Rab McNeil: When it’s good to have a cauliflower ear for words

The stooshie – guid Scots word – thither was occasioned by Prime Minister Boris Johnson (has a ring to it; makes you want to ring your psychiatrist) referring to a “Surrender Act”, vis-a-vis obstructive Remain legislation.

The word “Remain” is your first clue that the subject is Brexit, and I intend dropping it as swiftly as possible. In a nutshell (“case more like” – Fawlty, B.), a referendum occurred in which one side was entirely ignorant about EU matters, did not even know who their MEP was (true, I keep asking them), did not know which body sat in Brussels and which in Strasbourg, and did not know there would have to be multiple deals. And there was another side which voted to Leave.

For better or worse, richer or poorer, the Leavers won, occasioning paroxysms of fury among the bourgeois elite, which pushed through the aforementioned legislation to protect our democracy from the voters.

I’ve read the words “Surrender Act” forwards. And, liking to be thorough, I’ve read them backwards. And I’m at a loss to see how they’re violent or threatening, as alleged by the opposition. There are connotations of wartime perhaps, though not necessarily so (could be a criminal surrendering to police), but it still seems a relatively harmless rhetorical device, issued in the face of a clamour of abuse – “fascist!” “dictator!”; the usual products of careful analysis – from hate-fill generaled faces on the benches opposite.

I think “betrayal” was also used, but there can hardly be a week in which it isn’t trotted out. In fact, it’s one of the most routinely deployed accusations in politics.

As for violent, threatening language, the opposition walked right into a trap as Boris’s defenders brought up numerous horrendous examples of Labour members or supporters in particular talking of “lynching the b**ch” (Esther McVey in this instance), being admittedly “full of hate”, giving someone “a good slapping”, “garrotting Danny Alexander”, wanting to go back in time and “assassinate Margaret Thatcher”, “surrendering” the NHS to the US and, of course, calling everybody a Nazi.

It was left to that nice man, Jeremy Corbyn (“Marxist traitor” as he’s routinely called by lexicologically loose Tories), to point out that neither side had a monopoly on virtue.

Fortunately, the Commons has no monopoly on Mr Johnson’s time, and it was the prorogue elephant’s trumpeted words elsewhere that attracted my attention. In New York, for example, he made Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani titter by inviting him to a climate change summit in Scotland, saying: “As you know, Glasgow is lovely in November.” Outrageous!

Also in the US, he complained about tariffs on socks, averring that “some fibres … have to be taken to a laboratory and set fire to twice”. Incendiary stuff. On brassicas, he complained that “only certain ports in the United States are licensed for the import of British cauliflowers”. Lucky United States.

At the UN General Assembly, bewildered delegates looked nervously at each other, wondering if they were supposed to laugh, when the PM compared performing in Parliament to Prometheus having his liver pecked out daily by an eagle. Well, it’s arguable, I suppose.

Further adventures with words included describing some urban environments as being “as antiseptic as a Zurich pharmacy”, and taking the pisces out of the SNP administration in Scotland by calling it “fish-abandoning”.

However, the prize for clever deployment of words goes to the busty blonde tech entrepreneur and ex-model, with a pole-dancing pole in her flat, who described Mr Johnson’s weekly visits as being for “technology lessons”.

Technology lessons is sure to replace “Ugandan relations” at Private Eye as a euphemism for activities of a lewd and libidinous nature.

Words, words, words. Oh. Yes. What are they? They’re “the most powerful drug used by mankind,” wrote proto-Brexiteer Rudyard Kipling. They’re addictive. They’re brilliant. They’re the bee’s testicles – if that’s the word I’m looking for.

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POOR Prince Harry. He’s now so woke he can’t get out of bed in the morning. The Red Prince told students in South Africa that he worried so much about the globe’s many “issues” that he found it difficult to get up. Best excuse I’ve heard yet. Try using it with your employers next time you fancy a lie-in.

After one student spoke of everyone being equal, Harry’s missus, Meghan, said: “That was just so meaningful, it gave me the chills.” Meanwhile, Harry thumped his chest and wept: “You can feel that you’re speaking from here.”

Now, as someone who takes little interest in the monarchy beyond writing about it most weeks, I find this lurch towards Marxism-Leninism deeply discombobulating.

It’s difficult to imagine Queen Victoria addressing young persons and telling them we’re all equal and should be pressing the elite to put up more windmills or eat less meat, or whatever it is, to save the environment. Similarly, Prince Albert would never have beaten his chest in such an undignified manner. For a start, there were too many jaggy medals on it.

Truly, these are changed days when the royals are in the vanguard of revolution.

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CARS. Huh. Yes. What are they good for? Getting away from your family.

That was one finding in a survey of driving habits conducted for Privilege Car Insurance. The car, it seems, is a sanctuary, a place to escape, a place to listen to your own sounds and let your bottom blow a raspberry without censure.

Drivers spend more than two years of their lives in their vehicles. It’s not time wasted. It’s time to think, time to get a break from the old ball and chain – the mobile phone – and time even to have a wee sing-song without the lieges pelting your heid with rotten fruit.

Less fruitfully, motorists spend three and a half weeks of their lives shouting or swearing at other drivers, and five weeks looking for a parking spot.

In truth, driving’s a stressful business. The best plan would be to have a car and not go anywhere in it. In Scotland, we don’t have cabins, huts or dachas like normal people. But parking your car somewhere nice and going there to de-stress could be the answer.

Unfortunately, you’d have to drive to get to the car. God, how I hate thinking things through.

++++ IF it’s controversy you want then stick this in your pipe and vape it: I deplore all noirs: Tartan, Nordic, film, American, existential. They’re shameful, providing nought for our comfort, making us immune to horror, and presenting serial killers as persons of interest.

They’re not. Serial killers are a disgrace, frankly, and I will not have them creeping about in my literature. If no one else will stand up to the dark side then, fine, I’ll do it on my own.

I write in the wake of disturbing news that 10,000 people attended the Bloody Scotland festival in Stirling last weekend. Ten thousand! Just shows there’s nowt as weird as folk.

Even the First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, whom we all thought was a nice girl, likes nothing better of an evening than to curl on the sofa with a story about murder and horror. Then she goes out and skewers Labour’s Richard Leonard at First Minister’s Questions. First Minister’s Massacre more like.

Why can’t writers of detective fiction be more like national literary treasure Alexander McCall Smith, who refers to his pleasant tales as “Scandi blanc”? Enough horror, sadism and general badness. Enough novels where nobody lives happily ever after.

Read more: Everybody is a royalist when it comes to the Queen