Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir has a piece today on the nasty comments a tiny handful of idiots made to JK Rowling this week, which – unlike the alleged “barrage” of abuse supposedly unleashed against Labour activist Clare Lally – can at least definitely be said to have happened.
The piece is a tedious one-sided rant, but at the end something awesome happens.
Alert readers will have had a hard time missing Labour spin doctor John McTernan on TV and radio and in newspapers this week. A former special adviser to Tony Blair, he’s been rolled out on heavy rotation across the media to pontificate on Campbell Gunn’s minor briefing error (which was swiftly apologised for) about frontline Labour activist Clare Lally, and to strenuously insist to anyone who’ll listen that abusive “cybernats” are co-ordinated and controlled by the SNP.
Anyone who’s followed Scottish (or, indeed, Australian) politics for any length of time will have been rubbing their eyes and syringing their ears in surprise at Mr McTernan being invited to cast aspersions on anyone else’s morals and ethics. Anyone who hasn’t might want to bring themselves up to speed.
Your defamatory lies really ought to stop.
In today’s edition, you allege in reference to me that:
This, as I’m sure your journalists are perfectly well aware, is absolutely untrue.
Is mine, of course. From last night’s Scotland Tonight, in case you missed it:
Particular kudos to STV for finding footage (it’s right at the start of this clip) of Clare Lally introducing and launching Johann Lamont’s Scottish Labour leadership bid in November 2011, even though the Daily Record said in August 2012 that she had “no previous political experience”. We expect someone will resign.
We spent much of yesterday evening trying to actually track down the “vicious barrage” of vile cybernat abuse that Labour and “Better Together” activist Clare Lally says she was subjected to after being revealed to be rather less of an “ordinary” member of the public than the No camp presented her as at its recent Glasgow rally, and which has received wall-to-wall media coverage.
As yet, we’ve drawn a blank. We’ve made repeated requests, some to people who’ve contacted us angrily claiming to be her friends or family members, for evidence of any abusive comments at all. All have been met with an abrupt outbreak of silence.
Scotland 2014 devoted almost its entire 30-minute show to the issue last night. To depict the terrible onslaught, the above tweets were all they could come up with. The entire affair, readers might feel, is starting to smell distinctly piscine.
It’s been a pretty bad-tempered day in the independence debate, as the No campaign drags everything down into the mud yet again in an attempt to hide their latest shame. Let’s end it on something beautiful.
If you missed it, today’s John Beattie show featuring Hamish Macdonell and myself:
Sorry we’ve deserted you today, readers. I’ve been dashing around the BBC Bath radio cupboard, the ITV West Country studio and BBC Broadcasting House in Bristol talking mainly about the Clare Lally business, which the No campaign is throwing everything at. You’re going to have a hard time avoiding my big stupid face on the telly tonight.
The three appearances were very different in nature. On BBC Radio Scotland I had a very civilised discussion with host John Beattie and fellow guest Hamish Macdonell (of various publications), where everyone got to say their piece without us interrupting each other, while at Broadcasting House for, I think, Scotland 2014, I got pretty aggressively grilled but in a perfectly proper and professional journalistic manner. No complaints there – pending, of course, what makes the edit.
The ITV gig for Scotland Tonight was something else.
The New Statesman has been doggedly ignoring all our polite requests to release the audio of its controversial interview with Alistair Darling for several days now, but today it very quietly released the full text of it on its website.
Where previously it had reported the “Better Together” leader as having made an “inaudible mumble” in response to a question about whether the SNP were guilty of “blood-and-soil nationalism”, apparently the mag had given its ears a good swabbing out with a cotton-bud and concluded that it HAD been able to hear him after all.
The Times has a front-page lead this morning on the “Better Together” rally held in Glasgow yesterday, at which the official lead campaign group debuted its new “No Thanks” slogan. The article makes an interesting claim:
Well, that all seems legit.
The Daily Record carries a story this evening about a man placing a £200,000 bet with William Hill on a No vote in the independence referendum.
And readers might be forgiven for finding it a bit familiar.
Our ever-attentive readers will already have noticed that since the weekend there’s been a new link on the centre column, called “CAMPAIGN MATERIALS”. Over the next 100 days it’s going to be key to getting our message out to the people of Scotland, and it’s your chance to take it directly to your own neighbourhood.
Because even with quarter of a million readers, it’s no good just sitting here preaching to the already-converted. We need to go on the road.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
