IT will not have escaped anyone’s notice that the Letters Pages of late have been dominated by two subjects – the continuing fallout from June’s Brexit vote, and the possibility of a second independence referendum. In fact those two key issues have much in common and often become conflated; and such has been the interest that we have had to run several Letters Specials, where the left-hand page is devoted to one topic
I am happy to say that we are still welcoming new correspondents, and have also seen some who have not contributed since the heady (from a Letters Editor’s perspective) days of the independence debate of 2014.
However, life would be dull indeed if all we talked about was politics, and that has been far from the case in the three weeks since I last occupied this slot. On that occasion, I ran through some of our rules and conventions for the benefit of our newbies, but one I forgot to mention was our dislike for gratuitious, personal abuse.
That is not to say that we don’t welcome well-crafted put-downs. We had a fine example of that, aimed at an admirably thick-skinned colleague, from William Thomson of Denny: “I realise it is the responsibility of the Editor to publish columnists who can stimulate debate. But one should also be aware of the physical harm this can induce. My jaw almost broke as it hit the floor whilst reading Mark Smith’s ill-informed and ethnocentric article on fracking…”
There has been been much else to lighten the tone of late. In response to a fine Robert McNeil column on Scots words, Neil MacVicar of Greenock wrote: “He mentions Bampot, Glaikit and Stooshie. What a smashing name for a firm of solicitors or estate agents. As would be Peely Wally and Hairy, or Manky, Mingin and Mawkit or Dreich, Dour and Crabbit ...”
Actually, my favourite Scots word was supplied by the inestimable Jimmie Macgregor, who was describing the niffy aroma of Loch Lomond goats (you learn a lot from the Letters Pages), which he attributed to the prevalence of chlorophyll in their diet. “In the 1960s,” he told us, “there was much promotion of chlorophyll as a natural deodorant in such products as toothpaste and oxter-skoosher…”
Still on a vaguely scientific theme, following up a piece of research in The Herald that cows yield less milk when subjected to country music – Nobel judges please take note – Ian W Thomson of Lenzie suggested: “If, as a cow, you are having a bad day, your spirits are unlikely to be lifted by the strains of Nobody’s Child and Crying Time. Why not let them have the sound of Green Green Grass of Home and watch the milk production soar?”
Of course, while such levity is welcome, we will always find ourselves back in the realm of politics; but even there, humour is to be found. In the midst of a long-running debate on the woes of the Labour Party, Wilf O’Malley brought us back to the days of Clement Attlee, a man who he said made the most of his talents and defended himself with a poem: “Few thought he was even a starter./ Some thought themselves much smarter./ But he finished PM, CH and OM. /An Earl and a Knight of the Garter.
That seems a good juncture at which to end. Good knight.
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