THE press watchdog has received scores of complaints about an article published in The Spectator which was criticised as anti-Scots “hate speech”.
Ipso, the independent press regulator, told The National on Thursday morning it had received a total of 33 complaints about Rod Liddle’s piece “Help me, I’m Scottish”, published last week.
It is understood most complaints have alleged problems with accuracy or discrimination.
Because Liddle refers to himself as a “chippy, grasping, salad-dodging smackhead” in the piece after discovering he has mostly Scottish DNA, it is unlikely complaints will hold up on the grounds of discrimination.
The Ipso editors’ code bans publications from printing “prejudicial or pejorative” references to “an individual's race, colour, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or disability” and any mention of these characteristics at all “unless genuinely relevant to the story”.
But it does not mention offensive references to groups of people more broadly.
The article caused a furore – with some critics accusing the magazine of promoting hate speech against Scottish people.
Liddle wrote that his only “consolation” upon discovering he was genetically more Scottish than English was that he would “henceforth … expect everybody else in England to subsidise me through their taxes, while simultaneously demanding total independence from them”.
Ian Fraser, a former Sunday Herald journalist, tweeted his outrage at the piece: “I suppose Rod Liddle and the Spectator editor [Fraser Nelson] thought this was amusing. To me, it seems more like hate speech.”
Richard Haviland, a former civil servant in the Foreign Office who has spoken in the past about how he has become a reluctant Yes supporter, also called the article “hate speech” adding that it gave “ammunition to the worst of the English and the worst of the Scots”. He added that Liddle was involved in the “deliberate stirring up of mutual hatred” between the two countries.
The most-complained about article in Ipso's history was Jeremy Clarkson’s column about Meghan Markle, published last year, which generated in excess of 20,800 complaints, reports the Press Gazette.
It displaced The Scottish Sun’s “Death Express” front page on the Stonehaven derailment tragedy, which racked up 16,860.
The Spectator was approached for comment.
