It has been an unusual few weeks in the Scottish political blogosphere. Already, a number of bloggers had apparently lost motivation and were openly wondering if they should continue. Since then, a number of blogs have closed down, apparently due to external pressures.

Firstly, Wardog was closed down after journalists from a number of major newspapers sought to write stories about it. The angle was that the blog was pretty close to the bone and potentially offensive. Was it acceptable behaviour for an employee of a university?

Then, the author of the Universality of Cheese was “outed” as Michael Russell’s office manager. Mark MacLachlan had to close down his blog and quit his job. The added twist to the story was that Michael Russell, an SNP Government minister, has been a major advocate of new media such as blogging within the Scottish Government. It remains to be seen if this scandal has an adverse impact on the admirable aim of using new web technologies in government.

At the weekend, Subrosa opted to close her blog, apparently out of fear that she was going to be “outed” as well. As the weekend passed and the Sunday newspapers were published without event, the blog has since re-opened.

[Update: Please see Subrosa's comment below for a clarification on the information in the above paragraph.]

The author of Advanced Media Watch appears to have decided to keep his blog closed. Meanwhile, even Scotland’s top SNP blogger, Jeff Breslin of SNP Tactical Voting, was also involved in a minor stooshie.

I have seen it written by more than one person that it feels as though the Scottish blogosphere is “under attack”. Maybe under attack is putting it too strongly, but certainly some big giants are peering into this particular goldfish bowl just now.

There have been some interesting articles about the blogosphere by journalists lately. Iain Macwhirter has waded in once again, with a rather sensible analysis. Joan McAlpine also penned this interesting take on Scottish political blogging.

But as far as the scandal goes, it appears as though not all blogs are affected. It is a sub-set of blogs. The common thread is easy to spot. All of the bloggers involved are SNP supporters.

There are two possible theories as to why. One explanation — the one favoured by nationalists — that the “Labour establishment” in the Scottish media has stitched them up.

More likely is the idea that this is an effect of the “cybernat” phenomenon. Some of the bloggers who have been put under the microscope over the past few weeks could not be compared with the cybernats. But some were worse than others, and certainly one or two of them sailed too close to the wind.

Those who sailed the closest had to shut their blogs down. I felt that some of these blogs, in their better moments, were lacking in rigour. In their worst moments… well, the news reports have let you know about that. I should point out that this description by no means applies to all of the blogs that have been caught up in the recent fracas.

There may be a temptation among some to put this down to the fact that bloggers can be anonymous. That was certainly the conclusion of Iain Macwhirter. However, the cybernat phenomenon does not have much to do with anonymity (although that is an aspect of it, and apparently sock puppet accounts are rife).

But the fact is that the person who ran Wardog, the first blog to take a hit, was not anonymous. His name was displayed on his blog, in addition to his occupation and the fact that he was a lecturer! Clearly he was not ashamed of the way he presented his opinions, even if he had to relent when challenged about it. Nor is Jeff at SNP Tactical Voting anonymous (although it is totally unfair to compare his rather minor incident with the closures of the other blogs).

There is no doubt that the ability to be anonymous on the internet is abused by many, including a high proportion of cybernats. But there can be sound reasons for wanting to be anonymous. There may be those whose blogs are innocuous, but who prefer to remain anonymous in case it upsets their employer or someone close to them.

Others may blog anonymously as whistle-blowers of a sort. Think of PC David Copperfield or Civil Serf. A different set may like to blog for entertainment, but prefer to keep their privacy, like Abby Lee / Zoe Margolis or Belle de Jour.

The problem that has hit the Scottish blogosphere in the shape of cybernats is not as a result of anonymity. The problem is the fact that some SNP activists just get too excited for their own good. SNP activists in general are known for being particularly boisterous, excitable and even aggressive. On the internet, some become absolutely feral.

As I have said before, I have absolutely no doubt that the cybernats are a very small minority of SNP activists. It is a tiny proportion who get a bit too excited and don’t properly think through the consequences of their actions. It goes without saying that some of Scotland’s best and most clear-thinking bloggers are SNP supporters.

But the cybernat issue has bubbled under for too long. For a couple of years the phenomenon has been doing the SNP a great deal of damage in terms of its image. Perhaps it was easily dismissed as the hidden nocturnal ramblings of a small few in the comments section of a dying newspaper’s website. Maybe blogging was not mainstream enough for it to concern them.

It’s different when Sunday newspapers start to take notice and write articles about it though. And not just a one-off — a sustained burst targeting multiple blogs.

Now it is said that Alex Salmond has asked SNP activists to shape up and play nicely online. You just wonder why he hasn’t done it before now, when it was too late.

While some seem to believe that the Scottish political blogosphere is “under attack”, and that this can only be a bad thing, the truth is more nuanced than that. This is an overdue weeding-out of the dreg-ends of the gutter of the blogosphere.

Bloggers should take this not as a threat. It is a warning, but also an opportunity. As Will Patterson says:

…we can raise our game, answer the charges with the positive, celebrate the good things we get up to and in so doing, make the critics look like muppets, simply by proving them wrong.

Or, as someone else put it to me, the blogosphere will be “leaner, cleaner and keener” from now on. It is all about bloggers engaging their brains a bit more and becoming a more savvy about what they say and do. Overall, the blogosphere will be stronger in the end.

Other interesting takes

As you expect with a story about blogging, bloggers have been all over it. Here are some of my favourites:

• Bloggers’ dilemma – Go Lassie Go
• Night of the hard drives – SNP Tactical Voting
• Blogging: ex mea sententia – Ideas of Civilisation
• Ghosts of blogs past – J. Arthur MacNumpty

This week in F1 has mostly been about the FIA’s diarrhoea of the press release. Rather than looking for a compromise, they have instead gone on the attack, launching press release after press release and slamming the door shut on Fota’s suggestions (oh, and saying goodbye to Lola — good work, Max!)

This week the ACEA, the European Car Manufacturers’ Association, came out to say that the “current governance of the sport can’t continue”. The FIA’s retort was predictably arrogant and bitter. One thing that particularly interested me was this irrelevant paragraph at the end:

The FIA understands that Porsche did not support ACEA’s Formula One resolution and has instructed the ACEA secretariat to make this clear in response to any press enquiries.

Grasping at straws, this was the one thing the FIA found to attack the ACEA with (and how typical it is of Max to go on the attack with a straw man like this rather than methodically argue their case — probably because their case is filled with holes). It’s odd that they should find the view of Porsche within the ACEA so important. This is a manufacturer which was last involved in F1 way back in 1991, and not very successfully either. They have shown very little interest in returning to F1.

Indeed, a certain revelation last year put paid to any slim chance that Porsche might enter F1 while Max Mosley is in charge. Wolfgang Porsche said last year: “After the affair with Max Mosley and the women it would not be very savoury to get involved (in Formula One) now.”

Funny how Max Mosley didn’t pay so much attention to Porsche’s views then, isn’t it?

It strikes me as odd that Mosley should bang on and on about how the current recession means that the manufacturers must be told how much they will be able to spend. Somehow I think the ACEA is in a much better position to know where than manufacturers stand.

Yesterday, the FIA released to the media a further exchange of letters between the FIA and Fota. Presumably this is again supposed to show Fota in a bad light. But Fota’s letter is conciliatory in tone and the content clearly seeks a compromise. Fota propose solutions in four key areas. Max Mosley’s response? Four doors slammed shut.

On governance, Mosley wants the teams to agree to extend an 11-year-old Concorde Agreement and from that point negotiate forwards. This would involve the teams placing a huge amount of trust in the FIA, and the FIA have shown themselves to be a distinctly untrustworthy organisation. Slam.

On resource restriction, the FIA still contends that “a fundamental problem with the Fota proposal was the absence of a clear figure”. In other words, unless the budget cap is on the table, the FIA will not discuss it. Slam.

On the two-tier system, the FIA confirms that even though it says there will be no two-tier system in F1 next season, the technical regulations will still in fact be rigged in favour of teams running the Cosworth engine which will not have a limit on its performance, as all other engines do. Slam.

Bye-bye compromise. And it’s all thanks to Max Mosley. The letter looks as though it was formulated in order to tweak the teams’ tails. It leaves F1 facing the serious prospect of a breakaway.

It pains me to say it, but I am beginning to find the idea of a breakaway very appealing. By the FIA’s own admission, next year’s budget capped cars will not perform to F1 standard. All of the top teams in F1 currently do not stand on the FIA’s side, and the most promising of the new teams were not given a slot on the entry list last week. As things stand, the FIA Championship will have no teams of a high pedigree.

As for drivers, as things stand the FIA Championship will have no Champions on the grid. Fernando Alonso, Felipe Massa and Mark Webber have all spoken out against the FIA’s budget cap proposals, lamenting the fact that it would bring to an end the notion of F1 being the pinnacle of motorsport. All three drivers would sooner drive in a breakaway series than drive in a budget capped series.

Fernando Alonso:

I prefer to race in any other category before in the new F1. A model similar to GP2 or F3 is not interesting for any driver, for any sponsor or for any circuit or television network. In that case it would be a category without any sense.

Felipe Massa:

…we need to look seriously at what is the best option: as the teams appear to be united, then maybe it is time to look at doing something different that could be better for the sport.

Mark Webber:

Collectively everyone has played a role in trying to help and protect the sport and you just see all that effort down the years being devalued or diluted through some pretty radical ideas.

It’s good to have some stability, to be able to predict what’s going to happen, not have different things going on every six months.

All the drivers share the same view. We want to drive for the best teams and race against the best drivers. If it’s not the FIA Formula 1 world championship, so be it. It’ll still be the most prestigious championship.

Mark Webber’s opinion is particularly useful to pay attention to, as he the most senior member of the GPDA, the F1 drivers’ union, to have a race seat. He therefore has an intimate knowledge of what the drivers are thinking, and he has pointed out that “All the drivers have the same view.”

So the teams are against the FIA. The drivers are against the FIA. And the fans are almost universally against the FIA (see, for example, here and here).

I sense that there are a few journalists who have taken the FIA’s side. However, it is well known that journalists who speak out against the FIA sometimes find themselves having “problems”. After The Sunday Times received a writ for libel from Max Mosley following a column written by Martin Brundle, he had this to say:

I’m tired of what I perceive as the “spin” and tactics of the FIA press office, as are many other journalists. I expect my accreditation pass for next year will be hindered in some way to make my coverage of F1 more difficult and to punish me. Or they will write to ITV again to say that my commentary is not up to standard despite my unprecedented six Royal Television Society Awards for sports broadcasting.

The FIA vets journalists, so they must be seen as another F1 institution that is inherently biased towards the FIA’s point of view. In that sense, it is amazing that a few journalists have decided to speak out. See, for instance, Richard Williams (who I believe does not attend grands prix anyway as Maurice Hamilton is The Guardian’s main F1 correspondent) and Ed Gorman.

Unless the unthinkable happens and Max Mosley capitulates, we as fans (who have been given no say by the FIA, unlike Fota who have conducted proper market research) will have to endure his rotten vision of F1 anyway. At least with a breakaway we will have a choice.

What do we want? Max Mosley’s dungeon dictatorship which, like all dictatorships, will run his playthings into the ground? Or the best drivers racing the best cars at the best circuits? It’s surely a simple decision.

It’s no secret that the Scottish media is going through a particularly tough time at the moment. In a sense, the past decade or so can probably be described as one long tough time. Job cuts have been piled upon job cuts. With sales plummeting, advertising revenues shrinking and the uncertain world of new media, the credit crunch is simply the icing on the cake.

Just yesterday it was announced that seventy jobs at Trinity Mirror will go once production of the Daily Record and the Sunday Mail merges into a single operation. That amounts to a quarter of editorial staff.

The state of the Scottish press was one of the subjects discussed on Newsnight Scotland yesterday (from 18:07). BBC Scotland’s business and economy editor Douglas Fraser (himself a former Herald journalist) noted that when The Herald and the Sunday Herald did something similar, more people requested redundancy than the Herald Group was actually looking for. On his blog he wrote:

It doesn’t say much about working at those heavier titles to find management has even more voluntary redundancies than they had wanted.

It’s worth remembering also that last year staff at those newspapers held strikes in protest at cuts. But it might not be just the Herald group of newspapers which has become a more difficult place to work. Costs at all newspapers are constantly being cut, but the newspapers are churning out just as much content as before. If anything, they are producing more content as a result of the 24 hour news cycle, and the need to keep websites constantly updated.

Today I have received an email informing me that North Lanarkshire Council has (presumably accidentally) published details of shortlisted candidates for the role of Head of Corporate Communications and Marketing. The job went to Stephen Penman, who used to be deputy editor of the Sunday Herald.

I am reluctant to elaborate too far further in case it annoys any of the people concerned. But the list has been published publicly, albeit without forenames, so you may be able to join the dots. My informant seems certain that the list contains a number of big names from various newspapers and public affairs firms.

No doubt the job of Head of Communications at a local council tends to attract candidates with a background in journalism and public affairs. But the calibre of these applicants is quite striking. There is an Associate Editor for the Scottish version of a major UK-wide newspaper; Group Content Editor for a major Scottish newspaper group; possibly Group Political Editor for a national newspaper group and a columnist for a Scottish newspaper. There is also at least one person, and maybe two, who currently work for private sector public affairs / PR companies.

Whatever you make of it, it has spurred someone to email me. He says: “Considering these names there is a rush to get out of the dead tree press and the private sector and into the safe harbour of the public sector.”

It’s pretty clear that the Scottish press is in turmoil just now. With devolution, there is more politics going on than there used to be, and it is the media’s job to keep on top of it. But ever since devolution, Scottish papers have increasingly struggled to make ends meet in the face of the internet revolution. The government is stronger, but the media is weaker — and that’s a dangerous situation to be in.

It seems likely that this town ain’t big enough for both The Scotsman and The Herald. Many see it as a foregone conclusion that both papers will be dead before long unless something radical is done. Recently Stewart Kirkpatrick, former editor of Scotsman.com, wrote a blog post on what such radical action may look like.

With the latest news coming from Trinity Mirror, it looks as though Scotland’s main tabloid newspaper will similarly struggle. It seems as though even in the best case scenario for the Scottish media, a lot more jobs are going to go and the Scottish press is going to be a lot weaker.

Earlier today I had written about a small pile of troubles that have hit the BBC over its choice of commentary team for next season. Today it has emerged that the BBC has yet another problem — and this time it is with that despicable little man, Alan Donnelly.

The Daily Mail reports that Alan Donnelly — former Labour MEP (explains a lot), the FIA’s representative on earth and chief defender of Max Mosley — is expending his energy trying to dissuade the BBC from employing Martin Brundle. This is despite the fact that Brundle is widely regarded as one of the best pundits in any sport, never mind F1.

There is clear evidence that the FIA has attempted to silence its critics on a number of occasions. Martin Brundle himself has been the victim of the FIA’s bullying tactics.

Last year, at the height of the Stepneygate controversy, Martin Brundle wrote in his regular column for The Sunday Times what many others believe — that McLaren were victims of a witch-hunt, a play in Max Mosley’s personal vendetta against Ron Dennis. For that, the FIA threatened to sue The Sunday Times.

In his regular column, reacting to that news, Brundle revealed that he has been threatened by the FIA a number of times in the past:

I expect my accreditation pass for next year will be hindered in some way to make my coverage of F1 more difficult and to punish me. Or they will write to ITV again to say that my commentary is not up to standard despite my unprecedented six Royal Television Society Awards for sports broadcasting. So be it.

Now the FIA appear to have stepped up a gear and are pleading with the BBC not to hire this immensely popular commentator. It is clear that, if there was not a witch-hunt against McLaren, there is certainly a witch-hunt against Martin Brundle. It is yet further evidence that the FIA is scared of open debate and is only interested in hiding the truth. Mosley’s father would have been proud.

It cannot have escaped your attention that yesterday The News of the World ran an extraordinary story about the FIA President Max Mosley. The paper has alleged that Mosley was involved in a “sick Nazi orgy with 5 hookers”. If the allegations are true, it could have big consequences in the political world of F1.

Like many F1 fans I am no fan of Mosley. Many have pointed out that there will be a fair few people — Jackie Stewart, Ron Dennis, Damon Hill, Martin Brundle — who must have been chuckling to themselves as they read the story. I chuckled as well. I would dearly love to see Max Mosley leave the FIA Presidency for any reason, and this looks like a pretty good opportunity.

Then again, what Max Mosley does in his private life should remain private. He is entitled to have whatever sex life he wants among consenting adults. I am not a fan of the News of the World brand of journalism which mainly involves secretly prowling around people’s bedrooms, where journalists really shouldn’t be.

Nevertheless, the “Nazi” connotations really take these allegations over the top. My impression is that the Nazi element of the story has probably been exaggerated by the News of the World. We all know how the whiff of Hitler sells papers. And Max Mosley’s connections with fascism are well-known and have not been hidden. He is the son of Oswald Mosley, Britain’s most infamous fascist. It is not too hard to imagine someone in the towers of News International concocting this story. The allegations are almost cartoon-like in their extremity.

It is useful to point out here that Max Mosley is apparently engaged in legal action with another News International newspaper, The Sunday Times, over an article written by Martin Brundle. So News International has an interest in undermining Mosley.

Nevertheless, there is seemingly damning video evidence. The footage is blurry and at no point do you get a truly clear view of “Max Mosley’s” face. The stills on the News of the World website are more convincing. But it wouldn’t be the first time a tabloid newspaper has faked such a video.

Nonetheless, the allegations in themselves are damaging to Mosley’s credibility. While everyone has the right to a private sex life, making light of Nazism and concentration camp victims in this way is rather different. A lot of people will be ready to make a connection with Mosley’s autocratic approach to ruling F1. Then there is the suggestion that the FIA is increasingly filled with Mosley lackeys and yes-men suppressing debate.

What is interesting is the fact that so few news outlets are covering this story. As F1Fanatic points out, the fact that so few dedicated Formula 1 websites are even mentioning this story is telling in itself. There has been not a peep on this massive F1 story from any of the biggest F1 websites. Look on Autosport, Pitpass, Grandprix.com, Planet-F1, ITV-F1, Crash.net — you’ll draw a blank.

This is becoming an all-too familiar reality. Remember last year when the FIA failed to properly censor sensitive documents? Not a peep from any of those websites either.

Mosley effectively controls the F1 media, even “independent” websites such as Pitpass. This is yet another reason why the F1 blogs and podcasts are becoming more important than the mainstream media. We do not need to bend over backwards to please the powers-that-be to get accreditation or even avoid an ear bashing.

The media should be able to stand up to Max Mosley’s bullying attitude. The fact that they don’t even appear to attempt to counter it any more makes me despair. The sooner Mosley is gone, the better. And if it takes a sex scandal to do it, then so be it.