>Aamer Anwar, lead solicitor for Scottish Covid Bereaved families group, told BBC Scotland’s The Sunday Show that the Scottish government had not given details of when messages were deleted.
>He highlighted that Ms Sturgeon announced in May 2020 that there would be a Scottish Covid inquiry, which was later confirmed in August 2021.
>Mr Anwar said: “From May 2020, if there was a position of auto-delete, if there was a situation where government ministers and senior civil servants were deleting their WhatsApps, it should have been ordered to stop.
>”We want to know when was the deletion brought in, who ordered it, why was it not ordered to be stopped?
>”And did they continue after the event? Because that’s deletion of material.”
Appreciate the SNP’s line that government decisions weren’t undertaken through WhatsApp but surely there must’ve been informal discussions ongoing. I can’t really argue with Aamer’s line of argument here. Doesn’t really inspire much confidence in our politicians if they aren’t going to be transparent on why decisions were made.
The Scottish Government is insisting that government decisions aren’t made on WhatsApp – implying then that the WhatsApp messages aren’t as relevant but without the actual messages being visible, it’s not possible for the inquiry to make that judgement.
Plus, as we’ve seen with the messages from Tory MPs, it’s not only the government decisions that are important – the regular messages being sent between MPs gave an indication of the culture and environment around the decisions being made (like those messages where MPs joke Carrie’s the one in charge).
I don’t think WhatsApp should be used by the government in the first place, but any discussions made between the government should be archived, inquiry or not.
I wonder if the messages can be retrieved in any way? Perhaps through the recipients on the other end?
The only thing I delete is my browser history and that’s only because I don’t won’t people to know the freaky stuff I have a chug to.
I have to hand it to women leaders, they do seem to see the smoke a lot quicker than male ones do.
Going for that Angela Merkel reputation trajectory.
Wee lego heed
I’d just like to point out that in 2016 I upgraded from a Galaxy S4 to a S7 and in doing so I lost all my Whatapp messages. I was pretty annoyed with the process and with myself and swore to take more care next time.
In 2023 I got a Galaxy A23 and started the upgrade/transfer process with, what I thought was, great care. In spite of that I lost ALL my Whatsapp messages.
It doesn’t have to be an evil conspiracy to delete Whatsapp messages. Plain, old-fashioned, ordinary incompetence suffices and I have that in buckets.
8 comments
Corrupt politicians are corrupt. I am shocked.
>Aamer Anwar, lead solicitor for Scottish Covid Bereaved families group, told BBC Scotland’s The Sunday Show that the Scottish government had not given details of when messages were deleted.
>He highlighted that Ms Sturgeon announced in May 2020 that there would be a Scottish Covid inquiry, which was later confirmed in August 2021.
>Mr Anwar said: “From May 2020, if there was a position of auto-delete, if there was a situation where government ministers and senior civil servants were deleting their WhatsApps, it should have been ordered to stop.
>”We want to know when was the deletion brought in, who ordered it, why was it not ordered to be stopped?
>”And did they continue after the event? Because that’s deletion of material.”
Appreciate the SNP’s line that government decisions weren’t undertaken through WhatsApp but surely there must’ve been informal discussions ongoing. I can’t really argue with Aamer’s line of argument here. Doesn’t really inspire much confidence in our politicians if they aren’t going to be transparent on why decisions were made.
The Scottish Government is insisting that government decisions aren’t made on WhatsApp – implying then that the WhatsApp messages aren’t as relevant but without the actual messages being visible, it’s not possible for the inquiry to make that judgement.
Plus, as we’ve seen with the messages from Tory MPs, it’s not only the government decisions that are important – the regular messages being sent between MPs gave an indication of the culture and environment around the decisions being made (like those messages where MPs joke Carrie’s the one in charge).
I don’t think WhatsApp should be used by the government in the first place, but any discussions made between the government should be archived, inquiry or not.
I wonder if the messages can be retrieved in any way? Perhaps through the recipients on the other end?
The only thing I delete is my browser history and that’s only because I don’t won’t people to know the freaky stuff I have a chug to.
I have to hand it to women leaders, they do seem to see the smoke a lot quicker than male ones do.
Going for that Angela Merkel reputation trajectory.
Wee lego heed
I’d just like to point out that in 2016 I upgraded from a Galaxy S4 to a S7 and in doing so I lost all my Whatapp messages. I was pretty annoyed with the process and with myself and swore to take more care next time.
In 2023 I got a Galaxy A23 and started the upgrade/transfer process with, what I thought was, great care. In spite of that I lost ALL my Whatsapp messages.
It doesn’t have to be an evil conspiracy to delete Whatsapp messages. Plain, old-fashioned, ordinary incompetence suffices and I have that in buckets.
Just sayin’.