Invicta PR’s Mark Cummings in sectarian abuse allegations
Invicta PR’s Mark Cummings is hardly a stranger to controversy – the now failed Carltongate Project in Edinburgh, and the recent Sandown planning application by Deveron are existing legacies.
An ugly new development is being reported by The Times, though, claiming that sectarian abuse was sent from Mark Cummings’ mobile phone to Thomas Docherty, a Labour candidate Dunfermline and West Fife in the next general election.
Labour candidate ‘was sent sectarian messages’
The messages, which contained a lyric from the so-called Famine song, were allegedly sent from a mobile telephone number belonging to Mark Cummings, a lobbyist. His clients have included Premier Property Group, a firm owned by David Murray, the Rangers chairman.
Two weeks ago, Docherty, a Catholic, received a message repeating a line from the Famine song which has been banned at Rangers’ Ibrox ground, and which was recently ruled by Scottish law lords to be racist. The song pillories people of Irish descent whose ancestors came to Britain to escape the potato famine which began in 1845.
The message to Docherty allegedly read: “The famine is over. Why don’t you go home? FTP.” FTP is commonly used as an abbreviation for the sectarian phrase F*** The Pope.
It is alleged that when Docherty texted the sender to check whether the message was intended for him, he received the reply: “Yes, because you are one of them.”
As a Labour candidate, Docherty is campaigning against a proposed major housing development in Dunfermline which Cummings’s firm, Edinburgh-based Invicta Public Affairs, is lobbying for.
Quite an astonishing development, and many thanks to the Gurn for spotting it.
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Isn’t it ironic how the PR industry has such bad PR
More coverage in the Dunfermline Express:
http://www.dunfermlinepress.com/news/roundup/articles/2009/08/13/390625-probe-launched-into-sectarian-text-claims/
“Isn’t it ironic how the PR industry has such bad PR”
I suspect the real story will turn out to be one of a misappropriated mobile phone.