21 April – 20 May 2003
Religionists and their media cronies are using the manufactured outrage over the repeal of Clause 28 in Scotland - the law preventing local authorities from the so-called ‘promotion’ of homosexuality - to prevent the furtherance of gay equality. Scotland on Sunday’s homophobic Catholic, Conservative columnist Gerald Warner scoffed that the Greens, “after two weeks in the political sun, have turned Pink, proposing legislation for homosexual ‘marriage’. Here it comes – Section 29! What was that wise saw about forgetting nothing and learning nothing?”
The Courier’s political editor, Steve Bargeton in Dundee warned: “Holyrood is set to be engulfed in a fresh storm over homosexuality of the kind that tarnished the reputation of the first Scottish Parliament in 1999”. Tarnished? But Clause 28 was repealed, was it not? Bargeton – an amateur, surely? – was convinced “the issue divided the nation and left the Parliament with the reputation of being more concerned with political correctness than the interests of the public”. Well, Steve, I’m not interested in your personal opinions, and neither, I’m sure are your readers. Religionists deliberately hampered what could have been a simple Parliamentary procedure to repeal an English Act that could not be enforced in law. There was also a public duty to counter a wealthy religionist’s multi-million pound personal campaign to ‘Keep the Clause’. But what’s Clause 28 got to do with the Green Party’s efforts to bring some semblance of equality for unmarried straight and gay couples? MSP, Patrick Harvie - whom a BBC Radio Scotland newsreader pointed out was “unmarried - proposed a Bill for registered partnerships, both gay and straight. The Courier’s Steve Bargeton wet his knickers. He insisted it was “plans to bring in new legislation for homosexual couples to have the same rights as married ones – a move seen by some as effectively ‘same-sex marriage’.” Call it what you want. But most gays DON’T want the religious institution that is called marriage. I would like to think most heterosexual couples opting out of marriage don’t either. This was about equality. Giving couples – that is all couples, straight or gay, in committed relationships – equality in laws governing such things as tax, inheritance, pensions, bereavement and visiting rights in hospitals and prisons. Michael McMahon MSP, who in no reports was ever exposed as a staunch Catholic, opposed to the fair treatment of gays, told The Courier: “It’s highly debatable whether gay marriage meets people’s priorities”. (That’s funny. neither does Catholicism meet mine). Time and time again, from the First Minister down, we were reminded that our quest for equality was not important; ‘not a priority’ and something that mustn’t divert attention away from ‘more important’ issues. Equality for gays was shadowed by the threats of militant religionists; we were fobbed off as less-deserving, second-rate citizens. MSPs were running scared.
The Scottish Daily Mail sharpened its knife and prepared to indulge religionists in their obsession with homosexuality. MSP Patrick Harvie was sacrificed on the front page under the headline: “GREENS THREAT TO THE FAMILY”. Harvie was made out to be a fraud. A “militant gay activist turned MSP”. Kate Foster, so called Scottish Political Reporter, danced in the flames and declared Harvie “wants gay couples to be allowed to take part in civil ceremonies that would give them the same legal rights as married couples”. Leaning on a religious metaphor she advised: “Patrick Harvie may have been elected to Holyrood under the umbrella of the Green Party, but one look at his CV suggests his real passion is not environmental reform but the crusade for gay rights”. The List MSP for Glasgow’s sexuality was unnecessarily exposed; described as a “bisexual” who “worked full-time for a publicly-funded ‘education project’ criticised for distributing pornographic leaflets on homosexuality to children”. That ‘criticism’ was initiated by the same machinery oiling the cogs of this poisonous report: The notorious Christian Institute. The inverted commas around “education project” referred to Gay Sex Now, a booklet that contributed to the fall in HIV rates in Glasgow amongst gays to less than that of heterosexuals. Inverted commas were also used by Foster to retort how Harvie had “insisted his Bill was needed to end ‘discrimination’ against gay couples”. Whoops! A bit of personal opinion there, Kate? And pornographic? Who says so? The Mail’s barking mad organ grinder, the Christian Institute? Oh, do me a favour, love! Alongside a photograph of “a homosexual couple in Holland”, (?) The Mail declared “voters turn on Greens for suddenly championing homosexual weddings instead of the environment, while critics condemn ‘attack on the family’.” They found one. Cheryl Osbourne from Glasgow who told them that the Green Party “should be concentrating on the focus that people elected them for and gay marriages are certainly not in any way related to the environment”. But who said anything about gay marriages? Harvie made it clear to Foster: “This is definitely not about gay marriage… It is a mechanism which would be open to mixed or same-sex couples”. Who cares? Certainly not The Scottish Daily Mail. The words: “Gay marriage plans savaged”, was splashed across the tops of two pages. Instead of those directly affected by the discrimination Harvie wanted to challenge, Kate Foster lazily paraded the usual homophobic rent-a-gobs available at the touch of a Mail reporter’s Quick-Dial key. She found, “a spokesman for the Scottish Tories said the move could undermine marriage”, Valerie Riches of right-wing militant group Family and Youth Concern cried: “This is all part of the homosexual agenda designed to destroy the family”, a spokesperson for the Catholic Church added wistfully: “Hopefully, this Bill won’t be successful” and, of course, Colin Hart from the militant Christian Institute warned: “The whole motivation behind this is to give gays tax benefits. But there are many people caring for elderly relatives or disabled people who would be far more entitled to those rights that gays want. It is just a recipe for unjustness and unfairness and downgrades marriage.” So forget the disproportionate number of gays in the caring profession. There you have it. Gay couples are cheating the elderly and disabled of what’s rightfully theirs! Oh, Kate! And just to think you could have taken another path and been a journalist!
Another one of The Scottish Daily Mail’s cronies, Graham Grant dropped in a few paragraphs to give his angle on the repeal of Clause 28 in Scotland. Neatly sidestepping the plethora of religious propaganda infiltrating schools, Kate Foster described Clause 28 as “the law preventing the distribution of gay propaganda in schools”. The Mail’s editorial tried to make a causal link for voter apathy in the recent Scottish elections to the support for the massively funded ‘Keep the Clause’ campaign by millionaire evangelist, Brian Souter, three years ago. Despite a huge majority turning their back on Souter’s private opinion poll, the editorial insisted: “MSPs denounced their own electors as ‘bigots’ and pressed on regardless. The electorate got the message and responded this month with a 50 per cent abstention rate…” But The Mail hadn’t got the message. The party that most supports the aims of The Mail’s religious agenda - the Tories - gained no seats and even continue to lose support, while the Greens increased their number of seats in Scotland from one to seven. Er… Hello! Doesn’t that tell you something? The editorial whined: “It was not simply that people were opposed to the politically-correct posturing of the parliament – it was the irrelevance of the issues it was pursuing…” Once again, we are all equal in our pursuit of fair play, but clearly, some are more equal than others. Kate Foster went on to darken Patrick Harvie’s name. “Yet, for all his controversial views,” she gasped in surprise, “Scotland’s first openly gay MSP was born into a comfortable middle-class family”. Aww! But didn’t he just tell you he was bisexual? And neither was he “Scotland’s first openly gay MSP”. What about Iain Smith or Keith Raffan? With The Mail’s usual disregard for inconvenient detail, Foster warned that Patrick was “a member of the militant gay rights group Stonewall”, a remark, I confess, had me tipping my chair over and rolling across the floor in laughter! Is this bitch real? She warned that “only now that he has settled into his £49,000-a-year job as an MSP is the extent of his homosexual militancy becoming clear”. We should be more wary of The Scottish Daily Mail’s religious militancy. So-called ‘gay militancy’ has only ever been about a pursuance of equality and fair play in society. It never has been about ‘special rights’. Neither has it cost anyone their life. Religious militancy, however – be they holy wars, the troubles in Northern Ireland or the tragic events of September 11 - are quite a different matter.
Tom Curtis and Jason Allardyce painted an even darker picture of Patrick Harvie in Scotland on Sunday when they quoted an unnamed “politician” at his election hustings after he admitted he had worked in the gay and lesbian community: “You could hear a pin drop… The whole front row winced at what he had said”. Curtis and Allardyce offered the opinion that “unconventional sexuality remains a taboo too far for many Scots”, providing, in support, alleged homophobic comments from the leader of the Scottish Senior Citizens Unity Party and a Tory MSP who failed to get elected! Brian Souter was said to have been “upset”. Ex-Scottish Sun editor and Keep the Clause PR man Jack Irvine was quoted saying: “The tone of the conversation has been ‘have you seen this latest bit of crap?’ My instinct is that this time people have just said, ‘Oh, f*** it, do what you want’.” He believed “many people may be sickened” and added: “There’s a great middle Scotland out there which I think is probably appalled. There’s been a lot of gay propaganda trying to make out that this is normal but I always understood marriage was really for procreation, and, as far as I know, gays can’t procreate together”. Irvine appeared to be a victim of his own propaganda. Allardyce claimed Irvine believed “he accepted some of the arguments that people living together, of whatever sex, should have equal rights under the law”. Since this is all Harvie is proposing, what on earth was that dickhead Irvine on about?
Conservative, Catholic media whore, Mrs Katie Grant was called in to do her bit for marriage and comment on the Scottish Green Party’s “latest wheeze”. Marriage was “not a lifestyle option”; Mrs Grant sniffed as though gays shop for partners in Ikea: “It is a serious and deep-seated commitment”. But how many times did Patrick Harvie have to say this: The Greens weren’t seeking “gay marriage”. And even if they were, some gay partnerships have been a good deal more suited to the role Mrs Grant believed could only be claimed by heterosexuals who marry for what she snottily called “a personal commitment of faithfulness to each other… broadened into a commitment to stability and growth within society”. Mrs Grant was dancing through the daisies in her nightdress while extolling the virtue of a thoroughly nauseating Victorian myth: “Married couples accept the disciplines of marriage because they believe it provides the best environment in which children can flourish, thus replenishing the nation with people who know something about morality, authority, commitment and the joy to had from living as a family”. She was in full finger-wagging mode: “Fine, Mr Harvie. But people who do not wish to be married, who wish to remain publicly uncommitted… should accept the consequences. Nobody is stopping them from arranging their lives exactly as they like. But if you wish to do things your own way, you cannot expect the whole world to dance to your tune”. Only he wasn’t asking for ‘special rights’: She was! The horsey, wax-coated bitch wanted heterosexual Marrieds to benefit from all the special rights and privileges they could grab for themselves. “Maybe the Greens and those who support this latest proposal should get out more”, she snapped. Maybe if someone opened the stable door, she could, too. Crying out to politicians to come to her rescue, she bawled: “Who among them will show some leadership and put the promotion of marriage top of the list of priorities?” But marriage is already promoted by statute. And the Greens did not, in any case, want to undermine it. Mrs Grant adopted a more sinister tone: “…There is a deeper agenda. Civil partnerships will not just involve heterosexual couples. Gay couples, too, will benefit, thus softening us up for an eventual bill to promote gay marriage”. Softening up Mrs Katie Grant? Now there’s a challenge! She begged: “Ideally, children should have a mother and a father who live together. Parliament should promote the ideal. It is as simple as that”. But it is not an ideal every child has. And gay couples are sometimes the only couples that have come forward to offer them a secure and loving home. There is no point in The Daily Mail and it’s religious cronies scapegoating gays for the decline of marriage. There are many very traditional gays who desire marriage of some kind, and many, like me, who wouldn’t give you a pretty posey for it. It is not gays, but changing fashion, that is to blame for its decline. Marriage is a construction, and not, like so many religionists seem to believe, as natural as birth and death. It is both refreshing and astonishing that a gay or bisexual MP or MSP has dared to stand up and make any sort of stand for gay equality. Thanks to orchestrated homophobia from the likes of white trash like k.foster@dailymail.co.uk, political parties in Scotland like Labour, the SNP and, of course, the Tories, have turned their back on Green MSP Patrick Harvie and are running scared from any resurgence of the infamy of the notorious Clause 28 campaign, masterminded by a former editor of The Scottish Sun. Only the Liberal Democrats and the SSP have, by and large, stood by their commitment to equality. We should recognise Patrick Harvie’s courageous and noble efforts. That’s something you all might want to remember come the next election.
Never missing an opportunity to boot the fat arse of the Christian Institute, my eyes alighted on a festering boil on the face of its one-time buddy, The Daily Record. “I spanked two boys in name of God”. Reverend Martin Trench, 36, minister of the River Ministry Christian Fellowship Evangelical Church in Ayr was accused of beating a couple of boys, (one of them a six-year-old), with the buckle-end of a leather belt. Amongst other things evoking the minister’s ire was a bad school report and for doing what The Record tactfully described as going “to the toilet outdoors”. Trench found this “absolutely disgusting, disrespectful behaviour”. In dishing out a damn good thrashing, he told The Record: “The use of implements is quite common among Evangelical Christians… I did it in the name of God… My motives were noble and pure”. His inspiration was the Christian Institute website which he claimed told him “physical discipline should be with an external object and only applied to the buttocks”. He told the court he often hugged them after spanking them. His ex-wife - poor cow - remembered him as “a dictator”. In a demonstration of remorse, he advised that after thrashing the two wee boys, which he described as “loving chastisement”, he felt “a little tearful” and confessed: “I don’t want to be constantly doing this”. He was found ‘not guilty’ by the courts and free to continue preaching to kids with special needs at Craigpark School in Ayr.
The Church of Scotland’s social work service is facing financial collapse and I, for one, won’t be sorry. Call me hard-hearted, but the Kirk’s ridiculously named Board of Social Responsibility belongs six-foot under the Bog Myrtle in a Victorian graveyard. Why do councils abdicate from their responsibilities to house the elderly and vulnerable by handing out grants to a bunch of religious extremists? Despite running at an annual loss of £6m and forced to close old people’s homes they were happy enough to waste money on a study into how they could counter public scepticism of demonic possession and throw themselves into the futile campaign to prevent the repeal of Clause 28 ‘to protect children’. A bit rich considering that both of Scotland’s major religious institutions, the Catholic Church and the Church of Scotland, in the face of the damaging consequences of sexual repression meted out by the church, have been forced take internal measures to protect children. The Catholic Church have appointed a children’s czar and the Kirk are recommending all people working with children be described as ‘children’s workers’; face interviews and criminal record checks.
Under the pretext of concern for the birth of a child into a violent family, The Daily Record ruthlessly targeted a transgendered person. Donna Watson’s “SEX SWAP PSYCHO HAD DIY BABY” filled the front page. “Violent gangster William Wotherspoon, who now calls himself Lisa Docherty” claimed to have used sperm “froze at home”, to impregnate his girlfriend, who subsequently gave birth to Michelle “not long after Wotherspoon was given a six-month deferred sentence for a string of offences”. In fact, they had been trying to have a baby quite naturally up to the point of Docherty’s operation. The cost of a fertility clinic proved too much for them. In isolation, the jail sentence meted out for an axe attack that fractured his victim’s skull was serious enough. In another incident, a victim lost his life by being doused in petrol and set alight. Wotherspoon was found ‘not guilty’ and “acquitted on a legal technicality”. This was just grist to the mill as the tabloid ground this transgender to dust. “Now the violent ex-con is raising Michelle with Lisa-Marie at their home in Holytown, Lanarkshire”. The tabloid sniffed: “When the Daily Record approached Wotherspoon at his home, the gangster answered the door in peach satin pyjamas and asked for money to tell his story”. Had it just not occurred to journalists that “Wotherspoon” was Lisa-Anne Docherty? What was she supposed to be wearing, for goodness sake? Ms Docherty emphasised her desire to bring up the child in an honest, stable and loving environment. Despite doubts that Docherty, as a man, fathered the child, The Record appeared to delight in fact the couple “could now face criminal charges”. Where was the concern for child’s upbringing now? Or would it have been so much better if, perhaps, only the mother new the identity of the child’s real father, who, it turned out, had no interest in the child’s upbringing? Since Britain’s archaic laws, in clear breach of the European Court of Human Rights, insist Docherty must legally remain a man, she would be perfectly entitled to marry her girlfriend and that is clearly what “the odd couple” intended to do. The mother bravely admitted to The Record: “I imagined myself with a husband and children, but I’ll have Lisa-Anne and Michelle. I’ve given up normality to be with her, but she’s worth it. She’s unique and I love her”. The tabloid found an aunt of the murdered victim to cry: “He is not a man or a woman – but a monster who is a danger to the public”. She insisted that “every time” he appeared in court, he would escape sentence because of his sex change. The tabloid gasped: “Michelle will be encouraged to call Lisa-Marie ‘Mummy’ and Wotherspoon ‘Maddy’ – a cross between mummy and daddy”. More disturbing is the number of children who grow up wishing they never had parents at all! It was left to The Sunday Times Scotland and Glasgow University’s Professor Sheila McLean to present a more rational and less sensational assessment of the legal and ethical implications of the case. She made the useful point that this had taken place “with little concern for, or awareness of, the law” and “not significantly different from the ‘do-it-yourself’ pregnancies that have already been established”. The latter is not illegal because the sperm has not been stored, but the motivations remain the same as they would for any heterosexual couple trying for a baby. Reminding us that “there has been a 50 per cent rise in referrals to the children’s panel of children suffering from parental neglect”, you would think Gillian Bowditch in The Scotsman would have been a little more circumspect and appreciate wee Michelle had every prospect of a loving environment. Oh no! “Now science has reduced babies to the status of commodities. Your partner may be gay, dead or non-existent, but that will not preclude your right to procreate”, she sniffed. Excuse me, but I would’ve thought anyone going to such lengths must be pretty committed to the idea of having children. Putting aside everything from rickets to child prostitution, Bowditch played a scratched record promoted by the Christian Institute: “Prior to the Fifties… most children could be expect to be raised by both biological parents, an upbringing which countless studies have shown gives them the best chances in life”. She had already decided Michelle was destined to a life of misery. “At the heart of the matter is the selfish determination of a generation to pursue any lifestyle it chooses… If you worship at the cult of the individual, however, the gods demand sacrifice and that sacrifice is increasingly being paid by children. They are the main losers…” Bowditch was in full swing: “When we’ve reached a point where infertility professors claim to have a duty to help transsexual men become both mother and father to a child, it is clearly time to toughen the guidelines. The prospect of a regiment of sex-changed maddies is stretching our credulity a bit too far”. And probably this was what this was all about. Preserving the sanctity of ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’. There was no room for a ‘maddy’. Unfortunately, Ms Bowditch’s narrow, prejudiced views on life don’t grab me. Try a young lady with a rich experience, growing up in a loving, transgendered household.
The Scottish News of the World can always be relied upon to expose its homophobia, hypocrisy and negative approach to sexuality. David Leslie, one its reporters is a champion. Enter the “Strange tale of three lesbians, Two Feather (the Red Indian chief) and a one-armed man”. Of course, it wasn’t really so very strange at all before S.N.O.T. World got hold of the story. Jashiera Art’s lesbian lover, or “butch German lover”, Erika Wolbar as S.N.O.T. World rudely described her, became “obsessed” with the idea of their friend, a gentle man called William who had an interest in Native American customs, to impregnate her girlfriend. The relationship didn’t last, and Jashiera’s efforts to have a baby failed too. Jashiera claimed she had been “pushed” into it. S.N.O.T. World was on hand to provide a shoulder to cry on. All Jashiera had to do was share her story with their readers. She should’ve known better. Stories involving lesbians in this tabloid come across as either something of a joke or a masturbatory fantasy for it’s male readers. Following Erika’s inability to communicate properly in English, and after the decision was made to allow William to impregnate Jashiera without make love, S.N.O.T. World gave its version of events: “But the randy Red Indian thought Erika was asking him to have SEX with Jasheira. And when the two women stripped off and clambered into bed, he took off his clothes too and quickly jumped in beside them… Pretty Jashiera had tickled the brave’s fancy – and there was no stopping him”. S.N.O.T. World was having a ball. The phrases: “Not meant tepee… She’s not Apache on me…Squaw-bles… Phwoar-dance” and “Bloke signals” captioned each picture. Jashiera eventually “moved in with veteran commando” Rick Anderson “who lost his arm in an offshore oil rig incident in the North Sea”. They were, in fact, just good friends. Reporter David Leslie was obsessed with the proximity to the Queen’s residence at Balmoral. Jasheira’s “partner booted her out of their lovenest near the Queen’s holiday home at Balmoral, Aberdeenshire”. I wonder if S.N.O.T. World has ever thought of calling Balmoral, Philip and Liz’s “lovenest”?
The over-ambitious headline in The Herald: “Police call for lap-dancing crackdown” delivered the expressed concern of police that lap-dancing clubs could be used for money laundering. Well, so can suntan parlours! How many people use a sun bed is just as difficult to ascertain as the number of lap dances a woman performs in a night! With new lap-dancing clubs in Edinburgh, and without any evidence that money laundering was, in fact, taking place, Lothian and Borders police demanded lap-dancing clubs should all hold entertainment licences allowing “more conditions to be attached to applications”. I would be cautious of such controls. The police also expressed concern that with CCTV cameras in cubicles, men could be blackmailed. This is not a reason for enforcing more conditions on clubs which might choose to better protect women from the excesses of heterosexual men, but a reason for the police to make an unequivocal announcement that they would take action against anyone found blackmailing clients. Lap-dancing is something of a stop-gap on the road to sexual reform. A millennium fashion item destined to go the way of the burgundy baseball cap. The clubs are suspended between the enticing invitation of a leggy blonde beckoning punters to a private room for a quick wank and the moral fervour of a religious councillor, exercising net-twitching legislation to stop it. The clubs are clinging on to life between the cleft foot of local authority’s efforts to define morality and a burgeoning sexual revolution. Fired by the Internet, we are seeing changes in sexual dynamics that will turn institutions like marriage on its head. Sex has always and will always be obtainable at a price. Lap-dancing is like buying your lolly and not sucking it. Now, it seems, everyone wants a suck.
The bold capitals on the front page said it all: “JACK’S PORN LINK”. It was some desperate piece of pre-election news about someone hacking into First Minister Jack McConnell’s web site. What really launched this one onto the front page of The Scottish Daily Mirror was the fact it was “busty blonde US student Sophy, who offered to perform live sex acts”. Well, well! Reporter Mark Smith announced: “Jack McConnell was at the centre of an Internet porn probe”. 19-year-old Sophy’s invite to watch her live webcam appeared to anyone clicking onto one of Jack’s ‘useful links to the Labour Party’. The whole saga was impossibly upstaged: “Although there was no suggestion McConnell himself was involved, the scandal couldn’t have come at a worse time”. Scandal? What do they think this was, the Perfumo scandal? Labour’s opponents in the run-up to the Scottish elections dropped everything to rally round poor Jack to denounce the harmless incident. SNP’s Kenny MacAskill thought it in “poor taste” and said he felt “sorry” for McConnell. Tory’s Brian Monteith gasped: “I think the site should be pulled. It truly is an outrage”.
Finally, the sacking of Peter Cox from his position as editor of The Daily Record is not good news. Cox took over from the hardliner Martin Clarke who oversaw a plummeting circulation when he virtually turned the paper over to Keep the Clause campaigners during the repeal of Section 28. Bruce Waddell, who was editor of The Scottish Sun, has replaced Cox. During the Section 28 stushie, a Scottish Sun editorial claimed: “Section 28 is one of the most precious safeguards in Scottish society. It blocks right-on thinkers from foisting the mechanics of homosexuality on children in the classroom”. In another editorial The Sun was tub-thumping: “God put his own son in a household with a mum and dad… We are the ones who are today grateful to Brian Souter, the raiding of his charitable fund, and the righteous stirring of sensible Scots everywhere. To use a Biblical term, the thought of removing Section 28 is an abomination. To use another, the idea deserves the same fate as Sodom and Gomorrah”. So convinced that the “righteous stirring of sensible Scots” was the answer - an opinion I can’t imagine going down well with factory workers, office staff and hod carrying readers - the editorial exhorted: “What better use of charitable money than to turn the tide of muddle-headed thinking that assaults young minds?” (And, of course, fill the coffers of Murdoch’s newspapers with some lucrative advertising promoting the Keep the Clause campaign). Without considering the lesbian, gay and bisexual men and women who have children, its editorial cried: “Those of us who go with the 90 per cent majority in our sexuality are the ones who have children to worry about”. The editorial boasted: “Cabinets, the legal profession, showbiz and, let it be said, newspapers all have open doors to gay people”. But Waddell’s Scottish Sun didn’t employ an openly gay columnist, only a homophobic old boot, Jim Sillars! The editorial added smugly: “They have followed the call of their genes and by and large have forfeited the joy of children… Are we homophobic to reflect this? Not at all”. Waddell’s appointment is a retrograde step for the Scottish tabloid.
CUT IT OUT!
Catherine Deveney in Scotland on Sunday on Julian Clary: “Listening to him talk, you’d think he was the most genteel thing since a vicar’s garden party. All fine-bone china, crustless sandwiches and doilies on cake plates. It’s a thin, breathy little voice, delicate as the tinkle of teacup on saucer - until you listen to what it is he’s actually saying. It would make the vicar splutter his tea on the privet hedge and disconnect Grandma’s hearing aid in a trice. It’s not the gentle summer breeze of the garden party at all. It’s a bloody hurricane”.
Professor Donald Macleod in The Herald over the publication of Terry Pratchett’s new comic fantasy novel The Wee Free Men: “We are not often confused with fairies or elves. Our touch is not light enough!”
The Sunday Mail’s prudish reporter Norman Silvester: “One company has already caused outrage by making adult porn video clips available on mobile phone screens. It offers ten-second clips for £3 a time or much longer sequences if the phone has a memory card”. Come on Norm, get with it! People love it!
Brendan McGinty proving his paper The Sunday Mail either ain’t got the money or ain’t got the balls! “A Sunday Mail investigator last week paid a £20 door fee to enter the Ambassador, where he was introduced to a girl called Rachel in the communal lounge. She led him into a mirrored bedroom and, in a refined north of Scotland accent, listed a series of sexual services priced from £50 to £100. Our man left at that point”.
How her own children are opening Mrs Katie Grant’s eyes to what is involved in sex education as relayed by her good self in The Scottish Daily Mail: “The children divide into groups and shout things like ‘Who’s got the public lice?’ or ‘Have you got any genital warts?’ at each other. I suppose it breaks down barriers, particularly as boys and girls do the jigsaws together, but it seems a long way from the birds and the bees. ‘Will it teach you to be careful?’ I ask. They look at me with pitying smiles”.
Mrs Grant in The Scotsman: “My 11-year-old pianist son is learning Debussy’s charming Golliwog’s Cakewalk. Thrilled by its quirks, he had only one query, ‘What’s a golliwog?’ Political correctness made this difficult to answer…”
Mrs Katie Grant in The Scotsman: “It was with relief then, that I received a letter from the Scottish Catholic bishops telling me to vote according to my conscience ‘as formed by the teachings of the Church’. What a good idea”. Then, after being thoroughly dissatisfied with the major party’s stand on sex education: “Maybe, as a Catholic, my real duty is not to walk to the ballot box, but to do something possibly more effective, ie get down on my knees and pray”. Yes, you do that, love!
Mrs Grant in The Scotsman: “A community without a church is like a woman without hair”.
Conservative, Catholic, columnist and university lecturer, Mrs Katie Grant in The Scotsman: “In the 12th century, when universities were founded, the object was to expand minds. In the 21st, it is to restrict them”.
Former reporter, film producer and head of news and current affairs at Grampian TV, Ted Brocklebank who guided narrow-minded Sunday Mail columnist Selina Scott to stardom in The Herald: “I suppose I had always been a conservative with a small ‘c’ but I could never talk about Conservatives with a capital ‘C’ in my days in television because clearly I couldn’t have any political bias at all”.
