Scottish independence

Update on Peoples Action on Section 30

I can confirm that the decision of Lady Carmichael is imminent and will be published at 12 noon on the 5th of February 2021 (tomorrow) on the court's website here: https://scotcourts.gov.uk/search-judgments/court-of-session
Whatever the judgement is (because we've not seen it), it's important to know that it's likely going to end up in the inner house appeals court next. Because if we win, the UK Government just love to waste taxpayers money trying to usurp their rights. If they win, well then, we just can't allow that to stand.

dogbert27 wrote: »

Scotland being talked down to and being put in it's place by the unionist government as Boris bails Scotland out!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9224369/Minister-says-Boris-Johnson-bailing-Scotlands-sluggish-vaccination-rollout.html

'And we know now that the unionist government is helping the devolved Scottish government roll-out its vaccine programme that more people will be going from the British Army to help set-up more vaccine centres.

'We know now that the unionist government is helping the devolved Scottish government roll out its vaccine programme, that more people will be going from the British Army to help set up more vaccine centres,' he replied.

'This is our UK Government bailing out a devolved government. That is what we do and we should be really proud of the United Kingdom which has such strength as one country.'

Update on Peoples Action on Section 30

Confidential until 12 Noon.
As we expected in this first round, the ruling of Lady Carmichael did not go in our favour. But neither was it a silver spike through the heart. It is a highly appealable judgement.

While she may have dismissed the case on the hypothetical, academic, premature, it is clearly done on a neutral basis, and indeed in keeping with other cases of this nature.
As I have said many times before - it is very unusual in this type of litigation to get an opinion in the outer house and it almost always ends up in the inner house.

I note that she rejected pleas 3, 6 and 7 of the Lord Advocate. Pleas 3 and 7 was the contention of the Lord Advocate that this case should have been brought by Judicial Review, and even if it had been brought by Judicial review, it would then have been incompetent. She repelled both of those suggestions. Meaning that our methodology in this case is the correct one.

The 6th plea in law was also repelled, namely that granting the declarators we asked for would have been "inconsistent with the constitutional structures established by the Scotland Act 1998. Again, thumbs up for the procedure.
So the Lord Advocates arguments have taken a serious bruising as well. So not all bad news.

It is interesting to note that in no less than two places in her opinion she mentions allegations of "unlawfulness" (141) and "unlawfulness or abuse of power" (25/2).
It is also interesting to note that there is no mention of the announcement of the 11 point plan from the SNP the day after the hearing, which for all intents and purposes rendered all of the pleas in law for the defenders, meaningless.
This means, that as a matter of course, it appears she believed she had no choice but to dismiss because she didn't have all of the necessary information to move it from one column (hypothetical, premature, academic) to the other column (not hypothetical, not premature, not academic). This is purely a technical issue, which would not have been an issue if the Scottish Ministers had been more forthcoming in terms of the 11 point plan, lending weight to the fact that its release less than 24 hours was not done under the purest of intentions.

But Lady Carmichael cannot be held responsible for something which was not divulged to her. She can only opine on what she sees in front of her, and you will all recall that I have already raised the issue of the 11 point plan released a day after the hearings and whether the Lord Advocate of SGLD already knew about that plan before arguing at the hearings during the two previous days.

All-round one has done, is to show the public that the uncodified constitution of the UK is a bit like waving your open hand in front of your face. You can blur things in the short term, but eventually, you realise that there are still gaping holes that you can see daylight through it.
The Advocate General and Lord Advocate have done everything they can to blur the lines in this case but the gaping holes in the constitution are there for everyone to see, and now they are on public display. The institutions of parliament which are supposed to represent the people are in fact deeply flawed when the electorate is deliberately blocked from trying to ask a reasonable question about their own constitutional future.

It was, for all intents and purposes a neutral ruling because she did not have available to her, all the information she required to rule, and from first glance the ruling is highly appealable, especially considering the release of the 11 point plan, conveniently delivered to the public after the hearings.
What we need now is a referral to a higher authority and that comes in the form of the inner house of the court of session, and as I told you before, this was the expected next step - we're in better shape than we thought we would be.
So, I've already instructed that process to commence and it's off to the inner house we go.

Aegir wrote: »

Scotland always had complete control over its response to the pandemic.

Aegir wrote: »

tis

Peregrinus wrote: »

Who's to know? It's an unanswerable what-if, because we cannot know what decisions a Scottish government would have made, if it had the capacity to make those decisions.


It's pretty impressive, if you look at the metrics Westminister wants you to look at. Measuring the percentage of the population who have received the first dose, the UK is doing very well indeed, and is ahead of any EU country. But measuring the proportion of the population who are vaccinated (i.e. have had two doses) the UK is behind 21 of the 27 EU countries. Westminster is not going to draw attention to that.

(While we may not know how an independent Scotland's vaccination wouldd have proceeded, I think we can safely say one thing; the Scottish government would be drawing attention to whichever metric cast it in the best light.)

If we're honest, neither of those metrics is hugely signficant in itself. What really matters is (a) how long it takes a country to achieve a level of vaccination that creates a reliable degree of herd immunity, such that they can safely start to dismantle internal Covid control restrictions, and (b) how long it takes before its neighbours have done the same, so that it can safely start dismantle travel/border restrictions. Neither the UK nor the EU strategy has yet acheived either of these things, so any self-congratulation (on either side) would be premature. Count ye not your chickens, etc.


Mmm. The rhetorical question about Scotland with which you opened your post looked a bit sour. Just sayin'.

blanch152 wrote: »

What the EU have done is to sacrifice speed in the bigger and wealthier countries for coverage of the whole EU, albeit at a slightly slower pace.

You look at Moldova, outside the EU, a small poor country, and they haven't got any vaccines yet. Some of the smaller poorer EU countries would have been in that position had the EU members gone their own way.