I had thought last week that a story like this was inevitable and sadly so it has proved.
AN SNP activist last night sparked fury by claiming former council leader Steven Purcell could be DYING.
Alan Clayton wrote that troubled Mr Purcell may have a "lethal viral infection" on his Mediawatch email blog.
The comments are daft and disrespectful but here's hoping the press stay focussed on the big picture going forward.
Salmond vs Trump
16 minutes ago
26 comments:
I agree Jeff - and you know that I have absolutely no time for cyber idiocy.
But given the regular press eruptions against the SNP for trivial nonsense it is now time for the press to step up and perform the real democratic role that they claim to have.
Lets put this into perspective - we have a senior member of the Labour Party and their leader of a huge council implicated in a drugs and alleged organised crime story.
This is serious - and running scabby little cybernat stories just shows that the press is allowing party allegiance to get in the way.
There are huge questions for Glasgow Labour regarding who knew, what they knew, whether the contacts with undesirable elements go any further within Glasgow Labour and whether any council decisions have been affected. I know it might sound fanciful, but who could ever have imagined the events of the past 10 days?
Fully agree Chris. It doesn't bode well that Labour has responded to John Mason's calls for an investigation as the SNP "peddling smears and fears".
Don't they know when the gig's up and full disclosure is the best option?
That is a ridiculous and scurrilous comment, and it is also a bit of a deflection from the real issues that surround this case, as Chris says.
I suppose it sells papers.
I used to read the Mediawatch blogs, but they were making rather outrageous claims about Labour people (one especially lurid about David Cairns I remember) that I didn't appreciate. The blog also seemed to be thirled to the "right-wing" of the Catholic church which I thought was strange alongside virulent support for the SNP
I cancelled my e-mail subscription and didn't miss it.
Clayton and others like him should "get a grip" if they want the SNP to do well in the 2010 /11 elections. A blogsite that calls itself Mediawatch should know better than most that the Labour media are on the lookout for anything to pin on the SNP.
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Here are some of the questions that ought to be answered:
http://tinyurl.com/yctbz8k
Joan McAlpine does a really good job, doesn't she?
Talk of an "e-mail blog" offends my geek sensibilities.
It's a disappointing and predictable reaction by the Scottish press.
Yes, it's a daft thing to have said, but this is a serious story about drugs and potential corruption at the heart of the Labour party. If anyone in the SNP was involved in such behaviour it would be front page news every day.
"Alex Salmond promised to clean up the cybernats"
I'm getting very fed up of being tarred with a very broad brush and the media seeing tartan boogymen hiding in every corner.
Mediawatch is increasingly daft and gives the SNP a bad name. Yes, the Labour Party politicians may have started wars, apparently been involved with Glasgow underworld types and many more unsavoury things. There's more than enough to say about them that's fair game, but Mediawatch goes OTT, and is tasteless, lurid and nasty.
Maybe if people unsubscribed whoever writes it will get the message, but it needs to stop or at least be toned down. As well as being offensive in itself, it creates a distraction from the real stories and gives our opponents a chance to attack us.
To be honest I'd never heard of it and had assumed it was the gone and pretty much forgotten Advanced Mediawatch under the spotlight again. So yeah, all of the above is news to me. Can't say I'll be subscribing.
It is best to ignore such comments! Especially as the internet is rife with fraudsters and identity thieves! Anything that you read on the internet from a source that you dont know personally must be taken with a large pinch of salt but then I thought everybody here would know that.
Apparently not it seems!
Ah worry a lot aboot that y'know. Oan the Internet ye can niver be too sure aboot whit ye read, ye never ken wha's wrote it. So ah get ma granny tae read it.
Ah always take whit she says as gospel,
Jeff, re Advanced Media Watch, I didn't log onto that site for ages because I thought it was connected to Mediawatch!
I see someone else agrees with me that Mediawatch is cr-p.
Jeff
Labour have responded to certain things which John Mason said as being ''lies and smears''.
''A spokesman said: "The allegations concerning Mr Purcell were unknown until the events of this week unfolded.
"The Scottish Labour Party has never investigated Mr Purcell regarding any matter and never interviewed him about any allegations''
As far as I know that is correct. As far as I know the NOTW allegations regarding the Glasgow East by election and Purcell's candidacy are false.
There is more than enough for the SNP to go on here. They should be careful that they do not walk into the trap of behaving as their Labour opponents have done in the past.
The ''cybernats'' have gone into overdrive here in the usual locations, but it seems to be more about trying to prove the allegations in the NOTW (responsible let's remember for the outing of Wardog and Montague Burton) than they are about the Council's refusal to review Purcell's decisions.
That's the key point for me. Any other person leaving GCC under these circumstances would have their work audited, that's a given. The SNP should be pressing for that, they would have allies in some very unlikely places if they did, not repeating sensationalist tabloid rumours which may have no substance at all.
"Personal tragedy" is becoming almost as much of a cliche in this story as "chemical dependency".
One last thing that puzzles me - this whole chain of events was supposed to have been kicked off by a photo the tabloids had of Purcell doing coke.
Where is it? Have I missed it? Is it likely that they would have shown restraint in refusing to publish that when some of them have as good as accused the Prime Minister of allowing a cokhead to run the biggest City in Scotland?
More questions than answers....
cokehead
I do not see why a Labour Politician socialising with drug dealers, gangsters and faux socialists who gets outed for being a cokehead is a "Personal Tragedy" who is now getting to rebuild his life.
If this was anyone else in society they would be hung out to dry.
I agree we have to maintain a cool head and keep to the facts but we could still be making as much noise about the issue as possible.
Lucky for Purcell he was just another Labour High Flyer pretendy socialist who lived a lie, propogated lies, broke the law, conspired to conceal the truth, tried to swin in a river in february, was in rehab, investigated by cops and recorded on film by the mob snorting cocaine while socialising with drug dealers in Glasgow...
...If he had been involved in serious criminal activity like having lunch with a supporter he would have felt the full weight of the scottish press being unleashed.
Who was at the Telephone conference to decide the Glasgow Labour candidate when the Purcell coke head allegations were raised.
Selection of a candidate is important and most likely Vice Roy or Elmer Fudd would have been in attendance.
Yet they have been very quite on this subject.
John Mason was on Scotland at Ten tonight, fending off questions from presenter Sarah Patterson of playing party politics, where's the evidence, etc, etc. Labour MSP Johann Lamont MSP was asked precisely no difficult questions and grunted that Nicola Sturgeon's letter was a "much more serious" matter. Obligatory dig at SNP voters who are allowed to use the internet as well.
2Mac the facts of the GE Labour Party candidate selection were widely known at the time.
George Ryan was bumped and Purcell *turned it down*, there was a huge furore at the time if you remember, that he dared to do that.
Now why would they have made that up at the time?
I am all for nailing faux socialist Labour crims but in order to do that I think we have to ''stick to the facts ma'am''.
When will Murphy or Gray be brought on Newsnicht and asked when they knew Purcell was a cokehead, and had been interviewed by the police?
When will they be asked if his coke habit had influenced whether he should stand in the glasgow east by election, as the police had been involved with him prior?
Why have they not made a statement thanking him for his service to Labour?
Campbell, scoop of the year and he has his head up his backside.
Imagine if this had been Salmond... can you imagine Campbell being so respectful, or rather stand offish.
Read the BBC Scotland website, nothing about Purcell, so fair to say they think the boss of a 2 billion dollar budget, leaving his job, avoiding answering questions and skipping off to warmer climes is acceptable?
What do his old mates who were doingwell off SPT expenses think? Does this get them off the hook as people forget they were complicit in stealing money from taxpayers?
Not that Campbell ever had them on the hook on the first place, to use another fishy link.
Alison Thewliss should know better.
redcliffe. newsnight scotland is a minority interest tv programme, not a court of law. when will people be "brought on"? What a silly question.
Annymous, what a name but never mind.
Nothing silly about bringing someone on to newsnicht, normally labour pollies fight to get on and face powder puff questions.
It would be good if spud or the other anonymous from haddington answered why they did not wish Purcell all the best in his new career, whatever that will be.
Sauna attendant perhaps? Nightclub cloakroom attendant?
Any of the other points you wish to comment on, I would love to hear a rational argument from you.
Can you imagine what state we would be in by now had this been an SNP councilor. Look at the howling over the chappie who took his kids to Pakistan and let them fire Kalashnikovs?
There would be howls for Salmonds resignation; it would be banner headlines from now until the election.
As to cybernatism or not. Have any of you read the comments on the Scotsman forum for example? Or come to that Guido or The Telegraph whenever the subject of Scotland comes up. Hatred and racism just about covers it.
The MSM being Unionist controlled and just releasing New Labour press releases, have no room for criticism of any one. As if Salmond can control the Internet? I suppose it stems from the Universality of Cheese blog that had a link to Russell. And the New Labour attack dogs made a meal of it.
Bloggery is the free expression of people’s feelings at any point in time. Why on earth would any one want to close that down? North Korea, or China any one?
The cybernats are no worse or no better than any other.
The unionist paranoia that Salmond controls all this is just hilarious, what powers they attribute to the man, it shows how worried he has them.
New Labour and their journalist apparatchiks have still not got their heads around the fact that the SNP have formed a Scottish government. They are stuck in negative girning mode with not a positive thing to say on Scotland. They behave like Kirsty Wark when she gave Salmond the hairdryer on Newsnight as if the SNP are impertinent up starts, and have a bloody cheek sitting in the seat of power in Holyrood. Don't they know that New Labour is the party of the people? The very salt of the earth. Aye right.
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