Friday, March 10, 2006

More Campaigning produces results - Phil Gallie gets us an inquiry into crooked lawyers at the Scottish Parliament

The current farce with the Scottish Parliament relocating to anywhere that will take it due to the loose wooden roof beam (because of a missing £2 bolt, the "Herald" newspaper reveals), is almost too much to bear .... of course, plenty at the Scottish Executive and within the Parliament itself LOVE this news ... wonder why ?? .. well, as long as the media are reporting on loose bits of 'kindlin' at the Scottish Parliament .. then they are staying off the real issues .. which can be quietly swept under the carpet of course .... McKie case ... a bent Scottish Criminal Records Office, questions over the Lockerbie trial ..... etc .. you name it .. as long as the public's attention is focused on that hanging piece of wood on the roof of the debating chamber - nowt will happen .. and what matters most .. won't be reported ... certainly not by the Scotsman ... for looking at today's edition - more 'easy on the lawyers' stories .. sponsored by the legal profession ... enough to make a rabbit throw up I think ...

Another thing that bugs me is Tommy Sheridan's motion trying to get MSPs to disclose if they have bought properties & made profits on them from their Parliament Expenses Allowances. What is this ? does he believe that idea will float ? why doesn't he ask better questions - such as - why some Ministers & politicians have been given favourable property purchases against ordinary house hunters it seems, from records disclosed to someone I know ... (too late to hide this one, guys - the records I've seen appear genuine) ... I'd email Mr Sheridan and tell him about this - but I'm not his constituent and they don't listen to people outside their constituencies - or so they claim in responses .... maybe he will use his own initiative & find out for himself ... trouble is though .. there are people aware that documents on this have leaked out, and the particular sellers involved in the done deals, have all been silenced or smoothed over .... maybe some journalist who doesn't wear a collar these days will pick up on this and do the story ... good luck to them if they do ....

Okay, back to the battle then .. so, you read the article I wrote the other day on a little victory we won - where the Scottish Executive has now decided to bring in an independent body to regulate complaints against lawyers ? ... think that was easy ? .. hell no ... and, of course, we have been here before .. June 1999 & February 2001 to be precise .. where in 1999, I, along with a few others, put the issue to the Justice & Home Affairs Committee of our [then new] Scottish Parliament - who promptly told us to get lost ...

We then campaigned even harder and in February 2001, Phil Gallie MSP, campaigning on my behalf and a few others, managed to secure the "Regulation of the Legal Profession" inquiry by the Justice 1 Committee - of which he was a member, until he started asking awkward questions about why people were protesting and complaining about lawyers ... he was then replaced as Tory Justice Spokesman by Lord James Douglas Hamilton .... and the Inquiry descended into a farce, where the clients of crooked lawyers were banned from appearing at the Parliament to speak on their cases & difficulties, but the Law Society and their pals were all allowed to speak glowing reports of how great lawyers were ... and the results of the long inquiry were ... fiddled even more .. with submissions from members of the public being edited, blanked out, removed, fiddled, etc ... by Scottish Parliament staff ! on the orders of the Law Society of Scotland ....

I took part in the inquiry though, and made my submission, which is on this site in an earlier blog post ... but it has only been through more intense campaigning by us clients of crooked lawyers, along with organisations such as "Scotland Against Crooked Lawyers", that we have actually arrived at what seems to be a success ..

Here anyway, I am again in the newspaper - Scotland on Sunday this time ... where the case against the bent lawyer on my dad's will - Andrew Penman of Stormonth Darling solicitors, The Square, Kelso, makes it back into the limelight .... no success though for me, because the crooks over at the Law Society of Scotland made sure I would never get anywhere ....

makes a good story though .. and these articles - and more to come, made a heck of a difference to the campaign .. gave it a great boost !

more to come of course and here's the article from "Scotland on Sunday", which led to the BBC tracking me down for an appearance which you will read about in the next few days ...





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