Tom Shields on internet posts

As an aged hack with attitude, I tend not to pay too much attention to this modern trend of newspapers inviting readers to give their views online. But I do scan the opinions expressed about my own articles.

It can be illuminating. Last week I learned, from the posts on a column giving my personal (and possibly peculiar) take on my experience of knife crime, that I am a "bombastic oaf". Thank you, Supershug of Eaglesham.

I learned that, in the opinion of another online reader, the world would have been a better place if I had been stabbed to death as a teenager. I learned that for my entire journalistic career I had been an "arse kisser" and a placeman in the service of various Glasgow lord provosts, especially the late Peter McCann.

This last revelation came as something of a surprise since I do not recall having had so much as one kind word from Mr McCann.

One of the benefits, I find, of being a journalistic bombastic oaf is that you have a thick skin. There may be pricks, but you do not have to bleed.

The last thing I wish to do here is offend anyone who has spent their hard-earned cash to buy this paper. Or anyone who, by clicking online, is apparently adding to its electronic fiscal strength.

I hold Herald readers, daily and Sunday, in the highest regard. In my 34 years of working for them, I have been constantly impressed by the erudition, knowledge, insightfulness and humour they display in the letters columns.

My own efforts over many years at scribbling a diary column in the daily Herald would have been much less fun without the enthusiastic contributions from readers, or partners and stakeholders as they would be called in modern term-inology.

I am sure most of the posters (as they are called) on the Herald websites are in the tradition of the erudite, knowledgeable, insightful and witty letter-writing readers. It is just that some of the contributors to the electronic forums fall far below this standard.

Like the chap called Graham, commenting thus on the issue of the 42-day detention of terror suspects: "This is a great victory against wee Muhamed MacMuffdive. They are all planning the Jihad in their corner shops. Well done Broon that will show em. 42 days HMP is F'n luxury. Ask any criminal. And do not ask them to empty their chanty they will sue the taxpayer. A one way ticket to Mecca (not the bingo) is the way to do it."

This is a nice thought for us to carry into Refugee Week as we celebrate the contribution that people of all nations have made to Scottish life.

There was a response to this racist fellow Graham. A poster with the pseudonym Melanthios wrote: "You are possibly unemployed or more likely unemployable and blame Johnny Foreigner' for taking your MacJob You are a dribbling drooling mentalist who jacks off the one-eyed milkman while posting & giggling with your pals at each post you make."

I sympathise with the sentiments but the prose is hardly Wildean or the stuff we would like to see in the public prints.

There is, I am told, humour in the posts. Check out a guy called Wullie from Aberdeen, I was told. I could find only one contribution from Wullie on an article by an American who had taken British citizenship: "May I say that you are very welcome. Immigration is a good thing. I myself have just met a beautiful asylum seeker, he is from Sudan. When he is given permission to stay here we intend to make our relationship formal through a civil partnership ceremony, move to Glasgow, and live happily ever after."

Wullie's comment is entertaining in a surreal sort of way. Unless, of course, you happen to be a gay Sudanese asylum seeker who dreams of getting a green card by marrying a loon frae Aiberdeen who is prepared to relocate to Glasgow.

Sadly, many contributions on the message boards are reminiscent of those letters written in capital letters with green and purple ink. In the old days, journalists had the option of consigning these missives to the bin.

In the new age of instant communication, this appears not to be a choice. The journalists are no longer in charge of the asylum.

The genie of internet comment and free speech cannot be put back into the bottle. But there should be room for a few of the rules that used to apply.

Like some cognisance of the laws of libel. Some concern for common decency. Less character assassination as a field sport. Less poison pen, more powerful pen.

And here is an idea that will possibly not go down too well with the legion of anonymous and pseudonymous posters: why don't newspapers and other media hosts of boards and blogs insist that correspondents use their real names and addresses?

If these people have valid opinions, they should stand up and be recognised. For instance, the poster who stated that I am "a sycophantic arse kisser" and added that I am not really a journalist but an "odious little ****" went under the identity of Charlie Gordon.

I suspect he isn't the Charlie Gordon who used to run Glasgow and is now a Labour MSP. That Charlie Gordon might have advised me personally of these opinions before now.

Dear posters, please indulge in your freedom of speech. I'm really not bovvered.

I enjoy kind words and the occasional blandishment. But it does not put food on my table.

Unlike a response I had from Adam, a young breadmaker at the Delizique deli and café in Partick. As a boy, Adam wasn't much of a reader. But his dad got him to plough through some of my old diary columns and he enjoyed them.

As a wee tribute (a big tribute actually) he has offered to create a loaf in my name. I think I'll call it the Ootsider in memory of the robust plain bread I consumed so happily as a boy.

This is what I call feedback.

***

British republicans may feel there is much to be learned from the Nepalese model of royalty. Extreme anti-monarchists will recall with inappropriate glee the events of 2001, when crown prince Dipendra, having had a few sherbets, rampaged through the palace with his Heckler & Koch submachine gun and his M16 rifle killing his parents and eight other members of the royal family.

Dipendra shot himself and had a three-day reign as king, all of it spent in a coma, before he died.

His successor, Uncle Gyanendra, is now on the royal dole after the people of Nepal voted to get rid of their monarchy.

Gyanendra has had to hand over the crown (made of peacock feathers, yak hair and jewels) and vacate the main royal residence, which is now a museum.

He gets to live in a small palace (with a tin roof) in the suburbs of Kathmandu and has accepted a cut in his £2 million yearly allowance.

This more civilised method of despatching royalty, by the ballot rather than the bullet, would seem suitable for a forward-looking democratic country such as Scotland.

I'm sure there must be a suitable but-and-ben on the Balmoral estate to accommodate the Windsors should they wish to visit Scotland in their new capacity as civilians.