Winner of the Caledonian Mercury/Jura ‘Comment of the Week’ award
February 15, 2010 by Stewart Kirkpatrick · 20 Comments
I am proud to announce this week’s winner of the Caledonian Mercury “comment of the week” award.
We were impressed with Disillusioned’s trenchant attack on some aspects of Scottish politics in response to Robert McNeil’s latest sketch.
disillusioned:
While these pygmies play politics with people’s lives for their own political gain.
We the public can only look on in disgust.
Elmer as you so aptly name him ,sat in stoney silence as his peers in Westminster(no pun intended ..maybe) gorged at the trough.While Scotland has some of the worst social deprivation in the developed world, people losing their jobs every day ,houses being repossessed in record numbers.#etc etc.
Meanwhile Elmer chooses to home in on lunches and letters on behalf of a SNP constituent.
Disillusioned, therefore, wins a prize from Jura whisky.
Previous winners:
Dave
Nope, sorry, it shouldn’t win.Why? The writing is great, that’s true. But it’s a radio play. The acting and writing is first class, but there was absolutely no understanding of the visual medium made while writing the movie script. The camera work, and camera direction, is awful, truly awful (bog-standard BBC overexposed work, does no BBC camerman understand what an iris control is for? They used to, once upon a time.).
Now, to some degree that is the direction, and sloppy D.o.P. work, rather than the script itself, but there appears to be no attempt in the script to utilise the locations or edit points to make it work as a movie.
You can get all you need from this movie from the soundtrack alone, without having to watch any of the pictures. That’s why it should not win. It’s NOT a complete movie experience.
Steve McCabe on Jennifer Trueland’s analysis of the Kinloch Rannoch GP controversy:
Steve McCabe:
The fact that somewhere like Rannoch had a GP for 110 years is as much a historical quirk as anything else. Such arrangements pre-date the NHS and even the Highlands and Islands Medical Scheme on which the NHS was modelled and which provided remote communities with community nurses and sometimes helped to fund a doctor. But many of these rural doctors were actually paid for (and, therefore, there primarily to serve) a local landowner or major employer. For example, the doctor in Bowmore on Islay was oriniginally a “distillery doctor” paid for by the local laird.
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I’m a bit offended. But if it’s historical essay’s you’re after in the future….
Don’t worry. There’s another prize up for grabs for this week’s comments.
Stewart Kirkpatrick
Editor, The Caledonian Mercury
Interesting. I didn’t know that
Well there we have it , while the Scotsman is trying to make us all Labour voters the Cal Merc is trying to make us all booze bags .
I know which is more preferable to me, and it is not another 5 years of Brown’s Buffoons!!
Would it be too postmodern to win the next one for a comment on the announcement of the first winner?
I would just like to point out that it should have read “an historical quirk” as opposed to “a historical quirk”. Three cheers for nitpicking!
Rubbish! It’s a history as it’s a hotel. Most Scots pronounce the “h” therefore “an” is an unnecessary and orally ugly intrusion.
In fact, not only do most Scottish speakers pronounce the H, most English speakers do too, so “a hotel” is the only sensible option.
“An historical quirk” is, after all, nothing more than “a historical quirk”, given that it was merely the presence of a minority ruling elite of Frenchmen in the Middle Ages whose dialect of English lost the aspirant H (as their native French didn’t have it). They wrote as they spoke: because to them “historical” started with a vowel sound they had no choice but to say “an historical”, and therefore they wrote this too. As their dialect gained prestige, others would mimic this, and the grammar books reflected the speech of this minority. Unfortunately the early days of mass schooling in the UK took these books uncritically, and teachers didn’t think about *why* the form “an historical” existed, and imposed it on pupils contrary to the logic and convention of contemporary English.
The greatest irony in this is that the very people who declare that “an historic” is correct are usually the same people that criticise Cockney kids for dropping their aitches, completely ignorant of the fact that Cockney is one of the last remnants of the prestige accent that gave birth to the form “an historic”!
David Bailey:
Make sure you are certain before nitpicking others!
Actually, both “a historical quirk” and “an historical quirk” are acceptable in English.
The “a” form is preferred in British English however.
Unalike Standard English, in Scottish Standard English, the initial ‘h’ is aye moothit sae there nae want for ony ‘n’ tae be eikit on tae the indefinite airticle here.
meh ! whit a smashin comment !
noo eh ken eh’ll nivver win ….no’ wi’ aw thae kon-ten-shus posts eh dae
keep it couthy , chiels ! …..eh love the cali-merc !
Folk who say ‘an historical’ need a smack in the mooth.
I stand corrected, though i still think it sounds better =)
Very nice. Is there an option for folks that don’t like a swally?
@ThatScottishWoman: There are indeed prizes for non-whisky drinkers.
Stewart Kirkpatrick
Editor, The Caledonian Mercury
and what would this prize be?bourbon.
Iron Bru scotland other national drink ya heathen.
Congratulations to the the winner and CM. Both should feel proud.
not sure about rewarding anyone who has the gall to disagree with me. But I may, with counselling, get over it.
well done, dave. I thought it was a perceptive post.
The P.M appologise for dumping children in Canada and Australia, well that wee gem is better late than never, and has a ring of “well I said it” which is about the same as Winston visiting the blitz houses and telling those bombed out “We are winning”. The House of Commons is about the safest place to speak from and is about as windy as the Sleeping Warrior’s bed and just as cold. These politicians dumped the wanes way out in the colonies, and could well be considered the second Highland Clearances except this time it covered the whole of the UK , while the destination’s were the same with the same results. Shame is a cloak, which covers the two faces.