Tuesday 23 March 2004

Scotch Nationalism?

It's the most embarrassing mistake of the year:
... it appears the leader of the Scottish National Party has difficulty spelling the name of Scotland’s national drink.

At a time when the industry is at loggerheads with the government over the Chancellor’s controversial strip-stamps scheme to enforce duty payment, the SNP announced that John Swinney, MSP, was due to meet "whiskey" bosses to discuss the industry’s future.

As readers of this blog will know, it's "whisky" in Scotland (also in Canada and now Wales), but "whiskey" in Ireland and the USA. The Nationalists blame the use of an American spell checker. That's not good enough. The "English" version of English is still used in Scotland and, anyway, surely the SNP should know the correct spelling of our national drink.

I trust that SNP politicians will not compound this error by taking ice in their whisky. Shortly, they will have the opportunity.