The Scotsman gags anti-bridge campaigner

THE SCOTSMAN has landed another blow for press freedom – by proving it has the freedom to ignore and suppress those views it doesn’t like. After publishing my letter criticising plans for a new Forth road bridge in the paper on Monday 1 June, editors at the increasingly tabloid rag took umbrage at my opinion and decided to censor it by dumping the entire letters page!  Every other Letters page for that week appears online. Three emails asking readers’ editor Ian Stewart to intervene were ignored, so I’ve now complained to the PCC. However, don’t hold your breath for any fairness from that quarter; Nick Davies book Flat Earth News shows how it has consistently failed to hold the Mail to account for its hounding of members of the public and others and its frequent publication of libels.

     The Scotsman launched its pro-bridge campaign for a new bridge in November 2006, presumably rubbing its hands in anticipation of the extra house sales adverts it would get from a new route to Fife! The Scotsman’s transport hack Alistair Dalton falls over backwards in his slavish devotion to the roads lobby and the contractors and investors who stand to make millions from the public purse. But the Scottish government’s entire case for a new bridge is bogus: John Swinney said it had to be built because he couldn’t be confident that dehumidification would arrest the corrosion affecting the cables. But the chief engineer, Barry Colford told me and Paul Tetlaw, chair of Transform Scotland last July he was “highly confident” that it would work – meaning there was no need to build a new bridge.

     So somebody ought to ask John Swinney what on earth he is wasting £2bn for!