The Scottish Government and Nicola Sturgeon have tonight embarked on a last-ditch desperate throw of the dice to undermine and sabotage the already-compromised and endlessly-obstructed Fabiani inquiry in its impossible quest for the truth.
Having previously deployed her paid mouthpiece Rape Crisis Scotland last week, the First Minister – who’s spent the last six months insisting that she’d save her comments for her appearance at the inquiry – suddenly popped up on BBC and STV (but not, curiously, Sky News) to issue a challenge full of gunfighter bravado to her predecessor.
The ironic audacity of her demanding that Salmond produce “evidence” after the 58 separate interventions her government has made to block and suppress most of the key evidence is breathtaking.
(Although perhaps less startling than her repeated and rather flustered insistence to the BBC’s Glenn Campbell that the 29th of March was only three days before the 2nd of April. Hasn’t she heard the old rhyme about how many days months have?)
But it was only a sideshow to today’s main event, in which a parade of young women who all (according to truth-challenged Scotsman hack Conor Matchett) “work in the Scottish Parliament” were dragged out and lined up to tweet an identical heartrending plea to the Parliament’s corporate body not to publish Salmond’s written submissions, which in fact appeared on the inquiry’s website just after 7 o’clock this evening.
(The question of how any of them had come to believe the submissions would identify a complainer, since they hadn’t seen the submissions, was not addressed.)
Unfortunately, whoever penned the tweet for the young women clearly had not the slightest care for how it would reflect on them, because it made almost all of them liars.
Rosa Zambonini works for the SNP, not the Scottish Parliament. She is a liar.
Katie Stephen works for a theatre, not the Scottish Parliament. She is a liar.
Gillian Mackay works for the Greens, not the Scottish Parliament. She is a liar.
Shannon Donnelly works for the SNP, not the Scottish Parliament. She is a liar.
Emily Mackintosh works for the SNP, not the Scottish Parliament. She is a liar.
(Young Emily also deserves a special mention for somehow managing to insert a typo into a cut-and-pasted tweet. Outstanding communications work.)
Mags Hall works for the Greens, not the Scottish Parliament. She is a liar.
Sarah Masson works for a theatre company, not the Scottish Parliament. She is a liar.
Laura Mitchell works for the SNP, not the Scottish Parliament. She is a liar.
Kiva Richard works for the SNP, not the Scottish Parliament. She is a liar.
Zoe Mackenzie works for the SNP, not the Scottish Parliament. She is a liar.
Despite these women’s willing participation in an attempt – albeit quite an abominably ham-fisted and incompetent one – to pervert the course of the inquiry into a serious conspiracy to jail an innocent man, we urge readers not to abuse them, and have not linked to their Twitter accounts.
They are all (with the exception of Ms Zambonini, who is well experienced in stitch-ups over false sexual harassment allegations already) young and clearly somewhat, let’s put this kindly, gullible and have been disgracefully used by the Scottish Government or its agents as it flails around in an increasingly evident panic over the inquiry. Some are already feeling a backlash and have protected their accounts.
The true shame belongs to those who put them into this position. We hope that person or people, along with the rest of the conspirators, will one day face the consequences.
