Advantage Herald and where next for the Hootsmon's HQ?

 

 

Interesting times in Scotland's auld print media. Today's Sunday Herald announcement that it will back a Yes vote in the referendum has gained it acres of coverage on social media, many inches in the print of other papers as well as a few minutes on telly.

It is welcome though it is also probably a shrewd marketing move as well. If polls are correct, currently a pretty solid 40% of us are pro-indy with another 15 to 20% undecided. As the auld guard of what passes for journalism these days regurgitates the same auld scare-stories, it is a wonder that more of these dying organs don't twig that they're basically shitting on the intelligence of some 60% of their potential readership.

The Scotsman - now famous for its 'SNP accused...' and 'independence fears' headlines - is now 'downsizing' its HQ from the expensive but central location next to the Scots Parliament to a bog standard and ugly office block out of the town centre. 

It has also lost a significant number of staff over the years including the man who designed its once reputable and reliable website. Now, it's website is not very user friendly, the content mostly patronising shit while the print newspapers in the Scotsman stable come across as the boring bastard children of the Daily Mail and Reader's Digest. Even their one decent sports reporter, Tom English, has recently jumped from the stinking ship. It's nemesis, the 'CyberNat' media on the other hand is going from strength to strength. Wings Over Scotland's has a larger readership than the Scotsman's print version if not the online content too.

As the Scotsman's vague and reticent owners seek to save more dough while also trying to stem the hemorrhage of readers, it's fair to ask 'Where's the next stop for the Scotsman as it travels the tramline to oblivion?'

A ruined sheiling on Mòinteach Bharbhais? The back room of the Diggers in Gorgie? The 'Scotch' MPs' quarters in Westminster post-independence?

SPT shoot themselves in the foot

In short, Glasgow Labour Party Strathclyde Passenger Transport has banned these ads for Wings Over Scotland on the grounds that they are 'political'. Despite no party political opinion being advanced and only a constitutional position implied, the secretariat of the SPT has said 'naw'.

Funnily enough, the ad has now been shared and re-tweeted on soshul meeja sites with articles also appearing on the Guardian, BBC and STV websites. Expect some of those 37 'national' papers to follow suit with a dour denunciation tomorrow. After all, Wings' readership is booming while the readership and sales of pisspoor rags like the Scotsman are in a Hibs-style freefall. In what is becoming a win-win situation for Wings - and balanced reporting of the referendum - all monies have been returned to Mr Campbell at WoS.

Free publicity courtesy of the SPT. Malcolm McLaren will be chuckling in his grave.

Cheap laughs in other people's misery

The recent stooshies surrounding the humour of some English media types is probably heaven-sent propaganda material for certain right-wing tabloids who will use it in their latest campaign against 'political correctness'. Some in the London-based media would just love it if they could call a spade a spade and come out with the kind of hate-filled bile that even the BNP are scared to speak today.

Ha! Another murder!

The Matthew Wright incident is harder to brush off though as the predictable objections of a few lefties. It does however shine a spotlight on the hypocrisy that surrounds both the tabloid media and the kind of shock-comedians and presenters who make cheap laughs and money out of the misery of others.

Wright's employer is of course Channel 5 which is interestingly enough owned by Daily Express czar Richard Desmond. The Express, it should be remembered, is a campaigning paper and likes to see itself as being 'tough on crime' - as much as despised journalists can be. Desmond by the way is also the owner of various porn mags and one time donor to Blair's Labour Party - could this all be more righteous than it already is?!  Paxman's interview with Blair, if you can find it on You Tube, makes for classic viewing.

Wright though peddles a different kind of porn - and not one than young lads can have a quick hand-shandy to - poverty porn. This is usually bad enough - watching the smug bully that is Wright revel in the problems of various 'schemies' and 'chavs' confused by their 15 minutes of fame and hyped up on free coffee. However, hearing Wright and his fellow bullies smirk and guffaw at their own jokes about the murder of a teenager in the Isle of Lewis really does make the stomach churn. Like all of his ilk, he chooses his targets wisely though. This 'may only be a laugh' but why doesn't he laugh at the deaths in his own family? Why not laugh at soldiers blown apart in Afghanistan? Why not IRA victims?

Strange how these folk can come over all PC when it suits them.

Hope their families are watching.

Wright is not alone. His case swiftly follows that of yon fat buffoon Jeremy Clarkson. Hearing a bloated ex-private school windbag who drives cars for a living at the tax-payers' expense courtesy of the BBC, saying the striking teachers and nurses should be shot makes even this atheist wish for a wrathful God to suddenly demand Clarkson's biblical-style circumcision. How would JC fare in an inner-city school trying to teach the offspring of society's detritus? Would he have picked up the pieces of human bodies after London's many terrorist bombs over the years? Cannae see it somehow.

Or as someone else put it:

A Banker, a School Teacher, a Tory MP and a Daily Mail reader are sat around a table. In front of them is a plate, on which there are ten biscuits. The Banker scoffs nine of the biscuits, then the Tory turns to the Daily Mail reader and whispers in his ear "Watch out, that teacher is after your biscuit."

Which role would Clarkson play?

Whit ye waiting fur? Jist git oan wi it!

Scotland has its own prize hypocrite though. Billy Connolly. His laughs came from the beheading in Iraq of Ken Bigley. Ho-ho! However, I can't recall his jokes about Princess Di's early demise? Maybe his friendship with Prince Charles and the Royal Family has something to do the 'Big Yin's' selective political correctness? If not, I look forward to hearing his jokes about Chas' uncle, Louis Mountbatten - "1st Earl of Burma" - who the IRA infamously assassinated in 1979. Maybe the famously working-class Connolly does have some boundaries after all?

Not all school bullies grow up to become policemen.