Saturday 27 June 2015

WAS ''CLYPEGATE'' A WISE STRATEGY?

Warning: This post contains illustrations of strong language and abuse messages, some of which may offend.


The other day Nicola Sturgeon wrote a piece for the Daily Mail. That, for a start, brought a wave of criticism, Why was the First Minister writing for a low level Tory tabloid?

Surely the reasoning behind writing it for that paper was that the Daily Mail publishes story after story about Cybernattery of the worst kind. If your aim is to address that by telling their readers that, although, yes, there are some unfortunate tweets from SNP supporters, the process is two way, then there is little point in writing about it in the Sunday Herald or the National. 

Daily Mail readers who are swallowing the narrative that ONLY NATS are bad, don't read these papers. If you want them to hear your argument then you have to go to them.

Now, if I'd been one of the other party leaders, I would have jumped at the chance to show solidarity with the First Minister on this. After all, you'd really have to live in a Daily Mail bubble not to realise that people from other parties, most specifically Labour, are culpable too.

Amazingly, Ms Dugdale was, until Nicola enlightened her, apparently unaware that one of Labour's leading lights, Ian Smart, regularly, usually later in the evening, tweets about SNP Nazis among other insults. Mr Smart is followed by most of the leading lights in Scottish Labour. And, on at least one occasion, his tweets said that he was speaking on behalf of Labour. 


(It is fair to say that, although it took time, Mr Smart is now under administrative suspension from the Labour Party. But Mr Smart is hardly alone.)

Rather than express solidarity, however, Labour's response was to compile a 50-page document of SNP members who have sworn or used derogatory terms on Twitter. This is what Sir Humphrey would have called a "brave" move.

I note on James' post here that Kezia is capable of a foul mouthed rant, and we are reminded by Scottish Skier, in the comments, that no less a Labour member than Mr Bevan had nothing polite to say about the Tories. I recall too, that Mrs Curran said during the referendum campaign, that if someone ran over Alex Salmond with a bus, she wouldn't be asking the name of the driver.

Of course, the point of this post is that, instead of expressing solidarity as 5 party leaders in Scotland and asking people to be a little more temperate in their postings, at least Labour appears to have drawn up this list, which they want to publish on Sunday (but which has been leaked), of SNP members who have "swore" [sic] or used abusive terms on social media. 

This invites a similar list, if anyone can be bothered, of Labour supporters who have done the same thing, and I suspect that it would be a lot longer than 50 pages. Nopne of that, however, is likely to improve the mood on social media. 

People who swear, will, shock horror, continue to swear. And the very few people of whatever persuasion, who are downright abusive, will continue to be like that. 

It's life guys. We all do it to some extent. It happens in the pub, in the supermarket, at work, in the bus queue, at the races, and anywhere else you can imagine... Why would Twitter be any different? To some extent we all do it as does main stream media. Private Eye has made it a career...

The whole story may be that the whole thing is a wind up... but I wouldn't put it past Labour at the moment that they have actually wasted time doing this. They seem to be totally lost and with no idea of how to find themselves.

10 comments:

  1. What we are witnessing, I think, is Labours death rattle; in Scotland. They died in the rUK, years ago with their neo liberal attitude, chasing Tory votes ignoring any left wing vote/support that may have had left.
    As Sean Connery said, when playing Allan Quatermain; a tiger is most dangerous, when it knows it's dying. They are lashing out, while clutching at straws, and the seem to be going through the stages of a dying man, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. They are still in a mixture, of the first two stages.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, if it's not, it must be the nearest thing to it. This is pathetic stuff. Rev Stu has tweeted that, having seen the leaked tweets, that at least two of them are direct quotes from Burns! Some others date back 5 years... and yet they could only find 135 nasty tweets.

      Someone else reckoned that 0.019% of SNP members had tweeted offensively.

      And now there is serious doubt that it is legal to do this.

      I wonder who will print the list tomorrow?

      Dying throes right enough.

      Delete
    2. I should add for Labour.

      There are kids starving, and people working two jobs and still having to claim benefits. Get on that, you idiots.

      Delete
  2. I hope I'm in the *ahem* dossier. I mean I'm a superstar ... apparently.

    I tweeted the other day about her nibs having to move out of her wee council house whilst the builders were in carrying out repairs and offered her the use of a tent ... later upgraded to the ramshackled run down garden shed out the back. I was later informed by a well informed individual that my tweet had been read out on SKY News by none other than Kay "I'll keep quiet now because there is a helicopter taking off and they can be quite noisy" Burley!

    I really do hope they produce this dossier in alphabetical format. I'd hate to think that it was being produced in some form of date format with the earliest tweets appearing first. This would mean I'd appear somewhere in the middle of the Dossier ... probably. This will never do for such a superstar as I have now become! LOL

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    Replies
    1. My goodness. We have a star in our midst.

      You really will have to have a picture with Minguin...

      There's nothing wring, however, with suggesting that the queen be subjected to the same sort of treatment that anyone else in the country could expect. If you rely on the public services of the UK, as she does, for everything, you should have very low expectations. That reduces the likelihood of you being disappointed.

      Delete
  3. tris and the cypernats which include tris and Conan who
    is a deeply dark bad man yep !

    Anyways your a bad lot as Nicola says its no good trying to wriggle out
    of your nefarious past nope . I myself am swimming in schadenfreude
    schadenfreude ! schadenfreude ! right up to me smug neck.

    you have been told to go away your are no longer wanted by the snp
    who now wish to be a grown up party and yer an embarrassment
    ( like wot i woz to the new Labour party ).
    so shut up and be quite sshh ! and feck right off snigger

    soon the snp will betray you just wait and see thats what serious
    political partys do


    jimnarlene

    yeah yeah whatever how goes the Oil revenues

    http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0048/00480348.pdf
    Ooops a daisy and down she goes where she stops
    the snp dont know.....

    Still any shortfall can be met with a consequent rise in income tax
    as all Scots will happily share their wealth freely with each other
    unless of course the much vaunted Scottish social solidarity
    is just snp bunk...............we will see o yes we will

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    1. Niko. I'm not on the Labour list. Neither is Conan.

      Maybe you are though.

      Taz was gonna be on the list but he threatened to bite Blair McDougal on the arse... and the big brave lad backed off.

      Seriously, folk are hungry and dying from the results of the Tory policy of rich first last and always...and all the Labour Party wants to do is kick off about some people saying what people have said about politicians since ever there were politicians,

      Delete
    2. Grow up, and oil would still be a bonus.

      Delete