Go on, tell me if this makes sense to you

Some people say my anorak is glued to my ears. There I was gently leafing through the Register of Interests of MSPs, happily saying "ho" and betimes "hum" until I came to Paul Martin's return which stopped me in my tracks:

Since my election to the Scottish Parliament in 1999 I have received sums of money from an anonymous donor or donors, requesting that I donate the money to Stobhill Hospital. These monies are addressed to me at my Constituency office or the Scottish Parliament and are accompanied by letters and newspaper cuttings referring to health matters, in particular Stobhill Hospital. Despite following various avenues of enquiry I have been unable to identify the donor or donors hence these donations have not required to be declared. From May 1999 until November 2003 I received the sum of £130.00 which I passed to Stobhill Hospital Endowment Fund. In June 2007 I passed the sum of £519.88, which had accumulated over a four year period, to Marie Curie Hospice who are currently running the Big Build Appeal to build a new hospice within the grounds of Stobhill Hospital.
[Registered 27 August 2007]

What? There is a case to be made about anonymous donations but naff that, I just want to marvel at this fantastic meringue construction.

It takes some incredible degree of talent to write something like this. I'm awe-struck.

To London they will go, to London they will go

One of those voices sidled up to me earlier and whispered "Tavish Scott's in London today - word is that it is the Lib Dem equivalent of the laying on of the hands."

Oho thinks I, what's he up to?

Then word reaches my delicate shell-likes that Wendy Alexander is in London this evening, ostensibly to attend the Labour group meeting.

Interesting methinks, and I pondered upon the significance of two of Scotland's finest politicians being summoned to Londinium by their masters.

That be not all, as another pigeon lands and I'm told that Cathy Jamieson, cruelly lampooned as the Member for Badly Fitting Trouser Suit from Matalan West, is also promenading on the banks of the Thames. She's still Labour's Deputy Leader in case you haven't seen much of her during Wendy's tribulations (trials come later).

By this point I'm considering that Tav may be there to be annointed or might not but it matters little compared to the summoning of the leader and deputy leader of Labour (Scotland branch).

The real question now is this:

Will Wendy Alexander be saying "et tu Cathy?" or will Cathy be bearing Wendy back to Scotland to say "Gordon is an honourable man"?

If you now have the same mental image as me you'll appreciate why I now have to go and have a lie down in a darkened flannel...

What kind of a loyalty test is that?

Wendy Alexander is Schrödinger's cat

First of all, let's give a big welcome to any physicists who have dropped by with quizzical looks on their faces.

For those who don't know why you shouldn't ask Schrödinger to look after Tiddles when you're off sunning yourself in Thurso, he was trying to illuminate a paradox implicit in the measurement problem (I blame Bohr, it's easier if you ignore most of it and just go with measuring a thing is what makes it real, don't look at the bit about how it means that our existence now affects history before we existed, that's a bad thing to get inside your head. Physicists - you wait ages for one and then none come along at the same time).

Here it goes - take a cat, put it in a box (wear stout gloves) with a radioactive source which will decay within an hour and a Geiger counter connected to a device which will kill the cat if the source decays. Leave it an hour...
Of course, the radioactive source, being unobserved, is in a superposition and so neither decays nor doesn't decay and the cat is therefore neither alive nor dead but is itself in a superposition in which it will stay until you open the box and look at it whereupon it will become one or the other. Oh, look it up yourself - categorical.

Anyway, Wendy Alexander is Schrödinger's cat.

You see, she's neither innocent nor guilty and neither honest nor dishonest (or perhaps she's both innocent and guilty as well as honest and dishonest) because we don't know what's going on inside that box. She emits little particles of carefully selected information - some of which have proven to be lies - but never reveals the whole truth, ask about all the emails I say.

She hangs on tenterhooks for the Electoral Commission but doesn't know whether she'll live or die by their report. She and her colleagues cast doubt upon the probity of others - other MSPs to begin with and now public servants. Her own wee brother joined in on Sunday before her henchmen were released for today's papers.
Let us be done with it and open the box, release all the information and let Ms Alexander dance or go in the radioactive luminescence of Schrödinger's box. Have pity on kitty!

I do hope that there's a random physicist has floated in here on the back of a google for Schrödinger's cat - they'll be more confused by Wendy Alexander than anyone else will be by Quantum Theory.

The new Wendy song

With the news that yet another member of Labour staff has taken to the lifeboats and the John Prescott dance troupe has given up hoping that things can only get better, Team Alexander have come up with a new theme tune:

Every time we say goodbye, I die a little

Every time we say goodbye I wonder why a little

Why the Gods above me,who must be in the know..

Think so little of me they allow you to go

When you're near,there's such an air of spring about it

I can hear a lark somewhere begin to sing about it

There's no lovesong finer

But how strange the change from major to minor

Every time we say goodbye

Why the Gods above me,who must be in the know..

Think so little of me they allow you to go

When you're near,there's such an air of spring about it

I can hear a lark somewhere begin to sing about it

There's no lovesong finer

But how strange the change from major to minor

Every time we say goodbye

Spitting Image where are you now when we need you so much?

Run that by me again, will you?

Let's see - reported to the beak but "Scottish politics would be ill-served" if Wendy Alexander resigned? Unbelievable!

I see that Ms Alexander's latest defence is that she asked for some advice from the clerks (who she described as 'the Parliamentary authorities') but that the Standards Commissioner has now pointed out that she broke the law so it's not her fault. There are known knowns ...

Allow me to assist - leaving aside the fact that she had already missed the 30 day limit for declaring, here's what it says in the code of conduct:

If a Member is uncertain about any aspect of the operation of the Act or the Code, the Standards clerks may be asked for advice. However, each Member must ensure that the provisions of the Act are complied with and may additionally wish to seek independent legal and other professional advice prior to registration.

So it's quite clear that it is the duty of the individual MSP to ensure that they comply with the rules. The advice of the clerks does not relieve the MSP of their duty to make sure that they don't break the law.

One Helen Eadie, there's only one Helen Eadie ...

Labour's greatest talent and putative leadership candidate bolted on her oratorical wings on Thursday and took to the very skies of verbal engagement.

I can do no better than offer a sample:

The cabinet secretary talks about removing the 10 per cent tax band for the poorest, but Scotland is seeing the reincarnation of the sheriff of Nottingham in the shape of Alex Salmond. He is taking from the nation's sick, disabled and disadvantaged—people such as my constituent who, under the auspices of Fife's SNP and Liberal Democrat-controlled council, cannot even get a stair rail, or such as those throughout Scotland who are waiting for their central heating to be dealt with. My current case load is obscene.
Also obscene is the policy on charging, whereby elderly people have to pay £7 per trip for their shopping to be done and £1 per week for their community alarms under SNP-controlled Fife Council.
It is obscene that a grandfather has to look after his grandchildren in my constituency when the Government could take the initiative and introduce a kinship carers allowance.
Those are all important issues. The sheriff of Nottingham is taking from the poor to pay for the rich and their council tax.

Eadie for Leader! Join the campaign!

I wish to claim the credit

I normally shun approbation, eschew plaudits and shy away from acclaim but I'm in the spotlight so I may as well dance.

It was two months ago on Friday November 30th that I revealed that Wendy Alexander was obliged to reveal her donors. See the wonderful post here - Cashley tells the future

Here's an excerpt:

The Interests of Members of the Scottish Parliament Act 2006, requires that all MSPs publish details of their interests in the Register. Those interests include, at paragraph 6(1) of the schedule,

Gifts

6 (1) Where a member or a company in which the member has a controlling interest or a partnership of which the member is a partner, receives, or has received, a gift of heritable or moveable property or a gift of a benefit in kind and—(a) the value of the gift, at the date on which it was received, exceeds 1 per cent of a member’s salary on that date (rounded down to the nearest £10); and(b) that gift meets the prejudice test.

So anything over £530 has to be listed in the Register of Interests. Her defence will be that it was not her nor a company in which she has a controlling interest that received the gift.

Personally, I would say that she was a partner in the body that existed solely to get her elected as Labour leader.

That wasn't all - a later post that day pointed out that she only had 30 days to make the declaration Read all about it!

Can I now point out that she is having to declare these donations because she was a partner in the organisation which received them? There were other partners in that partnership and they also have to declare these sums - they have no choice.

Things are looking pretty bleak for Ms Alexander now, and for her partners. Failure to register your interests is an offence (section 17 of the Interests of Members of the Scottish Parliament Act 2006 and section 39 of the Scotland Act 1998 are the appropriate bits of law for all of you anoraks).

Neither Act allows a defence for failure to register an interest - this is a strict liability offence (the offence is actually taking part in proceedings of the Parliament while having an unregistered interest), and the penalty is a fine at level 5 on the Standard Scale on summary conviction (no prison for this one - that's the Electoral Commission one).

There are 10 donations which should have been declared, that's 10 violations of the law, 10 fines, £50,000. Each of the partners in that partnership which was Madame's campaign team is guilty.

So that will be:

£50,000 from Wendy Alexander for breaking the law

£50,000 from David Whitton for breaking the law

£50,000 from Tom McCabe for breaking the law

£50,000 from Andy Kerr for breaking the law

£50,000 from Jackie Baillie for breaking the law

£50,000 from Charlie Gordon for breaking the law (plus whatever else from his other donation nonsense)

and

£50,000 from anybody else who was involved who I've missed out for breaking the law

Good to see they'll be giving something back the community, isn't it? Conviction politicians one and all...

At least someone must find this funny though ...

Get that crowbar in there!

Why has it been such a trauchle to get Wendy Alexander to obey the rules? Here's the donor list she's been forced to declare today:

GMB Scotland £999
Michael D Rutterford £999
Neil Davidson £995
Nicholas Kuenssberg £995
John Lyons £995
Phoenix Car Company £995
Strathvale Holdings Limited £995
City Refrigeration Holdings Limited £995
David J Pitt Watson £990
Paul Green* £950 * forfeited to the Electoral Commission on 3 December 2007

What was so difficult? The Paul Green money, though - still no declaration on the Electoral Commission's website - did she really hand the money over?

She also claims to have received advice from the Standards Committee clerks that she didn't have to declare these donations in the Register of Members' Interests. That's simply not credible. If it's true she should publish the correspondence, if it's not true she should apologise to the clerks and resign her seat - smearing other people in an attempt to escape punishment for her actions is no kind of behaviour for an MSP to be engaging in.

Now - the Scottish Industry Forum ...

Excellent quip my good man

On Hacksaw Jim Duggan's blog - http://hacksawjim.blogspot.com/ someone has left a comment comparing Lib Dem leader Nicol Stephen to Brechin City, bit cruel on Brechin but I laughed -

hubert cumberdale said...
He's like the Brechin City of politics.

Thinks he has scored a great victory only for it all to fall apart afterwards.

Thar she blows

Breaking news is that Wendy Alexander has been compelled by the Standards Commissioner to declare her leadership bid donations and there will be some of interest.

So there we have it - another law broken. I do hope the police will take action now.