Who's laughing now?

The online attacks on Susan Calman by the self-appointed guardians of Scotland's dignity should surprise nobody who has been paying attention to the separation debate.

That the debate online has descended to this level is hardly surprising when the behaviour of the SNP leadership and party machine is considered. You need only read the increasingly churlish and chippy press releases produced by SNP HQ and its front organisation YESnp Scotland to see that angry wee nat syndrome is not confined to the outer reaches of cyberspace bampottery.

Furious wee men ( for it is usually men) are employed to churn out ever more bitter and petulant nonsense. They spend their time hissing that they don't need to take lectures from the bastard English. That whoever has contradicted their masters are a disgrace and should be ashamed of themselves. That those who disagree with them are anti-Scottish. That they and Scotland are synonymous; so an attack on them is actually an attack on Scotland and every single one of us. And as they poison the debate with their venom and spite they continue to peddle the lie that they are unrelentingly positive...

This is shenanigans: it is cheap, shallow and divisive politics and it diminshes us.

Every time we see our First Minister enraged not at the iniquities in our society but at something like a magazine making jokes he shames us. Somebody should tell him as gently as they can that when he goes off on one he is not protecting Scotland's reputation, he is making a fool of himself and embarrassing us - he may be a chippy, angry, pathetic wee man but we are better than that.

Whenever a person has to endure the kind of online abuse Susan Calman was subjected to it should be remembered that those patriots twirling their virtual claymores and shrieking abuse don't exist in a vacuum - they are merely an online extension of the ugly, nasty and snide nature of the failing and increasingly flailing campaign currently being waged by the SNP.