Right then. Our 2019 crowdfunder is officially over (the page is actually still live at the moment because several readers have asked it be kept open until the weekend so they can make their own donations, but it’ll be finally closed down on Sunday night).
And good heavens.
The main page alone narrowly beat last year’s all-sources total (ie including donations made via other routes like direct bank transfers) by nearly £600, and the actual final figure for 2019 is, jawdroppingly, this much:
£170,202
Blimey.
That’s almost £17,000 above the previous all-time record, despite the total deadness of the Scottish politics scene for the last two years and my personal determined efforts at alienating certain sections of the Yes movement at inopportune moments.
Once again, your support leaves us lost for adequate words, and since inadequate words are no use to anybody we’ll leave it there.
So the Wings finances are in a healthy state. Irrespective of what you’re about to read below, we have plenty cash to sustain us for the next 12 months and achieve all the goals set out in the fundraiser.
(We can also afford the frankly inflation-busting pay-rises that myself and our itinerant crayonsmith Chris Cairns are getting this time round, because the last couple of years have to be honest been quite a trial one way and another.)
But there’s a giant elephant in the room that needs to be dealt with now before we can wrap this whole business up for another year and get back to proper work, and the elephant was identified in this paragraph on the fundraiser page:
My defamation lawsuit against former Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale is not yet a done deal. There are valid and viable grounds for an appeal against the sheriff’s decision and we need to decide quite soon whether to file one or not.
For hopefully obvious reasons we won’t be discussing the merits or otherwise of the judgement, or the prospects of success for any appeal, in detail. While we’ve taken legal advice on the latter, we can’t discuss it here.
(Because if our lawyer said “You’re 95% sure of victory” it might be interpreted by the court as arrogant presumptuousness – which judges tend not to like – and if they said “You’ve only got a 10% chance” that would obviously be thrown in our faces by the other side’s lawyers.)
So what we’re going to talk about is the bare financial reality.
The sheriff, unusually, did not make an order for costs. A hearing is now scheduled to decide that, the two parties having failed to reach agreement between themselves. However it’s normally the case that the winning party – Dugdale – can expect to be awarded the bulk of their legal expenses.
(Though not always. Alert readers may recall the case of one A. Carmichael.)
You need to know what’s at stake to decide what we do next, so here goes.
[Please note that due to the way the law works, almost all of the figures given below are approximate to some degree or another, and/or subject to alteration.]
– Dugdale is seeking costs of around £100,000. (Made up of £77,000 in itemised expenses plus an unspecified “uplift” likely to be in the very rough region of 30%.) We’ll challenge this figure at the hearing and seek to have it reduced, since we believe it to be excessive in several respects, but there’s no guarantee of success and it could even go up.
– we’ve currently spent somewhere in the region of £55,000 on our own legal representation (that’s the full and final bill, except for the relatively small sums that’ll be incurred at the costs hearing).
– the cost of an unsuccessful appeal is likely to be somewhere very roughly in the general ballpark of £50,000 (that’s including the expenses of both sides).
What this means is that were we to lose the appeal, it would probably increase the total amount we had to pay by perhaps 50%, from around £100K to around £150K. (ie the settlement to Dugdale plus the costs of the appeal.)
On the other hand if we were to WIN an appeal, we’d have to pay Dugdale’s lawyers nothing (probably – see Carmichael) and could also reasonably expect to recover a large part of the £55K we’ve paid our own legal team. That would effectively put up to £150,000 extra into the Wings Fighting Fund, compared to if we don’t appeal.
Expressed in crude terms, what this means is that an appeal would risk £50,000 to potentially save £150,000. Or in summary:
– don’t appeal: pay up to £100,000
– appeal and win: pay £0, recover up to £55,000
– appeal and lose: pay up to £150,000
And since that’s essentially your money, we don’t believe it’s a decision that should be taken without soliciting your feelings on the matter.
Below is a poll. It won’t in itself be the total be-all and end-all of the decision because we also have to factor in our legal advice (and website polls can be sabotaged), but it’ll be considered along with the balance of your comments on this post.
Loading …So let us know what you think, and we’ll answer any questions that we’re able to. (The views of donors, should they make themselves known, will be given considerably more weight than those who didn’t contribute financially – it’s their cash – but everyone’s opinions are sought.)
One way or another, let’s get this wrapped up.
