Gerry Braiden and the Herald

Gerry Braiden asks me to acknowledge his contribution to the exposure of the abuse of ALEOs by Glasgow City Council, and the regular coverage he has given to the minority SNP group on GCC.

I am happy to do both, and freely acknowledge his undoubted contribution to revealing the full extent of this patronage system, which yielded significant and in my view grossly disproportionate rewards to individuals chosen by GCC, and to the very recent ending of this pernicious practice - a blot on Scotland’s democracy.

I also accept, and am grateful for the regular platform he offered – and offers - to SNP councillors as a minority group on GCC, who otherwise might have had found difficulty in securing a media platform for their views.

If my focus on egregious abuse of the rights of the Dalmarnock families and businesses, and the appalling treatment of the disabled users and their carers over the Accord Centre closure, in the name of progress and the Commonwealth Games, have on occasion deflected me fully from recognising the above aspects of Gerry Braiden’s wider contribution as a journalist, I regret the omissions and happily take this opportunity to make amends.

In an extended private email correspondence with Gerry Braiden over the last day, a number of important issues about the relationship of the users of alternative media and professional journalists have been raised – a relationship that is increasingly significant to our democracy, and one that is increasingly blurred and misunderstood, occasionally by myself.

I intend to explore these issues in a general context later, without any breach of confidentiality: our correspondence has simply acted as a prompt to ideas and views that I have held for sometime.