Category: Scots law

Will they or won’t they?

Build the wind farm, that is? “Insiders” claim the Scottish Government is going to turn down the proposal to build one of Europes largest wind farms in the Western Isles.

As the official decision’s not actually due for another two or three weeks, the SG seem to be a bit irritated by all the speculation, and have issued a very terse press release, basically telling everyone to calm down.

Why did I just get Michael Winners voice in my head there…”calm down, it’s a commercial”….
Yuck.

Trial bias

It was while reading this report about the farcical trial for the Omagh bombings that I realised something worrying.

I’ve unconsciously started to believe that, if someone’s put up for trial, they’re almost certainly guilty. Because people only get sent for trial if there’s enough evidence to make the prosecutors believe they can get a conviction, right? Maybe it’s the result of watching too many police / forensics TV dramas, but I’ve definitely started to pick up a belief in ‘guilt proven by fact of trial, regardless of result’.

So, seeing the many high profile cases coming up on appeal here in Scotland or abroad (Kenny Ritchie (yay, finally free soon!), Luke Mitchell, William Beggs and Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi), I wonder how many of them who were vilified after their trial really were guilty? Or did people just start to think they were guilty as soon as we heard there would be a trial?

Dolphin bothering

The first man in Scotland to be convicted of recklessly harassing dolphins has been fined £500 for the offence.

I have to confess, this rates highly on my ‘what the hell?’ radar…and the Scottish courts judgements website is being its usual unhelpful self, so I may never know the details of how he harassed the poor things…obviously he was on a jet ski, but was he using them as ramps?!?!