By Liz S

So today, surprise surprise (not), the front pages of the decidedly non Scottish editions of The Daily Mail & The Daily Express state this:

The Daily mail – “Naïve SNP dismiss China warnings”.

The Daily Express – “SNP support for Chinese turbine plant poses profound security risk“.

I prefer to “dismiss” anything that the Daily Mail front pages write about either the SNP or Scotland.

Also it is clear that The Daily Express “poses a profound risk” to truth and honesty when writing about politics in Scotland , that is due to their (obvious) “support” for ‘any party but the SNP in Scotland due to their (most obvious) support for the sustaining of the UK State against their (obvious) opposition to Scottish independence.

The Daily Express , like The Daily Mail, are part of what is referred to as the gutter press.

If you really want to “read all about it” then it would be best to avoid both of these rags, as with both of them all you will read is a succession of right wing propaganda and misleading disinformation (indeed that’s their speciality).

Not that the so called media regulator, IPSO, cares.

In 2024 The Byline Times wrote this:

“The Independent Press Standards Organisation, or IPSO, the so-called ‘press self-regulator’ operated by the big UK newspaper companies for their own benefit, is suffering a double crisis”.

“On the one hand, it appears to be paralysed in the face of its biggest-ever case, involving the Sun and Jeremy Clarkson’s notorious column about Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex. And on the other, one of IPSO’s smallest member publications, the Jewish Chronicle, is making a mockery of its authority and of its claim to uphold journalistic standards”. 

“Such challenges were inevitable given the basic dishonesties that have underpinned IPSO since it was established in defiance of the Leveson Inquiry recommendations nine years ago. A regulator designed not to regulate, as IPSO is, is bound to come a cropper”.

Nor does Labour care either as under Keir Starmer’s Labour UK government we read that Labour confirmed that they had “no plans to revive the second part of the Leveson Inquiry”.

However in 2016 the BBC had a headline that stated:

“Leveson Inquiry: Labour demands part two goes ahead“

The then Shadow home secretary Andy Burnham said “answers were still required over the “unhealthy closeness” between police and journalists in the past”.

“The second stage of the Leveson Inquiry is crucial,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Adding that “It needs to set out a much better relationship between the police and the press… to protect victims going forward to give them the justice they deserve.”

Levinson part two: “The extent of unlawful or improper conduct within News International , other media organisations or other organisations. It will also consider the extent to which any relevant police force investigated allegations relating to News International, and whether the police received corrupt payments or were otherwise complicit in misconduct.” – (the previous Tory UK government scrapped the second part of the Leveson Inquiry in 2018).

So now that Burnham is the new PM and new leader of the Labour party does he still feel the same way that he did in 2016 about the “second stage of the Leveson Inquiry” being “crucial” ?

Well I suspect that , like Starmer, Burnham’s need for ongoing ‘positive press’ stories about himself and his Labour UK government are far more ‘pressing’ than him reviving his supposed former beliefs in 2016, that is on the second stage of the Levinson inquiry being implemented.

The UK State , and the various forms of the establishment within it, are all just part of a great big corrupt UK State racket.

Liz S