There have been a few memorable quotes in the entire Sabbath ferries debacle. It is not good form for columnists to slag off other scribes and it is never necessary to suggest they should not praise each other unduly – because it happens so rarely. But I was tickled by John Macleod’s response to the CalMac spokesman saying it was only mechanical failure and not divine intervention.
“I wasn’t aware he had qualifications in theology, but I don’t myself believe the One who made the heavens and the earth would be stumped by a pair of 6-cylinder, 4-stroke, 3266kW (4380hp) @ 600rpm Mirrlees Blackstone K6 Major engines.”
Perhaps it is that very reluctance for journalists to ‘slag off other scribes’ that leave us with the standard of journalism we have in this country.
It allows ill-informed twaddle like Mr McConville’s report below to appear in the national press.
It permits the Press Complaints Commission to be the toothless body it is. (Staffed by journalists, of course, who are all too understanding of each others’ sins.)
It allows the recent reports of News International journalists tapping into the mobile phones of various individuals to be buried and become a non-story as swiftly as a decent funeral allows.
Perhaps it is time, Maciver, for the one who does the biting to be bitten; for the unreliable hack to be hacked down.
You could lead by example!
You can lead by example!
Absolutely. Whatever. I am writing this in the cafeteria of the first Sunday ferry as it prepares to sail. I switched on my laptop and there is a perfect broadband signal.
He really does work in mysterious ways.
The thought of that is frightening.
I have this image of the slim athletic form of Iain X sitting there dressed in his flak-jacket, following in the footsteps of such frontline reporters as John Simpson, Michael Nicolson, Joh Pilger and all the other heroic figures of journalism’s past, daring to step into the frontline for the first time, risking life and limb against the full forces of the Taliban waiting on the shore …
Tha Ayatolla Khomeni claimed it God/Allah who blew sand into US helicopters in a skirmish some years back. Is John Macleod the Ayatollah of Lewis? Or is the Ayatollah too secular for him?
Gura math a theid dhan t-seirbhis ur air Là na Sàbaid.