CLARE JOHNSTON: Tayside period dignity officer and BBC’s James Cook don’t deserve this abuse

By Clare Johnston

August 18 2022, 4:54pm

Tayside period dignity officer Jason Grant and BBC Scotland editor James Cook both found themselves the target of abuse this week.

I have opinions about most things. Which is helpful when you are required to write about them each week.

But if the passing years have taught me anything it’s that there is never just one right answer or solution.

There is usually always a middle ground.

It’s increasingly where I find myself.

And in the week when Tayside’s new period dignity officer and BBC Scotland editor James Cook found themselves at the centre of two very different storms, it’s felt like a lonely place at times.

I’d say the middle ground is the destination of choice for most fair-minded individuals.

The sort of people who can look at and respect another person’s opinion and give it equal weight to their own.

That’s equality. When you place the same value on another person as you would choose for yourself.

It doesn’t matter their race, their gender, their sexuality. Whether they vote Labour or Conservative. Whether they’re pro independence, on the fence or against it.

Every person and every voice should matter equally. That is equality and that is democracy.

Jason Grant and James Cook abuse should concern us all

We are very fortunate to live in a country where both are upheld by law and where everyone is entitled to vote as equals.

But the venom on display this week – against two individuals who in no way deserved it – should give us all cause for concern about the state of our society.

Tayside period dignity officer Jason Grant in the red top, with Rosie Gilbert, her daughter Angel and Euan Smith.

Take the poor guy whose ‘crime’ was to apply for and accept a job he thought he could do well.

Whatever the pros and cons of appointing a ‘period dignity officer’ for Tayside, and regardless of the arguments around whether this should have been a role for a woman not a man, Jason Grant should not have had to face personal abuse and cricitism for acepting a new job.

I can’t imagine how he must be feeling this week after such a public savaging. But he should know the majority of folks will feel saddened by his harsh treatment.

Then there’s the abuse levelled at BBC journalist, James Cook, who was called scum and harassed by activists outside a Conservative leaders’ debate in Perth on Tuesday.

I thought Nicola Sturgeon’s response was more or less word perfect. The First Minister made the point that it is a journalist’s job to “report and scrutinise, not support any viewpoint”.

Hurling abuse at journalists is never acceptable. Their job is vital to our democracy & it is to report & scrutinise, not support any viewpoint. @BBCJamesCook is a journalist of the highest quality and a total pro – the behaviour he was subjected to last night was disgraceful

— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) August 17, 2022

The problem is when you live in world where only your point of view can be the right one, anything to the contrary becomes a threat.

Unfortunately that is still the standard of political debate in this country at all kinds of levels.

Some cling to a belief so hard that they can’t even recognise impartiality or understand the need for it because their mindset is rigid and unable to process an alternative argument.

Entrenched thinking gets us nowhere

I’ve seen this growing up in a very religious environment where we were encouraged not to mix with non-churchgoers.

Needless to say I did. But for a lot of the people around me there was no questioning the doctrine.

We were the chosen ones who had it right and everyone else was wrong and destined for hell.

James Cook was subjected to abuse by protesters.

You’re not going to find a whole lot of kindness in that level of entrenchment. Just as you don’t find kindness in any type of entrenched thinking.

The trouble is, the world is still full of it.

Church membership and religious affiliation may be in decline. But people are still attaching themselves to plenty of causes that they’re willing to scrap like dogs over.

It’s utterly senseless but there we are.

Without the ability to have a reasoned discussion and reach balanced decisions how can we actually progress as a society?

For hope, we can take our cues not from the noisy minority who abuse and harass to try to get their way, but from the altogether quieter majority who observe, listen and weigh an issue up for themselves.

Kindness is found in compromise, and fairness in balance.