So it's a curious thing - as you may have seen on Twitter, I've been receiving some totally unprovoked abusive DMs from Grouse Beater of all people. I did have problems with him many years ago, but someone interceded to end the rift, I had a long phone conversation with him and we made our peace with each other. Since then, I've gone out of my way to tread gingerly with him, and when I've seen him have blazing arguments with other people (including in the comments section of this blog), I've just stood right back and let him get on with it, even when I thought he was in the wrong. But even those precautions weren't enough, it seems.
So what's his foul-mouthed harrumphing about this time? To be blunt, it's just sheer hypocrisy on his part. As you may remember, he was expelled from the SNP several years ago for alleged anti-semitism. Countless numbers of us defended him at the time, because his words were actually extremely ambiguous and were open to plenty of alternative innocent explanations. But no good deed goes unpunished, as the saying goes, and he seems to now have a visceral loathing of many of those who defended him most strongly, because some of them have since fallen foul of strikingly similar abuses of the Alba disciplinary process and have dared to speak up about it, just as he spoke up about the SNP's ill-treatment of himself. Suddenly he's become a born again Stalinist, saying that anyone who has been trampled on should just shut up and slink away where he doesn't have to think about them or remember their existence, because it's just so darn inconvenient to the party that large numbers of people should actually know that abuses of power have taken place. As long as he isn't the one on the receiving end, and as long as the people being silenced are ones he dislikes and would prefer to shut up, it's all totally fine.
In fact, let's be honest: he would be an enthusiastic cheerleader for someone being expelled for exactly the same reason he was expelled from the SNP, just so long as you first stick a blue Alba rosette on the Conduct Committee.
Bizarrely, what seemed to trigger him tonight was that the people he calls "the Famous Five", which seems to be an alternative name for Shannon Donoghue's "wee gang of malcontents", have been paying generous tribute to Alex Salmond and saying very complimentary things about him.
I asked Grouse Beater if he would prefer them to be making disrespectful comments about Mr Salmond at a time like this. Unsurprisingly, he didn't have much of an answer.
Could I just say to @Grouse_Beater, who has been sending me totally unprovoked abusive DMs and blocking me before I could reply: you, sir, are a hypocrite. You, sir, are a coward. I'm not going to tolerate this behaviour from anyone, no matter what my previous respect for them.
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) October 15, 2024
Grouse beater is an unstable character. I've seen this from him before.
ReplyDeleteDidn't Alba give him some sort of medal at the first conference? And then Salmond flattered him with an invite to his "TV show". That'll be what this is all about. The SNP gave lots of awards to lots of people, Gareth, but it didn't stop them expelling you, did it?
ReplyDeleteHe's another Stu Campbell
DeleteStu knows what went on inside Alba but chose to say nothing.
DeletePolitics has been such a massive disappointment. So many people have turned out to be horrible
ReplyDeleteIt’s ridiculous that the bullying and nastiness continues even after Salmond’s death
I have been positive about Salmond despite the facts of last summer just because I prefer to remember the good times.
And I knew him and I suspect I knew him better than most as I spent so much time alone with him
I experienced many sides of him not just the act he puts on for ‘his public’
On the bigger issue of where we go from here. The bitterness within the movement has to stop. Salmond has gone and Sturgeon will hopefully be out of politics in 2026. I am hopeful that new leadership in the SNP and Alba will find a route to independence. But to do that the Salmond - Sturgeon years have to be left behind.
It’s an even bigger task because so many of the gender ideologues that abused and bullied women in the SNP have got their reward and are councillors or NEC members and even the National Secretary those wounds will also take a lot to heal.
But the movement has to unite or die
This post does not acknowledge the negative experiences that many women have had who had to work for him. I believe them. Nicola Sturgeon was right to listen to them.
DeletePersonally I believe the verdict of the jury. The jury had, after all, listened to weeks of evidence. I believe they are likely to have got it right.
DeleteDenise, I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt thanks for all of your efforts, and particularly recently also for you blog site.
DeleteI can but hope that those who do not do the right thing can be sidelined, and those who do choose to do the right thing can unite to take the movement forward, irrespective of petty personal or party concerns.
We can all but wish that everyone else would take an example from your book.
If you were in my constituency, I would vote for you. I suspect many thousands of others would too.
(p.s. I say this here because of the inability to leave comments on your blog. Can you fix that?)
"But to do that the Salmond - Sturgeon years have to be left behind."
DeleteOnly way that will ever happen will be when justice is seen to be done for Alex. There's considerable anger out there that he's went to his grave before he was able to be vindicated via the current legal action (which will hopefully still continue).
Anon at 9.02. You can believe both the jury on the issue of criminal conduct and the women on the issue of inappropriate behaviour. Please leave this alone, at this of all times.
DeleteAs one who only returned to Scotland in 2012, after forty five years elsewhere, there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Alex Salmond was instrumental in raising independence into the main stream of our politics.
ReplyDeleteHis part in the leadership shambles that we have found ourselves in in recent years is debateable. There seems to be little doubt that there was a concerted effort to stitch him up to protect those who followed him in the leadership of the SNP, and who presided over the series of debacles that lost us the 2015+ opportunities.
How do we want AS to be remembered ? Some will have to maintain the denigration of him to cover their tracks. The rest who have no such shameful motives will, while recognising that no human being is perfect, want to preserve the positives of his life as a legacy of achievement in the struggle for our self determination.
A few who just make sour noises off should simply shut up and go away - to put it as politely as possible.
It would be wrong to present a sanitised version of AS. NS will have been more than aware of his shortcomings when she came to her view.
DeleteHi Denise. I posted shortly after the death was announced and asked if people could use the tragic death as a catalyst for change and unity, with Indy front and centre. The usual suspects just all piled in with their daily doses of vitriol and disinformation. I have been involved in Indy for over forty years now. I will not even identify myself on line anymore. It’s so sad. I have temporarily withdrawn. May possibly never be back.
ReplyDelete