Except for viewers in the South of Scotland...Exclusive!

Yet again Tyne Tees - Border TV, the Newcastle based ITV broadcaster have gone awry in their political obligations to the 250,000 plus viewers living in Dumfries & Galloway, Borders and parts of Ayrshire, by NOT playing the SNP party political broadcast tomorrow night prior to the party leaders debate. Viewers outside the South of Scotland can see Alex Salmond say what he might have said if here were allowed to participate on BBC1 Scotland, BBC2 Scotland, STV, Channel 4 and Channel 5.

This isn't the first time the quarter of a million people in the South of Scotland have been left in the dark. Last year before the European elections Border hadn't scheduled the SNP Party Political Broadcast preferring instead to offer their viewers a party political broadcast from those not terribly well known in Auld Scotia, right wing nut jobs UKIP. 

Complaints were made from my Dumfries office, councillors who had been out knocking doors and stuffing envelopes through doors campaigning were justifiably miffed, messages were sent up the line to the high heid yins at the SNP bunker in Edinburgh. Calls were reluctantly made and the situation was rectified. The broadcast was played and the SNP finished an admirable second to the Tories, but absolutely trouncing Labour and the Lib Dems.

Naturally this isn't just the fault of Border TV, who have been forced to merge with Tyne Tees after Michael Grade foresaw an opportunity to squeeze a few extra pennies out of the pension fund by sacking staff and closing down the Carlisle operation, giving the South of Scotland a five minute opt out on 'Lookaround' where viewers can enjoy learning all about young lassies doing Irish dancing in Whitby... Nope, in many ways the folk that must share the blame for this apathy to the South of Scotland are the upper echelons of the SNP, particularly the team that negotiated these PPB's to be scheduled prior to the leaders debate. How soon before the party realise that Scotland doesn't end somewhere south of Motherwell on the M74?

At the same time as Salmond offers viewers outside the South of Scotland an alternative politics to the "Metropolitan machine" his party are guilty of 'kowtowing' (thanks to Hamish) to the Central belt and ignoring peripheral Scotland.

Not that Labour, the Tories or the Lib Dems are blameless. They've never thought to complain about the paucity of news coverage this area gets, it suits their political agenda just fine and dandy to ignore the question of Scottish self determination.


If as expected we say goodbye to Comrade Brown and his relentless dithering after the General Election and welcome in the shiny forehead of David 'Dave' Cameron and his desire to respect Scotland, the first thing he can do to show that respect is to legislate the devolution of broadcasting to Scotland, so that a nation of five million doesn't remain dependent on London or Newcastle for our cultural and political views. 

The Daily Record is a big fat liar and other observations.

Our delightfully jolly Tartan overlord Alex Salmond and Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill yesterday appeared before the Scottish Affairs Select Committee (click link for video) at Westminster in the rather sterile sounding session, 'Scotland and the UK: cooperation and communication between governments'. I suppose it's nice to see Westminster adopt 'Government' over 'Executive'.

Anyhoo, the media have jumped all over the Tartan overlord and Kenny MacAskill or Mahatmacaskill ,as Tom Harris likes to think of him, for the comments they made in committee on the release on compassionate grounds in August 2009 of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi. 

Foremost in our brave Scottish media was Magnus Gardham of the Daily Record, aka the Labour Party in-house journal. Magnus at his most excoriating best delivered the subhead, 'Kenny MacAskill: I've no regrets over decision to release Lockerbie bomber.' 

The Daily Record much like the rest of the British tabloids and American media have been completely vituperative in condemning MacAskill's decision, much like the blessed Lord Foulkes, whom Tom Harris describes as shouting from a sedentary position during the nominations for the Scottish Politician of the Year Awards, "He's still alive."

There appears to be some desperate wish on the part of the Labour Party and the tabloids for Megrahi to remain alive, not on humanitarian grounds, but merely to embarrass MacAskill. Some have even gone so far as to deliberately mislead their readership with flagrant lies, deceit and propaganda.

Now on Thursday the 26th of November vile, deceitful, cowardly, bullying, smear merchant and attack bastard Montague Burton received a swift belter in the nads from the News of the World. Earlier that day, during an innocent morning, MB, aka me, had visited the parliament's information centre, SPICE to find a hard copy of the Daily Record dated Thursday 19th of November, after a senior colleague had mentioned that exposing the subterfuge and propaganda of the Daily Record therein regarding a photograph of Megrahi, might be a good story for this here blawg. I was rather dismayed and not all together surprised to discover, in a parliamentary email from SPICE, that the hard copy was in fact missing, had in actual fact gone walkies. 

Soon after the shit hit the fan and I was reviled, demonised and accused of being not only Jeckyll and Hyde...but also Walter Mitty!

Completing the blog post slipped from my mind, until yesterday. On a rare away day to civilisation, I managed to pop into the newly upgraded Mitchell Library in Glasgow, where the lovely ladies in the archive section were able to direct me to a copy of the Daily Record dated Thursday 19th of November, wherein I found the story on Megrahi where he brazenly was seen to have the temerity to still be alive, and dash it all, looking a lot better than he did three months earlier. Or was he?

Now dear reader, please have a look at the photographs below. The character in the shell-suit is Mr Megrahi boarding his flight to Tripoli. The photograph on the right and labelled 'Yesterday' i.e, Wednesday the 18th of November is of Megrahi in a suit, shirt and tie.  

                     

This photograph below is rather striking. It shows Mr Megrahi sitting with Libyan leader Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. If dear reader you look closely at Mr Megrahi, below, and above, you will see that the two photographs are identical, right down to the curtains in the background, the sofa back and the flare on his glasses. The wonderful label that informs us that the photograph was taken on Wednesday the 18th of November obscures Mr Gaddafi and Mr Megrahi clasping hands together. It is transparently obvious that this is a cropped image and a picture that tells a thousand lies.

The image above although tagged by the New York Daily News as being updated on Sunday the 23rd of August was taken on the evening that Megrahi arrived back in Tripoli on the 20th of August, after Megrahi changed out of his Greenock prison shell suit into a rather tasteful suit...

So there you have it the very last blog post I'll ever do suggested by a former colleague, jings if I'm telling the truth about this, what else might I be saying that's true? 

As to my assertion that the Daily Record is a big fat liar, well no doubt they could make an excuse that this blatant attempt to decieve was an 'honest mistake', rather than a nasty piece of propaganda, which attempted to sway their readers belief that Megrahi's cancer wasn't real and that Kenny MacAskill had been duped by cancer specialists. 

Interestingly, I first mentioned this duplicity in the Sunday Times article last month. Yet not one of the illustrious 'investigative' journalists working in Scotland could be arsed looking into it. Is it a case that they didn't believe me? If so why did Tom Gordon do the story in the Herald on the Secretary General of the Labour Party, Councillor Colin Smyth being expelled from a Dumfries and Galloway council meeting, when he lifted it direct from this here blog? Perhaps the Scottish media don't like bloggers pointing out their inaccuracies and in this case blatant attempts to deceive...

Of course next Wednesday will be the, jings, fifth month since Megrahi was released. Is his added longevity down to money being no object to his care, the differences in weather between HMP Greenock and Tripoli or the comforting effects of being with your family during an illness?

Expect further frothing from the good Baron Foulkes and the boy Baker minor, who appears to be missing his school cap...

Come ahead if you think you're hard enough. You're going to get your fucking head kicked in etcetera

These were the delightful images MSP's, Civil Servants, Members of the Public and the viewing audience of dozens of political anoraks watching on BBC Parliament witnessed yesterday, when Iain Gray 'challenged' First Minister Alex Salmond to a debate on Scotland's future on St Andrew's day.


Mr Gray a former secondary school teacher will quite naturally have seen the two handed 'come ahead' gesture many times in the playground and at some of the more rambunctious square goes, often seen in the wee small hours of Labour party conferences boozing dens and naturally amongst combatants in our national sport of street fighting.I was fortunate enough to be in the Chamber and in the canteen after Iain Gray's finest moment. Heads slumped among the thinking Labour MSP's, the writing is definitely on the wall. Iain Grey will no doubt be challenged between the Glasgow by-election and Christmas.

Who will replace him as Leader Labour in the Scottish Parliament?

Scotland's independence day

On the day that Broon, fluttered his eyelash, gave big Barak a comehither wink and proclaimed himself the big man on campus, an American journalist wrote something akin to a piece of journalism, we in Scotland have long given up on. An impartial article. Read on and applaud.

* For lurking dependence junkies, be aware that you are being insulted, you just don't know by how much.


ONE OF THE most interesting politicians in Europe these days is a Scot, and I don't mean Gordon Brown. Alex Salmond is the first minister of a devolved Scottish parliament, a creation of Tony Blair's Labor government designed to take the wind out of Scottish separatist sentiments.

A few years ago, however, a ranking member of the British royal family, whose members aren't supposed to get involved with politics, committed an indiscretion by telling me that he thought devolved parliaments were a terrible idea because they could break up the United Kingdom. The Welsh would stay with England, and maybe the Northern Irish, he said, but the Scots probably would not. Salmond, the head of the Scottish National Party, is banking on the royal being right.

After centuries of fighting the English to maintain independence, the two thrones were united when James VI of Scotland became James I of England in 1603, after Elizabeth died childless. In 1707, the two countries were joined under one parliament - the one in London. For the next 300 years, Scotland helped build the British empire, contributed more soldiers per capita to Britain's wars than any other region, invented more things, and had more than its share of prime ministers. Edinburgh became the seat of the Scottish enlightenment, a remarkable burst of creative energy in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. But something of William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, and the independence of yore lingered in the Scottish heart.

Ten years ago, Scotland got its own parliament back, with limited powers. Defense and diplomacy are in London's hands. The Scottish National Party won the election of 2007 by a whisker. Some thought the Scottish Nationalists' minority government would fail, but it hasn't. Neither has Salmond, whose rapier repartee is often on display in the parliamentary put-down that Britons love.

On a recent visit to Edinburgh, I met the first minister in his office in the new Scottish parliament, a startling architectural statement in the tumble-down modern style. An economist by training, Salmond is a big admirer of the late John Kenneth Galbraith and began quoting some of his work from memory.

His plan is to get a referendum on Scottish independence before the people sometime next year. Polls don't show a majority of Scots ready for independence yet, but Salmond believes that they do want the choice. Getting a bill passed on a referendum will be difficult because neither Labor, nor the Tories, nor the Liberal Democrats want any such thing. During my visit, the Scottish edition of the Times of London revealed that in the 1970s the British Labor government went so far as to redraw the boundaries of North Sea oil to deprive Scotland of much of it, and even contemplated stirring up separatists movements in the Scottish isles of Orkney and the Shetlands, should Scotland go independent, to deprive Scotland of even more oil.

Salmond says the nations he looks to for inspiration are Ireland for its lower corporate taxes, the recession notwithstanding; Norway for its stewardship of oil revenues; Finland for education; and the region of Catalonia in Spain for its emphasis on cultural identity. In general, "I tend to like the Scandinavian societies," he said, for the way they balance freedoms and social responsibilities.

Salmond's independent Scotland would keep the monarchy and the English language, although efforts are being made to keep Scottish Gaelic alive. Salmond himself uses old Scots, the language of Robert Burns, when he feels the need to tweak colleagues in the British parliament in London where he also sits. "They know they are being insulted, but not how much," he says.

The SNP's nationalism is based on citizenship, rather than on ethnicity, religion, or language, and is pro-immigration; quite different from many national movements.

Scotland's two biggest banks, Royal Bank of Scotland and Halifax Bank of Scotland, are in deep trouble, but Salmond hopes that even in recession Scots would prefer to have the "same economic teeth" that other nations have, rather than "hang on to the United Kingdom treasury."

Scotland's near neighbors, Ireland, Iceland and Norway, all became independent in the 20th century. Salmond is hoping that Scotland will come into its own early in the 21st.

H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe.

Rockin' Roddy Piper Hoo haaa!