JANUARY has been a slow news month. So slow that there’s even a dearth of #SNPBad stories. It must be pretty desperate when Scotland’s Unionist media runs short of things to accuse the SNP of, not that that stops them. They’ve got so desperate that if you were to go deep down into the lowest sub-basement in a barrel factory and climbed into the barrel at the bottom of the pile of broken rejects, if you listened very carefully, you’d hear the sound of a yooney journalist scraping away in the lower levels of Hell underneath.

This week, the swivel-eyed cultists of professional yoonery reached a new low, which was quite an achievement considering how low they’ve gone before. On Thursday, the entire front page of one Unionist daily was occupied with the shocking and disgusting news that an SNP MP had spent the Christmas and new year holidays saving lives and caring for the sick. How very dare she. Imagine having the sheer nerve to treat cancer patients and operate on them while she ought to be sitting on her bum while Parliament is closed just in case the Unionist press decides to attack her for something.

Philippa Whitford is the SNP MP for Central Ayrshire. Before entering politics, she worked as a surgeon in the NHS specialising in treating women with breast cancer. For five days over the recent holiday season, she covered for a former colleague who was ill, and this was used as the basis of a front page headline accusing her of profiting from the NHS on top of her MP’s salary. It’s not exactly as if there is a limitless pool of breast cancer specialists for the NHS to call on, but Philippa was strongly criticised by Jackie Baillie MSP, of all people, for daring to ensure that NHS patients get the treatment they need in a timely fashion.

That would be the same Jackie Baillie who has made a career out of attacking the Scottish Government’s record on the NHS. It seems that some MSPs are more interested in attacking the SNP than they are in ensuring that NHS patients get the treatment and care that they deserve. Labour gleefully jumps on a Tory media bandwagon and then they wonder why the wheels have fallen off their support in Scotland.

There are other ways in which the story could have been covered. It could have been written up as: “MP gives up her holidays to ensure that NHS targets are met.” Or it might have been reported that a Scottish MP actually did something useful and productive to contribute to the sum total of human good. They’re not able to do much of that in Westminster what with being outvoted by the Tories on Scottish legislation and banned from voting on issues that the Tories deem to be English-only. The Unionist media would far rather that our MPs did absolutely nothing.

That would be the same media that never uttered a peep while Tory and Labour MPs enriched themselves with all sorts of second jobs and consultancies. That would be the same media that wasn’t overly concerned about the non-attendance in Parliament of former Prime Minister and saviour of the Union Gordie Broon. But if an SNP MP engages in a socially useful job for just five days over a holiday period when the Westminster Parliament is in recess, a job that very few are able to do, and then you get a denunciation that even the Spanish Inquisition would feel was a bit excessive. But with the yoon media denunciation cult, you always expect the Inquisition.

Coming just a short while after a full page splash accusing Nicola Sturgeon of having good taste in raincoats and wellington boots, this latest story damages the media far more than it damages the SNP. All that it proves is that the real blinkered and self-regarding cult in Scottish politics is the narrow wee world of the tragic yoondom which is incapable of seeing anything good in the independence movement. When even giving up your holiday to spend it treating cancer patients to cover for a sick former colleague becomes a reason for criticism, you know that all sense of perspective has been lost. If Philippa had given up her holiday to treat refugees while she stayed in a Buddhist monastery in Cambodia, it would have been reported as SNP MP jets off to tropical paradise to join foreign cult.

The role of the press is supposedly to inform, to elucidate, to persuade, and to hold the powerful to account. That’s not the main task of the Unionist media in Scotland however. Their task is to stave off independence for as long as possible, by any means possible. What they’re doing with these ridiculous stories is to give committed Unionists something else to feel aggrieved about.

They constantly claim that the independence movement has divided Scotland, that it looks for grievances to exploit. The Unionist media seeks to deepen those divides and reinforce them. It even manages to turn treating cancer patients into stick with which to beat the SNP. The real irrational cultists in Scotland are the grievance manufacturers of the Unionist press. The only thing anyone is persuaded of is how unfit for purpose our media has become.