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The big story, next to me becoming a grandfather, is the carry on at the Herald. Two journalists have lost their jobs at a national newspaper because of threats from The Peeppul and their club. On the internet you can't help tripping over everyone going on about it; the NUJ and normal folk expressing outrage, The Peeppul gloating. Our mainstream media, however, doesn't seem to think it worth mentioning.

For the past two years our media have been going on (and on) about so-called 'Cybernats'. Supposedly, there's an organised and co-ordinated campaign by the SNP to silence all opposition and make sure that nothing negative is said about the party and Scottish independence. Has anyone lost their job because of this 'campaign'? Has any part of our media been forced to issue an apology or a retraction? All manner of lies and smears about the SNP has sullied our media and gone unchallenged, which means that the so-called 'Cybernats' have failed miserably. Either that or they don't actually exist; I know which one I believe.

So, while our media harps on about democracy and freedom of the press being threatened by the SNP and the 'Cybernats', they cravenly refuse to even acknowledge when the press's freedom and integrity is really compromised. I don't think this scandal is going to go away anytime soon and our media is going to be the laughing-stock of the world; they'll even be sniggering in China and North Korea.

The Daily Record is still banging on about Andy Halliday's sending off, which, apparently, is the worst miscarriage of justice since the hanging of Timothy Evans. They might have more of a case if they stopped lying about what happened. I've looked at the video of the incident and there's Halliday walking over to the home crowd and punching the air in their direction. He's not, as they all try to make out 'standing in the middle of the pitch'. They've even dragged a former 'top English referee' into it, who says that there's no way it was a bookable offence. The fact that this ex referee is renowned bigot Jeff Winter rather diminishes the impact of his judgment.

The agnivores have been banging on about how players should be allowed to celebrate and that there should be no bookings at all. Sorry, but that's a load of pish. My abiding memory of Mo Johnston, when he played for Celtic, was him scoring and then running toward The Peeppul, skidding along on his knees and making the sign of the cross. It's easy to point the finger at the Huns and say that being offended by somebody blessing himself just shows what sectarian bigots they really are. There is, however, a massive difference between a player blessing himself as he runs onto the pitch, which many players do, and what Johnston did. It was something that Danny McGrain didn't like, as he said in his autobiography.

The behaviour of the likes of Johnston and Paul Gascoigne pointed up the dangers of players taunting opposition supporters. The football authorities have clamped down on it and no team should be singled out for special treatment. Celebrating a goal means running to your own supporters in joy, not rushing to rub it into the opposition. The furore over Halliday's sending off shows two things: our press is firmly under the thumb of James Sexton Traynor and 'Warbs' has definitely caught 'Rangersitis' and thinks his team is above the law.

I see McMurdo has decided to grace us with his online presence again, which momentous occasion I discovered on James Doleman's Twitter account. He's on the website of the Rangers (sic) Supporters Loyal website, waxing lyrical about the 'good old days' before the Raynjurz Haturz, both without and within, ruined the party. He's critical of everybody at Ibrox from the Murray years onwards, saying:

"The Rangers they embody is not the one my father raised me to love fiercely...Something was lost in the SDM years. A certain dignity and honour – old school you could say – was missing. For all the glory of the David Murray era, it came at a price. That price was the good name and reputation of Rangers. The pride of being a Ranger, so ensconced in hearts and minds by men like Struth and Waddell, was traded in for a win-at-all-costs mentality more akin to  corporate raider than  sporting champion."

While it's true that the Murray years, as we now know, was blighted by cheating and attempting to buy success with other people's money, there were actually good points; though McMurdo would probably disagree. In fact, one point probably hurts and angers Merlin and his disciples most of all. Murray's 'win-at-all-costs mentality' included the unthinkable: he signed Catholic players. McMurdo goes on:

"Thanks to certain Rangers haters in the blogosphere, the question of Rangers being a new club is back on the agenda. The reality is that the process of changing Rangers to something different has been taking place for some time. This Rangers will be shorn of its traditional values and these will be replaced by petty, hate-filled ideologies foreign to many bluenoses of my generation and older...The end game is a new Rangers, not the Gers I grew up obsessed with and in awe of. This new Rangers will be a mutated version and this mutant Rangers is what is being engineered right now.
As a boy, the defining emotion of being a Ranger was pride. The right kind of pride, not the hubris and arrogance that crept in during the Murray era.
Today I see the defining emotion of many Rangers fans as HATE. Hatred of Scottish football, the SFA, the SPFL, other teams, of “tims” and “taigs” and all that is not Rangers. It is a narrow, parochial and suffocating worldview that breeds smallness of thinking, vision and ambition. It is not the Rangers I and many others know and recognise."

Strangely enough, it's this hubris, hatred and sense of entitlement that are the only things that most of us view as the only valid argument for the current club at Ibrox being 'stull Raynjurz'! If we were to believe McMurdo, then the 'Billy Boys' is a modern invention and all the sectarianism and bigotry associated with The Peeppul was never around when Rangers was still alive. The club's long refusal to sign Catholics never happened and the bullying tactics of club and support are a completely new phenomenon. I know The Peeppul are fond of rewriting history but this is taking things to extremes!

I think I've mentioned on here before that one of the problems facing education these days is that not all teachers are graced with a reasonable degree of intelligence; in fact, some of them are downright thick. Two prime examples appeared in the papers over the past week or so. One accidentally put the porn he was watching on his laptop onto the interactive whiteboard for all his pupils to view, while the other decided to broadcast her support for the IRA on her Facebook page. How the hell these morons managed to get themselves accepted into the teaching profession in the first place is beyond me!

Our education system is run and overseen by a bunch of middle-class idealists, who believe they know what's best for saving all the working-class scum from themselves. A hundred years ago they would all be members of some eugenics society, but nowadays they believe they can teach these inferior beings to be more like them. In primary schools especially, the big push is on for healthy minds in healthy bodies. You're not allowed to give children a bar of chocolate for a prize anymore and teachers are constantly reminded that they are 'role models'. If you've read my book, 'The Crimes of Miss Jane Goldie', you'll be aware that you can be sacked for being seen letting your hair down while on holiday and God help you if anybody sees you smoking! Before I left teaching there were even calls from some quarters for teachers to be practically forced into eating healthily and taking exercise. (No, that's not what forced me out!) There were even murmurings that fat people shouldn't be employed as teachers.

Into this environment stepped out two new celebrities. Most teachers avoid social media like the plague, since you can be castigated, or even sacked and removed from the teaching register for the least thing. And there's no point in claiming that what you do outside work has no relevance to your teaching career; your contract and GTC registration clearly state that you've to avoid bringing the profession into disrepute. The young woman that put all the stuff about 'Provos' and the rest on Facebook might try to argue that her political views should have no relevance but she's missing the point. Many folk are, or claim to be, offended by these views and she should have known better. It makes no difference whether you agree with her views or not; she's a fucking idiot and deserves all she gets. After all, wouldn't she complain if another teacher posted stuff supporting NI Loyalists and the Orange Order?

The other clown's idiocy practically goes without saying. There's a phrase used on the internet, NSFW, which, surely, as an IT expert, this guy should have known. Who the hell sits looking at porn while in charge of a bunch of thirteen-year-olds? At the very least he's guilty of not doing his job properly.

What the story of these two cretins says to me is that it's time our education authorities stopped worrying about employing fit and healthy teachers and started concentrating on what's going on inside their heads. For years there have been calls for prospective teachers to sit numeracy and literacy tests; calls which teaching unions have resisted furiously. Considering the amount of teachers I've encountered that struggled with twenty-four-hour clocks, times tables, mental arithmetic, spelling and basic grammar, I believe it's long past time these tests were introduced. At the same time, they should also perhaps consider bringing in tests in basic common sense!

Finally, thanks to everybody for all the good wishes after the arrival of my granddaughter, Thea. She's back home now with her mum and dad and settling in well. I'm looking forward to watching her grow up and getting involved as much as I can. (Though, not too much. Bringing her up is her parents' job!) Rather unfortunately, her dad's a Hibby but one should always look on the bright side; at least she won't be brought up to be one of The Peeppul!