On the meter

THE legal aid bill of the convicted husband of a senior Crown prosecutor has now topped £35,000 – with more public money still to come.

Stephen Roberts, the husband of Nicky Patrick, Scotland’s procurator fiscal for homicide and crime, was convicted of running companies when he was disqualified as a director. As I revealed previously, Patrick held the largest shareholding in one of them, Log Six, although there is no suggestion that she knew about the management of the business.

Roberts was due to be sentenced on Monday at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court but the case has been continued for further inquiries into his assets, pending possible confiscation under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

The couple live in a large period house in Symington, Ayrshire. However, the court was told by Roberts’ QC, Gary Allan, that the two are now separated.

It’s rare for counsel to represent a client in the Sheriff Court on a summary charge, hence, perhaps, the size of the legal bill. It’s understood that the hiring of a defence QC was agreed because the Crown Office, not wanting to be accused of a conflict of interest over Patrick, brought in an outside counsel.

A Scottish Legal Aid Board spokesperson said: “Equality of arms is a factor we take into our decision-making process when deciding if the use of counsel is necessary in a case.”

That Roberts was able to qualify for legal aid at all might seem strange, given Patrick’s large salary, but joint income is not taken into account. The SLAB spokesperson said: “While we need to know a spouse’s income to calculate the applicant’s allowances for shared outgoings, the legislation doesn’t allow us to combine their finances when assessing eligibility for summary criminal legal aid.”

The present legal aid bill is £35,053, but this does not take into account recent and forthcoming representation so the final bill could be much more.

Patrick had applied to become a sheriff but when the furore broke over her husband's businesses she withdrew the application.

Name game

Here’s my updated theory of nominative determinism, the name-driven outcome that people gravitate to jobs which fit with their names, or those of family or background.

Going back a bit Thomas Crapper invented the modern toilet. William Shockley was an electronics pioneer. There was a famous article on urology by Splatt and Weedon. Michael Vickers was a man of the cloth. So it was that astronaut Buzz Aldrin piloted Apollo 11 to land on that hunk of rock which orbits the Earth, because his mother’s maiden name was Moon. Ann and Frank Webb formed the British Tarantula Society, of course. And what else could David Beckham be but a football winger when he was born in Whipps Cross Hospital?

The Chelsea goalkeeper is Kepa. And there was a French international keeper called Dominique Dropsy.

The Ottawa man charged with indecent exposure was Donald Popadick. The brothers arrested for marijuana possession, Gregor and Timothy Weeds. He was only going to become an athlete with a name like Usain Bolt. And lastly, Donald Duck was surely always bound to become a quack, or rather a respected doctor in Oban.

Letting off gas

It seems beyond doubt that cows’ dietary habits and resultant farts have a deleterious effect on the global environment. Let’s leave out industrial pollution, petrol-based traffic, cigarette smoking, Hallowe'en bonfires, barbecues, unrecyclable plastics and coal-based power stations for the time being.

Academics at Oxford University reckon red meat should be taxed, which would make it about 40 per cent dearer in the shops, when steak is already unaffordable for most households, apart from as a treat. To be fair, the Oxford pointy-heads are also calling for the processed gunk to be similarly taxed.

The guy who led the research is Dr Marco Springmann, the Don Quixote of academe, but he really should declare an interest. He’s a vegan, the maddest of all eating disorders. Yes, of course, we should all eat more plants but let’s start by banning all the chemicals, refined sugars, salts and toxins food firms plough into our daily food. After that we can work to making the cow an endangered species.

Frozen out

A Christmas ad from Iceland highlighting how 25 orang utans die each day because their forest habitats are being destroyed for palm oil has been banned as too political, whatever that means. By Clearcast, whoever they are, but who apparently have the right to tell us what we can watch. The film, a rebadged animated Greenpeace video with voiceover from Emma Thompson, of course promotes Iceland’s own-brand products which eschew palm oil.

Iceland’s founder, Malcolm Walker, put it this way: “We got permission to use it and take off the Greenpeace logo and use it as the Iceland Christmas ad. It would have blown the John Lewis ad out of the window. It was so emotional.”

Strike a blow for your right to view and see it here youtu.be/JdpspllWI2o.

Dying to vote?

Another little remembrance on this Remembrance Day. More than 700,000 British soldiers died in the First World War and over two million were wounded.

The vast majority did so for a so-called democracy that did not allow them a vote in it.

Before 1918, only men with property were allowed to cast their ballot. And, of course, the women they left behind didn’t get their vote until 1928 and following a remarkable suffrage campaign. By contrast the enemy, the German soldiers, had the right to vote since 1871.

Wrong course

The Fraser of Allander Institute reckons the NHS in Scotland will eventually cost more than the Scottish Budget. It may well be right, but its solutions are largely wrong, and politically obtuse. One sensible measure, but one no government will pursue despite agreeing it’s necessary, is reform of council tax banding, making it fairer, hitting the top properties, which it says could bring in £100 million a year.

However, Allander is calling for the introduction of student tuition fees at £7,000 a year – look what that did for the LibDems! – which it claims would save the government £800m a year. This thesis shouldn’t really be a surprise. The Allander institute is hardly stuffed with raging lefties.

The man who led the research is David Eiser. His job is sponsored by the Asianomics Group, which brands itself as Asia’s leading economic outfit. It was set up by Dr Jim Walker, a Morton-supporting, independence-leaning, racehorse-owning expat. Two men, well meaning no doubt, who enjoyed free higher education to help them climb the ladder but now want to put financial burdens on those who might follow.

The real thing

A video on YouTube, “Golden Eagle Snatches Kid”, has been viewed more than 45 million times. In it the eagle sweeps down, grabs the child and flies away before dropping the baby. It has fooled millions, but it is a clever fake. Similarly “Synthesizing Obama” has the man himself saying “President Trump is a total and complete dip***t.” Again fake.

Last year, an anonymous manipulator with the handle Deepfakes released a software toolkit that allowed anyone to create synthetic videos where one face was substituted for another, while the mouthing and expressions were identical. To prove it, Deepfakes posted altered pornographic clips appearing to feature Hollywood actresses.

So the old saw that the camera doesn’t lie is bunkum. During the week the White House was at it, issuing a sequence which, press secretary Sarah Sanders claimed, showed CNN reporter Jim Acosta assaulting a female intern. The film was apparently speeded up to show Acosta chopping the woman’s arm when it was, at worst, an unintended brush as she tried to grab the mic. Acosta’s White House press credentials were then blocked.

Faked photos and videos, airbrushing opponents out of history, have been the tactic of bullies and dictators since the camera was invented. True to that, Trump then said to Acosta, “... when you report fake news, which you do a lot, you are the enemy of the people”.

In June this year five people were killed by a gunman in the newsroom of the Capital Gazette. I just hope Acosta’s security and that of his colleagues has been strengthened following this presidential incitement.