One of the problems faced by the SNP is the army of so called cybernats who spew nasty, insulting bile across the internet at anyone who dares to question SNP policy or independence - which, of course, are one and the same thing. Alan Cochrane from the Telegraph wrote earlier this year about these toxic, often anonymous individuals.
Those who cannot take part in this great debate without questioning the patriotism, and often the parentage, of those who don't agree with them are much more accurately described as Cyberscum. As such they are, of course, a legitimate target for those who hope that the debate over the SNP's plans to break-up Britain can be conducted in a reasonably decent fashion.
Willie Rennie challenged the SNP leadership to deal with these people in his keynote speech to the Scottish Liberal Democrat conference.
If they are not careful they will cause Scotland to become a divided country, setting Scot against Scot for a generation.My message to the SNP is simple: please don’t question my loyalty to my nation just because I don’t agree with your policy. It’s not all of those in the nationalist camp. There are many sincere, generous, liberal-minded people in the SNP. But it is their behind-the-scenes stalkers and abusers who need to be tackled. The SNP leadership needs to rein them in, to tackle the abuse, to overcome the division-creators. Their leaders need to act. And act now.
You would think, then, knowing the problems that they have with loose cannon online, that SNP parliamentarians would be extra careful to be positive at all times. They would take care not to fire cheap, gratuitous insults around.
Sure they would. Just like MP Pete Wishart did last night while speculating on the reshuffle.
And when I challenged him for being nasty:
I can't find that tweet on his timeline this morning so it appears he thought better of it.
Now, maybe, if he was in the House of Commons cafeteria indulging in some full fat Irn Bru and suffering the effects of sugar high, we might find it within our hearts to forgive a momentary indiscretion.
Except this is the way he does business. Last week he put out an extraordinary press release, accusing Michael Moore of attention seeking behaviour and making a pointless speech. All Moore was doing was talking in his usual ultra reasonable tone about how important it was to reach agreement on the process for the independence referendum - and expressing confidence that he and the SNP Government would do so - by the end of October. For his pains, he attracted this tirade via the SNP press office:
The only reason for Michael Moore’s speech is that he is desperately trying to get noticed and save his job in the reshuffle – it was pointless otherwise.....
...These cost increases show that the £8 million Scotland Office is simply a propaganda arm for Westminster to use in their Tory-led anti-independence campaign. It has no other role, and Michael Moore’s recent pronouncements are just indicative of an attention-seeking exercise with a UK Cabinet reshuffle in the offing.
So, will Alex Salmond rebuke his MP for such a tirade? I won't be holding my breath.
2 comments:
Caron,
Hardly seems enough to justify the epithet tirade to me: you don't have to be a cybernat to think that Michael Moore is a lost deposit waiting to happen. The fact that you think very favourably of him doesn't mean that he is objectively doing a good job, or that he or his record should not be open to criticism.
I'm no supporter of the SNP, although I do now support independence for Scotland. I am horrified at the fact the LD's are sharing a platform with the Tories and the Red Tories in New Labour.
Rather than get yourself in a lather about what seems pretty mild criticism of Moore, perhaps your efforts would be better spent engaging with the real issues like why the LD's have reneged on their aim of abolishing the office of Scottish secretary, justifying the huge increase in the costs of the Scottish office (despite it having less and less to do), and explaining why you as a party have connived with the democratically challenged Scottish Affairs Committee at Westminster?
Perhaps the LD's need to learn to be a bit less sensitive to what sounds to me like fair criticism? I didn't exactly hear howls of protest from the LD's when the deeply unpleasant Labour chair of the SAC Mr Davidson threatened to give the SNP member a doing, nor did I hear them deplore his attacks on Isabel Fraser personally and the BBC Scotland as an institution, which must come as news to the SNP.
Perhaps we should expect more of the same from the dependency parties over the next 2 years as they become more and more hysterical at the thought of losing in 2014?
Those vile cybernats
At least we don't tell deliberate lies like the dependence parties and there activists. I am glad MM is staying in place as he is an asset for the Yes campaign with the nonsense he spouts.
e.g. 270 embassies abroad yet we can only find 104 so where on earth are the missing 166.
All we have heard is that we are better together yet nothing to explain why other than fiction.
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