IN SHOCK MOVE, BLOG TRANSITIONS TO NEWS

My apologies to all of my readers who are eagerly awaiting Parts Three and Four of A Very Scottish Coup, and especially to all of my readers who are journalists with the Murdoch and Newsquest titles, but I just had to take this short break to let you all know that the events I have been describing in this blog since early September 2020 are now officially news.

Yesterday the Scottish Sun, in a long story headlined “Nicola Sturgeon faces ‘serious questions’…” and today The Herald in a story headlined “… Nicola Sturgeon told ‘buck stops with her’…” (faithfully attributing the story to the Scottish Sun as of course it wouldn’t do to plagiarise without attribution) have lifted wholesale the stories I was pleased to bring to you here and here and here and in various other posts on this blog.

As everyone knows, when such things are written in a blog and ignored by the mainstream media, they are not news. They are irrelevant at best, and at worst – the usual case, actually – they are conspiracy theories, deranged “Trumpian” ramblings or, in a recent SNP formulation, vile “alt-right” dogma.

This is the case, as we all again know, even if they are written by someone like Stuart Campbell, whose prodigious output over many years shows him to be well left of centre on every important issue, or for that matter by myself, an activist in the Labour Party Young Socialists when I was barely out of my teens, a Labour Councillor in my twenties, a campaigner against the poll tax and bedroom tax, veteran of a thousand marches and rallies against illegal wars, nuclear weapons, racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, etc, etc, and still now at the age of 58 as committed a libertarian socialist as I’ve been all my adult life.

And of course this is why Nicola Sturgeon and her Government have recently given £3 million of public money to the mainstream unionist media which despises her, and despises the SNP, while simultaneously seeking to make it an offence worthy of expulsion from the Party to read or share pro-independence bloggers of proven commitment like Stuart Campbell.

Because, although in our provision always of evidence, of sources for all claims made, and of rational analysis and argument, it might appear to the uninitiated that bloggers like Stuart and myself are producing news, it only becomes that precious commodity when given that vital seal of approval by the likes of Murdoch and his corporate colleagues.

So thank you Nicola, and thank you Rupert, and thank you whoever gives the journalists their orders at Newsquest for turning the stories on my humble wee blog at last into actual news.

I hope this will serve as an inspiration to all of you other bloggers out there. If you work hard, and be all you can be and dare to dream and never quit – oh, and if it happens to serve their interests for some reason at any particular time – you too might one day find your work anointed by the mainstream media as real live news.