Quentin Lett.
Just in general or has he been extra odious?
Patronising and snobbish towards Mhairi Black.
What Letts actually wrote was “Happily,Miss Black has such a formidably strong accent that the dreadful words she uttered ( she was repeating some rude words that she had been called on social media) were almost completely incomprehensible to your sketchwriter’s soft southerners ear.”
My wife’s uncle was born and brought up in South Lanarkshire and had an accent that was that strong that I never mastered it.
And that was after he had lived in East Anglia for 50 years. I know plenty of people in Yorkshire who would struggle to decipher Geordies or Pitwackas from 30 miles away. I have never heard Mhairi Black but as you are living in Edinburgh your ears are more tuned in to the Scots accent than many of us.
Letts’ column is the Parliamentary Sketch. Given that most of the business of Parliament is as dull as ditchwater, the aim of the sketch writer is to try to present the action in more than the deadpan of Hansard.
It’s not meant to be serious reporting .
Letts is sarcastic about anyone and everyone even Mother Theresa. It’s his schoolboy style.