A Brief Sense of Humour Bypass

A number of bloggers - Mr. Eugenides, the ever-readable Reactionary Snob, Holyrood Watcher, everyone's favourite Tartan Hero Grant, and Clairwil over at TerryWatch - have read Terry's latest outburst, which managed to get him in the papers. The consensus appears to be for bloggers to be paralysed with laughter.

I'm afraid to be the one to break the consensus, but I'm feeling po-faced tonight, so here goes.

Firstly, Terry claims, and asserts that most other people accept, that he was joking. I don't dispute that: it probably was a joke. But jokes aren't necessarily funny. And jokes can be sexist. Take the late Bernard Manning: he was a comedian, but he was also a bigoted Neanderthal. And if this is Kelly's idea of humour, then it shows him to be the vicious little bastard that we all knew him to be anyway.

Secondly, I've always said that his claim to oppose all forms of discrimination - and he names sexism specifically (though not homophobia, but that might simply be because it doesn't end in 'ism') - is complete and utter shite. The only time he can bring himself to attack homophobia is when he's accusing Brian Adam of it, and he appears to find sexist humour appropriate. Neither of those is opposing discrimination. The first is the attempted exploitation of the LGBT Community for party politics, and the second is actual support and encouragement of sexism. Lawyers, can I sue him for false advertising?

I feel vindicated this week. But I'm not laughing.

And I bet the women of his ward (to say nothing of LGBT residents, and maybe even members of ethnic minorities in the area) aren't laughing either. They're stuck with the knuckle-dragging bastard representing them (when he can be bothered to show up for Council meetings, that is) until the next election, after all.

A Personal Statement

Hello everybody,

As readers of TerryWatch may know, Terry has said some rather nasty things about me and my well-known sexual orientation, and it's fair to say that I've taken them rather badly. So badly that rather than use the normal means of Terry's Comment section, I've gone straight to the man himself for clarification. He hasn't had time to answer me, but he has had time to post another set of rants. Anyway Jim Lewis has entered the debate.

Basically, Clairwil's picked up on the current situation, I have little to add and I'm trying to keep my distance, but I would like to state the following regarding Jim Lewis's comment:

At no time have I ever consorted with Brian Souter. If I had, I would have sold my story to a tabloid a long time ago!

Terrywatch has a new home

Rather than post it all here (this blog is not about TelKel, really, it isn't), I'm going to stick my posts on the new TerryWatch blog, and just flag them up here.

I especially want to flag up today's effort: we all know what I think of his claim that he cares for the LGBT Community (he doesn't, he just wants to use us as a party political chew-toy), and he today asserted that he highlights cases of homophobic bigotry where appropriate. Turns out he's missed rather a big one.

The lying, hypocritical c**t.

There IS such a thing as a free lunch!

Turns out that Renfrewshire Councillors have the uncanny ability to be in two places at once: four of their number have been claiming free meals at Council HQ while the building was closed, or they were known to be elsewhere. This is now in the hands of the procurator fiscal, who will be treating as a criminal matter rather than anything from The X-Files.

Curiously enough, Clairwil - fast becoming a friend of this blog - has spotted this comment by everyone's favourite Renfrewshire Councillor, Terry Kelly: "Having been involved in corrupt Labour politics for 40 yrs. I'm already rich, I don't need the money I've stolen enough, so I'm retiring, now crawl back under your stone."

Now, she has asked TelKel what he thinks of the current situation. (I should point out that we don't know whether or not he actually is one of the four, but the blogosphere's money seems to be on him not being involved)

In his own style, Terry has accused her of false anger again. The amusing thing is that this little exchange has come in the comments section of his post accusing the SNP of the same in response to Jamie Stone's outburst at the LibDem Conference.

The ironic thing is that he loves to throw this term about, but the only way he seems to fight against discrimination on his blog (he claims to oppose discrimination, remember) is to accuse other political parties - the SNP especially - of every '-ism' and '-phobia' he can think of. So to accuse others of false anger seems as rich as a Renfrewshire Councillor's diet!

A Terry Tautology

Terry Kelly has waded into the row over Jamie Stone's comments with his usual sensitivity. He says, "if England didn't exist neither would the SNP."

Well, let's work this through. If England didn't exist, then there could be no Union with England (you can't unite with a non-existent country), and so unless Scotland had united with another country (Denmark? France?) then there would be no need for an SNP in its present form. That satnds to reason, so TelKel is, in one sense, correct.

But does that make the SNP Anglophobic, as Kelly asserts? Well, no. The SNP do want Scotland to govern itself, which entails a secession from the Union with England. But as I can testify, the SNP's attitude to the English couldn't be more positive. Certainly the welcome I received from the Party's activists in Edinburgh when I helped out with them was fantastic.

One person in particular, though, did splutter, "You can't be a part of the SNP! You're English!" That was Kenny Young, Labour's candidate in North East Fife. Turns out that in Labour's world, where you were born affects what your politics can be. And they accuse the SNP of anglophobia?!

Incidentally, I'm collecting my thoughts on Independence, ready for a few posts on the matter. (Update: You can read the first one here.)

That Gateway to Hades Known as a Mouth

Two dodgy smears make up this Sunday's post. The first comes from Aviemore, where five minutes after Nicol Stephen said that the LibDems wouldn't indulge in personal, negative campaigning (obviously he wasn't listening to Sir Menzies Campbell's speech), Jamie Stone called the SNP xenophobic. Well, a xenophobic party wouldn't be pro-EU, or broadly supportive of the Euro. Nor would it publish leaflets in Polish. So all Jamie Stone has done is annoy the SNP, who are now refusing to have anything to do with the LibDems until they apologise. Which on reflection might be what the LibDems want: in the event that the SNP are the largest party following the Election, the LibDems can excuse any attempt they make to deal with Labour by saying that they would deal with the SNP if the SNP wanted to deal with them. On the other hand, Jack McConnell is looking at ways in which he can govern without the LibDems, so unless he (or the SNP) can secure a less formal arrangement, the LibDems now risk being frozen out by the two main parties, a possibility I flagged up at the start of the year.

The next comes as part of Terrywatch, where TelKel has gone for that ancient footballing tactic of playing the opponent and not the ball. He has mentioned an award given to local heroine Margaret Canning, but he won't tell us (or at least, he won't tell Right For Scotland) as we 'would like nothing better than to pour scorn on how people like her and others in the Ferguslie area work for each other and the neighbourhood.' As the argument rages on, TelKel asserts that RFS would fail a disclosure check. This had led to the suggestion that TelKel has just accused RFS of paedophilia, and lawyers are coming into view. Kelly asserts that he didn't mention paedophilia, but it's RFS's blog that would cause the problem.

Either way, Kelly has, to continue the footballing metaphor, scored an own goal. If he IS accusing RFS of paedophilia, then the phrase 'Welcome to Defammation Country, Population: You' springs to mind. He's also told another porky. If it was just the blog, then remember that Kelly's main beef with RFS is that he disagrees with RFS's opinions, so he's saying that anyone whose politics don't match up to the Councillor's standards should be barred from public life. This strikes me as ever so slightly Stalinist, and is political discrimination. But wait! Doesn't TelKel oppose all forms of discrimination? Apparently not...

On answering a question

A brief Terrywatch, discussing TelKel's claim that he doesn't duck questions. I've been asking him one. Here are some extracts from the comments he and I have been exchanging on his blog. At least he has had (until now) the cojones to display them.

Me: In what way is Clairwil's so-called 'synthetic rage' on behalf of the mentally ill different from your so-called defence of the gay community?

TelKel: Clairwil's rage is synthetic mine is not, that's the difference...

Me: What makes Clairwil's rage 'synthetic' and what makes yours 'genuine'?

TelKel: I'm genuine and whether you accept that or not is up to you.

Me: I am yet to see any evidence of you being 'genuine' on gay rights. If it's possible for you to write a piece on it in isolation, without reference to any other political party, then I'll accept your credentials...

No direct response to this point from TelKel.

Me: What makes your stance in terms of the LGBT community 'genuine'?

TelKel: I am opposed to discrimination of all kinds including homophobia. That is genuine what else can I say.

Me: When was the last time you discussed the gay community and the equality agenda without making reference to any opposing political party or any members of an opposing political party?

TelKel: I have been arguing against homophobia for longer than I care to remember I've written about it before in my web site and blog. I found out about BYU and unlike your party I reacted to it. The SNP's cowardice in not dealing with this and the others is IMO worth commenting on.

(Note that I asked him when he last discussed gay rights without namechecking political opponents. He didn't answer that.)

Me: And if you really had opposed homophobia you'd have no trouble in showing one example where you haven't discussed my community while dragging it into a rant about the SNP.

TelKel: if you must keep writing please try to find something new, you are in danger of being cut off...

(Oh! Terry wants to censor me! Oh no!)

Me: Answer the question that I keep asking and you keep ignoring: when was the last time you spoke up on behalf of the gay community without referring to another political party in the process?

TelKel: I have been a supporter of the gay community all my life, I don't need to justify myself to you. Your blog before this one was just so bloody awful and prejudiced as well as repetitive that you are in fact now 'off my back' you've said nothing new for weeks, enough is enough.

So no answer. And an accusation of prejudice, though against whom I'm not sure. But Terry Kelly claims not to dodge questions, and I am no closer to getting an answer to a question I asked him. That looks like a dodge to me.

Terrywatch Update

Seems TerryWatch has caught on: a number of bloggers now seem to be performing their own version of it, possibly due to the fact that Clairwil's Inbox has reached critical mass with the number of stories reaching her. It's ironic, really, TelKel continually refers to a (non-existent) conspiracy of people out to get him and it's this continual ranting that has now led a number of bloggers (this one included) to launch into vitriolic posts and the formation of TerryWatch. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy!

Anyway, I'm aiming to keep TerryWatch as a relatively minor component of the blog, something to entertain me on a slow day, as I have better things to do than stalk members of Renfrewshire Council. Though I was interested in his latest post where he accused bloggers of being in the poison pen brigade, and suggested that were it not for blogging, crime figures would be higher. Nor does he like the fact that blogging has enabled people to gain an extra forum to put their views across (not noticing the irony that he is one of those people, and remember, he already has the Council Chamber). Anyway, he says for us all to try googling 'Cllr. Terry Kelly'. Well, a good idea is a good idea...

The first link is to his old website, which links to his blog. The second links directly to his blog. The next to his information page on Renfrewshire Council. The next one links to one of his run-ins with the Standards Commission, following which he was censured after referring to SNP Councillors in rural areas as 'village idiots'. There's also an extra one, which shows that he's been hauled in front of them quite a bit for breaches under the 'Leadership' and 'Respect' parts of the Code of Conduct. Well, unless the Standards Commission is full of the dangerous criminal types he's worried about, I wouldn't want to advertise that if I were him.

Google 'Councillor Terry Kelly' and you get another link from the Standards Commission, in which he was banned from Council activities for six weeks when: "at the end of the meeting, Councillor Kelly approached the principal complainant, Mr Patrick, in a threatening and intimidating manner; and that his conduct, including language, towards Mr Patrick was inappropriate, improper and unacceptable..." and was apparently fortunate not to receive a longer suspension.

It is alleged that 'Councillor Kelly then, as he left the Chamber, approached Mr Patrick in a threatening manner, put his face approximately half an inch from Mr Patrick's and said "Who the f*** are you?" Mr Patrick replied "Why, who are you?" Councillor Kelly then said "Do you think you're a hard man?" to which Mr Patrick replied "No I don't". Mr Patrick says that he remained seated and Councillor Kelly continued to stand over him in a threatening manner with his face still to Mr Patrick's apparently expecting some kind of response. At this point witnesses intervened and Councillor Kelly left the Chamber.' Now, it should be noted that a number of witnesses dispute hte facts, on partisan lines, with Labour members saying that Kelly went over to Patrick but didn't swear (they have Patrick, an SSP activist as a rabble-rouser), and SNP & SSP members saying that Patrick was complaining loudly about Renfrewshire Council and that Kelly launched into a vicious tirade against him. Either way, the investigator ruled that Kelly did swear at Patrick, and Kelly himself admitted that he shouldn't have gone over to him.

Like I say, if Kelly wants to remind people of this sorry episode, by asking people to Google him, then that's fine. Indeed, I'll help spread the word!

I'm taking Clairwil's advice...

...and adding Terry Kelly to my blogroll.

She's had a run in with him lately, after he accused those who disagreeing with him of being mentally ill (well, a friend of mine who suffers from depression read his blog today and called him a p***k - her word, not mine - but that's beside the point). Anyway, she suggested, quite reasonably (Clairwil does most things reasonably, please give her a read), that the Councillor was out of line to do this. He has accused her of synthetic rage - this from the same man who dresses up his attacks on the SNP as defence of the gay community. She first thought that maybe his blog was a bad idea. I suggested that if it shows him up to be the muppet he is, then it's a good thing. She then pointed out that I should aid that process by de-de-linking him. And you know what? She's right.

That is why, on this, the 24th anniversary of my birth (reports of a bright star shining over Sharoe Green Hospital, Preston that night are unconfirmed), I am giving myself a birthday present: Terrywatch. Terrywatch will be a whole section of this blog, devoted to him. It will not be complimentary. But here's the best part of all: it will use only two things. His own words, and the facts. Long live Terrywatch!

PS Duncan agrees with Clairwil as well.