Quite a headline eh? Some (OK me and a few of the Twitterati) have characterised the former Sunday Herald and the National as ‘Trojan Horses’ with their unconvincing converts to independence, Kevin McKenna, Michael Fry and Iain McWhirter as mercenaries, driven by a combination of a basic need to get paid and an innate conservatism, to shy away from criticism of the wider movement but to weaken it, a bit, by attacking the SNP.
McKenna has been very active in the last few days with today’s George Robertson/Gandalf-like suggestion, in the Observer, that a ‘dark presence has come to possess this [SNP] party.’ In the same piece we read: ‘Some of their [SNP] candyfloss policies can drive you round the twist.’ Leaving aside McKenna’s own dark presence, there’s some connection between his anger at ‘candyfloss policies’ and his despair in the Herald on the 13th, with ‘SNP diktats.’
These will include the ban on smoking indoors which Reuters have today reported as reducing heart attacks by four times more than in England and the reduced alcohol-related hospital admissions after the introduction of minimum pricing in Scotland.
More darkly, Mckenna’s obsession with the SNP goes back. In the Herald in October 2016, he wrote:
‘There is a curiously illiberal and reactionary strain running through its (SNP) core which seems to belie its socialist credentials’
Here were his claims:
- Named Person Scheme was soundly trashed
- A Party whose language is a Caledonian version of Orwellian double-speak
- Army of superannuated advisors
- Critics howled down and accused of pandering to paedophiles
- Christian groups jeered and intimidated
- Encouraged by a bunch of indolent academics
Here are SNP actions he clearly didn’t like:
- Named Person Scheme
- Prisoners’ Voting Rights
- New Women’s Prison
- Minimum Alcohol Pricing
- Police Scotland
- Offensive behaviour at Football Act
I don’t know if the many recent repeated child abuse scandals in the, mostly, catholic ‘care’ homes or in the, mostly, Celtic boy’s clubs, have moderated his opposition to the Named Person Scheme or if he now wishes we had kept the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act, in the wake of last season’s events.
McKenna has considerable previous as an SNP-basher since his supposed and suspicious conversion from a rabid Unionist. Here’s what Bella Caledonia wrote of him before he converted:
‘It’s a piece so loaded with self-loathing, barely recognised inferiorism and desperate, desperate, political emptiness it’s hard to approach, but we really do need to talk about Kevin.’
Talking-up Scotland 
Given that the National (sic!) is owned by an Umerican company, it goes straight in to the ‘not-to-be-trusted’ tray!
Newspapers owned by anyone outside the country of operation are NEVER to be trusted.
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Yawn!! Yes, lets trust the American owned or English owned pretendy ‘Scottish’ papers who treat Scots like idiots, weekly they have to put in a piece to apologise for their lies on Scottish matters, England is OUTSIDE Scotland and majority of ‘Scottish’ papers including Daily Record are English owned. Do you ever get off your knee, bending for Westminster and England? Scotland doesn’t need enemies with so called Scots like you.
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It is always very interesting, and by extension informative, to see how infrequently the Guardia/Observer do not allow comments on his articles. Probably because they know they would be torn to shreds by those posting comments.
The Herald on the other hand clearly see his columns as useful click bait like yesterday’s column on Glasgow which resurrected every cliche about Glasgow in the book
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McKenna is no SNP supporter , I doubt he is an independence supporter either , he dances to anyone’s tune .The National can pretend all it likes , showing pictures of marches is not being a full independence supporting newspaper . Get proper , independence supporting , investigative journalists in , telling the news in full . It would give it a bit more credibility , till then , still a Trojan Horse! .
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Oh yes indeed.
I’ve noticed the poor level of reporting.
🐼🐼
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Oor Kev has many hats and they are all lined with dosh and his favourite, although problematic sits on the rotting corpse of Labour in Scotland which he can never get rid of even if the stench pollutes him and all that surrounds him.
‘A man of the people’ making a killing just like his old Labour comrades.
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I don’t think the smoking ban can be called an SNP diktat.
I am very proud to live in a country that pushed forward the ban on smoking but I think it was the 2003 labour/ liberal coalition that did the deed.
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No no no , Labour / Liberal would never have introduced it, sure they talked about it like so many policies they had which were always shelved when it came to the crunch
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Just for the record –
https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/17470905.kevin-mckenna-catholic-church-is-a-force-for-global-good-but-must-defeat-the-scourge-of-child-abuse/
https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/16174941.we-need-a-public-inquiry-into-child-sex-abuse-in-the-catholic-church/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/06/catholic-church-scotland-sexual-abuse-mclellan-report
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The BBC only roll out Kev when an expert on Celtic. He’s just trying to get back onto Sunday morning’s paper review, geeze give a guy a break, gotta make a crust and all that.
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Should’ve read
An expert on Celtic . . . Is required
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I agree about McKenna – a chameleon who changes sides to suit who he’s writing for, but I think you’re all being a bit harsh with the National. It’s the only paper that gives us Indy stories all the other papers ignore and has some good independence supporting writers. The Herald and Hootsmon are avowedly anti-indy, and the London papers that I occasionally look at, Grauniad and FT deal in cliches about Scotland, if they ever get round to acknowledging we exist, which is rare, and mostly just ignore us while doing homage to the London clique.
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