Variant magazine have produced a press release addressing the response of James Doherty, Media Manager of Culture and Sport Glasgow and President of the National Union of Journalists, to a text published in Variant by Rebecca Gordon Nesbitt. 'The main thrust of the article is to expose the connections between the various board members of CSG and its trading arm and their multifarious business interests and strategies for culture, which point to the privatisation of a valuable public service and the erosion of the common good.'

Variant, one of the few magazines covering the grim process of stealth privatisation of Glasgow's cultural assets, appears to have been specifically targeted by one of the very privateers it criticised, and who has banned its distribution at Tramway gallery, in a highly defensive abuse of power:

Taking issue with the argument that, after decentralisation, control is embodied within the protocols of networks, Harry Halpin gives a historical account of the all-too-human actors vying for power over the net. Not technical standards but immaterial aristocrats rule cyberspace and their seats of power are vulnerable to revolutionary attack

                               Free Software
                         Toni Prug, toni@irational.org
                                August 13, 2007

From World Socialist Web Site (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jan2008/guar-j09.shtml), a telling example of what 'the real world' means when invoked by government, unions and sympathetic media.  The story of a group of women care-workers employed by Cleveland and Redcar council who were forced to turn to 'no win no fee' lawyers after to obtain back-pay withheld through a council-Unison stitch-up.  Guess whose side the 'Guardian' was on...