ALBA - Unofficial Forum

* Speaking as someone who is used to living on a shoestring budget, I have no sympathy for Murrell whatsoever.  It's actually the smaller 'petty' purchases that anger me the most - to waste thousands of pounds of other people's money on a single fountain pen, something that can be of no possible practical benefit to you, is absolutely obscene.  That seems to confirm that Murrell was to a large extent motivated by vanity and a preposterous playboy self-image.

* The SNP and its members were the victims of this crime.  That's not spin, that's a fact.  Murrell did not steal from the public purse, he stole from the SNP, and the money he stole had been raised from SNP members for the purposes of making Scotland an independent country.  The supposedly righteous anger of unionist politicians over this matter rings extremely hollow, given that the political impact of Murrell's selfish, cynical actions was to slow or stall the progress towards independence - something unionist parties were only too thrilled about.

* The way the SNP have recovered from this event has been truly remarkable.  Our old friend Stew is trying to make out it has left the independence movement a "broken shell", which he obviously wants to be true, but the events of the last few weeks tell a completely different story.  The SNP leadership under John Swinney have restored the trust of party members sufficiently that the pre-election fundraiser succeeded beyond all expectations - and make no mistake, without that restored trust and without the funds that flowed from it, we wouldn't be sitting here now with the highest number of pro-independence MSPs in history.  Once we get past the negative headlines of today, which unfortunately we've known were coming for a long time, both the SNP and the wider independence movement will actually be in pretty good shape.

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