Sentencing statement - Indygalling in re: Stuart MacLellan [2010] LPW 13

When Anne McLaughlin went to Holyrood in 2009, replacing the sadly deceased Bashir Ahmad MSP in Glasgow’s SNP parliamentary delegation, I suggested the following addition to our useful ragbag of political concepts:

I want to propose a new term. It’s a useful little word, I think. And is of particular interest to we creaturely characters of the politicised and speculating “blogosphere”. Indeed, I firmly anticipate that its significance and incidence will only increase as time marches by. It is, in short, a good coining investment. But I’m getting ahead of myself in the red heat of the neological prospects. Here is the proposed addition to the lexicon:

To indygal (v.) A state experienced in the early stages of a blogger turned politician’s life when the media discovers their candid reflections on individuals or sensitive subjects on the internet, and immediately seeks to embarrass the fresh-faced politico with lurid incidences and choice examples drawn from their free flowing prose. Frequently a matter for repentance.

That is our theory. Onto the instant case. Be upstanding, prisoner at the Bar -  Twitterer No. 000001A, otherwise known as Stuart MacLellan, would-be Westminster representative of bonny Moray.  Seems that someone (probably at the Sun newspaper) used their day yesterday to dredge through the uninterrupted stream-of consciousness crotchets and minims that were MacLellan’s symphony of tweets on Twitter, noting and reproducing the more jarring, inharmonious things he had to say about various public figures, the blameless and sinless people of Moray themselves – and on, and on, and on. Consult the article above if you wish to peruse the full compliment of chirping comments he made. I’d submit, bearing out the prophecy, that this is the first substantive indygalling we’ve seen of this campaign. But wait! My lord, I protest! Ought twitter to fall under the macro-category of blogging, or is it an alternative social practice and hence, sui generis? Ought the doctrine of indygalling to be distinguished and mclellanising substituted? Sometimes folk describe Twitter as a micro-blogging phenomenon, with its 140 character limit, suggesting that if the limit was inflated, our tweets would turn into full blown birdsong. In short, be indistinguishable from a blog.

Personally, I’d suggest that the distinguishing feature of the two social practices is in terms of immediacy. A tweet is a casual aside. An infinite regress of narcissistic personal occurrences. Life's small chortles and the toadstool thoughts thought to be worth the sharing. A blog entry (typically speaking) is more worked up, more considered. This is somewhat reflected in the fact that generally, more time needs to be spent before the final click exposes your frail reflections to the hungry public. In this sense, we might chart some ambivalence which is the guiltier medium for a putative, scandalous remark – whether blogged or tweeted. Effort suggests involvement, protracted consideration – and as a result, it is harder to shrug off your chortling insult as a bit of casual frippery. Want of casualness equates with cognition equating with culpability. Equally, in the lay psychology of commentary on these matters, there is also the idea of the unguarded and unmediated remark that unconsciously reveals the thinker’s true nature and real opinions, unfiltered by the written niceties and grammatical courtesies of an essay. This theorem, incompatible with but often appealed to alongside our first, takes it that casualness equates with cognition equating with culpability. Really, the short substance of the thing is that you are jiggered either way, hoisted by your own petard, whether it is composed of 140 characters or 1400, strangled by blog or tweet. According to the BBC, this hoisting now seems fatal, the Labour party, after much judicial rumination and equivocation, having determined to give MacLellan his jotters, excising him as their candidate up in Moray - and apparently suspending him from their ruddy gathering of the elect. 

For these reasons, I crave that the court upholds the judge at first instance’s conclusion that this is a case of indygalling simpliciter, deny the candidate's submission that the interlocutors pulping him be recalled and punish the offender in the traditional vaguely hysterical fashion. Which is hereby pronounced for political doom...