The township of 12 people which sells four…

The township of 12 people
which sells four million
cans of beer a year

At a
cinema
near you

Scotland
in the
heat

Abused
by the CyberNats

A leading public figure – former Secretary-General of NATO, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen – speaks out about his vilification at the hands of SNP supporters. He says it’s time the party dealt
with extreme elements.
Click here

Could the fans take over the club? A member of the Rangers Supporters’ Trust and the co-author of the club’s official biography explore this idea in today’s SR.
Click here

In case you’re wondering what the birthday cake is all about, today is the fourth anniversary of the Scottish Review online.
Click here for an extract from Tom Devine’s diary in the first edition

The Midgie

The Midgie is gratified to be able to announce that dozens of entries have been received in his new competition to append exclamation marks to worthy Scottish place-names, following Devon County Council’s disgraceful decision to drop the thunderstriker from the far end of Westward Ho!, thus releasing an exclamation mark back into the community.
     The Midgie’s next enterprise may be a competition to devise the longest opening sentence in a Midgie column. Today’s is a beezer.
     Meanwhile, his representative on earth will continue to receive exclamatory place-names until 1pm today (Wednesday), when The Midgie will retire to his usual booth in Yates’ Wine Bar to consider his verdict.
     The Midgie is surprised and disappointed not to have received an entry from Arthur Bell advancing the interests of Biggar! on the grounds that Biggar! is better.
     Nominations with reasons for your choice, please, to: islay@scottishreview.net
     A Scottish Review pen, personally chosen by The Midgie, will go to the author of the winning exclamation mark!

www.bobsmithart.com

Kenneth Roy

One of the prime smoothychops of the UK cabinet, culture secretary Jeremy Hunt, gave an assurance in a weekend interview that he ‘thinks [my italics] it is completely agreed that the state should not control the content of newspapers’. Boy, isn’t that big of him?
     I didn’t see the interview in question. I have been unable to watch Andrew Marr since it was revealed that the Queen’s biographer had taken out a superinjunction to prevent details about his private life being splashed all over the papers. But I am told by someone who did see it that Hunt’s use of the word ‘thinks’ should not be taken too seriously, that it may have been a slip of the tongue.
     I’m not sure. Raising a speculative possibility, then knocking it down, is a well-known ploy. It plants a seed. No need to do much more than water it a couple of times a week until it grows into an unexpectedly nasty fungus. Next time it makes a public appearance, possibly years later, there it is on Sir Andrew Marr’s Sunday programme, a fully pledged idea whose time has come.
     So Mr Hunt needs watching; and watching now. The same is true of Lord Leveson, Shami Chakrabarti and the rest of the worthies on his panel.
     In the same interview, Mr Hunt looked forward to ‘a tougher regulatory system’ for the press. He said it was what ‘the public’ – whoever they are – want. He also said that ‘the public’ want the press to behave ‘properly’. Is that really what the people want? Who knows? It is certainly what people like Jeremy Hunt want, since it would suit them very well.
     I do wonder about that word ‘properly’ and what Mr Hunt meant by it. Would he regard it as ‘proper’ for the press to report the inconvenient fact that, for 18 months, a leading British politician allowed his agent to live in his taxpayer-funded house as a lodger, while the politician continued to claim costs totalling almost £10,000 to which he was not entitled? There was no criminal wrongdoing, but it was a breach of the rules and the money had to be repaid. The politician in question was Jeremy Hunt.
     Had a more proper press, respectful of the privacy of public figures, not reported this unfortunate misunderstanding, and many others, in its exposure of the MPs’ expenses racket, it is conceivable that we would still be none the wiser about Mr Hunt’s lodger. It is also conceivable that this emasculated press will be the press of the future.

Eight months later, despite many arrests, not a single charge has been brought. We don’t need a tougher regulatory system; the criminal law will do. Yet the smell of prison for the guilty seems a rather distant prospect.