Letter to the Scotsman, re Etiquette

Following the comment from a Mr Peter York at the end of this article:

Being only vaguely aware that such people existed, I am very grateful to you for securing the services of an ‘etiquette guru’ to comment on my Twitter habit. However I can’t agree with the suggestion that a few discreet under-the-table text messages represent “the worst sort of behaviour”, especially when that suggestion comes from someone who can, apparently in all seriousness, ask me to “think back to the 1950s”.
If I had sent messages which betrayed a confidence or insulted other guests, of course that would be antisocial. If my blog was full of innuendo, scandal and outright lies (I assume that I needn’t Labour this point) then I’d understand the outrage. But a few harmless tweets at the level of smalltalk really don’t merit condemnation.
I can assure Mr York that I was fully engaged in the conversation (certainly enough to annoy Tavish Scott, whose distaste for hearing Green politics expressed out loud is very clear) and found the experience useful. But I would remind him that the people “on the other end” of those messages are indeed the important ones – members of the public who ultimately paid for the delightful dinner we enjoyed at the Prime Minister’s home. The feedback I’ve had from people who read my posts on Twitter, on Facebook or on my own website was very positive.
Mr York should accept that these new technologies are out there and will only grow easier to engage with in every situation. It’s quite right that politicians should experiment with them. Perhaps we do need to develop some kind of ‘tweetiquette’; social rules about what’s expected. But they won’t be rules grounded in the 1950s, you can be sure of that. If anyone at the table was offended, I’m very sorry. But I’d ask them whether we can’t just all relax a little instead of taking offence. Life’s too short.