankly" - without any apparent irony.
It's embarassing for her but she hardly has to be a moron to not have known what he was up to. Maybe she trusted him and was wrapped up in other stuff. I don't know. You'd need knowledge of their relationship, how and how often they interacted and spent their time, the relative split of domestic v politics etc. I don't have this. So, from what I do have, the reporting, my assessment is maybe she did and maybe she didn't.
The bigger question is why the party didn’t realise its money was going missing earlier?
For a little context on today’s temperature in Kew (34.8C), the estimable TA Harley British weather website has max temperatures of the year since 1875.
The annual maximum exceeded 34C on 29 occasions, so that’s once in every 5 years on average. But nearly a third of those have been since 2013. Until then it was 1 in 7 years.
16 of those hit 35C or more, which is likely somewhere in the East Midlands or East Anglia tomorrow.
So this late spring heatwave has exceeded the peaks of June, July and August in 80% of years, and could end up exceeding the peaks of 90% of years.
It is as well this peak has hit in the week when there are no exams. Sports halls with tin roofs and no air con would be exceedingly bad.
As an SNP member, Yes campaigner and contributor to the fund raiser, I’m copacetic.
I’m surprised that any Unionist would consider the 2014 referendum was winnable, I know they shat the bed in the week before but I had the impression from them that the question had been settled irrevocably.
You weren't copacetic over the tent.
Tents. Which part do you think they played in uncovering Pete’s shopping addiction?
‘Sur, there’s been a purchase of a vulgar consumer good!’
For a little context on today’s temperature in Kew (34.8C), the estimable TA Harley British weather website has max temperatures of the year since 1875.
The annual maximum exceeded 34C on 29 occasions, so that’s once in every 5 years on average. But nearly a third of those have been since 2013. Until then it was 1 in 7 years.
16 of those hit 35C or more, which is likely somewhere in the East Midlands or East Anglia tomorrow.
So this late spring heatwave has exceeded the peaks of June, July and August in 80% of years, and could end up exceeding the peaks of 90% of years.
34.8C at Kew Gardens today. Beating the previous May temperature record by a massive 2C.
The “yeah, it was hot in 1976” crowd are kicking themselves it was Kew rather than the hot-runways-and-aeroplane-exhausts Heathrow (which actually has almost identical historical stats to Kew).
It's just normal summer weather. Nothing to get exercised about.
Normal midsummer weather, in spring.
The good news is that the weird unconscious alliance of greens and technologists has probably already done enough to.swerve the worst future consequences- though there's still some inventing and a lot of implementation to do.
The bad news is that a certain amount of baking is... erm... baked in.
"In respect of any items I was aware of Peter having purchased, I had no reason to doubt that he had used his own money. We were both earning high salaries and, due to the responsibilities of my job, rarely socialised or went on holidays. We had separate bank accounts and I had no access to his financial records.” - Nicola Sturgeon
His salary was high but not exactly investment banker / footballer money at £100k.
She was the leader of the SNP and her husband was its CEO.
Regardless of their social life or holidays, she was in charge and should have known what was going on, especially given all the very firm statements she was making about the SNP's finances. How did she know that what she was saying was true?
She trusted her husband. Without evidence to the contrary it's not an outlandish position for a person to have.
And if she'd looked at the accounts herself, would she have been able to see the fraud? Would you? Would I?
Since I led the investigation team on what remains the UK's biggest fraud I think the answer to the question you addressed to me is yes.
But that's not the point. She was in charge: she should have put in place proper governance arrangements to prevent this sort of fraud going on for so long. There was, for a start, an obvious conflict of interest having her husband as CEO. And when she made statements about the finances being fine, on what basis did she say this?
That is certainly true, and a far stronger critique.
Being able to tell the difference between a £200 piece of overpriced tat and a £2000 ditto isn't a necessary skill for a first minister. Being aware if the need to mitigate conflicts of interest certainly is.
Similarly (to return to an example from upthread) you don't need to be a forensics accountant to understand the system of perverse incentives which resulted in the bat tunnel.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
I think financial crimes are hard to prove beyond reasonable doubt, and if both insist she knew nothing and his are the only fingers on the goods then that's that I guess.
It does, as others have noted, suggest a high degree of incompetence from her as leader and the treasurer - the funds per year may not be massive but they aren't an enormous organisation administratively - given they will have insisted all was well.
I doubt they will let the admission they knew nothing but spoke with confidence anyway slow them down. People never do.
34.8C at Kew Gardens today. Beating the previous May temperature record by a massive 2C.
The “yeah, it was hot in 1976” crowd are kicking themselves it was Kew rather than the hot-runways-and-aeroplane-exhausts Heathrow (which actually has almost identical historical stats to Kew).
It's just normal summer weather. Nothing to get exercised about.
It's not summer though!
It's more that it's all over the place.
My car was slightly frosted over at 6am a few weeks back.
"In respect of any items I was aware of Peter having purchased, I had no reason to doubt that he had used his own money. We were both earning high salaries and, due to the responsibilities of my job, rarely socialised or went on holidays. We had separate bank accounts and I had no access to his financial records.” - Nicola Sturgeon
His salary was high but not exactly investment banker / footballer money at £100k.
She was the leader of the SNP and her husband was its CEO.
Regardless of their social life or holidays, she was in charge and should have known what was going on, especially given all the very firm statements she was making about the SNP's finances. How did she know that what she was saying was true?
She trusted her husband. Without evidence to the contrary it's not an outlandish position for a person to have.
And if she'd looked at the accounts herself, would she have been able to see the fraud? Would you? Would I?
Since I led the investigation team on what remains the UK's biggest fraud I think the answer to the question you addressed to me is yes.
But that's not the point. She was in charge: she should have put in place proper governance arrangements to prevent this sort of fraud going on for so long. There was, for a start, an obvious conflict of interest having her husband as CEO. And when she made statements about the finances being fine, on what basis did she say this?
Exactly. This is a bit more than 'I trusted my husband'. It is surely a duty of all those involved in the corporate governance to make sure things were ok. Didn't some resign as Murrell wouldn't let them see all info?
As for if she'd know had she looked at the accounts, I'd hope any leader would. They should.
Now I'm curious how other parties monitor such matters. The Tories sell a knighthood to the chaps heading up fundraising i believe.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
"In respect of any items I was aware of Peter having purchased, I had no reason to doubt that he had used his own money. We were both earning high salaries and, due to the responsibilities of my job, rarely socialised or went on holidays. We had separate bank accounts and I had no access to his financial records.” - Nicola Sturgeon
His salary was high but not exactly investment banker / footballer money at £100k.
She was the leader of the SNP and her husband was its CEO.
Regardless of their social life or holidays, she was in charge and should have known what was going on, especially given all the very firm statements she was making about the SNP's finances. How did she know that what she was saying was true?
She trusted her husband. Without evidence to the contrary it's not an outlandish position for a person to have.
And if she'd looked at the accounts herself, would she have been able to see the fraud? Would you? Would I?
As is now the norm, those normally clutching their pearls over women being blamed for the actions of their menfolk do a somersault when it’s passed through the prism of their toilet monitor ideology.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
But what if you were crazy busy running the country and the time spent with your (also in politics) spouse was limited and more focussed on the political than the personal?
She might well have known/suspected something but I don't find it hard to believe that she didn't.
In order not to come across as a crook she now has to present herself as a moron. It's a defence I've often seen used, strangely among people who will bore the pants off you telling you how brilliant they are and why they deserve so much money for apparently knowing and noticing nothing.
How does that tally with what she wrote in her autobiography called "Frankly" - without any apparent irony.
It's embarassing for her but she hardly has to be a moron to not have known what he was up to. Maybe she trusted him and was wrapped up in other stuff. I don't know. You'd need knowledge of their relationship, how and how often they interacted and spent their time, the relative split of domestic v politics etc. I don't have this. So, from what I do have, the reporting, my assessment is maybe she did and maybe she didn't.
Sorry - but this won't do. You don't need to know about the marriage to ask why it is the SNP's leader thought it appropriate to have her husband as CEO, despite an obvious conflict of interest, what steps she took to ensure proper governance of the SNP, the basis on which she said so very clearly and firmly that there was nothing wrong with the SNP's finances, what inquiries she made when the SNP needed a £100,000 loan from her husband and where that money came from. And so on.
She wasn't just a wife trusting her husband. She was the leader of the main Scottish political party which gets money from its members and, don't forget, some government funding. She had an obligation to treat these duties seriously and all this "poor me, I had no idea" is utterly pathetic. If she was that ignorant and incompetent she was not fit to be leader.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
They were both pretty highly paid anyway, and if she didn't know how much something like the coffee machine cost then it might not have seemed like an amazing amount of spending. And he may have hidden some of it from her.
I think it's possible she didn't know.
If I were embezzling thousands of pounds from my employers I can guarantee my wife would know nothing about it. She pays no attention to anything financial. I mean, she might find it odd if I were suddenly splashing my cash on a lot of fancy stuff as I am an inveterate cheapskate - I'm the sort of person who saves the teabag to make a second cup out of it - so if I turned up with a James Bond fountain pen there might be some questions asked.
They will. No different from Oxfam wanting to 'cure' poverty. The trick is to be able to continue to ask for money for an outcome that will never happen.
Reform canvass data now has Restore on 18% in Makerfield, with Reform on 34% and Burnham on 42%. So Restore could well win Burnham the by election by splitting the Reform vote
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
But what if you were crazy busy running the country and the time spent with your (also in politics) spouse was limited and more focussed on the political than the personal?
She might well have known/suspected something but I don't find it hard to believe that she didn't.
In order not to come across as a crook she now has to present herself as a moron. It's a defence I've often seen used, strangely among people who will bore the pants off you telling you how brilliant they are and why they deserve so much money for apparently knowing and noticing nothing.
How does that tally with what she wrote in her autobiography called "Frankly" - without any apparent irony.
It's not surprising people try an "I'm an idiot" defence without sacrificing their image as brilliant and intelligent.
What's surprising is that others still accept it. I bet when SBF gets out of prison he'll have no shortage of people to give him millions despite the trial revealing, at best, comical incompetence by his own admission.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
But what if you were crazy busy running the country and the time spent with your (also in politics) spouse was limited and more focussed on the political than the personal?
She might well have known/suspected something but I don't find it hard to believe that she didn't.
In order not to come across as a crook she now has to present herself as a moron. It's a defence I've often seen used, strangely among people who will bore the pants off you telling you how brilliant they are and why they deserve so much money for apparently knowing and noticing nothing.
How does that tally with what she wrote in her autobiography called "Frankly" - without any apparent irony.
It's embarassing for her but she hardly has to be a moron to not have known what he was up to. Maybe she trusted him and was wrapped up in other stuff. I don't know. You'd need knowledge of their relationship, how and how often they interacted and spent their time, the relative split of domestic v politics etc. I don't have this. So, from what I do have, the reporting, my assessment is maybe she did and maybe she didn't.
There must have been a cumulative effect though. One or two extravagant purchases: 'Oh Peter, what have you gone and bought now?', but as they wrack up and then the winnebago arrives, you'd have to be really stupid not to know something was not right. And NS is definitely not stupid.
A once great political career has ended in total ignominy afaic.
But what you're doing there is making an assumption about how their relationship worked. Everyone saying she "must have" is doing that. This is what I'm resisting doing. I can quite easily imagine it to be true but also that it isn't. As for the rest, yes, it reflects badly either way and it's been quite the fall. She was the highest regarded politician in the UK just a few short years ago.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
But what if you were crazy busy running the country and the time spent with your (also in politics) spouse was limited and more focussed on the political than the personal?
She might well have known/suspected something but I don't find it hard to believe that she didn't.
In order not to come across as a crook she now has to present herself as a moron. It's a defence I've often seen used, strangely among people who will bore the pants off you telling you how brilliant they are and why they deserve so much money for apparently knowing and noticing nothing.
How does that tally with what she wrote in her autobiography called "Frankly" - without any apparent irony.
It's embarassing for her but she hardly has to be a moron to not have known what he was up to. Maybe she trusted him and was wrapped up in other stuff. I don't know. You'd need knowledge of their relationship, how and how often they interacted and spent their time, the relative split of domestic v politics etc. I don't have this. So, from what I do have, the reporting, my assessment is maybe she did and maybe she didn't.
The bigger question is why the party didn’t realise its money was going missing earlier?
Not for the first time, and I am sure it won't be the last, I wonder what their auditors think they are doing and what their job is. My experience of them is that they spot any discrepancy larger than about sixpence and won't let go until you have moved a 37p transaction from sundries to pencils.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
I think financial crimes are hard to prove beyond reasonable doubt, and if both insist she knew nothing and his are the only fingers on the goods then that's that I guess.
It does, as others have noted, suggest a high degree of incompetence from her as leader and the treasurer - the funds per year may not be massive but they aren't an enormous organisation administratively - given they will have insisted all was well.
I doubt they will let the admission they knew nothing but spoke with confidence anyway slow them down. People never do.
Generally, a good chap, or chappess, does not enquire too closely. It would be bad manners to do so.
It suits people to be incurious, just as it suited Carmela and Meadow Soprano, to believe that Tony was a waste management consultant, who made some money on the side through illegal gamblng.
The biggest question in all of the Murrell stuff, is not did NS know anything, or why did she not notice this parade of luxury goods appearing in Murrell's inventory, its why NO ONE in the SNP thought hmm, our accounts look a bit dodgy, this isn't squaring, people will start asking questions about the 600k/Indyref 2 fund soon.
It only all came to light from a tip off to police from outside the party executive.
And the party leader at that time, and perhaps her deputy, should shoulder some of the responsibility for that. People are entitled to ask questions, its time for political leaders to show accountability.
The biggest question in all of the Murrell stuff, is not did NS know anything, or why did she not notice this parade of luxury goods appearing in Murrell's inventory, its why NO ONE in the SNP thought hmm, our accounts look a bit dodgy, this isn't squaring, people will start asking questions about the 600k/Indyref 2 fund soon.
It only all came to light from a tip off to police from outside the party executive.
And the party leader at that time, and perhaps her deputy, should shoulder some of the responsibility for that. People are entitled to ask questions, its time for political leaders to show accountability.
They trusted the auditors, who themselves will have questions to answer.
How is it possible to spend £110 on a pencil sharpener?
When you have lots of money 'normal' stuff no longer excites. There's entire serieses of people mocking the awful furniture in the homes of billionaires for just that reason. The cost is the point.
Murrell didn't steal millions, and of course had to hide it all from his wife, so wasting it on that crap is even more weird.
Apparently Sturgeon was the best person to run the SNP and Scotland for very many years who assured everyone a few years back that the SNP's finances were fine, there was no reason to ask any questions etc while at the same time being the most gullible person on the planet who did not notice the gigantic fraud her husband was perpetrating under her nose nor any of the very expensive items he was buying with stolen money.
Righto.
That's the long arc of Scottish history right there. From one fraud - the Darien scheme to another - pepper pots and whatnot.
The Darien Scheme was run by William Paterson, a Scottish merchant who notably helped found the Bank of England in 1694. So the Union was an inside job by someone who made it inevitable that Scotland would have to merge with England
"In respect of any items I was aware of Peter having purchased, I had no reason to doubt that he had used his own money. We were both earning high salaries and, due to the responsibilities of my job, rarely socialised or went on holidays. We had separate bank accounts and I had no access to his financial records.” - Nicola Sturgeon
His salary was high but not exactly investment banker / footballer money at £100k.
She was the leader of the SNP and her husband was its CEO.
Regardless of their social life or holidays, she was in charge and should have known what was going on, especially given all the very firm statements she was making about the SNP's finances. How did she know that what she was saying was true?
She trusted her husband. Without evidence to the contrary it's not an outlandish position for a person to have.
And if she'd looked at the accounts herself, would she have been able to see the fraud? Would you? Would I?
Since I led the investigation team on what remains the UK's biggest fraud I think the answer to the question you addressed to me is yes.
But that's not the point. She was in charge: she should have put in place proper governance arrangements to prevent this sort of fraud going on for so long. There was, for a start, an obvious conflict of interest having her husband as CEO. And when she made statements about the finances being fine, on what basis did she say this?
That is certainly true, and a far stronger critique.
Being able to tell the difference between a £200 piece of overpriced tat and a £2000 ditto isn't a necessary skill for a first minister. Being aware if the need to mitigate conflicts of interest certainly is.
Similarly (to return to an example from upthread) you don't need to be a forensics accountant to understand the system of perverse incentives which resulted in the bat tunnel.
Natural England, funded by government, is now arguing the tunnel is inadequate mitigation, and pressing for another round of litigation...
The biggest question in all of the Murrell stuff, is not did NS know anything, or why did she not notice this parade of luxury goods appearing in Murrell's inventory, its why NO ONE in the SNP thought hmm, our accounts look a bit dodgy, this isn't squaring, people will start asking questions about the 600k/Indyref 2 fund soon.
It only all came to light from a tip off to police from outside the party executive.
And the party leader at that time, and perhaps her deputy, should shoulder some of the responsibility for that. People are entitled to ask questions, its time for political leaders to show accountability.
They trusted the auditors, who themselves will have questions to answer.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
But what if you were crazy busy running the country and the time spent with your (also in politics) spouse was limited and more focussed on the political than the personal?
She might well have known/suspected something but I don't find it hard to believe that she didn't.
In order not to come across as a crook she now has to present herself as a moron. It's a defence I've often seen used, strangely among people who will bore the pants off you telling you how brilliant they are and why they deserve so much money for apparently knowing and noticing nothing.
How does that tally with what she wrote in her autobiography called "Frankly" - without any apparent irony.
It's embarassing for her but she hardly has to be a moron to not have known what he was up to. Maybe she trusted him and was wrapped up in other stuff. I don't know. You'd need knowledge of their relationship, how and how often they interacted and spent their time, the relative split of domestic v politics etc. I don't have this. So, from what I do have, the reporting, my assessment is maybe she did and maybe she didn't.
The bigger question is why the party didn’t realise its money was going missing earlier?
he controlled the books and only an idiot pal could see them, it was mental and where did the 600K go
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
But what if you were crazy busy running the country and the time spent with your (also in politics) spouse was limited and more focussed on the political than the personal?
She might well have known/suspected something but I don't find it hard to believe that she didn't.
In order not to come across as a crook she now has to present herself as a moron. It's a defence I've often seen used, strangely among people who will bore the pants off you telling you how brilliant they are and why they deserve so much money for apparently knowing and noticing nothing.
How does that tally with what she wrote in her autobiography called "Frankly" - without any apparent irony.
It's embarassing for her but she hardly has to be a moron to not have known what he was up to. Maybe she trusted him and was wrapped up in other stuff. I don't know. You'd need knowledge of their relationship, how and how often they interacted and spent their time, the relative split of domestic v politics etc. I don't have this. So, from what I do have, the reporting, my assessment is maybe she did and maybe she didn't.
There must have been a cumulative effect though. One or two extravagant purchases: 'Oh Peter, what have you gone and bought now?', but as they wrack up and then the winnebago arrives, you'd have to be really stupid not to know something was not right. And NS is definitely not stupid.
A once great political career has ended in total ignominy afaic.
But what you're doing there is making an assumption about how their relationship worked. Everyone saying she "must have" is doing that. This is what I'm resisting doing. I can quite easily imagine it to be true but also that it isn't. As for the rest, yes, it reflects badly either way and it's been quite the fall. She was the highest regarded politician in the UK just a few short years ago.
We make working assumptions all the time about stuff. For a prosecution you have to have all your ducks in a row 'beyond reasonable doubt' and most dubious human activity and knowledge doesn't get past that test. But if applying the everyday common sense test, you assume that the status of a spouse in this situation WRT transparent and absolute honestly can't be fully relied on.
It also makes me laugh how the people here who are most critical of Faragist charlatanry and ill-preparedness for government are the most gung ho about 'Just ignore the damn regulations!!' - I mean really guys, pick a lane.
The point being made wasn’t to ignore any legislations but to make our own.
Anyway, answer the point: how have Spain built a lot of high speed rail since this came in if it’s such a problem?
No, you answer the point of where we go from here.
So far I've had:
"We should just ignore them like everyone else" - but how do you start ignoring them, with whole bodies set up to enforce them and environmental groups able to block projects using judicial review?
And versions of:
"We should just pass a law to invalidate, ignore, or bypass the regulations - which is fine, and absolutely possible, but then you are deregulating and departing from EU regulations. Which is what I want, but I didn't know it was what you wanted, and if it is, basically means we are all agreed that we need to move away from retained EU law.
Item - the rest of the EU don’t build such structures. Item - the specification of the Bat Tunnel was farcical and proved that its author was ignorant of how such a specification should be done. Item - the design of the Bat Tunnel didn’t meet its specification.
Conclusion - it’s possible to protect bats etc without building such nonsense. Nobody else builds them.
The bat tunnel is not an isolated incident. The fish thing at Sizewell C (?) has already been mentioned, and we also have the example of the UK's answer to Disneyland Paris having to be completely abandoned because of a jumping spider that isn't even rare - it is rare in the UK only and plentiful in Europe.
You can argue that this sort of thing doesn't seem to happen in other countries with the same regulations, and that this is a toxic British response to the regulations, and that's fine, so what would YOU do, HERE and NOW. Because I'm not sure whining that the Spanish don't do it is a plan.
34.8C at Kew Gardens today. Beating the previous May temperature record by a massive 2C.
The “yeah, it was hot in 1976” crowd are kicking themselves it was Kew rather than the hot-runways-and-aeroplane-exhausts Heathrow (which actually has almost identical historical stats to Kew).
It's just normal summer weather. Nothing to get exercised about.
Normal midsummer weather, in spring.
And a week or so ago I was experiencing normal winter weather in spring.
Apparently Sturgeon was the best person to run the SNP and Scotland for very many years who assured everyone a few years back that the SNP's finances were fine, there was no reason to ask any questions etc while at the same time being the most gullible person on the planet who did not notice the gigantic fraud her husband was perpetrating under her nose nor any of the very expensive items he was buying with stolen money.
Righto.
That's the long arc of Scottish history right there. From one fraud - the Darien scheme to another - pepper pots and whatnot.
The Darien Scheme was run by William Paterson, a Scottish merchant who notably helped found the Bank of England in 1694. So the Union was an inside job by someone who made it inevitable that Scotland would have to merge with England
/Tin Foil Hat off.
If we're talking frauds I prefer Gregor MacGregor. Shame about all the deaths though.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
But what if you were crazy busy running the country and the time spent with your (also in politics) spouse was limited and more focussed on the political than the personal?
She might well have known/suspected something but I don't find it hard to believe that she didn't.
In order not to come across as a crook she now has to present herself as a moron. It's a defence I've often seen used, strangely among people who will bore the pants off you telling you how brilliant they are and why they deserve so much money for apparently knowing and noticing nothing.
How does that tally with what she wrote in her autobiography called "Frankly" - without any apparent irony.
It's embarassing for her but she hardly has to be a moron to not have known what he was up to. Maybe she trusted him and was wrapped up in other stuff. I don't know. You'd need knowledge of their relationship, how and how often they interacted and spent their time, the relative split of domestic v politics etc. I don't have this. So, from what I do have, the reporting, my assessment is maybe she did and maybe she didn't.
There must have been a cumulative effect though. One or two extravagant purchases: 'Oh Peter, what have you gone and bought now?', but as they wrack up and then the winnebago arrives, you'd have to be really stupid not to know something was not right. And NS is definitely not stupid.
A once great political career has ended in total ignominy afaic.
But what you're doing there is making an assumption about how their relationship worked. Everyone saying she "must have" is doing that. This is what I'm resisting doing. I can quite easily imagine it to be true but also that it isn't. As for the rest, yes, it reflects badly either way and it's been quite the fall. She was the highest regarded politician in the UK just a few short years ago.
Yes, I'm making an assumption - but it's a quite reasonable one. The alternative just does not make any sense to me because I have to believe her to be so naively trusting of her husband's word that she would ignore all the contrary evidence. That happens in some relationships where a spouse might be easily duped. NS has throughout her political career shown herself to be the smartest of smart cookies.
How is it possible to spend £110 on a pencil sharpener?
When you have lots of money 'normal' stuff no longer excites. There's entire serieses of people mocking the awful furniture in the homes of billionaires for just that reason. The cost is the point.
Murrell didn't steal millions, and of course had to hide it all from his wife, so wasting it on that crap is even more weird.
It sounds a lot like compulsive behaviour. That's not to excuse it - he's still responsible for his actions - but making the purchase would have satisfied the compulsion, and what was bought would have been much less important.
I'm lucky that my money-related compulsive behaviour hasn't extended beyond buying too much chocolate and Warhammer.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
It seems to me quite possible that Sturgeon knew nothing. They had a large income. While she was focusing on failing to secure Scottish independence, she may have devolved all household finance matters to him.
Though not comparable, if you asked my better half what her income (or mine) was, what any of our bills were, or indeed about any household financial matter, she would be utterly clueless. Her strength lies in her spending, not in her accounting.
Your don't think your better half would say anything at all about your spending if a brand new winnebago, jag and golf appeared on the driveway?
No. We don't have a driveway.
I hope that nobody on PB has a driveway except Jim Miller - it is called a drive.
The biggest question in all of the Murrell stuff, is not did NS know anything, or why did she not notice this parade of luxury goods appearing in Murrell's inventory, its why NO ONE in the SNP thought hmm, our accounts look a bit dodgy, this isn't squaring, people will start asking questions about the 600k/Indyref 2 fund soon.
It only all came to light from a tip off to police from outside the party executive.
And the party leader at that time, and perhaps her deputy, should shoulder some of the responsibility for that. People are entitled to ask questions, its time for political leaders to show accountability.
They trusted the auditors, who themselves will have questions to answer.
Even the big auditors seem to be able to miss the very obvious. But you have to go with someone so it doesn't matter if they do - never their fault.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
It seems to me quite possible that Sturgeon knew nothing. They had a large income. While she was focusing on failing to secure Scottish independence, she may have devolved all household finance matters to him.
Though not comparable, if you asked my better half what her income (or mine) was, what any of our bills were, or indeed about any household financial matter, she would be utterly clueless. Her strength lies in her spending, not in her accounting.
Your don't think your better half would say anything at all about your spending if a brand new winnebago, jag and golf appeared on the driveway?
No. We don't have a driveway.
I hope that nobody on PB has a driveway except Jim Miller - it is called a drive.
I think I might have a lane. I feel daft calling it a drive anyroad.
"In respect of any items I was aware of Peter having purchased, I had no reason to doubt that he had used his own money. We were both earning high salaries and, due to the responsibilities of my job, rarely socialised or went on holidays. We had separate bank accounts and I had no access to his financial records.” - Nicola Sturgeon
His salary was high but not exactly investment banker / footballer money at £100k.
She was the leader of the SNP and her husband was its CEO.
Regardless of their social life or holidays, she was in charge and should have known what was going on, especially given all the very firm statements she was making about the SNP's finances. How did she know that what she was saying was true?
She trusted her husband. Without evidence to the contrary it's not an outlandish position for a person to have.
And if she'd looked at the accounts herself, would she have been able to see the fraud? Would you? Would I?
Since I led the investigation team on what remains the UK's biggest fraud I think the answer to the question you addressed to me is yes.
But that's not the point. She was in charge: she should have put in place proper governance arrangements to prevent this sort of fraud going on for so long. There was, for a start, an obvious conflict of interest having her husband as CEO. And when she made statements about the finances being fine, on what basis did she say this?
That is certainly true, and a far stronger critique.
Being able to tell the difference between a £200 piece of overpriced tat and a £2000 ditto isn't a necessary skill for a first minister. Being aware if the need to mitigate conflicts of interest certainly is.
Similarly (to return to an example from upthread) you don't need to be a forensics accountant to understand the system of perverse incentives which resulted in the bat tunnel.
Natural England, funded by government, is now arguing the tunnel is inadequate mitigation, and pressing for another round of litigation...
Christ, will they not be satisfied until swamps and forests reclaim the land and the Somerset levels reflooded to help newts?
The biggest question in all of the Murrell stuff, is not did NS know anything, or why did she not notice this parade of luxury goods appearing in Murrell's inventory, its why NO ONE in the SNP thought hmm, our accounts look a bit dodgy, this isn't squaring, people will start asking questions about the 600k/Indyref 2 fund soon.
It only all came to light from a tip off to police from outside the party executive.
And the party leader at that time, and perhaps her deputy, should shoulder some of the responsibility for that. People are entitled to ask questions, its time for political leaders to show accountability.
They trusted the auditors, who themselves will have questions to answer.
Who were the auditors. Nicola's Auntie and Uncle?
From 2023
The firm that audits the SNP's finances has resigned, the BBC has learned.
Accountants Johnston Carmichael, which has worked with the party for more than a decade, said the decision was taken after a review of its clients.
Police investigating the SNP's finances this week searched the home of former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell - Nicola Sturgeon's husband. He was arrested and released without charge.
The BBC understands Johnston Carmichael resigned before Mr Murrell's arrest.
A spokesperson for the SNP said it was in the process of finding a replacement firm.
The SNP has signed a contract with a new auditor more than half a year after the previous firm quit.
SNP leader Humza Yousaf confirmed on Wednesday that AMS Accountants Group has taken on the party's books.
Mr Yousaf, Scotland's first minister, said: "I am pleased to confirm that we have secured the services of auditors to take forward our accounts.
"We take our statutory obligations extremely seriously, so it is welcome news that AMS Accountants Group will complete the accounts for both the party and the SNP Westminster group.
"There is hard work ahead, but it is really encouraging to have them on board as we work towards challenging deadlines."
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
It seems to me quite possible that Sturgeon knew nothing. They had a large income. While she was focusing on failing to secure Scottish independence, she may have devolved all household finance matters to him.
Though not comparable, if you asked my better half what her income (or mine) was, what any of our bills were, or indeed about any household financial matter, she would be utterly clueless. Her strength lies in her spending, not in her accounting.
Your don't think your better half would say anything at all about your spending if a brand new winnebago, jag and golf appeared on the driveway?
No. We don't have a driveway.
I hope that nobody on PB has a driveway except Jim Miller - it is called a drive.
I think I might have a lane. I feel daft calling it a drive anyroad.
Apparently Sturgeon was the best person to run the SNP and Scotland for very many years who assured everyone a few years back that the SNP's finances were fine, there was no reason to ask any questions etc while at the same time being the most gullible person on the planet who did not notice the gigantic fraud her husband was perpetrating under her nose nor any of the very expensive items he was buying with stolen money.
Righto.
That's the long arc of Scottish history right there. From one fraud - the Darien scheme to another - pepper pots and whatnot.
The Darien Scheme was run by William Paterson, a Scottish merchant who notably helped found the Bank of England in 1694. So the Union was an inside job by someone who made it inevitable that Scotland would have to merge with England
/Tin Foil Hat off.
If we're talking frauds I prefer Gregor MacGregor. Shame about all the deaths though.
There seems to be a trend here. Isn't Trump part Scottish?
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
But what if you were crazy busy running the country and the time spent with your (also in politics) spouse was limited and more focussed on the political than the personal?
She might well have known/suspected something but I don't find it hard to believe that she didn't.
In order not to come across as a crook she now has to present herself as a moron. It's a defence I've often seen used, strangely among people who will bore the pants off you telling you how brilliant they are and why they deserve so much money for apparently knowing and noticing nothing.
How does that tally with what she wrote in her autobiography called "Frankly" - without any apparent irony.
It's embarassing for her but she hardly has to be a moron to not have known what he was up to. Maybe she trusted him and was wrapped up in other stuff. I don't know. You'd need knowledge of their relationship, how and how often they interacted and spent their time, the relative split of domestic v politics etc. I don't have this. So, from what I do have, the reporting, my assessment is maybe she did and maybe she didn't.
There must have been a cumulative effect though. One or two extravagant purchases: 'Oh Peter, what have you gone and bought now?', but as they wrack up and then the winnebago arrives, you'd have to be really stupid not to know something was not right. And NS is definitely not stupid.
A once great political career has ended in total ignominy afaic.
But what you're doing there is making an assumption about how their relationship worked. Everyone saying she "must have" is doing that. This is what I'm resisting doing. I can quite easily imagine it to be true but also that it isn't. As for the rest, yes, it reflects badly either way and it's been quite the fall. She was the highest regarded politician in the UK just a few short years ago.
We make working assumptions all the time about stuff. For a prosecution you have to have all your ducks in a row 'beyond reasonable doubt' and most dubious human activity and knowledge doesn't get past that test. But if applying the everyday common sense test, you assume that the status of a spouse in this situation WRT transparent and absolute honestly can't be fully relied on.
Being spouse and Leader both is key for me. Fine, not enough evidence she was involved, maybe none at all. But as said with some of Borises defenders (albeit very different conduct), behaviour doesn't have to be criminal to be criticised. A duped spouse is sad for her. A duped Leader is worth criticising even in her telling of events being true.
And doubting her is not unreasonable but cannot be proven.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
But what if you were crazy busy running the country and the time spent with your (also in politics) spouse was limited and more focussed on the political than the personal?
She might well have known/suspected something but I don't find it hard to believe that she didn't.
In order not to come across as a crook she now has to present herself as a moron. It's a defence I've often seen used, strangely among people who will bore the pants off you telling you how brilliant they are and why they deserve so much money for apparently knowing and noticing nothing.
How does that tally with what she wrote in her autobiography called "Frankly" - without any apparent irony.
It's embarassing for her but she hardly has to be a moron to not have known what he was up to. Maybe she trusted him and was wrapped up in other stuff. I don't know. You'd need knowledge of their relationship, how and how often they interacted and spent their time, the relative split of domestic v politics etc. I don't have this. So, from what I do have, the reporting, my assessment is maybe she did and maybe she didn't.
Sorry - but this won't do. You don't need to know about the marriage to ask why it is the SNP's leader thought it appropriate to have her husband as CEO, despite an obvious conflict of interest, what steps she took to ensure proper governance of the SNP, the basis on which she said so very clearly and firmly that there was nothing wrong with the SNP's finances, what inquiries she made when the SNP needed a £100,000 loan from her husband and where that money came from. And so on.
She wasn't just a wife trusting her husband. She was the leader of the main Scottish political party which gets money from its members and, don't forget, some government funding. She had an obligation to treat these duties seriously and all this "poor me, I had no idea" is utterly pathetic. If she was that ignorant and incompetent she was not fit to be leader.
I'm not mounting a defence of Nicola Sturgeon against those charges. I'm saying one specific thing:
Without knowledge of how their relationship worked (or making assumptions about it in lieu of the relevant knowledge) the assertion that she MUST have known what hubby was doing on the £££ front, the embezzling, is not possible to make.
To say she should have known if she was taking all her duties seriously is a different point.
Apparently Sturgeon was the best person to run the SNP and Scotland for very many years who assured everyone a few years back that the SNP's finances were fine, there was no reason to ask any questions etc while at the same time being the most gullible person on the planet who did not notice the gigantic fraud her husband was perpetrating under her nose nor any of the very expensive items he was buying with stolen money.
Righto.
That's the long arc of Scottish history right there. From one fraud - the Darien scheme to another - pepper pots and whatnot.
The Darien Scheme was run by William Paterson, a Scottish merchant who notably helped found the Bank of England in 1694. So the Union was an inside job by someone who made it inevitable that Scotland would have to merge with England
/Tin Foil Hat off.
If we're talking frauds I prefer Gregor MacGregor. Shame about all the deaths though.
There seems to be a trend here. Isn't Trump part Scottish?
I think he's gone off Scotland because of windfarms near his golf course.
Apparently Sturgeon was the best person to run the SNP and Scotland for very many years who assured everyone a few years back that the SNP's finances were fine, there was no reason to ask any questions etc while at the same time being the most gullible person on the planet who did not notice the gigantic fraud her husband was perpetrating under her nose nor any of the very expensive items he was buying with stolen money.
Righto.
That's the long arc of Scottish history right there. From one fraud - the Darien scheme to another - pepper pots and whatnot.
The Darien Scheme was run by William Paterson, a Scottish merchant who notably helped found the Bank of England in 1694. So the Union was an inside job by someone who made it inevitable that Scotland would have to merge with England
/Tin Foil Hat off.
If we're talking frauds I prefer Gregor MacGregor. Shame about all the deaths though.
There seems to be a trend here. Isn't Trump part Scottish?
I think he's gone off Scotland because of windfarms near his golf course.
He just needs to get his head in the game and market it as the bigliest crazy golf course in the world.
Apparently Sturgeon was the best person to run the SNP and Scotland for very many years who assured everyone a few years back that the SNP's finances were fine, there was no reason to ask any questions etc while at the same time being the most gullible person on the planet who did not notice the gigantic fraud her husband was perpetrating under her nose nor any of the very expensive items he was buying with stolen money.
Righto.
That's the long arc of Scottish history right there. From one fraud - the Darien scheme to another - pepper pots and whatnot.
The Darien Scheme was run by William Paterson, a Scottish merchant who notably helped found the Bank of England in 1694. So the Union was an inside job by someone who made it inevitable that Scotland would have to merge with England
/Tin Foil Hat off.
If we're talking frauds I prefer Gregor MacGregor. Shame about all the deaths though.
There seems to be a trend here. Isn't Trump part Scottish?
I believe there are people currently very close to the reins of UK power who are of Scotch descent. They even boast about it!
34.8C at Kew Gardens today. Beating the previous UK May temperature record by a massive 2C.
The “yeah, it was hot in 1976” crowd are kicking themselves it was Kew rather than the hot-runways-and-aeroplane-exhausts Heathrow (which actually has almost identical historical stats to Kew).
Hotter tomorrow. Probably, unless we get a major heatwave later, will end up being the hottest day of the year.
Given that this is the U.K. I can well imagine us getting used to summer this week followed by an absolute shocker of a rain drenched wrecker of the cricket season.
Oddly I am hosting two Texan students from tomorrow. Normally they arrive to temps significantly cooler. Not this year.
"In respect of any items I was aware of Peter having purchased, I had no reason to doubt that he had used his own money. We were both earning high salaries and, due to the responsibilities of my job, rarely socialised or went on holidays. We had separate bank accounts and I had no access to his financial records.” - Nicola Sturgeon
His salary was high but not exactly investment banker / footballer money at £100k.
She was the leader of the SNP and her husband was its CEO.
Regardless of their social life or holidays, she was in charge and should have known what was going on, especially given all the very firm statements she was making about the SNP's finances. How did she know that what she was saying was true?
She trusted her husband. Without evidence to the contrary it's not an outlandish position for a person to have.
And if she'd looked at the accounts herself, would she have been able to see the fraud? Would you? Would I?
Since I led the investigation team on what remains the UK's biggest fraud I think the answer to the question you addressed to me is yes.
But that's not the point. She was in charge: she should have put in place proper governance arrangements to prevent this sort of fraud going on for so long. There was, for a start, an obvious conflict of interest having her husband as CEO. And when she made statements about the finances being fine, on what basis did she say this?
That is certainly true, and a far stronger critique.
Being able to tell the difference between a £200 piece of overpriced tat and a £2000 ditto isn't a necessary skill for a first minister. Being aware if the need to mitigate conflicts of interest certainly is.
Similarly (to return to an example from upthread) you don't need to be a forensics accountant to understand the system of perverse incentives which resulted in the bat tunnel.
Natural England, funded by government, is now arguing the tunnel is inadequate mitigation, and pressing for another round of litigation...
If your goal was to protect bats, you could buy a whole forest for £100m. I think Labour's new bill to some extent addresses this.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
But what if you were crazy busy running the country and the time spent with your (also in politics) spouse was limited and more focussed on the political than the personal?
She might well have known/suspected something but I don't find it hard to believe that she didn't.
In order not to come across as a crook she now has to present herself as a moron. It's a defence I've often seen used, strangely among people who will bore the pants off you telling you how brilliant they are and why they deserve so much money for apparently knowing and noticing nothing.
How does that tally with what she wrote in her autobiography called "Frankly" - without any apparent irony.
It's embarassing for her but she hardly has to be a moron to not have known what he was up to. Maybe she trusted him and was wrapped up in other stuff. I don't know. You'd need knowledge of their relationship, how and how often they interacted and spent their time, the relative split of domestic v politics etc. I don't have this. So, from what I do have, the reporting, my assessment is maybe she did and maybe she didn't.
There must have been a cumulative effect though. One or two extravagant purchases: 'Oh Peter, what have you gone and bought now?', but as they wrack up and then the winnebago arrives, you'd have to be really stupid not to know something was not right. And NS is definitely not stupid.
A once great political career has ended in total ignominy afaic.
But what you're doing there is making an assumption about how their relationship worked. Everyone saying she "must have" is doing that. This is what I'm resisting doing. I can quite easily imagine it to be true but also that it isn't. As for the rest, yes, it reflects badly either way and it's been quite the fall. She was the highest regarded politician in the UK just a few short years ago.
Yes, I'm making an assumption - but it's a quite reasonable one. The alternative just does not make any sense to me because I have to believe her to be so naively trusting of her husband's word that she would ignore all the contrary evidence. That happens in some relationships where a spouse might be easily duped. NS has throughout her political career shown herself to be the smartest of smart cookies.
As I say: Does Not Compute
Well for example you could imagine the possibility that she left a lot of that stuff to him and with all her other priorities didn't pay enough attention to what iyo should have been obvious.
Then the relationship. Maybe they were a bit estranged. A bit distant. Didn't talk freely and honestly. I don't know. Do you?
No, you can't say she "must have" known. That is what doesn't compute. You can only say she should have if she was doing all aspects her job properly. And you can say she bears responsibility as party leader.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
They were both pretty highly paid anyway, and if she didn't know how much something like the coffee machine cost then it might not have seemed like an amazing amount of spending. And he may have hidden some of it from her.
I think it's possible she didn't know.
If I were embezzling thousands of pounds from my employers I can guarantee my wife would know nothing about it. She pays no attention to anything financial. I mean, she might find it odd if I were suddenly splashing my cash on a lot of fancy stuff as I am an inveterate cheapskate - I'm the sort of person who saves the teabag to make a second cup out of it - so if I turned up with a James Bond fountain pen there might be some questions asked.
And if your wife were managing director of your employer, and you in charge of the accounts, might that imply a bit more than that ?
I don't blame Sturgeon for her husband's crimes, but did she not have some responsibility for the management of the party's affairs ?
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
But what if you were crazy busy running the country and the time spent with your (also in politics) spouse was limited and more focussed on the political than the personal?
She might well have known/suspected something but I don't find it hard to believe that she didn't.
In order not to come across as a crook she now has to present herself as a moron. It's a defence I've often seen used, strangely among people who will bore the pants off you telling you how brilliant they are and why they deserve so much money for apparently knowing and noticing nothing.
How does that tally with what she wrote in her autobiography called "Frankly" - without any apparent irony.
It's embarassing for her but she hardly has to be a moron to not have known what he was up to. Maybe she trusted him and was wrapped up in other stuff. I don't know. You'd need knowledge of their relationship, how and how often they interacted and spent their time, the relative split of domestic v politics etc. I don't have this. So, from what I do have, the reporting, my assessment is maybe she did and maybe she didn't.
There must have been a cumulative effect though. One or two extravagant purchases: 'Oh Peter, what have you gone and bought now?', but as they wrack up and then the winnebago arrives, you'd have to be really stupid not to know something was not right. And NS is definitely not stupid.
A once great political career has ended in total ignominy afaic.
But what you're doing there is making an assumption about how their relationship worked. Everyone saying she "must have" is doing that. This is what I'm resisting doing. I can quite easily imagine it to be true but also that it isn't. As for the rest, yes, it reflects badly either way and it's been quite the fall. She was the highest regarded politician in the UK just a few short years ago.
Yes, I'm making an assumption - but it's a quite reasonable one. The alternative just does not make any sense to me because I have to believe her to be so naively trusting of her husband's word that she would ignore all the contrary evidence. That happens in some relationships where a spouse might be easily duped. NS has throughout her political career shown herself to be the smartest of smart cookies.
As I say: Does Not Compute
Well for example you could imagine the possibility that she left a lot of that stuff to him and with all her other priorities didn't pay enough attention to what iyo should have been obvious.
Then the relationship. Maybe they were a bit estranged. A bit distant. Didn't talk freely and honestly. I don't know. Do you?
No, you can't say she "must have" known. That is what doesn't compute. You can only say she should have if she was doing all aspects her job properly. And you can say she bears responsibility as party leader.
If I’m being honest I think she is a lying piece of shit (see Salmond stitch up), but on this I can just about believe she didn’t know.
As leader of the SNP she should have done, though.
"In respect of any items I was aware of Peter having purchased, I had no reason to doubt that he had used his own money. We were both earning high salaries and, due to the responsibilities of my job, rarely socialised or went on holidays. We had separate bank accounts and I had no access to his financial records.” - Nicola Sturgeon
His salary was high but not exactly investment banker / footballer money at £100k.
She was the leader of the SNP and her husband was its CEO.
Regardless of their social life or holidays, she was in charge and should have known what was going on, especially given all the very firm statements she was making about the SNP's finances. How did she know that what she was saying was true?
She trusted her husband. Without evidence to the contrary it's not an outlandish position for a person to have.
And if she'd looked at the accounts herself, would she have been able to see the fraud? Would you? Would I?
Since I led the investigation team on what remains the UK's biggest fraud I think the answer to the question you addressed to me is yes.
But that's not the point. She was in charge: she should have put in place proper governance arrangements to prevent this sort of fraud going on for so long. There was, for a start, an obvious conflict of interest having her husband as CEO. And when she made statements about the finances being fine, on what basis did she say this?
That is certainly true, and a far stronger critique.
Being able to tell the difference between a £200 piece of overpriced tat and a £2000 ditto isn't a necessary skill for a first minister. Being aware if the need to mitigate conflicts of interest certainly is.
Similarly (to return to an example from upthread) you don't need to be a forensics accountant to understand the system of perverse incentives which resulted in the bat tunnel.
Natural England, funded by government, is now arguing the tunnel is inadequate mitigation, and pressing for another round of litigation...
Meanwhile, Natural England, funded by government, is failing to manage its important SAC/SSSI sites here in the Flatlands properly, mainly through a lack of ability to do anything positive without 10 years of dithering. In the past, they even tried to denotify them...
So on the one hand, they put £100m+ burdens on development, but on the other, they spend 50p managing genuine ecological oases.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
They were both pretty highly paid anyway, and if she didn't know how much something like the coffee machine cost then it might not have seemed like an amazing amount of spending. And he may have hidden some of it from her.
I think it's possible she didn't know.
If I were embezzling thousands of pounds from my employers I can guarantee my wife would know nothing about it. She pays no attention to anything financial. I mean, she might find it odd if I were suddenly splashing my cash on a lot of fancy stuff as I am an inveterate cheapskate - I'm the sort of person who saves the teabag to make a second cup out of it - so if I turned up with a James Bond fountain pen there might be some questions asked.
And if your wife were managing director of your employer, and you in charge of the accounts, might that imply a bit more than that ?
I don't blame Sturgeon for her husband's crimes, but did she not have some responsibility for the management of the party's affairs ?
More to the point - where was she when her husband was blocking senior SNP people from accessing the financial information they were entitled to?
How is it possible to spend £110 on a pencil sharpener?
That is the point. If your other half turned up with a new pencil sharpener, it would not occur to you or me or most people that it could have cost £110.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
But what if you were crazy busy running the country and the time spent with your (also in politics) spouse was limited and more focussed on the political than the personal?
She might well have known/suspected something but I don't find it hard to believe that she didn't.
In order not to come across as a crook she now has to present herself as a moron. It's a defence I've often seen used, strangely among people who will bore the pants off you telling you how brilliant they are and why they deserve so much money for apparently knowing and noticing nothing.
How does that tally with what she wrote in her autobiography called "Frankly" - without any apparent irony.
It's embarassing for her but she hardly has to be a moron to not have known what he was up to. Maybe she trusted him and was wrapped up in other stuff. I don't know. You'd need knowledge of their relationship, how and how often they interacted and spent their time, the relative split of domestic v politics etc. I don't have this. So, from what I do have, the reporting, my assessment is maybe she did and maybe she didn't.
There must have been a cumulative effect though. One or two extravagant purchases: 'Oh Peter, what have you gone and bought now?', but as they wrack up and then the winnebago arrives, you'd have to be really stupid not to know something was not right. And NS is definitely not stupid.
A once great political career has ended in total ignominy afaic.
But what you're doing there is making an assumption about how their relationship worked. Everyone saying she "must have" is doing that. This is what I'm resisting doing. I can quite easily imagine it to be true but also that it isn't. As for the rest, yes, it reflects badly either way and it's been quite the fall. She was the highest regarded politician in the UK just a few short years ago.
Yes, I'm making an assumption - but it's a quite reasonable one. The alternative just does not make any sense to me because I have to believe her to be so naively trusting of her husband's word that she would ignore all the contrary evidence. That happens in some relationships where a spouse might be easily duped. NS has throughout her political career shown herself to be the smartest of smart cookies.
As I say: Does Not Compute
Well for example you could imagine the possibility that she left a lot of that stuff to him and with all her other priorities didn't pay enough attention to what iyo should have been obvious.
Then the relationship. Maybe they were a bit estranged. A bit distant. Didn't talk freely and honestly. I don't know. Do you?
No, you can't say she "must have" known. That is what doesn't compute. You can only say she should have if she was doing all aspects her job properly. And you can say she bears responsibility as party leader.
If I’m being honest I think she is a lying piece of shit (see Salmond stitch up), but on this I can just about believe she didn’t know.
As leader of the SNP she should have done, though.
I'm not disputing that. It really is the one specific point I'm making. "She must have known" doesn't stand up unless the person saying it knows more than has been reported.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
But what if you were crazy busy running the country and the time spent with your (also in politics) spouse was limited and more focussed on the political than the personal?
She might well have known/suspected something but I don't find it hard to believe that she didn't.
In order not to come across as a crook she now has to present herself as a moron. It's a defence I've often seen used, strangely among people who will bore the pants off you telling you how brilliant they are and why they deserve so much money for apparently knowing and noticing nothing.
How does that tally with what she wrote in her autobiography called "Frankly" - without any apparent irony.
It's embarassing for her but she hardly has to be a moron to not have known what he was up to. Maybe she trusted him and was wrapped up in other stuff. I don't know. You'd need knowledge of their relationship, how and how often they interacted and spent their time, the relative split of domestic v politics etc. I don't have this. So, from what I do have, the reporting, my assessment is maybe she did and maybe she didn't.
There must have been a cumulative effect though. One or two extravagant purchases: 'Oh Peter, what have you gone and bought now?', but as they wrack up and then the winnebago arrives, you'd have to be really stupid not to know something was not right. And NS is definitely not stupid.
A once great political career has ended in total ignominy afaic.
But what you're doing there is making an assumption about how their relationship worked. Everyone saying she "must have" is doing that. This is what I'm resisting doing. I can quite easily imagine it to be true but also that it isn't. As for the rest, yes, it reflects badly either way and it's been quite the fall. She was the highest regarded politician in the UK just a few short years ago.
We make working assumptions all the time about stuff. For a prosecution you have to have all your ducks in a row 'beyond reasonable doubt' and most dubious human activity and knowledge doesn't get past that test. But if applying the everyday common sense test, you assume that the status of a spouse in this situation WRT transparent and absolute honestly can't be fully relied on.
That's what I'm doing. Applying my everyday commonsense test. It leaves me unable to say with any confidence whether she knew or she didn't.
While we're doing conflicts of interest, here's some blatant corruption/ abuse of power.
The federal government is suing Minnesota after state legislators passed a bill that would ban prediction market companies from operating in the state. https://x.com/ABC/status/2058325468055576920
Excl w/ @breeallegretti: Left-wing MPs are considering standing a candidate against Andy Burnham in a future Labour leadership contest because of concerns the Greater Manchester mayor could abandon progressive positions to broaden his appeal.
Hi, Richard Burgon. Best of luck with the leadership bid.
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
They were both pretty highly paid anyway, and if she didn't know how much something like the coffee machine cost then it might not have seemed like an amazing amount of spending. And he may have hidden some of it from her.
I think it's possible she didn't know.
If I were embezzling thousands of pounds from my employers I can guarantee my wife would know nothing about it. She pays no attention to anything financial. I mean, she might find it odd if I were suddenly splashing my cash on a lot of fancy stuff as I am an inveterate cheapskate - I'm the sort of person who saves the teabag to make a second cup out of it - so if I turned up with a James Bond fountain pen there might be some questions asked.
And if your wife were managing director of your employer, and you in charge of the accounts, might that imply a bit more than that ?
I don't blame Sturgeon for her husband's crimes, but did she not have some responsibility for the management of the party's affairs ?
She had a legally defined role in the management of the party finances.
It is, again, classic #NU10K - “I was in charge. However I have no recollection of anything that I was legally and morally responsible for. Responsibility is for little people.”
"In respect of any items I was aware of Peter having purchased, I had no reason to doubt that he had used his own money. We were both earning high salaries and, due to the responsibilities of my job, rarely socialised or went on holidays. We had separate bank accounts and I had no access to his financial records.” - Nicola Sturgeon
His salary was high but not exactly investment banker / footballer money at £100k.
She was the leader of the SNP and her husband was its CEO.
Regardless of their social life or holidays, she was in charge and should have known what was going on, especially given all the very firm statements she was making about the SNP's finances. How did she know that what she was saying was true?
She trusted her husband. Without evidence to the contrary it's not an outlandish position for a person to have.
And if she'd looked at the accounts herself, would she have been able to see the fraud? Would you? Would I?
Since I led the investigation team on what remains the UK's biggest fraud I think the answer to the question you addressed to me is yes.
But that's not the point. She was in charge: she should have put in place proper governance arrangements to prevent this sort of fraud going on for so long. There was, for a start, an obvious conflict of interest having her husband as CEO. And when she made statements about the finances being fine, on what basis did she say this?
That is a different question. Of course there was a blatant conflict of interest that should not have been allowed. In my second job I recall the FD explaining why cheques had to be drawn and signed by different departments. We can accept the SNP should not have been structured like that.
But separately from that, if your other half was spending an extra £10,000 a year on overpriced tat, would you notice? Could you tell the difference between a £200 pepper pot and a £20 19th Century cup and saucer of the sort Leon often tells us about? And if you did notice, would you think it fraud or extravagance given he could easily afford it from his salary?
What's the annual ISA limit? £20,000. Is it beyond imagination that some put in half that and spend the rest?
Apparently Sturgeon was the best person to run the SNP and Scotland for very many years who assured everyone a few years back that the SNP's finances were fine, there was no reason to ask any questions etc while at the same time being the most gullible person on the planet who did not notice the gigantic fraud her husband was perpetrating under her nose nor any of the very expensive items he was buying with stolen money.
Righto.
That's the long arc of Scottish history right there. From one fraud - the Darien scheme to another - pepper pots and whatnot.
The Darien Scheme was run by William Paterson, a Scottish merchant who notably helped found the Bank of England in 1694. So the Union was an inside job by someone who made it inevitable that Scotland would have to merge with England
/Tin Foil Hat off.
If we're talking frauds I prefer Gregor MacGregor. Shame about all the deaths though.
There seems to be a trend here. Isn't Trump part Scottish?
Do people really believe Sturgeon knew nothing? I’m pretty sure I’d notice if my wife spent at extra 400k over ten years. Has he just taken the rap? Or is she an idiot?
But what if you were crazy busy running the country and the time spent with your (also in politics) spouse was limited and more focussed on the political than the personal?
She might well have known/suspected something but I don't find it hard to believe that she didn't.
In order not to come across as a crook she now has to present herself as a moron. It's a defence I've often seen used, strangely among people who will bore the pants off you telling you how brilliant they are and why they deserve so much money for apparently knowing and noticing nothing.
How does that tally with what she wrote in her autobiography called "Frankly" - without any apparent irony.
It's embarassing for her but she hardly has to be a moron to not have known what he was up to. Maybe she trusted him and was wrapped up in other stuff. I don't know. You'd need knowledge of their relationship, how and how often they interacted and spent their time, the relative split of domestic v politics etc. I don't have this. So, from what I do have, the reporting, my assessment is maybe she did and maybe she didn't.
There must have been a cumulative effect though. One or two extravagant purchases: 'Oh Peter, what have you gone and bought now?', but as they wrack up and then the winnebago arrives, you'd have to be really stupid not to know something was not right. And NS is definitely not stupid.
A once great political career has ended in total ignominy afaic.
But what you're doing there is making an assumption about how their relationship worked. Everyone saying she "must have" is doing that. This is what I'm resisting doing. I can quite easily imagine it to be true but also that it isn't. As for the rest, yes, it reflects badly either way and it's been quite the fall. She was the highest regarded politician in the UK just a few short years ago.
Yes, I'm making an assumption - but it's a quite reasonable one. The alternative just does not make any sense to me because I have to believe her to be so naively trusting of her husband's word that she would ignore all the contrary evidence. That happens in some relationships where a spouse might be easily duped. NS has throughout her political career shown herself to be the smartest of smart cookies.
As I say: Does Not Compute
Well for example you could imagine the possibility that she left a lot of that stuff to him and with all her other priorities didn't pay enough attention to what iyo should have been obvious.
Then the relationship. Maybe they were a bit estranged. A bit distant. Didn't talk freely and honestly. I don't know. Do you?
No, you can't say she "must have" known. That is what doesn't compute. You can only say she should have if she was doing all aspects her job properly. And you can say she bears responsibility as party leader.
If I’m being honest I think she is a lying piece of shit (see Salmond stitch up), but on this I can just about believe she didn’t know.
As leader of the SNP she should have done, though.
I'm not disputing that. It really is the one specific point I'm making. "She must have known" doesn't stand up unless the person saying it knows more than has been reported.
Unlike Westminster where the big grifting takes place and nobody knows anything. £200M for TAT please. Why are all those cabinet members who helped chums swindle billions in England still out and about and all their chums and themselves are still rich.
Comments
However I secretly covet a conveyor belt toaster.
She has always been very fond of her working class Ayrshire background, I'd have assumed that living a life with luxury and high ticket items around you wouldn't have been her bag. Of course if she didn't know their cost, that may be a different story.
I'd like to think if I was in a relationship with someone who had their fingers in the cookie jar so often, I'd maybe spot some subtle signs as the penny pinching got worse. This may be the reason the camper van was parked at Murrells mothers house.
Her best alibi in this is to make out she didn't know, appear a bit gullible that the fancy stuff was normal and hope for the best.
As far as debt recovery goes, my guess is the advent calendars have long been scoffed but perhaps the tea set thing can make a bob on ebay.
Some of the stuff on the list I could only laugh at.
As far as the taxpayer is concerned, all I can say is at least it wasn't public money.
I've seen in my testing of computer code that many people are remarkably uninterested in how systems might react to things going wrong, or unexpected input being entered. There's a belief that things will work because they're supposed to work.
The bad news is that a certain amount of baking is... erm... baked in.
The annual maximum exceeded 34C on 29 occasions, so that’s once in every 5 years on average. But nearly a third of those have been since 2013. Until then it was 1 in 7 years.
16 of those hit 35C or more, which is likely somewhere in the East Midlands or East Anglia tomorrow.
So this late spring heatwave has exceeded the peaks of June, July and August in 80% of years, and could end up exceeding the peaks of 90% of years.
In reality, her knowledge of my financial activities boils down to "My husband has a engineering company, some money from which lands in his personal bank account fairly regularly". If I turned up with say a newish sports car*, she'd probably have little conception of it's likely cost, or of if I could have afforded it. She'd also have no idea if the whole thing was actually front for organised crime, rather than a legitimate business.
Sturgeon's problem is that, unlike my wife, she was effectively CEO of the business her husband was plundering - so she not only missed that his lifestyle was substantially above their means, but also appears to have taken little interest in why the SNP never had the amount of money in the bank one might have expected given their income.
*she might have some idea on a camper van as she has "vanlife" asperations, and has watched too much YouTube content about them. One day I'll buy her an actual campervan and she can find out first hand how awful an experience it is.
A once great political career has ended in total ignominy afaic.
And will be if this persists.
Which part do you think they played in uncovering Pete’s shopping addiction?
‘Sur, there’s been a purchase of a vulgar consumer good!’
Being able to tell the difference between a £200 piece of overpriced tat and a £2000 ditto isn't a necessary skill for a first minister.
Being aware if the need to mitigate conflicts of interest certainly is.
Similarly (to return to an example from upthread) you don't need to be a forensics accountant to understand the system of perverse incentives which resulted in the bat tunnel.
It does, as others have noted, suggest a high degree of incompetence from her as leader and the treasurer - the funds per year may not be massive but they aren't an enormous organisation administratively - given they will have insisted all was well.
I doubt they will let the admission they knew nothing but spoke with confidence anyway slow them down. People never do.
My car was slightly frosted over at 6am a few weeks back.
As for if she'd know had she looked at the accounts, I'd hope any leader would. They should.
Now I'm curious how other parties monitor such matters. The Tories sell a knighthood to the chaps heading up fundraising i believe.
Sorry - but this won't do. You don't need to know about the marriage to ask why it is the SNP's leader thought it appropriate to have her husband as CEO, despite an obvious conflict of interest, what steps she took to ensure proper governance of the SNP, the basis on which she said so very clearly and firmly that there was nothing wrong with the SNP's finances, what inquiries she made when the SNP needed a £100,000 loan from her husband and where that money came from. And so on.
She wasn't just a wife trusting her husband. She was the leader of the main Scottish political party which gets money from its members and, don't forget, some government funding. She had an obligation to treat these duties seriously and all this "poor me, I had no idea" is utterly pathetic. If she was that ignorant and incompetent she was not fit to be leader.
Bit like Reform really.
What's surprising is that others still accept it. I bet when SBF gets out of prison he'll have no shortage of people to give him millions despite the trial revealing, at best, comical incompetence by his own admission.
It suits people to be incurious, just as it suited Carmela and Meadow Soprano, to believe that Tony was a waste management consultant, who made some money on the side through illegal gamblng.
It only all came to light from a tip off to police from outside the party executive.
And the party leader at that time, and perhaps her deputy, should shoulder some of the responsibility for that. People are entitled to ask questions, its time for political leaders to show accountability.
Murrell didn't steal millions, and of course had to hide it all from his wife, so wasting it on that crap is even more weird.
/Tin Foil Hat off.
You can argue that this sort of thing doesn't seem to happen in other countries with the same regulations, and that this is a toxic British response to the regulations, and that's fine, so what would YOU do, HERE and NOW. Because I'm not sure whining that the Spanish don't do it is a plan.
As I say: Does Not Compute
I'm lucky that my money-related compulsive behaviour hasn't extended beyond buying too much chocolate and Warhammer.
The firm that audits the SNP's finances has resigned, the BBC has learned.
Accountants Johnston Carmichael, which has worked with the party for more than a decade, said the decision was taken after a review of its clients.
Police investigating the SNP's finances this week searched the home of former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell - Nicola Sturgeon's husband. He was arrested and released without charge.
The BBC understands Johnston Carmichael resigned before Mr Murrell's arrest.
A spokesperson for the SNP said it was in the process of finding a replacement firm.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-65212357
The SNP has signed a contract with a new auditor more than half a year after the previous firm quit.
SNP leader Humza Yousaf confirmed on Wednesday that AMS Accountants Group has taken on the party's books.
Mr Yousaf, Scotland's first minister, said: "I am pleased to confirm that we have secured the services of auditors to take forward our accounts.
"We take our statutory obligations extremely seriously, so it is welcome news that AMS Accountants Group will complete the accounts for both the party and the SNP Westminster group.
"There is hard work ahead, but it is really encouraging to have them on board as we work towards challenging deadlines."
https://news.sky.com/story/snp-signs-contract-with-new-auditors-ams-accountants-group-as-deadlines-loom-12871919
And doubting her is not unreasonable but cannot be proven.
Without knowledge of how their relationship worked (or making assumptions about it in lieu of the relevant knowledge) the assertion that she MUST have known what hubby was doing on the £££ front, the embezzling, is not possible to make.
To say she should have known if she was taking all her duties seriously is a different point.
NEW THREAD
Oddly I am hosting two Texan students from tomorrow. Normally they arrive to temps significantly cooler. Not this year.
Then the relationship. Maybe they were a bit estranged. A bit distant. Didn't talk freely and honestly. I don't know. Do you?
No, you can't say she "must have" known. That is what doesn't compute. You can only say she should have if she was doing all aspects her job properly. And you can say she bears responsibility as party leader.
I don't blame Sturgeon for her husband's crimes, but did she not have some responsibility for the management of the party's affairs ?
As leader of the SNP she should have done, though.
So on the one hand, they put £100m+ burdens on development, but on the other, they spend 50p managing genuine ecological oases.
The federal government is suing Minnesota after state legislators passed a bill that would ban prediction market companies from operating in the state.
https://x.com/ABC/status/2058325468055576920
It is, again, classic #NU10K - “I was in charge. However I have no recollection of anything that I was legally and morally responsible for. Responsibility is for little people.”
But separately from that, if your other half was spending an extra £10,000 a year on overpriced tat, would you notice? Could you tell the difference between a £200 pepper pot and a £20 19th Century cup and saucer of the sort Leon often tells us about? And if you did notice, would you think it fraud or extravagance given he could easily afford it from his salary?
What's the annual ISA limit? £20,000. Is it beyond imagination that some put in half that and spend the rest?