By May D'Tollup and Imogen Nation, Our New Investigative Journalists

BBC Scotlandshire has teamed up with Edinburgh regional paper 'The Hootsmon'  to investigate just now deeply the vein of humourless aggression runs within the Yes campaign in Scotlandshire.

Numerous stories in the 'quality' press concerned the (allegedly) dreadful treatment of (alleged) comedian Susan Calman at the hands of (alleged) separatist cybernat scumbags.

In any article concerning a comedian it is tempting to include lots of funny jokes.

On reflection, however, we decided to include the same number as Ms Calman did in her Edinburgh Festival show.

There is, therefore, no humour at all in our article. Stories about her accosting women who were total strangers to her for casual sex are unsuitable for the high moral tone of this channel and, convent educated as we are, we could tell her a thing or two about being on the receiving end of that!

Ms Calman said, “name-calling, swearing and death threats” were marring the independence debate. Though, as she said on HIGNIFY "Fuck it, why bother". Alex Salmond is "a Dalek", she quipped. On her blog, she showed an attractive reticence in her language to those she disagreed with "You patronising twat.  You utter dick. You complete shit head. Fuck off". It is only natural that someone with such sensitivity would be upset by swearing and name-calling.

Sadly, we were quite unable to track down the nasty blog Ms Calman claimed to have been told about by someone who had heard about it.

Despite all of our best efforts, despite great encouragement and support from Danny Alexander MP and his internet search team at GCHQ, and despite the absolutely vitol and almost unlimited funding provided by a Mr Ian Taylor of no. 500,000 Gohe Badboo Taghalob Kuchiq Square, Tehran, Republic of Iran, we have been completely unable to satisfy our brief.

We have unfortunately been unable to uncover a single nasty blog, or even unkind tweet directed toward Ms Calman and - given that her Twitter account has now been deleted by her - we cannot see how we might now proceed with our investigation. We have no reason to suppose, however, that Ms Calman is somehow the only celebrity not to have been the subject of the same abuse that she feels free to dish out to others.

It may well be that she was indeed "accused of betraying my country, of being racist towards my own people and of being a c**t" (oddly enough, an epithet with precisely the same meaning as 'twat').

We have found many examples of such dreadful things being said about a range of people on social media - just not about Susan Calman.

We can only conclude that either (inexplicably) such communications never existed other than on her timeline, or that they have all been systematically removed or hidden by cybernat agents, who appear to have an uncanny facility for all things digital, or publicity agents who wield similar mysterious powers.

However, as Mr Taylor has now decided to rescind his offer to pay our expenses - leaving us quite seriously indebted to several bars and restaurants in both Edinburgh and Glasgow - we have decided in turn to publish the results of our researches to date.

On Facebook, we quickly discovered a large number of apparently pro-union pages which were highly critical of the separation movement and several of its leaders. King amongst those is the wittily-named Alex Salmond is a deluded wanker, which represents a large group of pages on which separatist commentators are regularly abused, threatened and banned. BBC Scotlandshire heartily approves of this form of negative campaigning. "More, more", we cry.

As newcomers to journalism, we were surprised (and impressed) by the Hootsmon's inclusion of the 'death threats' that Calman mentioned in the opening line of their report. That might lead people to think that Calman herself had received such threats, when no such claim had been made, by her at least.

It is a regrettable fact that those in power frequently face threats of violence from the mentally deranged. For example, deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon has been the recipient of numerous 'kill the bitch' tweets from an individual who seemed unconvinced of the case for separation – as are we. Johann Lamont muttered "Lucky bitch! Wish I was in a position where people thought I was important enough to send them to me."

In similar vein, a Labour supporter posted that he wished Alex Salmond's father would die. Psychiatric specialist Dr Koodnae Gieadamn commented, "This kind of threat is usually a transfer of wish fulfilment from someone who resents their own father. A possible candidate would be a rich SLAB MP who is beholden to their Dad for their seat and both resents that and is conscious of the inheritance that would result from a premature death."

We also found an infamous comment on the official Better Together campaign site, now removed, where a unionist supporter mused over how many bullets he would be allowed to fire into the leadership of the SNP. As this remained on the site for several days, while many other posts (mainly from separatist scum) were removed, we can assume that this comment was considered as 'harmless fun' as nobody was actually killed.

Many separatists have quoted Margit Curran saying: “I think if Alex Salmond went under a bus tomorrow – not that I would ask who drove that bus” as evidence of her homicidal tendencies. While some have suggested that Margit can't drive, others have pointed out that she has successfully driven many people, and their principles, out of the Labour Party.

However, in the final analysis, the only threatening behaviour from the Yes side we were able to uncover, was the publication of the new law on “threatening communications” on the internet by the SNP government.

This dreadful piece of legislation is clearly intended as a threat against those who threaten others online. And, as we have shown, these are primarily directed at those in power - sadly power is exercised by the separatists.

That means that the Scottish government is effectively using its dictatorial power to threaten those opponents who use the limited means at their disposal - the internet, the press, TV stations, rich tory donors - and thus silence a great many members of the No campaign, including numerous public figures and unionist politicians, just because they threaten and abuse.

For example, this 18 year old Glasgow University Law student may have to learn the law very fast as Salmond's extra 1,000 police descend on him and charge him with being "drunk and very silly in charge of a keyboard".

To our mind, that is an unacceptable abuse of government power and we condemn it absolutely. It is, as we have finally shown, all the fault of the SNP.

And that has to be a good thing.

Editor's note

Apparently, Gohe Badboo Taghalob Kuchiq, translated from Farsi, means wee smelly sanction-busting shite.

PS to Editor

We collected these tweets from No supporters, but weren't sure whether to include them or not. We'll just bung them in here and let you decide whether they should be made public or not.

 

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