
Kneecap at Glasgow's TRNSMT would need 'significant police operation'
The BBC reports the police force have made the claim after a member of the rap trio was charged with a terror offence.
We previously reported Liam O'Hanna, 27, who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, has been charged over the displaying of a flag in support of Hezbollah at a gig at the O2 Forum in Kentish Town, north-west London, on November 21 last year, the Metropolitan Police said.
READ NEXT: Kneecap say terror charge is 'political policing' and 'carnival of distraction'
O'Hanna, of Belfast, was charged by postal requisition and is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on June 18, the Met said.
A Police Scotland spokesperson said any decision on who performs at TRNSMT was for the organiser to make, however concerns had been raised about safely delivering the event.
The BBC reports a police spokesperson said: "There was no prior consultation with Police Scotland before acts were booked.
"Officers have highlighted the potential reaction of such a large audience to this band would require a significant policing operation in order to support the delivery of a safe event.
"We have also passed on information from the public around safety concerns to allow organisers to make an informed decision on the running of the festival."
READ NEXT: Calls for Kneecap to be axed from TRNSMT 2025 over 'kill your local MP' comments
First Minister John Swinney previously said Kneecap should be axed from the TRNSMT line-up, saying the band had "crossed the line" with comments allegedly backing Hamas and calling for the death of MPs, saying it would be "unacceptable" for them to perform.
However, Green cllr Jon Molyneux said calls to ban the group should be resisted, saying the Belfast band is being targeted in a smear campaign because it has been outspoken on the war in Gaza and showed support for the Palestinian people.
TRNSMT will take place in Glasgow Green from July 11-13, with Kneecap set to perform on the opening night.

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Daily Record
an hour ago
- Daily Record
Armed officer sues Police Scotland over suspension after TikTok Tallia Storm incident
Steven Jones is taking Police Scotland to court after being suspended over an incident involving singer Tallia Storm. A firearms officer is taking legal action against Police Scotland alleging he was unfairly suspended after footage of an "incident" was shared on TikTok. Steven Jones, 35, appeared before an employment tribunal in Edinburgh on Monday, June 9, where he is suing the force for sex discrimination. Mr Jones claims his actions were unfairly labelled 'misogynistic' and that he was penalised due to Police Scotland management's concerns about the armed response unit being seen as having a 'boys' club mentality'. The tribunal heard that the incident occurred on March 1, 2024, when a video posted by Scottish singer Tallia Storm showed Mr Jones and his colleague stepping out of their marked police vehicle on Edinburgh's Cowgate to take a photo with her. In the footage, Mr Jones can be seen taking the picture while his partner poses with Storm, reports EdinburghLive. Mr Jones told the tribunal he was later 'chastised' by senior officers who described his conduct as 'misogynistic' and criticised him for stopping in a busy pedestrian and traffic area. He said the force reacted negatively due to public backlash over the video. He believes he was treated unfairly because of 'past instances of misogyny' involving other officers in the firearms unit, and that his own actions were wrongly framed in that context. He told the tribunal: "Because of the word 'misogyny,' it made me feel it was because I as a male interacting with a female that it was viewed through that lens. If a member of the other sex had that interaction, it wouldn't have happened." His solicitor, Mr Merck, referenced a previous high-profile case involving female firearms officer Rhona Malone, who received nearly £1 million in compensation after an employment tribunal ruled she had been victimised by the force on the basis of her sex. Mr Jones believes that case influenced how his own behaviour was judged. Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. He said: "It really surprised me. I was extremely upset and shocked because I knew I had to disclose to my partner what I had been accused of and explain to my family." At the time of the incident, Mr Jones and his colleague were on "parliament duty," patrolling areas around the Scottish Parliament including the Cowgate and Grassmarket. While driving through Cowgate, they encountered a large crowd and slowed the vehicle. Mr Jones said he then recognised Tallia Storm in the crowd. "I knew who she was due to the publicity and her being the Capital DJ host at the time. She was on the side of trams and buses," he said. He and his partner left the vehicle — which held secured firearms — for what he estimated to be about a minute, possibly less. Mr Jones claimed the singer was "ecstatic" about the photo opportunity and added: "There was no rude behaviour or catcalling. I present myself courteously and was calm in the situation. We engaged in conversation to ascertain that a Q&A was being held. It looked like she was making her way over. We very quickly introduced ourselves, it was a polite interaction." He said that throughout the encounter, they ensured their police vehicle remained secure. Despite this, Mr Jones was later suspended — a sanction he believes was disproportionate. He told the tribunal: "It is our job to engage with people. We don't police with fear, we police by good interactions with the public. The last thing I'd ever want is the public to fear the police and to fear me. I always speak to people as a human being. I meet them where they are." Mr Jones joined Police Scotland in March 2017 and completed his authorised firearms officer training in June 2023. He told the tribunal he had ambitions of becoming a national firearms instructor and had been encouraged to apply for a role in counterterrorism. But since the incident, he says he has been demoted to a desk-based role, handling "low-level daily calls" — a stark contrast to his previous work dealing with "very high risk incidents" and high-stakes decision making within the firearms unit. The five-day tribunal, overseen by Employment Judge Amanda Jones, continues.

The National
an hour ago
- The National
Labour are still in deep trouble despite by-election win
FOR a man whose party had just won a by-election, it was widely expected to lose, Anas Sarwar is not at all a happy bunny. His aggressive and angrily needy behaviour while being interviewed by Martin Geissler on the BBC Scotland Sunday Show will remind fans of RuPaul's Drag Race of the iconic droll comment made by contestant Trixie Mattell when a competitor had a very public and furious temper tantrum after being put through to the next round by the judges but failing to make the top three: "I think that's a lot of emotion for safe." For those not familiar with the show, the comment was a pointed reference to the fact that although the contestant in question had survived that particular episode, the temper tantrum was due to their awareness that they were not on track to win the contest, and as it transpired, they were eliminated not long afterwards. Likewise, the anger displayed by Anas Sarwar was due to his awareness that despite this by-election win, his party remains in deep, deep, trouble, and that trouble is largely of Labour's own creation. Whatever you might think of the SNP's decision to focus its attacks on Reform UK during the by election campaign - and spoiler alert I think it was tactically a disaster - it's pretty rich of Anas Sarwar to go on the BBC, of all media platforms, and accuse John Swinney of running a "dishonest and disgraceful" campaign which pushed voters to Reform UK. Rarely has psychological projection been so manifest in a political interview. READ MORE: Scotland's top doctor warns of climate and pollution public health emergency It doesn't push voters to Reform when you do as the SNP has done and complain loudly that Reform is running an overtly racist campaign. What pushes voters to Reform is when you do what the Labour party and the BBC have been doing, which is to ape Reform's policies, thus legitimising and mainstreaming them, and to give Reform's leader a platform out of all proportion to his political success. The rise of Reform has nothing to do with the SNP, and everything to do with the Labour and Conservative parties and the anti-independence British media, above all the BBC. Of course, Anas Sarwar knows that, he's not a stupid man. He is, however, a politically dishonest man. The very last thing he can do in public is to admit the responsibility of his own party or that of a publicly owned broadcaster to which his party is linked by an umbilical cord in facilitating , encouraging and normalising racist far-right Anglo-British nationalism. Blaming far-right Anglo-British nationalism on the SNP is a new low, even by the base standards of the Labour Party in Scotland. Talking of pandering to the far right, the BBC has revealed that it has drawn up plans to "regain the trust" of Reform UK voters. The plans reportedly include changing news and drama content in order to make the broadcaster's output more appealing to the kind of people who have no problem at all with Doctor Who being a shape shifting near immortal alien who can cross time and space while fighting all sorts of trans-dimensional alien threats and sentient dinosaurs, but who complain it becomes unbelievable when the Doctor regenerates into a woman or a gay black Scotsman. Minutes of a meeting of the BBC's Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee in March, which has been seen by Byline Times, show that BBC News CEO Deborah Turness gave a presentation in which she discussed plans to alter 'story selection' and 'other types of output, such as drama' in order to win back the trust of Reform voters. One of the key members of the BBC's Editorial Guidelines Committee is former GB News executive Robbie Gibb, an arch-Brextremist who was appointed to the board by Boris Johnson in 2021. In 2022, former BBC presenter Emily Maitlis described Gibb as an 'active agent of the Conservative party.' Gibb was Theresa May's Downing Street Director of Communications between 2017 and 2019. (Image: House of Lords) Expect more news reports on immigration and greater prominence given to uncritical coverage of Reform UK politicians. They should just go the whole hog and rebrand BBC Question Time as 'An Evening with Nigel Farage'. Gibb was also previously the director of The Jewish Chronicle. Gibb fronted a consortium of worthies who 'rescued' the paper in 2020, but who claim either not to know, or are not saying, who put up the cash. In his November 2023 BBC Declaration of Personal Interests, Gibb stated that he was the 100 per cent owner of the Jewish Chronicle. After Gibbs' departure in August 2024, the newspaper was forced to apologise for publishing a series of fabricated pro-Israeli stories about the Gaza war. In drama, you can now look forward to cosy murders set in English country villages where everyone is white and heterosexual, and period dramas about a plucky colonial doctor, who repeatedly references how Scottish he is despite his upper class English accent, serving in one of the British Empire's African possessions, where over the course of a six episode story arc he rescues the benighted natives from their pagan superstitions and Arab slave raiders and eventually succeeds in winning the heart of a beautiful English rose, the daughter of a wealthy duke who heads a household of forelock tugging salt of the earth servants. I should stop here in case the BBC thinks this is a story pitch. Compare and contrast, surveys have shown that the BBC has lost most public trust in Scotland, in no small measure due to the Corporation's blatantly one-sided coverage of Scotland's constitutional debate, but the BBC shows no interest in trying to win back the trust of Scotland's independence-supporting viewers and listeners. The reason for that is that, despite his constant claims to be 'anti-elite,' Farage and his ilk pose no threat at all to the British establishment, they are merely the latest iteration of that establishment's attempts to subvert and control impulses to push back against it.

The National
an hour ago
- The National
Expert gives verdict as BBC bosses plan to win over Reform UK voters
THE BBC is 'taking its cue from Donald Trump' by proposing to alter its drama output in a bid to win the trust of Reform UK voters, an expert on mainstreaming the far-right has said. BBC bosses including director-general Tim Davie have reportedly drawn up plans to win over Reform voters due to a belief their news and drama output is creating 'low trust issues' with supporters of Nigel Farage. Minutes from a meeting of the broadcaster's editorial guidelines and standards committee from March, revealed by The Byline Times, show that BBC News CEO Deborah Turness gave a presentation in which she discussed plans to alter "story selection" and "other types of output, such as drama" to win the trust of Reform voters. Professor Aurelien Mondon, an expert at the University of Bath on the mainstreaming of the far right, said he is concerned the BBC are 'caving in' to a backlash against equality and diversity with these plans, largely spearheaded by US President Trump. READ MORE: LBC spark fury with pro-Israel report on seizure of Madleen Gaza ship Asked about proposals to alter drama output specifically, Mondon told The National: 'This is the most concerning element to me. 'I think what we are seeing here is a pushback against equality and diversity and inclusion and it seems to me the BBC is taking its cue from Donald Trump, quite directly. 'It seems they are caving to this backlash against equality, diversity and inclusion. 'My worry is that they are jumping the gun and we're seeing that not just in the media, we're seeing it in universities as well, we're seeing a pushback in businesses. 'I think people are accepting a new world order without even pushing back. My worry is that this is what this is about, the changing [of] drama programmes.' Farage has repeatedly attacked the BBC, having called it a 'political actor' last year while appearing on GB News. He threatened to boycott the corporation following a Question Time appearance in which he was taken to task by members of the public over repeated instances of Reform candidates being involved in allegations of racism and homophobia. Following the broadcast, Farage said the audience was rigged and that they 'were not ordinary members of the public'. He threatened to not appear on the BBC until the broadcaster apologised. A YouGov poll last September showed less than 20% of Reform UK voters trusted the BBC to tell the truth. However, the same poll also showed more than 50% of people in the UK overall do not trust the BBC to tell the truth. (Image: University of Bath) In revealing plans to alter its coverage to try and win the trust of Reform voters, Mondon said the BBC is misunderstanding its role as a public broadcaster and how popular the party actually is. 'I think they misunderstand their role as a public broadcaster whose mission should be the defence of democracy,' he said. "It should platform a diversity of views, but that does not mean that it should give uncritical space to ideas which are contrary to democratic principle or a threat to some communities. This is deeply counterproductive as the case of the US has shown. 'The other thing I think they wilfully misunderstand is the level of support for Reform. In a way, they've bought into their own hype. 'Much of the media has been hyping the popularity of Reform in the last few months which I think is very problematic. I don't want to downplay the recent opinion polls that have shown Reform could be the most popular party, for example, but I think we need to take this with a grain of salt. "We've seen that in many other democracies the far right rising not because they are popular but because the mainstream parties are failing and losing support mostly to abstention. We have witnessed countless times now that giving uncritical platforms to the far right or disproportionate attention, it only ends up benefitting them." READ MORE: Richard Murphy: What to expect from Rachel Reeves's spending review The BBC has repeatedly been criticised for the extent to which it has platformed Farage and radical right or far right figures in recent years. The Question Time episode criticised by Farage was hastily arranged by the BBC so he could appear after not being involved in a previous edition, while a Panorama interview with Nick Robinson was also rescheduled last year after Farage pulled out at the last minute. Tom Mills, a sociology expert who wrote The BBC: The Myth of a Public Service, said last July said BBC had been 'really bad' at robustly questioning Farage throughout the election because, he claimed, it is more comfortable with an anti-establishment figure on the right than the left. The BBC was also found to have been disproportionately platforming people from right-wing media outlets on Question Time over the past decade by researchers at Cardiff University. They analysed a total of 352 programmes with 1734 guest slots, which were filled by 661 different people. However, while they found that the BBC had 'broadly balanced' appearances from representatives of the UK's main political parties, when it came to members of the media a right-wing bias became evident. The BBC was additionally called out on air in April by former presenter Matthew Stadlen for platforming anti-Muslim 'extremist' Douglas Murray, after he was given an eight-minute interview on Newsnight. The committee which discussed the plans to appeal more to Reform voters in March, included former GB News executive Robbie Gibb, who is also a former director of communications at Number 10 and an outspoken Brexiteer. Mondon has warned the BBC that continuing to hand a platform to Reform UK and far-right figures is a serious threat to democracy that the broadcaster should be seeking to protect. 'You don't need Reform in power to have far right politics in place,' Mondon went on. 'What we're seeing with a Labour government is that a lot of the discourse Reform was pushing is becoming increasingly normalised. The more they are given airtime on legitimate news sources, the worse things are going to get for democracy. 'We should be talking about the climate, education, housing, pensions and the cost of living and all we end up talking about is immigration in ways that are completely disproportionate. 'This is not what most people in the UK care about. This is what our media, our mainstream politicians, have placed high on the agenda to divert attention from the real crises they have no answers to.' The BBC has been approached for comment.