Political prisoner

September 2, 2003 11:34 PM

The prison diaryof Scottish Parliament MP (and successful self-publicist) Tommy Sheridan, jailed for seven days (not for the first time) for refusing to pay a fine imposed after he was found guilty of a breach of the peace while demonstrating at Faslane against nuclear weapons.
posted by ascullion (7 comments total)

Yeah. Unlike the soulless, gutless, politico/military/business toady-types currently (and temporarily) haunting us, other humans in the world still in possession of fully functional gonads sure stand out.

Preach on, Tommy....and think about a sabbatical to come work and teach in America. We need it more than any.
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 12:54 AM on September 3, 2003

Sheridan pisses me off to be honest. I'm (generally) very much in favour of the causes he stands for, but I think he completely undermines them. Hearing him speak at the Edinburgh antiwar marches earlier this year was actually painful.
posted by bwerdmuller at 2:44 AM on September 3, 2003

why was it painful ? did he drop his aitches ?
posted by sgt.serenity at 4:43 AM on September 3, 2003

anyway, i've got a lot of admiration for tommy sheridan , despite the fact that he has a working class scottish accent.
posted by sgt.serenity at 4:47 AM on September 3, 2003

Because his speeches were full of absolute bile and contained very little actual content. He also seemed to be turning it into let's-all-hate-the-US* rather than let's-protest-the-war, which is what we were there for.

* In a really racist kind of way, rather than criticising US foreign policy or cultural imperialism. I found it really distasteful, and that kind of vitriol really derails any meaningful discussion or protest in my opinion.
posted by bwerdmuller at 4:50 AM on September 3, 2003

i cant say i've seen him do any of that stuff myself, i've had enough of well behaved liars and he is a welcome antidote as well as the new batch of msps he brought into parliament with him , it's just a pity catriona grant wasnt one of them .
I'm all for politicians who only take half of their 40,000 a year salary like tommy.
posted by sgt.serenity at 5:02 AM on September 3, 2003

bwerdmuller - which marches were you on?

Admittedly he was high on bile, low on content at all the Glasgow ones (which is fair enough at a rally) but I really don't recall any anti-American sentiment directed at the American people. Not from Tommy anyway - there was indeed too much brainless Yank-bashing going on from other quarters, not to mention hijacking by militant pro-Palestinians (oh, the irony of chanting 'Intifada' on a peace march) and SNP gobshites - '2, 4, 6, 8, We don't want no British state' not being strictly relevant to the matter at hand.

I must admit I'm a sucker for Mr. Sheridan's charm (smarm?) - I'm sure that's what helps me forget the more unwholesome platforms within the SSP (including the occasionally dotty CPGB/some pretty die-hard anti-reformist Militant folk - splitters!) and their rather ill-conceived post-independence economics when voting for them. Easy, too, to brush those things off in the context of actually having a left-wing party to vote for, a luxury I didn't have when I lived in England.

Oh people may be interested to know: to the best of my knowledge, the SSP are the only party in Scotland to keep a weblog...
posted by jack_mo at 5:10 AM on September 3, 2003