Scottish Energy News would like to be able to bring our thousands of readers around the world** news reports from First Minister’s Question Time at Holyrood tomorrow (3 March) when Labour MSP Neil Findlay is due to ask Nicola Sturgeon what is the position of the Scottish Government on shale-gas ‘fracking’.
But the Scottish Parliament’s chief clerk, Paul Grice – a former local government worker in Haddington where the main media outlet was the weekly East Lothian Courier – has banned Scottish Energy News from Holyrood on the specious grounds that we are not ‘real’ media.
While the thousands of Scottish Energy News readers ** who include 75% of Scotlands’ MSPs – realise (but Grice doesn’t) ‘energy news’ is one of the top day and daily topics of ‘Scottish parliament’ news. Energy – oil, gas, wind, solar, wave, and biomass – affects every MSP and every constituent.
Energy prices affect people day and daily in their every day lives.
And there is no greater challenge facing the chief clerk of the Scottish Parliament (and readers, voters, and consumers worldwide) than combating harmful climate-change.
Banning Scottish Energy News from bona fide media access to Scotland’s parliament .. by the clerk in charge of ‘administration’ at the Scottish Parliament – is, in effect, a BAN ON DEMOCRACY.
Yet, at the same time, the Scottish Parliament spends taxpayers’ money in providing accommodation and support services to a notoriously anti-trade union company, Dundee-based DC Thomson Ltd, which owns and publishes local newspapers in Aberdeen as well as a regional oil-industry newsletter – both of which (rightly) have unlimited media access to MSPs in the Scottish Parliament.
See also: Sturgeon met INEOS shale gas king the SAME DAY that her Govt. announced Scottish fracking moratorium
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See also
http://www.scottishenergynews.com/record-breaking-start-to-2016-for-scottish-energy-news/