DESPITE criticism from the usual SNP suspects, Scotland on Sunday has published more damaging revelations about the SNP’s links to the Scottish-Islamic Foundation (SIF).
The story reports details of legal papers setting up SIF as a legal entity:
“This document – ‘the declaration on application of registration’ – was signed at 50 Wellington Street, the same office which contains the SNP Glasgow HQ. The document was then formally witnessed by Calum MacLeod, an SNP solicitor.”
Hmm…
So, in summary, the SNP set up an organisation – which many in Glasgow’s Muslim community have never heard of – which subsequently is awarded £215,000 by the SNP “government”. And who is in charge of the SIF? Osama Saeed (pictured left with Salmond), who is (wait for it) an SNP parliamentary candidate as well as a former employee of (drum roll please…) Alex Salmond, who is leader of the SNP which set up the SIF, and also head of the Scottish “government” which gave the SIF £215,000 of public money.
Gosh! That’s quite a muddle.
But we can all relax, because a spokesman for the Scottish “government” has dismissed all this as a “non-story”*. So that’s all right, then.
* label given to any story critical of the SNP
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Sunday 20 July 2008 at 1:17 pm
Tom, even if true its a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. Labour are famous for funding their chums and cannot lecture anyone on probity.
Sunday 20 July 2008 at 8:15 pm
Mr Harris,
I read your blog regularly and am not a Nationalist sympathiser by any means but I find the innuendo here a little too much (even in the white heat of a by-election campaign). By SNP solicitor, do you mean the SNP’s solicitor or a solicitor who supports the SNP?
Lawyers sign and witness lots of stuff. I have. Friends have. It means only that you are present at a signature, or – more frequently – that someone has come to you asking you to confirm the signature. Where something is signed is often irrelevant, and wholly dependent on where the signatory happens to be one day.
A signing witness has no idea what is in the document he or she witnesses (typically). My name will appear on lots of documents. If dragged up in years to come will they be tainted by my support for St Mirren FC, or the fact that I was a Lib Dem member in the 1990s, or voted Labour in 1997?
When working in the public sector I witnessed various documents admin staff and others had brought in to work – dispositions, securities, wills &c. They took the document to somewhere they knew their signature could be witnessed (given that lawyers caution clients to have documents witnessed by someone that knows you) and that was most convenient.
If the director of the charity is an SNP member regularly in the SNP HQ – having the document signed by him there and witnessed would be sensible. I don’t know if it can be viewed as part of some big conspiracy.
Last week’s story had rather more substance to it. This week is – I’m afraid – merely an atempt to keep it going.
Sunday 20 July 2008 at 10:23 pm
It seems to me that Labour are very bitter that the SNP have such strong support in the Scottish Muslim community-which was just another group of people whose support Labour took for granted for so long.
Monday 21 July 2008 at 11:46 am
Scott you are misunderstanding the point.
SIF is not a charity but is registered as a private company which has received money from the Scottish Government.
The solicitor involved is the SNP’s solicitor. The signature of the document was done at SNP HQ.
The directors of this company are key SNP activists.
CEO is parliamentary candidate. media director is SNP researcher and chair of young asian scots for independance. Marketing Director is former SNP researcher and vice chair of young asian scots for independance. Public Affairs Director is secretary of Federation of Student Nationalists……….there is much more!!!!