Bomb aplomb

IT'S Remembrance Sunday and if not for people like David Craig we'd be in lederhosen and singing the Horst Wessel today. In 1943, as an 18-year-old, he was the radio officer on the merchant ship Dover Hill which was part of a convoy to the Russian city of Murmansk, then just about 10 miles from the German front line. Despite gales and attacks on the way the ship reached its destination but, in an air attack by German bombers while it was moored, a 1000lb bomb went straight through the deck without exploding and ended up in the mound of coal below decks.

It took two days, under attack, to dig out the bomb and get it on to deck where it was to be disarmed. While David and the others waited for the Russian bomb disposal officer to arrive they chalked their names on the bomb, then went for a cup of tea in the officers’ mess. David then helped the Russians remove the detonator and when the bomb was harmless they tipped it over the side, where it probably remains to this day. I don’t know if they then went for another cup of tea or had something stronger.

David has been back to Murmansk many times since. He’s 94 now and living in Kilmarnock. Lest we forget.

A brief dressing down

What is black and gold and looks good on a lawyer? A rottweiler. Apologies to my friends in the legal profession (and my daughter) for cracking an old one but the subject of lawyers’ garb has become a hot topic.

There are various surveys going on – the latest from the Scottish Young Lawyers’ Association and in my old chum Graham Ogilvie’s Scottish Legal News – about whether the formal wig and gown should be dispensed with in the majority of courts. Dress is already informal in civil proceedings and in the civil court, the Inner House of the Court of Session, where I’m told that jeans and gilets are the norm, but kilts are frowned on, unless long jeggings are worn underneath, while football tops are strictly taboo. Not sure about rugby jerseys.

The abolition of formal dress has been sniffily put down by the Faculty of Advocates, which claims that there wasn’t proper consultation before it was implemented in the Inner House. How’s this for self-importance and delusions of grandeur: “Wigs and gowns provide a sense of ‘corporate identity’ to the wearer, which, in turn, strengthens the legal profession, as it is able to move forwards in confidence and continue to fight for truth and justice for all in society.”

The fight for fat fees would be more accurate.

Damages alert

Some years ago I was dragged out of bed at the crack of dawn in the south of England, handcuffed, briefly detained in a local cell, before being flown back up to Edinburgh and banged up overnight before appearing on a charge of reset, or having “property dishonestly appropriated by another”. It was over what was called “Fettesgate”, where a bunch of miscreants broke into the then Lothian and Borders police HQ through an unsecured ground-floor window and over three hours stole bundles of documents while the oblivious Scottish Crime Squad was on a riotous bevvy upstairs.

I was sprung next day by Alex Prentice, then in private practice, but now the Crown Office’s chief gunslinger, the senior Advocate Depute. We were let out into the enclosed police car park and as the electronic gate came up Alex began humming the theme from Z Cars. Well, it was a while ago.

I managed to get a bit of a scoop over what had been taken from Fettes but I was, of course dear reader, entirely innocent, charges were dropped, and, while the then chief constable described the arrest as “tactless”, I never received an apology or even one thin dime in compensation and, moreover, was told I couldn’t then sue for wrongful arrest.

Which is why I am watching with interest, or avarice, the proceedings in the case of the four men involved in the takeover of Rangers in 2012 who are suing police and prosecutors – including for their wrongful arrest – for sums ranging from £2 million to £20m. They were charged with fraud but later cleared.

It has now emerged that one procurator fiscal at the time criticised, in internal documents, the then-Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland for not taking more time – more than “half a second” – to assess the case. I am sure that there is more dirty washing in the files of this case, which is why I am convinced that it will be quietly settled for many millions of our money. I am, of course, talking to my own legal team but a settlement of £1m plus costs would be satisfactory.

Being Frank

And still on Frank Mulholland, now a judge, can it really be the case, as the scuttlebutt among lawyers has it, that in the past he was known to call in to radio phone-ins, using the alias “Big Frank Fae Livingston”. I so hope it’s true.

A deal confused

A clip of a seemingly confused Boris Johnson, drink in hand, addressing a group of Northern Irish business people will surely trend shortly on the internet. In it, at times lurching into incomprehensibility, he tells them what a great deal he has brokered with the EU – unfettered access between "Northern Ireland and GB”, no checks on goods coming to the mainland, access to the single market, freedom of movement. An almost perfect description, not of his deal of course, but the status quo.