Tommy Sheridan's letter to the Herald re that paper's lack of coverage of the Scottish Socialist Party's attempt to axe the iniquitous council tax and replace it with an income based alternative.

Tommy letter to the Herald.
Eddie

Your political bias against the Scottish Socialist Party has now reached embarrassingly obvious depths for a newspaper once famed for its fair political coverage.

The culmination of a three year parliamentary struggle and a 2½ hour parliamentary debate yesterday to replace the unfair council tax with a progressive income-based alternative merited a mere two sentences tagged onto another story today which failed to represent the tenor of the debate in any way, shape or form. On the day of the bill’s passage through
parliament, Tom Gordon in a long article about the likely 5% council tax rises, managed not to mention it at all! In other words, an important SSP bill proposal was ignored by the Herald.

Last week you carried an unsubstantiated story picked from the pages of a distasteful news corporation regarding SSP Convenor Colin Fox and his intention to “lay a motion� to replace the saltire. The original story concerning Colin was nonsense and therefore the Herald’s politically biased follow-up was also nonsense. We have still received no correction.

On several occasions in the past, well-known political individuals joining or changing political parties has ensured reasonable coverage in the pages of the Herald. Jimmy Reid joining the SNP is a case in point. Yet when John McAllion, former Labour MP and MSP of considerable repute not only joins the SSP but stands as their candidate in a high profile by-election, your paper chooses to ignore this.

These examples go to prove the Herald has an anti-SSP agenda which is unhealthy for democracy and pluralist politics in Scotland. I would appeal to the new Editor to examine and amend the Herald’s unacceptable anti-SSP bias in political reporting.

TOMMY SHERIDAN MSP