I don’t really share the ’soft-spot’ most Glaswegians seem to have for Tommy Sheridan. I think he’s a bully, an ego-maniac and a fucking liar. I have nothing but contempt for his grandstanding and the way he slandered life-long trades unionists and socialists in his defamation trial, simply because he couldn’t bring himself to say, “None of your fucking business”, when the allegations of his private life surfaced in the NOTW. I also don’t buy this shit about the ‘unprecedented’ nature of the perjury charge against him. It may be in Scots Law but it follows a pattern set by Jonathan Aitken and Jeffrey Archer: lie your ass off that publicly and you’re bound to get the wrong kind of attention.
However, the behaviour of Lothians and Borders polis strikes me as being a little excessive, to say the least. Please don’t believe the crap you hear from the ex-pat Glaswegians floating around the blogosphere who seem to sincerely think Sheridan is the victim of some vast conspiracy. I’ve yet to meet a real one - y’know, somebody who actually lives here - who thinks he told the truth during his trial. I’d assume the jury thought the same. But they probably thought, rightly in my view, that the NOTW were lying too, so given a choice between the two, they found in favour of Sheridan. Because in a beauty contest, he was the least ugly.
And the treatment of Gail Sheridan, I think, shows a certain vindictiveness on the part of Lothians and Borders police. The half-inching of a few minatures is hardly material to the case. Doesn’t she have enough to contend with - what with a small child and the fact that she’s married to a bawbag like Tommy Sheridan? In all I’m afraid I had to agree with that rarest of creatures, a Scottish Tory, in the shape of Alan Cochrane of the Telegraph:
“I may have laughed at his jokes and admired his turn of phrase from time to time but his working-class martyr act has never struck this observer as anything other than self-aggrandisement.
However, as the weeks, months and now years grind on in the seemingly interminable inquiry following his court case victory against the News of the World, a fact has to be faced. It is this: by any standard or criteria of fair play, Mr Sheridan is getting a raw deal.”
Exactly so. I don’t believe for a minute that Tommy’s only crime is to “speak truth to power”, as his supporters would have it. No, he is, in my view, a complete and utter bastard of a man. But the people he’s up against are bigger bastards. Big bastards with power.
