12 October - 9 November 2001
It should come as no surprise to many of you to learn that Gerald Warner is uncomfortable with women. (Women serving in the army, I mean). In Scotland on Sunday he wrote: "It is a perversion of the female identity for feminists to promote the exposure of women to the horrors of combat... The US Navy has extended the length of time that pregnant women can remain aboard warships, while formerly rigorous military training programmes have been made less demanding to accommodate women". And just how tough it is to be a professional woman in Scotland today was also amply demonstrated by Allan Brown on Wendy Alexander in Scotland on Sunday: "It hasn't gone unnoticed that Wendy has lately been deploying the henna and foundation powder with alacrity, leading those who are skilled in matters of the heart to conclude that some manner of chap is now figuring in the equation". After First Minister, Henry McLeish jacked his job in; Wendy was in for a rough ride! Rikki Brown in the Scottish Sun thought: "Wendy Alexander's makeover hasn't exactly made her Miss Fanciable sexy Pants, has it?" Alex Massey in Scotland on Sunday wrote: "Fears... that Wendy may have a new man in her life appear groundless. At a ministerial briefing this week highlighting Scotland's potential as a retreat for young lovers, she was heard to sigh wistfully: "Romantic breaks - not much relevance for me then". In the Sunday Times Scotland, Atticus contradicted the 'sighing wistfully' bit: "The minister said she hoped there would be a new push on romantic short breaks, before adding ruefully that it would be, "sod all use to me". Scotland had a choice. Was it to be another Lanarkshire cooncillor in a grey suit (yes, another one who compromised his way through the Clause 28 scandal); cheered on by the Daily Record as one of the 'three Macs'; recently in meetings with religious militants addressing their 'concerns' of gay 'propaganda' infiltrating schools; praising Catholic schools despite their oppressive sexual 'education' programmes and producing carefully orchestrated saintly, Pierres et Gilles-like pictures of himself with schoolchildren. Or was it to be led by a charismatic, intelligent woman who not only proved herself strong enough to stand by her principals, but saw her way forward into a new and modern Scotland? Labour democracy or Catholic theocracy? I knew which red frock I was choosing! Then the poisonous Scotland on Sunday presented Jason Allardyce - yes, you might have seen his name circling above religious propaganda in The Times. The "feminist minister" versus "family values champion" springs to mind during the Clause 28 campaign - now front-paging it over one of those Keep the Clausey 'opinion polls' that conveniently showed Jack McConnell yards out in front. (The Record admitted most people don't even know who the hell they all are)! After faithfully reporting the McConnell camp's charges of dirty tricks, SoS reminded readers: "Alexander, who controversially led the scrapping of Section 28 last year, also appears to have a 'negative publicity' problem with voters, of whom four in 10 said she would not make a good First Minister... Although the Section 28 affair dates back to 1999, the enormous moral controversy which pitted church against state has clearly damaged her standing". Sorry... It filled me with admiration! All the same, Wendy sadly chucked in the towel.
An article on Scotland's gay magazines is about as likely as seeing Vulcan given away free with the The Scotsman, so I can be excused for gawping while I read about the odd "death threat... outraged complaints" and readers "seething..." over a couple of footballers snogging on the front of GI, an Irish Gaelic gay magazine reviewed in the broadsheet. The Sunday Herald also celebrated Glasgay! overseas with a guide to gay Cologne. Like the Dutch cap, or French ticklers, how much easier it is to manage the subject of sex when it's portrayed as somehow being 'over there'! So Glasgow's Evening Times, overcome by the "pressure of space", can't review my book. What a difference it might've made if I'd taken some pictures of Loch Lomond; had the book bound in tartan cloth and got a friend of Jimmy Shand's to write the foreword!
The Herald found this a good time to throw in another glowing article on Cardinal Winning. Jim McBeth cooed: "Winning was outspoken in the campaign against the repeal of Clause 28 in order to prevent the so-called promotion of homosexuality in schools. It was a dirty campaign, but even Winning's enemies conceded that he was driven by principle and not homophobia". And pray... who were they, love?
What a difference an editor makes. Reviewing the legacy of the late First Minister Donald Dewar under its former editor Ramsay Smith, the Scottish Daily Mail would have seized the chance to castigate him for his support for the repeal of Section 2a (Clause 28) in Scotland led by Wendy Alexander. But alas, editor Ramsay Smith is no more. He's off to work with Jack "slobbering old queers" Irvine of PR outfit Media House. All that was left of the Mail's customary homophobia was a report submitted by Isabel Oakeshott who managed to muscle in some of the religious propaganda spouted by the militant Christian Institute Scotland: "His administration is also still suffering from the fallout over its repeal of Section 28, the law banning the promotion of homosexuality in schools. Many parents lost faith in the Executive over the affair and were not reassured when education chiefs backed lurid sex education teaching materials this year".
For his feature in The Scotsman on Michael Barrymore's TV confessional Stephen McGinty turned to Jack Irvine of Media House. (A bit like asking the National Front for their opinion on asylum seekers I would've thought). Irvine behaved himself long enough to liken Barrymore to a "politician who cheats on his wife and then arranges a photocall with all the family at the garden gate".
Commenting on Geri Halliwell's "lewd" show for 'our boys', (as the tabloids like to call them), Ephraim Hardcastle in the Scottish Daily Mail repeated a reader's recollection of a similar show in Cyprus in 1956 when Lita Roza - who recorded 'How Much is That Doggie in the Window'? - was supposed to have left the stage in tears as soldiers chanted, 'Bring back the queer!' for a "Liberace type" who had performed earlier. Lita, now 75, called the paper to tell them they were talking bollocks.
Despite a plummeting circulation, The Scotsman's resident anti-porn campaigner still makes her contribution. After it was announced those found guilty of downloading sexual images involving children could face up to 12 months imprisonment. Linda Watson-Brown wondered where the police were hiding. "Maybe they are behind the sign in an Asian Edinburgh newsagent's which pleads for 'tolerance and respect' as punters go indoors to access their healthy men's lifestyle mags which show schoolgirl models being ejaculated upon as fear is etched across their faces". Over moves to give child witnesses "greater rights" in court cases involving abuse, Linda Watson-Brown stomped: "Where is the equity and efficiency in a system which says that alleged abusers must not have their human rights infringed by excessive delay, but that the abused can have no such protection?" I would've thought if there were any delays it is because the accused needs time to prepare a proper defence. Ms Watson-Brown sometimes forgets that the whole point of a court of law is to do whatever is necessary to convict the guilty. "Who knows? Once everything has been sorted, perhaps I can move on and start writing about shoes, while those sensitive people who are just down-right fed up with reading about this nasty stuff can go back to Never-Never Land". And to those who were just plain fed up of her daily rants? "To those bored little souls, there can only be one printable response: tough".
It just shows. When the going gets hot, it's not enough to just close the door. Aberdeen Central Library has closed their public toilets because too many people were having sex in them. The city council is installing toilets with an alarm that goes off when more than one person goes in!
It is unlikely that the claim of a heterosexual serial killer to have erotica in prison could have lifted the sheet of a journalist's notepad, but 54-year-old Fraserburgh-born Dennis Nilsen managed it. Nilsen requested copies of boy-babe magazine, Vulcan. It became a story, not on human rights, but whether prisoners who have committed serious sexual crimes should be treated equally at all... "The serial killer... took the Home Secretary to court yesterday for the right to read gay porn in prison. He is being given Legal Aid, and his case will cost taxpayers thousands of pounds", stormed the Daily Record. The Scottish Daily Mail's Michael Clarke weaved in the paper's grudge against human rights to shriek: "Dennis Nilsen is using the controversial new human rights law to demand porn magazines in prison". Allow me to explain something about human rights. They are for everybody. And there are absolutely no exceptions to this whether you are a light-fingered fly-boy from Forres or General Pinochet from Argentina. Blunkett also seized Nilsen's manuscript of his autobiography, claiming entitlement to seize "objectionable material". Quite apart from the fact this money would have gone to charity, it would have been an opportunity to learn something about the workings of a criminal mind. Wouldn't it have been more useful to seize Blunkett? What was more disgraceful was the Sunday Mail's use of this story. To demonstrate that other, more worthy causes were being trampled on to ensure Dennis Nilsen doesn't run out of wank fodder, they juxtaposed the story with news of the refusal of the Scottish Legal Aid Board to fund court action against monks of the De La Salle order who were accused of torturing young boys.
A shy Daily Record noted how Emmerdale's Anna Brecon (Lady Tara) "wore a see-through 1920s-style dress, with bra and G-string to protect her modesty" as they reported that "stars ignored a ban on showing too much flesh". In gigantic letters across the page they begged: "WHAT FLESH BAN?" It is of no importance that the odd star should bare all as a publicity stunt. The press's role in reporting it to millions has a far greater impact in shaping the nation's morality. After Judy Finnigan's tits popped out at last year's ceremony the organisers have imposed a sense of caution, but I'm pleased to see the stars ignoring it. What worries me is not so much that women should tease and proudly flaunt their worked bodies, but that men should be so conservative and drab by comparison.
CUT IT OUT!
The Herald's Jackie McGlone tiptoeing round a five-knuckle shuffle after watching a performance by Scottish dancer Michael Clark: "Bare buttocks and breasts, a prosthetic penis, and a video of the back view of a young man who is patently not washing his socks, but is energetically engaged upon - how to put this in a family newspaper? - five-finger exercises".
Ephraim Hardcastle on Geri Halliwell ordering room service during a banquet prepared by chef and Scottish Daily Mail columnist Gordon Ramsay at the Hilton in Dubai: "Taste prevents us revealing what she managed to force down".
At last! John Macleod speaks out in The Herald on "the feeding frenzy" over Section 28. "Christians, a naturally persecuted species, should never impugn the civil freedom of others. They have a stake in gay liberties as they have a stake in their own".
John Macleod in The Herald: "A fundamentalist then is no more than a Christian who holds, as matters of flat historical truth, to the doctrines of the apostles' creed: the deity of Christ, the virgin birth, the resurrection, and so on, as opposed to theological modernists, who deny these doctrines or reduce them to meaningless, non-literal symbolism. In every age there is some token modernist adopted as a media pet: James Pike, Don Cuppit, the Bishop of Durham, or our own Richard Holloway". Holloway? Media pet? Er... Hello?
Ron Ferguson in The Herald: "The churches are, by and large, preposterous institutions. The sight of decrepit geezers in frocks laying down the law about the minutiae of sexual behaviour is beyond parody... Churches can also be dangerous, especially when they are utterly convinced that they are doing the will of God. Consider Jerry Falwell, the American TV evangelist, who has announced that the twin-towers atrocities occurred because God was angry at American tolerance of gays. Subliminal message to gays: we know where you live".
Old Mother (Joan) Burnie's advice to the son of a braless mum in the Daily Record: "Personally, I've never seen the attraction of the let 'em all hang out Charlie Dimmock look for anyone on the wrong side of 30. ...A snatched snap of how she sags might get her into M&S's lingerie dept".
Joyce McMillan in New York in The Scotsman: "...There's mounting anecdotal evidence that after decades of obsession with ever more sensational forms of sexual imagery - gender-bending, S&M, serial infidelity - people are suddenly rediscovering an interest in ordinary, affectionate sex with people they love; a baby boom is predicted for next summer, often involving couples previously reluctant to 'commit'."
And 'Geraldine' Warner, touching on homosexuality (again) in Scotland on Sunday: "Our legislators are as drunk with power... Such ideological infantilism betrays how unfitted they are to govern Scotland. It began with gross indulgence in salaries, allowances, medals et al. It progressed to the dictatorial arrogance of Section 28". (And referring to the campaign to ban fox-hunting, led by the Countryside Alliance whose PR is run by Jack 'Keep the Clause' Irvine's Media House). "Now the parliament's incompetence and divorce from reality are threatening to destroy, irretrievably, the economy and society of rural Scotland. It is time to call a halt to such childishness".
