Compare and Contrast

Alex Salmond is never 'backward about coming forward' especially on his own behalf, so I read his comments on his recent court victory over the Scottish Government with great interest.

Here's an extract of what Alex had to say and his full comments can be read via the link below to The Daily Record.

"As a result, Leslie Evans, the Permanent Secretary, has wasted huge amounts of public money in and incompetent attempt to enforce an unlawful process.

"Now having incurred those costs to the pubic purse, she has collapsed the case prior to a full hearing.

"......the Scottish Government's conduct in this case as an institution has unquestionably lacked candour.

"Officials repeatedly failed to disclose documents to the Court which were of central importance.

"Those documents ultimately made clear the apparent bias and procedural unfairness which has only now been admitted."

In essence Alex has called for the head of the civil service to resign or to be sacked which I suspect is unlikely to happen because the irregularities involved are 'procedural' rather than about the merits of his case.

But compare what's going on in the Scottish Government to what's been going on in Scotland's largest council, where senior officials have been fighting tooth and nail to defend Glasgow's WPBR pay scheme for years, even after the WPBR had been condemned as 'unfit for purpose' by the Court of Session, Scotland's highest civil court.

The same group of officials are also unwilling to 'come clean' over their role in the WPBR and are refusing my FoI requests which would hold them properly to account, in my view, by releasing important WPBR documents into the public domain.

Just what do they have to hide?

  

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/alex-salmond-statement-full-calls-13828550

Compare and Contrast (08/01/19)

The head of Scotland's civil service apologises, and rightly so, for a flaw in the procedure under which complaints of harassment against Alex Salmond were investigated.

Compare and contrast this swift apology with the behaviour of senior officials in Glasgow who have never expressed any regret for defending the Council's 'unfit for purpose' WPBR pay scheme for 12 long years.

Up to and including a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt (in December 2017) to overturn the Court of Session's 'unfit for purpose' judgement by appealing this decision to the UK Supreme Court in London.

The court's decision in Alex Salmond's case is based on the doctrine of 'clean hands', i.e. that a person investigating a complaint should not have prior knowledge or involvement in the case to avoid accusations of taint or prejudice.

So let me remind readers of what I had to say yesterday about my FOI Request regarding Glasgow City Council's WPBR pay scheme.

And just to add a final 'Alice in Wonderland' touch to proceedings, sharp-eyed readers may notice that the Council's initial response has been sent "On behalf of Carole Forrest, Director of Governance and Solicitor to the Council" - and that the FOI Review process is also conducted by 'Carole Forrest, Director of Governance and Solicitor to the Council'.

As they say, you couldn't make this up.