Wings Over Scotland

When this complaint got the brush-off from the BBC, flatly refusing a right of reply under Article 28 of the Broadcasting Code to the Corporation’s grossly unbalanced and factually-inaccurate coverage of our court case against Kezia Dugdale:

We now have to go through TWO more rounds of pointless dickaboutery and dismissal from the BBC, taking up several weeks, before Ofcom will take the matter up.

(You may have noted, incidentally, that the letter gives no indication that its response can be appealed in any way. It took Ofcom to tell us it could.)

We’ll keep you posted.

After five days I’ve had no response to this:

As Ofcom require any complaints about the BBC to be directed to the Corporation first, I’ve sent the BBC the letter below today (by physical mail, as the online complaint form is comically inadequate), which I expect to be a waste of time and energy. If I don’t receive a satisfactory response – and I’m sure that I won’t – I’ll take it up with Ofcom.

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Most of the on-the-spot media reporting of the judgement in our court case against Kezia Dugdale on Wednesday was pretty fair and straightforward news coverage. The majority of pieces accurately and prominently mentioned the fact that the sheriff had found that I wasn’t a homophobe and that Dugdale’s article in the Daily Record which had claimed that I was WAS both untrue and defamatory.

(Some readers objected to headlines claiming that Dugdale had been “victorious”, but the strict legal fact is that she had.)

But it didn’t take long for the press to recover its composure and revert to type.

A comment piece in today’s Herald is probably the peak so far.

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My legal team and I have just received, unexpectedly early, the sheriff’s verdict in my defamation case against Kezia Dugdale. The short and paraphrased version is that yes, she did defame me by inaccurately calling me a homophobe, but because she’s an idiot who doesn’t know what words mean, she’s allowed to, so we lose.

Some key passages of the 37-page judgement are appended below.

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Well, hopefully there won’t be too much of that, as we’ve got a sitter in to keep the Separats in check while we’re away. But activity on Wings will probably be a little sparse over the next few days, for hopefully-obvious reasons.

There’s a limit on how much we’ll be able to say about the case, and chances to post on the site will be restricted in general, but we’ll try to keep on top of any important events. Normal service will be resumed ASAP. In the meantime, behave yourselves.

Wings Over Scotland is seven years old today (the period of time defined by the Good Friday Agreement as a “generation” in terms of referendums), and it doesn’t feel like a day over 25. Can we hurry up and have another indy vote before the entire country burns to the ground around our ears, please?

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It’s probably time we started collecting all the media articles from the last couple of weeks about our ongoing legal battle with former Scottish Labour branch manager Kezia Dugdale, because it’s getting increasingly hard to plough through them all.

The story that Labour were pulling Dugdale’s legal funding was first broken by the Huffington Post on 19 September. Below is all the coverage we’ve found between then and now (most recent first). As best as we can recollect, incidentally, we’ve been asked for quotes for TWO of these stories.

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We’d hoped not to have to write any more about this for a while, but a story broke this evening on left-wing Labour website Skwawkbox that we thought those of you not on Twitter would want to see.

Following a previous piece casting huge doubt on Dugdale and the Scottish media’s version of events, the site got hold of a letter (dated yesterday) from Labour’s general secretary Jennie Formby to Mary Fee MSP, who’d sent a complaint about the party’s decision to stop funding Dugdale’s legal costs.

And it’s quite the read.

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We hadn’t been intending to talk about this again today, but the John Beattie show on Radio Scotland just ran a segment that we really can’t let go unremarked.

Here’s the whole thing. Some of that’s going to need interpreting for the sane.

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We’ve been keeping coverage of our ongoing court battle with former Scottish Labour branch manager Kezia Dugdale to a minimum on the site, partly because little of any material impact has actually happened yet.

However, there was a mildly interesting development last night, which was scooped and accurately reported by the Scottish Sun.

Reactions to the party’s statement have already seen serious amounts of what we’re generously going to call “misinformation” generated and circulating around social media, so we’re going to have to clear some of it up. Apologies.

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We’ve got to admit, the Yorkshire chap makes a fair point.

Earlier this evening the Herald’s poor demented David Leask made an extraordinary and completely untrue allegation:

We haven’t said a single word on the subject (we haven’t a clue if it’s true or not), so several people challenged Leask on the claim, and eventually got a response.

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