National News Scottish Finance Secretary

Gary Baldi

Well-known member
Joined
6 Dec 2017
Messages
7,061
This story is quite a shocker:

Just what in the hell was he thinking for starting an unsolicited conversation with a 16 year old on social media and carrying it on for over 200 messages? It's like George Osborne or Gordon Brown doing this and being caught on Budget Day. Could it be considered to be grooming?

I know it's the Murdoch media, but frankly, I don't think anyone should care. Just wow.
 
A bizarre situation for a politician to get themself into. It’s a bit hard to see how it’s grooming. The age of legal capacity in Scotland is 16, so however unusual it looks the lad could be marrying someone without parental consent.

If it could be considered harassment that’s different and Mackay should have the book thrown at him. Otherwise, if what he did is so wrong that he has to step down, then the law must be wrong, surely?
 
A bizarre situation for a politician to get themself into. It’s a bit hard to see how it’s grooming. The age of legal capacity in Scotland is 16, so however unusual it looks the lad could be marrying someone without parental consent.

If it could be considered harassment that’s different and Mackay should have the book thrown at him. Otherwise, if what he did is so wrong that he has to step down, then the law must be wrong, surely?

I`ll help you with that............
 
Yes I get that EY, and I think it was mad and bizarre behaviour. But at what point do people stop being “young people”? There are social definitions and legal definitions, and they seem to be at odds in Scotland based on this. I’m not sure that people would be saying “grooming” if he was 18 even though an 18 year old is still a young person. Maybe they would? Maybe his behaviour still wouldn’t have “passed the pub test” and he would have stood down.
 
The method of contact and the length of what he did is what you could consider grooming. I think as any adult, it's responsible to be highly careful and caring when contacting a young person in that manner, especially when unsolicited. As a politician, it's a higher standard you must live by and higher when in a position of power.

In some regards, it depends on the maturity level of the 16 year old and as such, so it's probably the right thing to consider it to be grooming, or an attempt to. Quite what he was doing is still not clear to me.
 
Back
Top Bottom