Censorship starts with your own Column

Stephen DaisleyThe extraordinary false-victimhood claims of Stephen Daisley has had another run-around as the man who is so marginalised he’s got his own national newspaper column has been bleating about vile nationalists … in the Daily Mail.

This drivel needs some brief attention.

The first thing to note is not the familiar paranoid haverings of a man who used his bizarrre platform on STV to advocate torture – but the recurring attacks on NGOs – a particular bug-bear of his new employers at the Mail who have conducted an all-out assault on the sector in England and are now turning their attention to the third sector in Scotland.

First the familiar re-run of his tired cliches. First up his supposed persecution.

“I don’t blame Wishart and Nicolson. They are nationalists and conduct themselves accordingly; no one laments the character of a viper when it bites”

Note – nationalists = vipers. This from a columnist in the Mail who have fomented race-hate and an English nationalism so destabilizing it is about to wreak havoc on the Scottish economy. Poor Stephen writes on his hated nationalism’: “Under this most barren of ideologies there is only national pride and nothing else…”

He’ll soon realise the very truth of this under Mr Dacre’s tutelage. If he thinks that Scottish nationalism is a closed-shop just wait until he gets his feet under the desk of the Anglo-British Hate Rag that is the Daily Mail.

Some of you wont recognise the hellish country Daisley describes:

A parliament of biddable backbenchers and scant scrutiny; a media lacking resources and corporate gumption; a voluntary sector conscripted into politics; and an intelligentsia that has already made its mind up.

In a country which still has only one small-scale daily paper that is pro-indy despite about half the country supporting radical constitutional change, Daisley paints a picture of a monolithic Mugabe-style nationalist media hegemony.

What’s at the heart of this over-hyped nonsense is a pure ideological hatred of the fact that there is a different political culture in Scotland today, and that this is expressed across civil society. This is intolerable for the likes of Daisley.

Third Force News recently documented the Mail’s extraordinary attacks on charities and NGO’s in recent weeks:

“Charities in Scotland have united against the Daily Mail for irresponsible journalism and creating “fake news” about the country’s third sector. It comes after the tabloid paper published two days’ worth of articles ostensibly exposing individuals and charities receiving public money. A tranche of stories depicted the sector as siding with “SNP paymasters” while describing many of the sector’s leading figures as Scottish Government “sock puppets”, implying they were controlled by civil servants.  The right-wing paper also published a bizarre story about how four “charity fat cats” lived in the same street in Edinburgh, suggesting they were supported by public money which was in turn “greasing the wheels of the third sector”. Martin Sime, chief executive of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations, lambasted the stories as a lame attempt to belittle a vibrant third sector.”

Sime hit out: “The Scottish Daily Mail has a world-view that hates immigration, despises welfare and poor people in general is anti-LGBT and anti-human rights.“It’s a way of thinking that we stand firm in opposing in all the work we do, in the charities we support and in the resolve we have to never let bullying and hate stop our work.”

The Mail in England has led a concerted attack on the Third Sector and wants any funding removed, which would leave key frontline organisations working with children and vulnerable people unable to function.

Daisley has progressed from a disastrously ill-thought out platform on STV to a place where he will be more comfortable. The Mail will truly be a home-for-home for Daisley, like many of his far-right colleagues, only Scottish nationalism exists and the comfort-blanket of the British Homeland has no faults, it is the default-setting from which Scotland has, unforgivably digressed. As poor Stephen writes in deep unconscious oblivion: “The rise of nationalism around the world is a shocking, disorienting experience.

But the reality of this is not just paranoia but abject fantasy. Let’s make this simple: Daisley wasn’t sacked, or gagged, or even asked to shut-up.

As STV said at the time: “STV continues to develop and invest in political coverage, particularly since the launch of our enhanced digital news service earlier this year. Our output and content will continue to evolve and Stephen Daisley, digital politics and comments editor, is a key contributor to this as we enter the new parliamentary sessions.”

Daisley exists in a world where Scottish culture or language can’t be allowed to be recognised -hence his bizarre vitriol against Scots – in a country which is now increasingly comfortable with its languages (s), culture (s) and history.

That’s as intolerable as a third sector that espouses some decent humanity and vague aspiration towards a progressive society, fighting in the face of British austerity and ‘red in tooth and claw’ off-the-hook Toryism. Scotland is full of good journalists, critical thinkers and trouble-making politicians. It’s a dynamic place that hasn’t yet completely lost its political compass.

Poor Daisley presents himself as a sort of Scottish Solzhenitsyn, a brave rebel fighting against the oppressive state. In real life he’s more like a poor mans Rod Liddle.

As the bold Solzhenitsyn, once said: “Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people.”

Sadly Daisley knew none of these.

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Comments (16)

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  1. Peter Berg says:

    Hi Mike
    First of all, it wasn’t the Sunday Mail. The rest of your rant needs fact checking as well: why not actually dig into how STV treated one of its journalists for a start,instead of this freeform rant.
    I didn’t agree with Daisley: that’s the point, at some stage everyone got a kicking from him. Unlike your monocultural website of late.

    1. Graeme Purves says:

      Stephen Daisley doesn’t do kickings. He does petulance.

  2. Dan Linehan says:

    It should read wreak havoc, not reek havoc.

  3. montywhile minty says:

    Sadly I recognise “a parliament of biddable backbenchers and scant scrutiny ; a media lacking resources and corporate gumption” all too well. The rest of it might be nonsense but this as an accurate and concise description of Scottish politics as I have seen for a while

    1. James Mills says:

      Then you must not get out much or read much of the coverage ( sic ) of the Scottish Parliament by the almost uniformly blinkered Scottish unionist media or the daily propaganda from the Scottish arm of the BBC ( ”is that true or did you hear it on the BBC ?” )

    2. David Carnex says:

      and I recognise your type of ill informed comments, you Daisley-esque agenda.

  4. Justin Kenrick says:

    on the other hand, his move makes clear the world view he has been expressing all along, and hopefully gives pause to those who defended him so vociferously.

    It’s clear why and how so much of Labours progressive support went to the SNP and Greens, and why and how the Daily Mail leaning support is now rapidly going to the Tories.

  5. Kenny Smith says:

    Spot on article Mike. The man like others really wants to get off his knees and pull his mouth away long enough to use his brains( I’m lead to believe they are in there somewhere ) Good to see you banging the nails on the head. As for the stv debacle anyone who cares knows he wasn’t gagged. To the people who defend his ilk if it was the other way round the vultures would have had a nationalist writer having to emigrate to find work. The daily heil is the worst of a bad lot, its at the point where I prejudge people who buy it, wudny use it to wipe my arse for fear of infection, I’m sure Daisley will fit right in

  6. Richard MacKinnon says:

    Editor,
    What do you expect. He is a journalist. That is what they do; they look for stories and hype them. What is more Bella Caledonia has been giving the English media plenty of ammunition over the last few years. I am tired of pointing out the danger of intemperate language. Take for example yesterdays article by George Gunn. “That is what the new fascists think. There are ways that the Scottish people can resist it and flex our “strenuous liberty”. The use of language like that is dangerous and will get a reaction.
    Bella has only itself to blame. It has churned out grievance fiction daily for the last three years. Keep it up and you will do irreparable damage to Scotland’s relationship with England.

    1. Just for the last three years?!

      1. Richard MacKinnon says:

        From the 19 September 2014.

  7. Rab Dickson says:

    Good stuff Mike.
    I’m personally tired and really, really bored by this tearful masquerade of a right wing hack.
    The straw-man blurb that he ‘attacks everyone equally’ is also tedious and the likes of Johann Lamont should really know better and stop using him as some pathetic cause célèbre.
    His vitriolic right wing opinions have their place and that place has been found….now let’s see the SNP ‘one party state’ shut him up.
    I won’t be holding my breath…or more importantly, reading his bilious drivel.
    He was almost unavoidable on social media….fortunately being at the Daily Heil makes it far easier.
    He can flout his obnoxious views to his hearts content.
    He might even get the chance to trash the reputation of some young drunk kid who has an encounter with a horse.
    The world’s his oyster.

  8. florian albert says:

    I feel as though I am back in the 1980s. Then, the left in its impotence, raged against the Murdoch press. Attempts were made to have it banned from public libraries. By the end of the decade, Murdoch was thriving – not so the left.
    Now, it is the Daily Mail.
    There are solid reasons to criticize the Daily Mail. Its antipathy to the Third Sector is probably not the best. Huge resentment against charities has grown in the last few years; similar to the resentment against those at the top in the public sector. The Daily Mail has been at the front in the campaign against deadbeat employers like Ashley.
    As with the Murdoch press, irrational dislike is counter productive.
    The Murdoch press broke to story of the sexual abuse of girls in Rotherham. Abuse that had been swept under the carpet by police and social services.
    It is worth remembering what Marx said about history repeating itself.

  9. Craig P says:

    Never heard of him.

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