Scotland
in the
heat
The Cafe
I have been reading in your organ (for want of a better word) much content about the apparently tiresome habit of mis-spelling names McDaimid, McCaig, Alisdair Gray and the extent to which this is getting the goat of SR’s editor. The miserable little mix-up with Dennis Lee seems to have bothered him as well.
I’d like to point out that, whether we like it or not (and I don’t at all), things have moved on and we need to ignore these trifles or we’ll go mad. ‘Moved on’ seems to have been invented as a concept by Tony Blair and he demonstrated eloquently why, in his case, it was a good idea, as otherwise we would still be looking at things ‘unmoved on’ for years.
So having ‘moved on’ we should take stock of where we are now are and that is a place that your erudite editor has not yet reached apparently.
In the ‘moved on’ world, the Herald reported the most unfortunate heart troubles of someone called Derek Johnstone in lieu of front page news of Mubarak’s fall in Egypt.
The BBC news keeps us posted on weather as news, celebrity events and gameshow results to the non-priority of all sorts of other real news stories. University graduates are at ease with the language fluidity of ‘I done that’ and have no cause to be concerned about whether a principle is a principal or how one might spell quite simple words, never mind names with odd Scottish origins.
The ‘moved on’ world is a land of the laissez faire and, before we know it, the interpretation of language will be assisted by the fun of quite a lot of guesswork as to what anything means.
John Macmillan
Ah weel, good sirs – and sisters – at the SR…
The mis-spelling thing has certainly caught on. Watching a repeat of an episode of the otherwise excellent BBC4 series ‘The Men who Built the Liners’, I was appalled when the caption ‘Jimmie’ Reid was attributed to the late trade union firebrand. The effect was not unlike a midge – or, indeed, midgie – attaching its sting to my neck.
If anyone had ever called Jimmy Reid to book by yelling ‘See you, Jimmie!’ in his direction, they would have received an appropriate response.
Re the Midgie appeal for an original Scottish quotation, the one my grandfather utilised when setting out for work was a belter. Making the sign of the crucifix, he would utter: ‘Ma bunnet, ma specs, ma wallet, ma piece’.
Priceless.
Barney MacFarlane
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Today’s banner
Winter sunset over
the Clyde
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
The ratings agencies
are behaving like
financial terrorists
Raymond Soltysek
Just what on earth are we doing designing government policy which specifically panders to the subversive, treasonous behaviour of the
financial sector?
Raymond Soltysek was born in Barrhead and is a graduate of Glasgow University. He is a teacher and lecturer
