I AM fully behind Bill Wilson's audacious move to have supermarkets give their products controversial old Scots names, such as "tatties", "tumshies", and "brambles". As you can imagine, the bespectacled MSP's idea has caused a furore in Scotia, the country opposed to itself. Last night, rioting broke out in parts of Dumfriesshire and Greater Glasgow, with effigies of Bill burned and calls for him to be imprisoned for between 17 and 32 years.
Poor Bill. He's sometimes thought loopy by the Nobody People, but this is merely a result of having Too Much Brain. TMB results in an energy blockage between the heid and the body and, since the body is concerned with earthly contact, the TMB-suffere
r appears semi-detached from reality.
I don't have time to go into this further – thank God, as my Satnav is showing a dead-end – but it's a creditable and authoritative explanation of Bill's situation. Suffice to say, TMB can be cured by seven pints of Guinness, a lukewarm pie from a ramshackle kiosk, and attendance at a Scottish league football game (provided the patient indulges in swearing and vein-popping fury).
To make matters worse, Bill was some kind of scientist, specialising in mouse droppings, though he denies the allegation and claims his work was really about viruses. I've decided not to believe him on this, as I prefer the version involving the mouse droppings. It's my training as a journalist. I can't help it.
However, there's no doubting the reports detailing his tumshie initiative. Wouldn't it be lovely? The Scots words sound so homely. They resound in the soul. But not in the soul of the Scottish Retail Consortium, if it has one. Its sweat-drenched spokesman erupted furiously: "There will often be people from other parts of the country who might not understand these words!" This is what top philosophers call bilge. People from other parts of the country – presumably the UK – would love some local character. Just as I would, were I ever in the unlikely situation of visiting another part of the country.
Why would visitors have to know the words anyway? Wouldn't they recognise potatoes when they saw them? Supermarkets, as I've complained ineptly before, are already over-centralised, resulting in life-size cardboard cut-outs of English football players greeting you in the aisles, not to mention special DVD sales of all Cleethorpes Tigers home rugby matches.
At least, Asda in Peterheid had a go when it changed its welcome sign to "Come awa in", and "Always low prices" to "Gweed bittie chaiper", which was arguably going too far.
I don't like either the expression "First Meinister" on the Scottish Government's website. "Meinister" is horrible, that "mein" sounding "mean", and reminiscent of the most awful (if Irish-derived) word deployed by Scots – "Fenian", pronounced "Feenyin" with an ugly, thin-lipped snarl. Anyone outwith academia uttering the word "Fenian" is almost certainly a lifeform from the sewer. You should spray them with something until the authorities arrive.
Bill, meanwhile, should be sprayed with praise. He has incurred the wrath of the Labour Party for Wealth and England, with one MP peddling the risible old sophistry that all politicians should be focused on the recession, all day, every day. But if Bill were to dedicate the rest of his days to the tumshiefication of Scotland, his life will not have been in vain. Not for the most part, anyway.
If only they'd called in Highlighter ManTHE odd, and somehow inappropriate sounding, word "redaction" has been on many citizens' lips this week. "This redaction is a right caper," they say. Or: "If I ever caught anyone indulging in redaction, I would boot them below the waist."
"Redaction", at its simplest, is the editing of something for publication. When the something under advisement is MPs' expenses, redaction comes close to censorship. Yada-yada, some of you say. Nothing shocks us now. That's a dangerous state of affairs, but I understand how it came about. You cannot be shocked every day. It's too wearing. We've had eight weeks of MPs' expenses scandals, and there's only so far the jaw can drop before it must be raised again.
I'd just retracted my own jaw when it fell once more with a clang as I read about the cost of blacking out interesting details of expenses claims that might have amused the lieges. That cost? £1 million. All together now, in the tones of a wolf that has just stood on a tack: how-ow-ow-ow?
You know my views on this sort of thing. The simplest activity carried out in civic or corporate life always costs ludicrous, curiously rounded sums. How-ow-ow can it cost £1 million to take a thick black pen to sections of a document?
In the world of superheroes, I am known as Highlighter Man. I cannot read a text without highlighting some improving or illuminating passage. Although highlighting and blacking are technically opposed as textual activities, they involve similar expenditures of time and labour. I buy the highlighters in bulk, so they work out about 30p each. There's no further cost involved. If it were my job, I might bill it somewhere between gardening at £10 an hour and lawyering at £1,000. So call it £11. I'd have to spend nearly 91,000 hours on the document to make the work cost £1 million. It's riddickerless. They just make these figures up and charge them to anybody daft enough to pay (that'll be you, mate, the taxpayer).
Between this expenses nonsense, the banks and the big corporate bonuses, normal citizens like us have had glimpses of another economic world, a disgraceful and unethical one that we all wish we could join.
