Holyrood Blockbuster

I have just watched the Justice Minister and the Lord Advocate making statements to Parliament about Shirley McKie's case. I obviously have to be fairly circumspect in my comments here, but suffice it to say that nothing said by either of them addressed the main question which troubles the public - in case they have forgotten, here is the question, put as briefly and pithily as I can manage:- How did 6 fingerprint officers manage, independently from each other, to make exactly the same (honest) mistaken identification of the questioned fingerprint? If they cannot or will not answer that question then they should either have a public inquiry or give way to others who can answer the question. I am afraid that this looks increasingly like a cover-up, Watergate-stylee. Cathy Jamieson seems to think that it was all a long time ago and things have changed, so let's move on. But she misses the point. Underlying the above question is the sinister implication that there were people employed (and who are still employed) in the SCRO who were prepared to collaborate in the manipulation and misidentification of fingerprint evidence, for purposes which can only be guessed at. I don't know whether that's true, but at the very least that is the suspicion. While that suspicion remains uncleared then the SCRO will continue to be a pariah in international forensic examination, and Cathy's vision of making it 'world-class' is pie in the sky. Politicians, eh? As Sheriff AJM would say "they come from a culture of dissemblers"