 | 'No one enjoys McConnell's fulsome monologs.' Morton S. Freeman in A Treasury for Word Lovers ISI Press. |  |
| 'No one enjoys McConnell's fulsome monologs.' Morton S. Freeman in A Treasury for Word Lovers ISI Press. | |
'Back to college, Jack', says SNP Chief Executive Commenting on the Labour news conference this morning, at which Scottish General Secretary Jack McConnell claimed to have discovered a document on the internet that was 'deeply embarrassing' to the SNP, Party Chief Executive Mr Michael Russell said:
'Jack McConnell claimed this morning that he 'understood the internet'. On the basis of his press statement, it is time he went back to college to try to understand it a bit better. His lack of knowledge revealed today will make him a laughing stock.
'The pages that McConnell claims are an 'SNP General Election projection' are nothing of the sort. They actually belong to an independent academic based in France, and have no formal or informal connection to the SNP. They feature a database of Scottish electoral results from all parties, and have links built into them to all parties - including Labour.
'McConnell clearly does not understand the first thing about the internet and how it works. All pages build in links to other pages, and indeed the breadth of material that the SNP have created links to resulted in the Party's site being praised by the Financial Times earlier this year.
'However, no site takes responsibility for such links in any way. One has only to look at a major site like that of 'Microsoft' to see that it provides topical links to many other sites totally outwith Microsoft's control.
'If McConnell had browsed a bit longer, he would discovered links from the SNP pages to a very wide range of organisations, including Parliament (for which we are not responsible ), the Scottish Office (for which we are not responsible ), the British Politics server at Warwick University (for which we are not responsible ) and many others (for which we are not responsible)!
'Such links are provided by web services so that the thousands who access a page can get additional information related to the main subject. No such linked sites are controlled by or approved of by the site supplier. That is obvious just by glancing at the page URL.
'Jack should understand the basic fact that it is the widespread presence of such links on every page that results in the description of this part of the internet as the 'World Wide Web'.
'Links on any page are like items in a library - what McConnell seems to want is the type of isolationism and censorship that has resulted in his Scottish part of the British Labour Party having no separate Scottish pages, and a UK Labour Party web site that simply glorifies Tony Blair and New Labour, and provides no substantive information whatsoever.
'It is revealing that in order to show the supposed 'gaffe', McConnell had to take journalists to the local internet cafe - there is no internet access at Labour's Scottish HQ, unlike at SNP HQ where half a dozen staff regularly use the internet from their desks for research and communication.
'Far from being 'wired', as modern parties should be, New Labour is simply 'wired to the moon'. The only political events McConnell thinks are important are his own much hyped, desperate and totally irrelevant press conferences which fall to pieces the moment the issues he raise are examined.
'Still, I suppose it take his mind off the internal chaos caused by Blair's imposition of the two question referendum, and McConnell's role as Blair and Robertson's poodle in trying to enforce the decision. It is that political situation that will lead to substantial SNP gains at the next election, including Kilmarnock & Loudoun, and many other Labour seats.
'No wonder Jack is worried.'
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