So per week and a bit after the deadline, this arrived.
And it’s not fairly what you had been informed earlier than.
In keeping with the Sunday Mail 9 days in the past, the CC and DCC did go to Holyrood, however did NOT meet with the previous First Minister.
However we can not consider a cause, if that had been true, that the response we’ve acquired right now wouldn’t merely say so.
(1) “They didn’t meet with anybody else” is a sentence with no ramifications. It self-evidently doesn’t influence on any investigation. (Our request didn’t specify the previous First Minister anyway.)
(2) Equally, “additionally they met with [X] to be able to talk about [government business Y]” could be an announcement with no injurious consequence, so there’d be no cause for them to not disclose the actual fact (certainly, they’d be obliged to).
(3) Lastly, one thing like “additionally they met with the First Minister to tell her as a matter of courtesy of the upcoming charging of Andrew Miller/Amy George” (as a result of it occurred on that day and it might need political reverberations), would once more bear no want of secrecy. The very fact of his being charged is public information.
So what we’ve got to ask ourselves is why we haven’t been informed any of these issues.
And regardless of the verbosely evasive reply, the one conclusion it’s potential to moderately draw is that they DID meet with another person (in any other case they’d have stated Sentence 1), and that it was NOT on regular authorities enterprise (in any other case they’d have stated Sentence 2), and that it was NOT to merely move on info with regard to some other legal matter (in any other case they’d have stated Sentence 3).
And that solely actually leaves one possibility, doesn’t it, readers?