A Foray into Cybernattery

For the uninitiated, Cybernat (occasionally Cybergnat) is the derogatory term used by the Labour Political and Media Establishment in Scotland (LPMES) for any Scottish person with an internet connection who supports Scottish independence.  Merely posting "I'm thinking of voting yes in the independence referendum" on your Facebook page or Twitter status is enough to qualify you as a Cybernat.  The term was apparently coined by Lord Foulkes.

You'd think, from the"nat" element of the term, that all Cybernats are members of the Scottish National Party. That is not the case, however much the LPMES would like to portray them as such. Cybernats may be non-aligned politically (the great majority seem to be), from the Scottish Green Party, the Scottish Socialist Party, the Labour Party (Labour For Independence), the Liberal Democrats (Liberal Democrats for Independence), Tories in Scotland who fancy independence don't seem to have an official organisation but I presume they probably exist and, of course, some Cybernats are indeed members of the SNP.  Moreover, anyone who has the temerity to question any utterance of the LPMES in cyberspace automatically becomes a Cybernat whether they are for, against or undecided about Scottish independence.

I can imagine folk from abroad reading this thinking "Why do you speak of the LPMES? Surely there is an SNP Government in Scotland? Aren't the SNP the Establishment?"  Welcome to Scotland!  You see the Scottish Parliament and the electoral system for it were set up by Labour with the express aim of seeing off the threat from the SNP and securing Scotland's place both in the United Kingdom and as a Labour Hegemony.  Scotland had been run as a virtual Labour hegemony since the Tories started their long decline into oblivion in 1959 to where we famously now have more pandas in Scotland than Tory MPs. 

The great majority of the press and broadcasting organs such as the BBC fell in with this Labour hegemony so completely that they really can't (or won't) see that they are part of it. So much so that even half way through the SNP's second term of office, a doyenne of the LPMES and BBC broadcaster Lesley Riddoch can, in all seriousness, casually write the SNP off as a "protest party" akin to UKIP in England in The Scotsman.  However, I dare say she would scream from the hilltops that she is not biased towards Labour.

An SNP Government wasn't meant to happen at all, let alone twice in a row.  Far less was the SNP meant to provide far and away the two most competent administrations Scotland has seen since the Scottish Parliament reopened in 1999.

Both among Labour politicians, and their lackeys in the media the complacency and sense of entitlement is staggering.  They cannot see that the Scottish people have woken up to the corruption, nepotism, expenses fiddling and the rank incompetence that pervades Labour in Scotland.  Couple that with the fact that sales of traditional newspapers are plummetting and canny Scots are waking up to the fact that watching TV on catch-up  services on the internet doesn't require a TV Licence (goodbye BBC gravy train) and you get the dual threat both to the survival of a Political Establishment and the livelihood of a Media Establishment who have become nothing more than Churnalists - churning out the press releases from said Political Establishment to whom they've been cosying up for years.

Rather than look at themselves for solutions, they have drummed up the big scary bogeyman they call the Cybernat, the ordinary Scot with an internet connection who can not only pick and choose where he gets his or her news and entertainment from (and stop buying it from the mainstream media) but, being Scots, when they see tripe spewing forth from these LPMES organs, they are not backward at questioning it.  Some of them do the questioning more politely and objectively than others and a very small minority may admittedly be described as verging on the lunatic fringe.

However, having followed one particular story closely for a week which involves both of my pet bugbears - a very minor celebrity and appalling churnalism -  and seen the gross distortion of the facts that, in some cases would have been more at home in Der Stürmer, I have decided to become a proud Cybernat.