Meanwhile, I have been shouted at by strangers in Tesco’s car park and while I am big enough and ugly enough to take such abuse in my stride, this not necessarily the case with others. The phenomenon of the so-called Cybernats – SNP supporters who use the internet to attack anyone who disagrees with them – has been well aired before, but of late it has taken on a new viciousness. After appearing on the BBC’s Question Time, Kezia Dugdale, a Labour MSP for the Lothians and staunch defender of the United Kingdom, was subjected to a veritable barrage of hate mail via Twitter. One accused her of being a “blackshirt”, evoking memories of the Thirties fascists. Another tweet said the sender would like to see what she looked like “on the end of a bayonet”. When Ms Dugdale reported this to the police, she says she was told the tweet was “not directly threatening enough” and that too much police manpower would be required to track down the miscreant. As of yesterday, she told me she’d received more than 1,000 tweets in the past week – none of them complimentary.