On
11 July 2024 at 22:38 dodmole Said:
Why should myself, a bog standard male (in my opinion) have to change my use of the guid auld Scots language, attitudes and perfectly respectable actions to accommodate the modern language preferences of the rest of the world.
I now consider myself to be in a persecuted minority and as such should receive legal protective rights against the new woke (whatever that is) to go about without being offended the same as everybody else
Interesting that a Scot doesn’t see any connection between woke and his past! Happy with the Highland Clearances are we, and the characterisation of Scots as being mean with money, rowdy, and drunk. Until recent times the whole of Europe thought Scots were uncivilised cannibals, a suspicion supported by a diet of Haggis, Deep Fried Battered Mars Bars, and no fruit or vegetables. Scots die young!
Not long ago, Boris Johnson, whilst editor of the Spectator, published this poem:
The Scotch – what a verminous race!
Canny, pushy, chippy, they’re all over the place,
Battening off us with false bonhomie,
Polluting our stock, undermining our economy.
Down with sandy hair and knobbly knees!
Suppress the tartan dwarves and the Wee Frees!
Ban the kilt, the skean-dhu and the sporran
As provocatively, offensively foreign!
It’s time Hadrian’s Wall was refortified
To pen them in a ghetto on the other side.
I would go further. The nation
Deserves not merely isolation
But comprehensive extermination.
We must not flinch from a solution.
(I await legal prosecution.)
Though Scotiaphobia is somewhat on the rise again, Scots today are pretty much universally respected, at least in my experience. But it was a long painful fight and despite dodmole’s ancestors being on the receiving end of prejudice and worse, he has no sympathy with today’s victims. Pity, because woke is about fighting current racial prejudice, injustice, sexism and inequalities. It’s not about grandad being ordered not to use words, it’s about educating him about when they indicate offensive attitudes. Woke has no legal force: if anyone wants to cause offence by gobbing off, there’s little to stop them. Apart from the risk of being being punched!
Possibly there’s a high element of “I’m all right Jack” in anti-woke sentiment. My dear old dad was fond of singing to the tune of the Interationale: ‘The working class can kiss my *rse, I’ve got the foreman’s job at last‘.
Of course the woke movement has a bonkers element. It’s far from perfect, like the extreme anti-vietnam war protesters in Nixon’s time who thought bringing violence to US streets was logical!
Dave