Joan McAlpine: A question of tone as well as policies


Joan McAlpine
Few Scottish kids say innit — unless they are standing before the bedroom mirror, pretending to be Dizzee Rascal. So the boy in the dubbed Scottish version of the Labour party’s A Future Fair for All video translates the ubiquitous catchphrase of estuary teenagers into “streetsmart, man . . .”

The policemen, albeit in distinctive Met helmets, say ’ello ’ello in Scottish accents. Well, one of them does. In England, dad is a chap just like you who lives “round the corner” in suburbia, surely. In Scotland, dad worked at Ravenscraig, though he clearly used his redundancy package to pay for elocution lessons. He sounds like he plays rugby for Glasgow Hawks.

This article was posted on 20-Apr-2010, 14:00 by Hugh Barrow.