The Talking-up Scotland fund raiser primarily, finishing in 7 days, to enable the recruitment of some research assistance, in order to take pressure off me [74 in June and tiring] and hopefully to further improve the blog, has made a good start. To contribute, only if you can (!) go to: Talking-up Scotland - a Politics crowdfunding project in Ayr by Professor John Robertson

Professor John Robertson OBA, former Faculty Research Ethics Chair, UWS

Yesterday from BBC UK, nine paragraphs down:

Dundee-based Det Insp Alan Swanston from Police Scotland said: “We’ve identified a serious organised crime group that are operating out of the West Midlands area and drug dealing in Dundee.

BBC Scotland, Police Scotland and PA Scotland have mentioned West Midlands/Birmingham arrests on the same day but none have been prepared to inform their audience of the direction of flow.

Why is that? This kind of thing:

‘Gangster rapper unmasked as kingpin of huge drugs line from Birmingham to Aberdeen’ but that’s clearly too boring for Scotland’s media

In the online-only Aberdeen Live, last week, but bizarrely ignored by all of Scotland’s MSM:

A notorious gangster rapper has been revealed as the mastermind behind a massive drug supply line from Birmingham to Scotland. Rikardo Reid [above top], who goes by the stage name Stardom, was identified as the leader of the ‘Flash’ county lines operation [above second-top], which supplied cocaine and heroin to users in Aberdeen for five years.

The 34 year old, once a promising footballer with over 85,000 Instagram followers, was previously outed as a member of the GSA gang – Goon Squad Army or Get Some Ambition – a younger branch of the infamous Johnson Crew. In 2021, he was performing at the Levana bar in the Arcadian when he was targeted by a rival member of the Burger Bar Boys, Armed Response.

https://www.aberdeenlive.news/news/aberdeen-news/gangster-rapper-unmasked-kingpin-huge-9264073

By any news value measure, this is a journalist’s dream story. It’s like something out of the Wire. Why are BBC Scotland, STV, the Herald, the Scotsman etc not reporting this kind of story?

It looks bad for da Union man. You feel me?

Even the Aberdeen local, the P&J is not touching it thought to be fair in April 2023, they did have this, about another rapper:

I feel sure the good folk of Aberdeen will have wanted to hear of any updates on this kind of thing.

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