21 October - 20 October 2002
The Scottish News of the World needs to have a talk to its employees about the birds and the bees. With only Anvar Khan flying the flag for anything like a modern, liberated view on sexual issues at this paper, readers are being short-changed. Sharon Marshall's 'exclusive' on BBC2 drama Tipping the Velvet begged: "Is this tale of lesbian lust the steamiest show ever seen on our TVs?" (Well, I suppose I should be grateful it wasn't the Mail's take on this which will most probably run along the lines of 'can TV stoop any lower?') Marshall's piece left me confused. News of the World film critic Shebah Ronay was dragged on to call it "soft porn disguised as art" an 'insider' added: "It's filthy". But if it was so bad, what was S.N.O.T World doing showing three black and white and three colour pics of 'steamy' lesbian kisses? Then another three examples of gay kisses we've all seen before on TV? The pictures revealed nothing more 'steamy' than a nipple, a couple of women cuddling in bed, a picture of two women in corsets and two of them kissing. (Yawn)! The tabloid gasped: "These astonishing lesbian scenes are played out in the first HOUR of a new BBC drama series. They are so realistic that Scots actress Rachael Stirling, 24, and Keeley Hawes got drunk before undressing each other". But was that quite true? Keeley Hawes admitted: "We did get fairly drunk, if I'm honest. Then it was kind of fun, we laughed a lot. In any case, kissing a woman is not that different form kissing a man - just less chance of stubble rash. Maybe after this everyone will want to be a lesbian". I know such swift condemnation helps sell TV programmes. So perhaps programme makers contrive to excite the outrage. And the tabloid cry of 'sleaze'... is that faked too? If so, aren't we just the idiot nation for being so easily duped?
In one of the most outspoken critical commentaries on the media I have ever seen in Scotland, columnist Robert McNeil in The Scotsman cast a jaundiced eye on the activities of the Countryside Alliance's recent march for so-called Liberty and Livlihood. It was, of course, just a huge PR exercise. In Scotland it was masterminded by the same man who challenged Scotland with Keep the Clause. Jack Irvine and his horrible band of cronies at Media House. With the help of landowners, their political slogans were erected to face oncoming traffic in fields like so many Conservative Party placards before them. The demonstration, the biggest in Europe, we were told, was supposed to have attracted 400,000 demonstrators. After studying video footage, Napier University researchers claimed only 151,400. Catholic, Conservative, cruel-sport supporting homophobe and media propagandist Mrs Katie Grant only managed to recruit 10,000 from Scotland. For goodness sake, there have been bigger gay prides! McNeil wrote: "I'm told that the Daily Mail, the paper that backed Hitler in the 1930s and which remains the most evil mainstream organisation in Britain today, devoted 13 pages to the demonstration of rural superiority (remember the whole point of this rustic rubbish is that they think they're better than the rest of us). With the exception of the Daily Mirror, the West Highland Free Press and a couple of our own Hootsfolk, print journalism has covered itself in manure through a contemptible, amoral campaign whose intellectual shallowness has known no depths. Never since the miners' strike (when, on one notorious occasion, it reversed the footage to show pickets attacking police first, rather than vice versa) has the BBC stood so seriously in breach of its charter. Every day last week, we had to suffer propaganda snippets, paid for out of personal taxation, for the sinister, right-wing Countryside Alliance".
"Gay rights campaigners are being paid to stage an anti-bullying play in Edinburgh schools in a move which has infuriated the Catholic Church and Tory politicians", wrote so-called journalist, Brian Ferguson for Edinburgh's Evening News. The "being paid" bit referred to "£6,500 of city council cash as part of a high profile crusade against bullying in the Capital's schools". The implications are clear. It's "gay", so it must be a waste of money. Ferguson has carefully chosen those he knows will challenge this so-called "crusade". The names of those who not expected to make it into Ferguson's report include Dr Ian Rivers, a senior lecturer in social psychology who asked 200 gay men and women about their experiences in school. The eminent doctor found that those subjected to psychological bullying, such as stares or ostracism, were more likely to leave school than those physically attacked. He found 28 per cent admitted being bullied by teachers due to perceived sexual orientation. Post traumatic stress disorders affected one in six bullied pupils with symptoms ranging from nightmares, panic attacks and flashbacks. In a University of London report, they found 82 per cent of English and Welsh schools were aware of homosexual bullying, yet only six per cent made reference to it in any anti-bullying policies. An Executive-sponsored unit based at Edinburgh University indicated a "significant problem" with bullying in Scottish schools. They found children as young as seven victims of homophobic bullying; a head teacher of one primary school explained that words like 'poof' and 'gayboy' were commonplace amongst seven-year-olds. Described in this report as "children", the play was to be shown to 14 and 15-year-olds! The Catholic Church couldn't care less about the victims of bullying. Rent-a-gob John Deighan pursued his religionist agenda to declare that Peter Alexander's play "would horrify parents". He knows that does he? I think what has been going on behind the closed doors of the Catholic Church in recent times will horrify parents! The editorial in Edinburgh's Evening News declared: "Now the first real test of the post-Section 28 era in Scottish schools has arrived". Has this writer ever read The Scottish Daily Mail or heard of the notorious Christian Institute? The editorial's belief that singling out homosexuality in this anti-bullying initiative "may turn the spotlight" on the very people it was supposed to protect, is rather like suggesting we shouldn't confront men with the issue of rape and violence against women for fear of putting the idea in their heads. The editorial also fidgeted with the idea that many parents would be uncomfortable with their "children" watching the play at all before appearing to suggest kids were likely to have to gather round their teacher to listen to a short story from Shoot My Load: "But it is only children with emotional maturity who should be expected to engage in debate about homosexuality".
I hate to have to say, 'I told you so', but after promoting a ban on lap-dancing in the capital, Glasgow City Council's response to the knowledge they were letting a shop to purveyors of erotic material, World of Video in Saltmarket and a warehouse to Glenalder's sister company, Distribution Direct (Scotland) Ltd was knee-jerk. "The premises at Chapel Street will cease to be let out to one of these companies by the end of this month. We shall visit the shop in Saltmarket. If we find The Herald's allegations are well founded, we shall take steps to terminate the lease". The Herald has been up to its eyeballs in a rather nasty campaign of moral vigilance. Biased reporting meant that The Herald only printed responses in support of these repressive measures from Catherine Harper of Scottish Women Against Pornography and Sandra White SNP MSP. Nothing defending the rights of women to work in the sex industry or Victor Shields and his son's right to create such employment appeared. A few years ago, (Scottish Media Monitor November 1998) The Sunday Mail attacked Shields's business as: "Sleazy... sordid... in the shadows of Scotland's sickest industry... in a world of bogus names, anonymous box numbers and secret sex parties... in the frontline of a rising tide of filth... amongst Scotland's sleaziest, sickest and most depraved" before promptly passing their "dossier" on to the vice squad. How much longer before what we have of the freedom and rights of gays and lesbians are curtailed too? Already, people behind this exercise in moral policing have declared gay erotica as 'exploitative'. What next, demonstrations by this 'concerned' moral alliance of Conservatives, religionists and anti-porn 'feminists' outside Glasgow's Clone Zone? The sight of journalists acting as moral vigilantes is quite repugnant. In another report on the same paper, Iain Wilson and Billy Briggs also exercised their prejudices over the freedom of sexual expression when they reported, with some relish, the support of Strathclyde Police: "You may be sure we will be investigating claims made by The Herald". After visiting Legs 'n' Co, (formerly Divally's), a bar in Glasgow that was applying to open its doors until 3 am, the broadsheet's intrepid reporters found that girls "danced naked while fondling their private parts, and made full body contact with customers - while men, in the public bar, stripped to show their genitals in return for free drinks and dances". Instead of heading for the door - normal practice when a bar is not to your liking - they turned to Glasgow's censorial licensing board for a comment, but alas - found no support for their condemnation. After all, no one had ever bothered to make an official complaint! Unsatisfied with that, the reporters approached Glasgow City Council. "The city council welcomed The Herald's revelations - and renewed its call to the Scottish Executive to increase its powers to limit lap-dancing activity". Such heroes, aren't they? And let's hope The Herald's new buyers will kick this broadsheet into the 21st century!
He looked completely mad staring out on the front page of The Scottish Sun. This was "bug-eyed... pervert... Ian Curtis". The Sun was enjoying itself once again, with a particularly narrow view on sexuality. "HUBBY FACING DIVORCE OVER ROMP WITH FROZEN CHICKEN". Mark Howarth's 'exclusive' was supposed to support a "sickened wife" who was divorcing Ian Curtis after she caught him "having sex - with a frozen chicken". (I would've imagined it would've felt a whole lot better using one that had been thawed, but the idea of having sex with a frozen bird from Somerfield probably made better copy)! Curtis was dressed in a blouse and rubber stockings when wife Jean walked in and declared: "You dirty b******, that's my Sunday lunch". Jean Curtis was made completely aware of her husband's transvestite interests well before they were married. One would assume, his willingness to sexually experiment too. A huge black and white picture of a frozen chicken appeared under the headline: "DIRTY PLUCKER!" Although, as readers, we were supposed to side with the poor, sobbing Jean, The Scottish Sun was just milking her for a good story. She was pictured holding up a basque. The fact that Jean claimed this tattooed ex-military policeman had assaulted her, beating her during rows and attempting to strangle her and throw her out of their 10th floor flat window in Cranhill in Glasgow was confined to the small print. That was the only thing that should have 'shocked' us.
I thoroughly enjoyed myself reviewing the press on Graham Stewart's Sunday morning programme on Real Radio. Although they were a little apprehensive about the possibility of complaints from religionists - particularly the Catholic Church who were doing a bit of social engineering, looking out for 'deviant' behaviour to eradicate gay priests - it never happened and I've been invited back around the end of November. Get rid of gay priests and that's it... The Catholic Church will be finished!
CUT IT OUT!
Gerald Warner in Scotland on Sunday: "It is her denunciation of the Back to Basics slogan as 'evil' that most strongly reeks of hypocrisy. Can this be the same Edwina Currie who... declared 'Good Christian people... will not catch Aids'? She may well have had a valid point..."
Gerald Warner's thoughts in Scotland on Sunday on a written constitution: "... One of the tired old hobby horses of the equally jaded Charter 88 clique of armchair Jacobins, an outmoded relic... when Mandy minced tall and the busy clatter of construction work rang out on the site of the Millennium Dome".
Gerald Warner's opinion on the sexual hypocrisy of Conservative politicians in Scotland on Sunday: "The guardians of society have a responsibility to affirm standards, even if they privately lapse from them. The Victorians understood this, in an age of discreet licentiousness in high places. For this, they are denounced as hypocrites today; but they preserved family life as the cement of society".
Homophobic and Conservative to the core, columnist Mrs Katie Grant in The Scotsman: "In their new touchy-feeliness, Tories must beware of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The concept of what we call the 'traditional' family is too important to be jettisoned in a fervour of modernisation... backing the family is not a policy option, it is a policy necessity and one that should be trumpeted rather than hidden".
Mrs Katie Grant's pronouncement on the death of the Conservative Party in Scotland on Sunday: "...It might prove impossible to compete with Labour on the 'women 'n' gay rights' front. If this is the case, and their policies, in the cold light of day, do not seem radically different from what Blair's crew are offering, what then for the once great Conservative party? Oblivion". We do hope so!
Cameron Macintosh's plans for his funeral in Scotland on Sunday: "It's going to be a fabulous production"
What Tom Thomson, new chairman of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra was reported telling The Herald: "He said one, Jack Irvine, the former newspaper editor who runs the public relations agency Media House, would help raise the orchestra's profile in the media, and said he was the 'best PR man in the country'." Oh really? That'll be quite a few regular ticket buyers up the Swanee already then, Mr Thomson!
Father Joe Chambers who chaired the working party on the new guidelines for sex education in Catholic schools in The Sunday Times Scotland: "The approach we've taken is neither negative nor positive. We want children to find out different attitudes to different situations and then look at the church's teachings on them... There are people with genuine abnormalities in their physical and psychological make-up and they still need the pastoral care of the church. There are people with sexual abnormalities who are just as deserving of the help of the church as anyone else". Would the last one leaving the Church please turn out the light!
On the bill proposing to allow gays, lesbians and unmarried couples the right to adopt in The Herald: "John Deighan spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland, said the bill would undermine marriage and endanger children. 'By their nature, homosexual relationships are not stable'." And by their nature, ditto for Catholic priests!
