Dear nationalists replying to my tweet criticising the FM's use of her personal Twitter account for government business,

The fact that the example I chose is to do with the life-threatening covid pandemic seems to have caused you particular upset, the implication being that I somehow don’t care about people dying.

If you could raise your sights from the specific example to the general point you’ll realise that my concern is to do with the use of a personal/SNP account for government business.

This confuses what the proper roles are of parties and government respectively in a democracy. If the SNP can’t tell the difference, democracy is *not* safe in their hands.

In addition, various people have said they’re blocked by her personal account. Since most of her government news is not tweeted on her official @ScotGovFM account they are excluded on Twitter from learning that news.

Some of you believe her @NicolaSturgeon account is ‘official’. It isn’t. It’s private. I’ve had that confirmed by a Scot Gov reply to an FOI request I made.

So the many tweets on that account about government business are either written by her personally or by an aide/SNP employee who is neither civil servant nor spad.

Some of you point out that her personal account has many more followers than her Scot Gov account so using it for govt news is justified. But maybe far fewer follow the govt account because it is mostly unused.

Some of you think I’m petty, a ‘funatic’ (sic), am nit-picking, need to get a grip, am just taking cheap shots, should shut up, and support someone they call ‘Bozo … down south’. Fair enough, though none of these refute my original point.

So, I’ve kept plenty of you engaged today. I don’t think anyone is going to change my view so that’s it from me on the subject. Feel free to continue a debate amongst yourselves.