Scots
The Englishman and Shuggie don’t normally agree, but they agree that Scots is a dialect of English. It isn’t really. At least, not of mainstream English. It developed from northern Anglo Saxon independently of the southern English language. That’s because the Anglo Saxon settlements stretched deep into modern Scotland.
So can we have that land back? After all, if it was Anglo once, it should be forever Anglo.
UPDATE: Right Wing Prof, a proper linguist, has posted about the difference between Scots, Scots English and English here. Recommended read.
Terrorists
Everyone’s getting very cross about the idea that the families of dead terrorists should be paid compensation along with their victims. The problem is that this equivalence is the whole basis of the current peace* in Northern Ireland. It’s what allows former terrorists to be ministers of state over there.
If anyone is paid compensation, and I’m not sure why they should be, then the existing logic means they all should be.
* I decided not to use scare quotes for this word. But it isn’t really peace. It’s just a more acceptable level of violence than the last one.
