Apparently, the recently deceased Alex Salmond’s body was brought back to the UK on a private jet paid for by a private individual. Well, I hope that he declared this hospitality through the correct channels. Being dead is no excuse for not doing so, as it is clearly an outrage that politicians should be accepting gifts and gratuities from donors who obviously would be expecting their generosity to be reciprocated in some way and not offer a full and frank explanation to the electorate. I fully expected the plane carrying his body to be met by a mob of reporters from the Daily Mail, Daily Express, The Sun and the Daily Telegraph, demanding answers, when landed in Scotland. I’ was hugely disappointed to hear that they didn’t knock his coffin to the ground as it was being taken out of the aircraft, spilling his body onto the runway and that they didn’t thrust microphones in his face and demand answers about who was paying for this free trip on a luxury private jet. Because, like I say, being dead is simply not a good enough excuse for his continued refusal to answer these questions. Where will it all end, other wise? Will we see his coffin propped up against a wall during a Taylor Swift concert, having been gifted tickets? Will we find that he’s being buried in a designer suit donated by a wealthy Alba Party donor? We need answers.

If the right-wing press don’t pursue Salmond, dead or not, on this issue as vigourously as they have Keir Starmer over his alleged acceptance of undeclared gifts from donors, then I’ll be looking to make a complaint to the press regulators. You know, the regulators set up and run by the press themselves, rather than any of those outrageously biased independent regulators that we don’t have in the UK because, well, the press wouldn’t like it. I don’t care that Salmond is a corpse – and have the press investigated whether his death is merely a tax avoidance scheme? – he needs to be held to account and censured by the Scottish parliament if it is found that he’s been accepting undeclared gratuities. I don’t want to hear that it’s impossible because he’s already been buried. Dig the bastard up. It’s doubtless what the right-wing press want to do to Jim Callaghan, Harold Wilson and probably Clement Attlee, in order to question them on what gifts they received while in office. (Obviously, Churchill, Eden McMillan, Douglas-Hume, Ted Heath and the sainted Maggie Thatcher are all above suspicion). Politicians, specifically those who aren’t members of the Tory Party, who are beyond reproach, need to learn that there’s no hiding place, not even the grave, for the grasping, corrupt bastards.

So beyond reproach are Tory politicians, that even Boris ‘The Fat Bastard’ Johnson – who, if it not for the existence of Liz Truss, would hold the title of Britain’s worst ever prime minister – is currently being rehabilitated by the media, who have all happily fawned over his recently published memoirs. Not just the right-wing press, the BBC were all over him as well and would have subjected us to a live interview with the national disgrace, had Laura Kuessenberg not ‘accidentally’ sent him her briefing notes in advance – and was caught out doing so, resulting in the interview being, mercifully, cancelled. As a licence fee payer I object to having my licence money spent on helping that fat slob to publicise his self serving and, let’s face it, completely made up memoirs. Really, if he was happy lying to parliament then he’s going to have no qualms about publishing a pack of lies, now is he? But this sort of stuff is par for the course for the UK’s right-wing dominated press, so I really shouldn’t be surprised.

They’ve spent every day since the election relentlessly trying to trash the new Labour government, launching personal attacks on its senior figures, so it seems only logical that, as a follow-up, they’d try to resurrect one of their fallen heroes. (‘If only Boris was still PM, everything would be alright’). On one level I can almost admire their ingenuity in finding a negative spin to put on every Labour policy – today, of course, it’s all been about how bad for UK businesses the government’s modest proposals to reinforce some workers’ rights will be, (do they really think that’s a line which is going to fly with most working readers/viewers who probably voted Labour because their basic rights had been so eroded by the Tories?). As for their hand-wringing over the fact that the OAPs winter fuel allowance will no longer be universal, it is quite something coming from the people who happily supported the last government’s failure to act to curb soaring fuel bills. (It also ignores the fact that the value of the fuel allowance hasn’t increased since it was introduced, while average pensions have risen significantly. Plus, those ‘poor’ pensioners they are featuring on their front pages wailing about how they’ll have to choose between food and heat would, if really that poor, still be eligible to apply for the fuel allowance as a means tested benefit. But why print facts when you’ve got misinformation instead?).

Now, while I expect this sort of nonsense from the right-wing press, it is disturbing to see the BBC get so nakedly caught up in it all. It’s not just that Johnson interview that never was, let’s not forget their political correspondent Chris Mason making Sue Grey’s salary public – his subsequent floundering around trying to justify it as being, somehow, in the public interest because she was earning more than the PM, was painful to watch. As was his failure to mention that Simon Case, head of the civil service and appointed by Johnson, also earns more than the PM, as does Mason himself. It just came over as an obvious slice of partisan reporting, deliberately aimed at derailing the new government before it had even got properly started – hardly in the spirit of the politically neutral reporting the BBC, as a public broadcaster, is meant to pursue. Perhaps the BBC’s apparent downer on the new government and its eagerness to ‘hold it to account’, is a reaction to the justifiable criticism that it spent fourteen years giving the Tories pretty much a free pass in that regard. Clearly, they aren’t as scared of the possibility of a Labour government retaliating via the threat of budget cuts than they were of the Tories. Or maybe it is because the Tories spent fourteen years packing out the BBC’s senior ranks with its own supporters? Time for a purge, perhaps?  Whatever the answer, the question remains: just when are they going to start calling Alex Salmond to account for accepting undeclared  gratuities posthumously, (not to mention those allegations of sexual misconduct)?

Doc Sleaze