For the Record

We all know that the traditional Scottish media is pants, and the Daily Record is the skidmarks. Today on page 10 the paper published a wee moany press release by Magrit Curran – the dangleberry of the Labour party – about a short piece I’d written in support of Natalie McGarry who is standing against Magrit in Glasgow East.

The paper did not see fit to contact me about the story, and describes me as “an SNP blogger”. This is incorrect – as I have said on this blog on numerous occasions previously, I am not an SNP member and do not write at the behest of the SNP. I wrote the piece supporting Natalie in a personal capacity. If the Record had seen fit to engage in the most fundilymundily journalism and contacted me instead of printing a Labour press release verbatim, they’d have known that. Och, journalism and the Daily Record, what am I thinking? Still, it’s hugely pleasing to know that I’m getting under Magrit’s skin, an enormous delight to discover that my words wound her.

Magrit thinks my words are patronising and insulting to the people of Glasgow East. Coming from a woman who has spent her entire career patronising and insulting the intelligence of the people of Glasgow East, and the rest of Scotland, this is pretty rich. But before going on to patronise and insult Magrit, here’s the piece I wrote for Natalie. You can judge for yourselves.

We have a choice before us with this election. Walk down Shettleston Road, take a stroll through Tollcross Park, and you can see the drawn faces of a people who have been abandoned, betrayed by those for whom aspiration means leaving Glasgow East behind, a place to be from not a place to be a part of. One choice is passivity, we can choose to sit back and bemoan the fact that Glasgow East is known for low life expectancy, for poverty, for substance abuse, for multiple social deprivation.

Passivity means that we can vote as we’ve always done, as our grandparents did, and sit back in hopelessness and despair, lost amongst the drawn faces in Tollcross Park – or we can choose to stand tall and shout. We can demand. We can choose to make our vibrant voices heard, we can choose to be loud, to be gallus. We can choose to be the proud grandchildren of those who created a movement for change, a force for social justice. And we can choose to do that again.

Here and now, we can start to create a future our grandchildren can be proud of, and Natalie McGarry is the woman who will be the voice of that future.

Not all politicians are the same. Natalie McGarry’s aspiration is be a part of this community, to be of it not from it, to carry its message to the corridors of power, to speak truth and be an agent of change, an agent of social justice.

This is a time for change. This is a time for making a difference. This is a time for grasping the thistle of the future. Be the change, be the difference, make the future. Scotland’s future rests in your hands, in your vote and voice. Be active, be a force, be a strong voice.

Dare to hope.

Vote SNP, vote for Natalie McGarry.

Magrit thinks it’s insulting and patronising to point out that people who suffer the effects of her misrule and the misrule of the Tories are pained and damaged because of it. She’s the one who campaigned in order to keep Scotland at risk of Tory rule, she’s the one who danced and clapped as Davie Cameron prepared his EVEL speech.

Running to the Record to complain about my words is a sign of her pathetic desperation, a risible attempt to manufacture sympathy for herself on the backs of those whose benefits have been sanctioned, who walk the cold and hungry miles to a food bank, who wrap themselves in blankets because they have no money for the meter. Those are the people Magrit should be fighting for, but no, she’d rather complain to the Record that someone from her own constituency, someone who unlike her actually lives in the East End, has dared to point them out to her. That’s why Magrit is a hypocrite. Away with you Magrit, back to yer big hoose in Newlands.

Magrit says that the people of the East End need hope. She says I insult them. How dare you speak to us about hope. We do have hope for the future Magrit. We are hopeful of a future that doesn’t have you in it. You are a barrier to progress, a blockage that needs to be flushed out and flushed away. You are the voice of a sclerotic establishment that promises a privatised sticking plaster on the gaping wounds of a community whose soul your party has ripped out.

But now the pressure is rising. Magrit can feel it, she can feel it about to burst and take her career with it. So she runs to the Record with her whiny press releases. And when Magrit is flushed away the cheers from Glasgow East will be heard all the way to Westminster. No one here wants you Magrit. You can trust me on that one. I live in Glasgow East, you don’t. I talk to real people who live here, you live in the manufactured bubble of press releases and media events attended only by party hacks. You know nothing Magrit, but even you in your place of ignorance can feel the tremors of the earthquake that’s coming.

Magrit’s panicking now, and in her panic she reveals herself as a woman bereft of poetry, absent from any finer feeling, lacking in compassion, and a stranger to the truth. The only thing Magrit has ever felt any passion for is her expenses claims and her public standing. We’re going to take those things from her.

It’s not that the blood is slowly dripping out of Magrit’s career, it’s spurting from the jugular and she’s drowning in it. Tick tock Magrit, just two days to go. The pale and drawn face will be yours. The lost and lonely figure will be yours. Focus group that.

You’ll have many years ahead of you to enjoy your obscurity Magrit. But you won’t enjoy it anything like as much as we will.

Donate to the Dug

This blog relies on your support and donations to keep going – I need to make a living, and have bills to pay. Clicking the donate button will allow you to make a payment directly to my Paypal account. You do not need a Paypal account yourself to make a donation. You can donate as little, or as much, as you want. Many thanks.