It's been a good week for … terms of endearment
It's been a good week for … terms of endearment
Ey up … preparations to host the Tour de France in Yorkshire have been hit by controversy after the tourist board told volunteers to avoid using traditional greetings like "darling".
Thousands of volunteers have signed up to steward the opening two stages of the Tour when it starts on July 5 and 6. But an online training video sparked complaints because it advised volunteers to avoid words such as "mate", "love" or "darling".
Now Tour organisers have hit back, saying they are keen to preserve the county's identity and maintain the traditional northern greetings when visitors descend on the Dales, despite warnings the phrases "could offend some people".
A Yorkshire tourist board spokesman insisted that the race would "celebrate everything Yorkshire", and said the language warnings were issued to avoid "confusion for our overseas visitors".
"This is not about volunteers taking elocution lessons, it's about making the volunteers aware in the training process that some of our accepted local turns of phrase could get lost in translation."
Commonwealth Games organisers might like to take note. I'm sure visitors from around the world are looking forward to experiencing the quaint vernacular of Glasgow. How they will take to being called "hen" and "doll", though, is anybody's guess. Best stick to "pal". Surely such a friendly term could never be lost in translation.
It's been a bad week for … midges
The tiny tyrants are estimated to cost the Scottish tourist industry £286 million each year in lost revenue. But perhaps they have finally met their match.
After noticing that midges never come near model airplanes in flight, retired electronics professor Alistair Stewart has invented an ingenious device to keep midges at bay: the Bugwisa, a baseball-style cap with a built-in anti-midge fan designed to blow the insects away.
The cap is fitted with solar panels so that in the summer the fan can operate without batteries (although this might be over ambitious, given the Scottish weather). Stewart, from Connel, near Oban, has also come up with a hard hat version for construction workers.
He said: "It can be manufactured for sale for under £10 for the cap and £25 for the hard hat, but I am just an ideas man, I want to find someone to manufacture this for me."
One for the Dragonfly's Den perhaps.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article