High speed speech

The recent stories of the reporters from Hansard, the Official Report of the Commons, struggling with the vocabulary of some Scottish MPs stirred a few memories for Michael Mulford from Cupar.

Michael worked in the Parliamentary Press Gallery and was in regular demand from Hansard reporters for translations and explanations for some Scottish expressions. “I remember explaining ‘feart,’ ‘bampots’ and ‘Ah hae ma doots,’ says Michael, “as well as Mrs Thatcher’s risible attempt at Burns which came across as something like: ‘the best-laid schemes of mice and men go oft agla.’

Michael also worked part-time as a Hansard reporter and marvelled at the colleague who famously achieved a verbatim note of the following gem, delivered by an MP at well over 200 words per minute:

“We believe the clause to be restrictive, ossifying, petrifying, atrophying, lapidifying, corrupting, stiffnecked, and inflexible – a cretinous clause in a bunkum-filled Bill.”

Michael adds that the Official Report is in itself anything but verbatim.

“It is a full report which leaves out nothing which adds to a debating point, but takes out repetitions, bad grammar and excrescences – in effect as a previous Speaker explained, an attempt to put into literary style the efforts with which MPs make their speeches.”

Michael also likes another colleague’s definition of question time reporting as “trying to note down inaudible answers to incomprehensible questions posed by unseen MPs.”