Stop it, John Crace! I officially only read the Guardian to mock it. It’s confusing when I read a piece from the Guardian’s political sketch-writer mocking Nicola Sturgeon and find myself laughing out loud:
Nicola’s only crime was to love too much. And to not notice the Jaguar on the drive
You know how it is. You wake up and look out the bedroom window. You see a brand new Jaguar worth £81,000 parked in the driveway. You smile to yourself. That’s what you love about your husband. Always nipping out to the shops to buy himself treats. And where’s the harm in that? No one can say he isn’t worth it. And a new car is only a trifle compared with a motor home. That’s just Pete being Pete.
You get dressed and go downstairs. Your husband is already in the kitchen making you breakfast. “Fancy a coffee?” he asks. You nod. You’re busy not reading the SNP accounts. “Which machine would you like me to make it from?” he asks. “The basic Jura? The Jura Z8? Or the Miele? I always think the Z8 makes the best flat white. And what milk would you like?”
You open the back door and look at the Galloway and friesian cows he bought the previous week. Both are grazing on the lawn. You reckon you will try the Galloway today. You smile. You count yourself lucky that you are married to such an amazing man. Someone who can still surprise you after all these years you’ve lived together. Never change, darling man. Never change.
For those who ken not the tale of the Fall of the House of Sturgeon, Mr Crace explains in the next few paragraphs:
On Sunday morning, Nicola Sturgeon gave her first broadcast interview since her former husband, Peter Murrell, pleaded guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from money donated to the SNP by supporters.
This was Nicola as a woman who had been badly wronged. Yet if you had looked behind the lights of the makeshift studio, you might just have been able to see the outline of a man in the shadows. That man was her lawyer, Aamer Anwar. Because who among us doesn’t need their brief on hand when doing a sit-down chat with Laura Kuenssberg? Probably just a precaution to make sure Laura didn’t nick one of the Montblanc fountain pens.
The interview basically consisted of just one question. How could you possibly not have known that your husband had been on the take? Your house was basically a multimillionaire’s remake of the Generation Game. A non-stop conveyor belt of high-value goodies. The garage alone was full of salt and pepper grinders worth more than £2,000 a shot. And even if it had never occurred to you Pete had basically stolen the lot, surely you must have thought his compulsive shopping habit had got badly out of hand?
Meanwhile, the writers at The National are making the best of things. One of yesterday’s headlines says, “‘Fundamental flaw’ in Sturgeon and Murrell having top SNP roles, says FM”. A Scottish friend gives rare praise to First Minister John Swinney and says, “He’s right. There was a fundamental flaw in Sturgeon and Murrell having top SNP roles. The flaw was that they were Sturgeon and Murrell.”
If you want to keep up with the Scotland’s “ultimate power couple”, check out the brands listed in this article from the BBC: “Coffee machines, fountain pens and Grand Theft Auto: How Murrell spent the money”.
& the legacy media tiptoe around the subject, carefully avoiding the mention of “corruption”
Because thats what it was, Nippie. Corruption. Wilful mis-use of funds stolen from the public purse,by her,
& she should be reminded of this, every time she sets foot outside her agreeable London pied a terre……
The garage alone was full of salt and pepper grinders worth more than £2,000 a shot.
One is reminded of all those lottery winners who are back on welfare five years on.
Am I the only one who thinks that £400,000 is a piffling sum and, anyway the “victims” are SNP supporters who are hardly deserving of sympathy and should have known better?
The seediest part of this is Sturgeon’s decision to divorce her husband in his hour of need. Did she really think it was going to rescue her political career?
I suppose we are expected to believe Jimmy Krankie’s evil twin was not aware that her darling husband, ‘who loved to pop out to the shops’ had bought a reported 108 toilet rolls (according to the Daily Mail). Really, though, it was probably just as well that he did, as the dreaded Covid Plandemic was rearing it’s ugly rehearsed head, and just before she reassured the morons who voted for her not to panic buy, as the SNP would see them right. Perhaps that’s why he bought the campervan? He had to store the toilet rolls somewhere.
There are some phrases that immediately trigger my suspicion (whether warranted or not). “Ultimate power couple” is one of them.
There are plenty of examples from America… but less obvious in the UK. Is it because our ‘free’ press is more obsequious?
DJM
Hmmm… this is a really interesting point. It was not public funds – this was SNP money from SNP supporters, not the general taxpayer. It was willingly given, not extracted by force of law.
That said, if your CEO is going to do this to your own hard raised funds _and the rest of the leadership then punishes anyone who asks awkward questions about what is going on, both internally (other SNP leaders) and externally (the press)_ then the rest of us can – must – ask legitimate questions about whether any of this shower are fit to govern.