Chris McEleny is an SNP councillor. This is a personal opinion.
The open sewer of some newspapers has been in full torrent this week. However it surged over the overflow pipe with the hysteria in last weekend’s Sunday Mail.
In a deranged editorial it actually argued that Alex Salmond should stay out of the SNP “whatever happens with his legal challenge and the subsequent police investigation”.
In other words, “regardless of innocence or guilt, regardless of whether the procedures are judged just or unjust we just don’t like him”.
Actually it’s not what they like or don’t like. It’s fear that motivates much of the mainstream media against Salmond.
As alert readers will have noticed from the third paragraph, the headline is actually an inexplicably negative spin on the fact that journeys on the line INCREASED last year by 5.8% to a new record high of 1.5 million.
This year’s Scottish Household Survey is out, and the press is in an absolutely gleeful orgy of misery over it. Here’s the Times, for example:
The paper’s leading line is that “only half of those polled were happy with schools, the NHS and transport provision in their area”. So readers would naturally assume that the other half were DISsatisfied, right?
Perhaps the single most striking feature of everyday non-constitutional Scottish politics is Labour’s constantly-recurring habit of highlighting some supposedly unsatisfactory statistic about the Scottish Government’s performance, only for it to be revealed that it’s vastly better than the comparable figure for Wales, where Labour has been in power ever since the Assembly was created in 1999.
So let’s crank up the machine again and see what it says, shall we?
New polling out tonight from British Polling Council members Deltapoll.
Excluding don’t-knows, both of those sets of figures come out at 52-48 margins: for Yes if Brexit goes ahead, for No if it doesn’t. If Brexit isn’t mentioned in the question at all, the results are 49% Yes 51% No.
Excluding don’t knows, the figures for Northern Ireland are 57-43 in favour of a united Ireland in the event of Brexit, and 60-40 against if Brexit is averted.
It’s an almost impossible task to identify the most despicable sewer-dredging piece of “journalism” that the Scottish press has spewed out in the past 10 days or so of demented obsession with as-yet-unsubstantiated allegations by two unnamed women against Alex Salmond, but today’s Sunday Mail must be a strong contender.
The paper runs a four-page orgy of hypocritical moralistic shrieking based on Salmond’s outrageous and unacceptable behaviour in, um, thanking the people who donated to his crowdfunder to challenge the process by which the story was improperly leaked to the media. The monster.
And if you think that’s a ludicrously thin basis on which to create a front-page splash and three pages of screaming drivel inside, wait until you actually see some of it.
While ploughing through hundreds of pages of hysterical drivel about Alex Salmond in the Scottish press this week, extra-alert readers may have also been aware of quite a stushie going on between the SNP-controlled Glasgow City Council (GCC) and a group of representatives and fans of Scotland’s newest professional football club The Rangers FC, such as Tory list MSP Adam “WATP” Tomkins (pictured below).
Last night’s unexpected events caused a meltdown in the Unionist community on a scale we can’t remember seeing before. Alex Salmond doing the exact thing they’d all been calling on him to do for days provoked an absolute apocalypse of spluttering, incandescent fury in which more people made idiots of themselves at once than the last time “Rangers” had a share issue.
Geri on The Land Of No Laws: “AI Dan, Whit a moron you are. High worth *individuals* are of very little benefit to any country. What exactly…” May 20, 02:32
Young Lochinvar on The Land Of No Laws: “AI Dun @ 5.42 The hoores excuse.. You Tories really are a right bunch, just lurking, beneath the radar but…” May 20, 00:15
Young Lochinvar on The Land Of No Laws: “HMcH Hurry up now catamite! 11.20 is getting awfy close to midnight and Matron switching off the lights and turning…” May 19, 23:56
Young Lochinvar on The Land Of No Laws: “Dan @ 9.44 It’s because he’s a Scotchland office superannuated/ private healthcare scheme tax hating/ aspiring evader Harry hoofter with…” May 19, 23:45
Dan on The Land Of No Laws: “So just diversion and no effort to provide detailed costings on the health provision model you want. Yer not the…” May 19, 23:39
Geri on The Land Of No Laws: “Faithless people? Away & behave! They’re defending their territory. WTF that had to do with his comments is anyones guess.…” May 19, 23:31
Geri on The Land Of No Laws: ““if they can’t get the huns to win, will try to get the wee huns over the line.” LOL! Love…” May 19, 23:21
Hatey McHateface on The Land Of No Laws: “Credit where due, Confused, that’s a good post. Seems you missed an obvious solution to Scottish football’s sectarian problems though.…” May 19, 23:20
Young Lochinvar on The Land Of No Laws: “Well happy anniversary tomorrow, particularly for the Pict supporters on here of tomorrow’s anniversary of the Battle of Dunnichen/ Nechtansmere…” May 19, 23:18
Hatey McHateface on The Land Of No Laws: ““our ancestors were ethnically cleansed, displaced, slaughtered & starved” Are you sure, Geri? Only, I would have thought that if…” May 19, 23:08
Hatey McHateface on The Land Of No Laws: “@ Dan says: 19 May, 2026 at 9:44 pm “prick” “twat” “feck” “arse” “drink” You should get out more, Dan,…” May 19, 22:56
Red on The Land Of No Laws: “Geri, take your suicidal empathy elsewhere. We don’t need any more faithless people. We need people who are for the…” May 19, 22:52
Hatey McHateface on The Land Of No Laws: “If you intend to play the “native Scot” cards, Alf, I hope you’re holding a good hand. I can trace…” May 19, 22:44
Geri on The Land Of No Laws: “& how would you know that? I think they’d be rather proud & show empathy considering our ancestors were ethnically…” May 19, 22:29
Confused on The Land Of No Laws: “it’s funny how the podcast is taking over as the dominant form; even the BBC is doing them, since they…” May 19, 22:22
Willie on The Land Of No Laws: “Just switched on tbe BBC news. Silly me, should have known better, but the world neadlines are that Arsenal have…” May 19, 22:16
Red on The Land Of No Laws: “If we’re going to talk “pathetic”, why are you, a Scottish man, flying the “Palestinian” flag? You think they’re your…” May 19, 21:59
Dan on The Land Of No Laws: “One ponders how John Hatey Main will cover his health insurance premiums or pay for his and family’s medical treatments…” May 19, 21:44
Alf Baird on The Land Of No Laws: ““Are these colonialists with you now?” Aye, they are all over this site like a bad rash, de-basing native Scots…” May 19, 21:44
Jamie on The Land Of No Laws: “Cheating SFA now talking about deducting Celtic points, so that Celtic will be the first and only club in Scotland…” May 19, 21:36
Hatey McHateface on The Land Of No Laws: “Some good points there, Southernbystander. I believe the parasitic infestation that is woke is too entrenched within the NHS. It…” May 19, 21:28
George Ferguson on The Land Of No Laws: “An update on the Official Match Delegate Report situation. Both the SFA and SPFL have received the reports. The normal…” May 19, 21:25
Hatey McHateface on The Land Of No Laws: “Night, night, Donny. Dinna forget yer tacos.” May 19, 21:12
Aidan on The Land Of No Laws: “And you’ve now added three more, you trying to be James Cheyne?” May 19, 21:07
Hatey McHateface on The Land Of No Laws: ““Do the voices keep you awake at night?” Indeed they do, Northy has often stated as much. He always attributes…” May 19, 21:07
Southernbystander on The Land Of No Laws: “Northcode, very much like ‘downtrodden’ then?” May 19, 21:03
Southernbystander on The Land Of No Laws: “Hatey, ‘Sure. But the wokerati infesting the NHS . . .’ Yes, but that ain’t socialism. Socialism is what founded…” May 19, 20:58
Northcode on The Land Of No Laws: “Right, I’m bored with this place now… too many colonialists on here the nicht. Anyway, I’ve skelped thair erses raw…” May 19, 20:52
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh on The Land Of No Laws: “AUSTRALIA URGED TO PROTECT WOMEN-ONLY SPACES AFTER ‘INSANE’ COURT JUDGEMENT Australian legislators have been urged to uphold biological reality after…” May 19, 20:44
Northcode on The Land Of No Laws: “You are hilarious… I bet no-one has ever said that to you before, eh? Well, said it and meant it,…” May 19, 20:40
