(Further) down the rabbit hole.

The latest instalment of the Scottish Government's corruption saga landed on Twitter last night, I think that was the only place it landed, but gosh - landed it did. With the wet splat of a fibre-deficient jobby, it descended upon users (not real people remember), and provoked an immediate response, from both sides.

Speech here.

I'll lead with the TL/DR version - Sturgeon loyalists dismissed David Davis' Westminster speech, mostly because it was David Davis. Salmond loyalists rolled their eyes because everything he said, they already knew. Everyone else? They didn't notice - why would they?

Now for the Did Read version. The Scottish press seem to be leaving it alone, which is astonishing really. Think of the countless times the merest hint - even if that hint was an obvious fabrication - of SNP/independence-related scandal, but the Scottish media ran with it anyway. Yet here we have a proven sequence of actions in to which, the Scottish press, and what passes for Scottish news from the BBC, have barely dipped a toe. Normally they'd be baw-deep by now.

Or eyeball-deep

I'll admit, I'm not a fan of David Davis - I may have said horrible things about him over the insouciant way he dealt with his responsibilities around Brexit. One uncomfortable lesson I've learned while watching Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon give evidence is, unionist politician - even the most oleaginous ones - shouldn't be dismissed entirely. One of the more unfortunate gifts social media has given us, is a willingness to dismiss 100% of a person because of 1% of the things they believe. I'll admit - I do it sometimes, but it's not right. It's shallow and self defeating. Joanne Lamont's contribution to debates around women's rights are a strong case in point.

I will never vote or be a Conservative, but only a fool would blank another human being because they happened to be a Tory. If Jacob Rees-Mogg gave a speech about how much we love our children, (putting to one side he might think yours should be sent up chimneys), would you angrily declare you hated your kids anyway?

What David Davis did last night, was read out a string of events which happened. It wasn't a list he wrote, or his interpretation, opinions, or extrapolations. It's what actually happened based on the sworn-under-oath testimony of the people involved. They admitted it. It's there in balck and white, in emails and text messages - emails and text messages the Scottish Government and COPFS have been desperately trying to redact, hide or forget exist.

Don't mistake my tone for glee, and don't even think about dismissing me as a unionist or 'yoon plant'. This is anger. The current leadership of the Scottish Government allowed a situation to develop resulting in David Davis (of all people) being able to stand up in Westminster (of all places), and give that speech. I'm mortified, and so should the current SNP leadership be.

I thought so highly of Nicola Sturgeon. I thought she was a different kind of politician. There was never the doubt for her, people my age had, for Alex Salmond.

I don't dislike Sturgeon and for the same reasons I won't dismiss Joanne Lamont, I won't dismiss Nicola Sturgeon. I'm just disappointed.

What is more disappointing, is the craven denial of fellow independence travellers. We know how it works, we see through it every time we intelligently rubbish an argument for the Union. To not see through it because it's our own side, is an abandonment of morality. Worse still, to do so off the back of an unwillingness to be informed, is an abandonment of the good sense that brought us to the independence cause in the first place.

I prefer not to use the word cult to describe diehard Nicola fans, but it's beginning to fit. They claim because we don't support Nicola, we no longer support independence - to them Nicola and independence are one and the same. What is that, if not the views of the inculcated?

The idea independence might be at risk because of the actions of the current leadership - and not its critics - does not compute. Instead, we have continuing and increasingly shrill admonitions to wait for the outcome of an already flawed inquiry, and to ignore all that has come out from it to date.

Its a mess, it can't be denied. Divisive policies and decisions pursued by the SNP leadership - if they were half as competent as their supporters claim - they knew they'd be hugely problematic, yet they persevered anyway. This cannot be the fault of the policy's critics. Those critics exist as a result of the policies, not the other way round.

A longer post today, but it reflects the frustration many feel. That it's been brought back into the spotlight by David fucking Davis giving a speech at Westminster, is frustrating and embarrassing - but the Sturgeon faithful still see fit to blame the egg instead of the chicken that laid it.

If Nicola was a fraction of the leader they claim she is, she'd take responsibility for the eggs she's broken.