The Glasgow Arsehole Attack

Yesterday's news filled me with fear and alarm as I watched that green Jeep Cherokee burn at the entrance to Terminal 1 of Glasgow Airport. Yes, it was inevitable - at some point over the course of the next 24 hours there would be some of my fellow Glaswegians appearing undistilled on the telly giving eyewitness accounts.

For a while we were spared. It seemed to take an age for the big rolling news channels to get cameras anywhere near the Airport. STV's two camcorders were at the opening of the Scottish Parliament where the Queen was. So they had to rely on library footage of the airport - shortly followed up with Biro scribbles on the back of a beer mat of what Bernard Ponsonby thought a terrorist attack at the airport might look like.

By about 6pm the news crews were there - not the decent reporters mind - just the ones that cover on the weekends - looking a bit rough, wearing bobbled fleeces and with unkempt hair.

They coped manfully and both on BBC News 24 and Sky News there were eyewitness accounts piling in - and wee pixelated leaping flames dancing over our screens from folks' mobile phones. Glasgow was doing quite well as most of the eyewitnesses were mainly from England - so the viewers could understand what was being said you see.

Then a couple of Weegies phoned in - and to my astonishment they made a decent fist of their reports on what they had seen - only stumbling every time it came to describing the people that had been in the Jeep. In fact, I was impressed they managed to replace "a Paki bastard" with "eh, eh, eh, eh… an Asian filla" at every turn.

Clearly they had remembered what the BBC staff had coached them on minutes earlier before getting on live telly.

Now the BBC's Peter Cissons, a grumpy bastard these days, was quite forceful in his questioning of each of the callers and forensically quizzed the eyewitnesses about what the two "eh, eh, eh, eh…Asian fillas" were like; what expression they had on their faces; and if they were saying anything while all the shenanigans with burning cars and assaulting police officers and flinging about of Molotov cocktails was going on.

Each eyewitness agreed not a thing was said by our friendly terrorists. I'd put the count of eyewitnesses who agreed to this at about nine; maybe a few more. Unity between Glaswegians, English, Irish and some other odd accent I could not account for, who claimed they had been in close proximity to the burning Jeep.

I was watching the early parts of the news broadcast with my mother and we instantly exclaimed the same thing when this man opened his mouth. It was what I had dreaded since the news first broke.

"Areshole!"

My mother and I cried in unison.

Now I don't know if the rest of the UK spotted that John Smeaton, baggage handler, was an arsehole or whether it was only fellow Glaswegians that could spot it's own particular brand of arsehole - but if you are reading from any other part of Britain and you picked this ginger eejit out as an arsehole do let me know.

I watched the man interviewed several times, the first time on the BBC. His tale was so wild that the wee Glesga wummin, Jacqui Kennedy - who looked like she'd been too close to the burny Jeep given how dry her Peroxide white hair was and how leathery her toasted skin appeared - was visibly laughing at his side as he told it.

"Did the assailants say anything?" Said Weekend Wummin for the BBC.

"Yeah, they were shouting "Allah!" They were throwing punches at the Police and shouting Allah, Allah, Allah!" said the Glasgow Arsehole John Smeaton.

Wisely the BBC cut him off at this stage only for the numpty to appear minutes later spouting the same tosh on Sky News. Murdoch's channel seemed to actively encourage him to keep reciting this twaddle about "Allah!" in their pursuit of ever more sensationalist and exciting rolling news.

Other than the "Allah!" bit I never heard this fool recite the same story twice. He realised why he was popular with the "Allah!" thing, it was going well for him. But he went from being round a corner having a fag and not seeing the initial impact to being 20 yards away. From watching Police officers getting a slap from burning terrorists to being involved in fisticuffs with the terrorists themselves and assisting the Police. But always, always hearing them shouting, definitely, shouting "Allah! Allah! Allah!"

My mother and I concluded he was a typical Glasgow walloper who, you can imagine, nobody in the local boozer takes seriously and probably scoff and rip the piss behind his back.

By early evening Liverpool's John Lennon Airport confirmed they were to be the only other airport in the whole of the UK that would shut as a result of the terror attack in Glasgow. Heaven forbid something awful should happen to this country that the Scouse can't add to the chip on their shoulder.

Sky, unsurprisingly, had persisted with Glasgow arsehole Smeaton's clearly ludicrous claim that no one could corroborate all day - whilst the BBC had dropped it altogether. Then a weird thing happened.

Strathclyde Police's Chief Constable Willie Rae gave his Press conference at 9.30pm and confirmed the men that were being held were Asian and that they suspected there was a link between the Glasgow Airport attack and the failed bombs in London a couple of days earlier.

Suddenly the Glasgow arsehole's claims of "Allah!" were being broadcast by the BBC yet again. Bizarre. Why did the confirmation of the attackers' ethnicity suddenly make what was clearly a bollocks, unsubstantiated claim okay?

Smeaton is now on a loop on the telly on both 24 hour news channels with the least reliable of all the reports that I had heard over the course of the day.

The Home Office - to use Glasgow parlance - have now upped the nation's defence state of alert from "keep the edgy" to "pure shiting it" even thought there's no real evidence why we should be.

Call me a cynic but it does smack of being rather handy for Mr Brown that days after taking over as PM he has two "terrorist" alerts and one attack in which no one got hurt. He gets to look serious, tough and capable whilst assisting in running controversial legislation through Westminster he's been rather keen on for a while. The 90 day detention of suspects and ID cards to name but two. And a nice early boost to approval ratings too.

On taking office as PM outside number 10 on Wednesday, Mr Brown said: "At all times I will be strong in purpose, steadfast in will, resolute in action in the service of what matters to the British people."

After his meeting with C.O.B.R.A. on Saturday evening he got be all those things and then asked the British people to do the same, saying: "I know the British people will stand together, united and resolute."

I particularly don't like it when politicians keep on using the same words - I get worried. A bit like Tony's "It's the right thing to do" mantra.

Will Gordon's catch-all argument be that we must be "resolute" in the face of anything that challenges his Premiership? The Clunking Iron Fist indeed.

And as an aside - what better way to bring a people which has just voted against your party and installed a nationalist government into line than a wee terrorist attack?

Certainly an interesting way to shut up a possible rabble rousing SNP First Minister like Alex Salmond.