BORIS Johnson has resorted to calling the Leader of the Opposition "a mutton-headed old mugwump" in one of the nation’s redtops. This from a man who appears not to own a comb and if he does, has not been instructed on the correct usage. Still sporting a trapped-in-a-timewarp primary school haircut, it seems to me that he ought to be a bit more careful about throwing insults about.
This is, after all, a man who represents UK plc at the highest level most days looking like Oor Wullie on a bad hair day.
Anne-Marie Colgan,
10 Castle Wynd,
Bothwell.
BORIS Johnson’s use of the word mugwump to describe Jeremy Corbyn had political commentators and academics scrambling for their dictionaries to discover its meaning. According to the Oxford English, it means “a great man, a boss, a person who holds aloof, esp. from party politics”, derived from the native American Algonquin tribe’s word for a “great chief”. So was Mr Johnson, with tongue in cheek, actually being complimentary to Mr Corbyn? No, as very old Stirling local newspaper readers would have known.
In the early half of the 20th century, strong rivalry existed between The Stirling Observer and The Stirling Sentinel. Vigorous debate between the two took place in their leader columns. Both editor-proprietors resorted to verbal fisticuffs by disrespectfully and respectively referring to each other as the Craigs Mugwump and the Stirling Cesspool. In Scotland, a mugwump had come to mean a curmudgeon, as exemplified by Victor Meldrew. Trading insults was all part of the give-and take of newspaper banter and ignored risk of legal niceties such as defamation.
Eventually it was The Sentinel which succumbed to circulation thrombosis (cutting off of circulation by clots), and The Stirling Observer survives in The Craigs of that city.
George W Downie,
3 Summerhill Avenue, Larkhall.
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