I don't mind ribbing Pippa. In fact , I never get offended at the Scotsman , Englishman type of silly jokes because it's just a joke and i'm not that easily offended. I laugh along with silly slaggings and usually give as good as I get but couldn't understand why the question of nationality should be relevant here. I used to work for the Student Loans company and you wouldn't believe how much abuse I took on the phone ........ just for being Scottish ! I had many calls where students/their parents moaned at the fact that they wanted to speak to someone English because they were sick of always getting 'Scotch' people on the phone. As the Student Loans company is based in Scotland , the majority of the people they would have had to speak too would have been Scottish. The worst of it is , I have a very clear accent. I don't have any regional twang and i've never had a problem being understood. I was even picked to be the recorded message (Thank you for holding , your call is in a queue , your call is important to us type of message) in one call centre I worked in so I was annoyed when one caller said to me "I can't understand a bloody word of your thick Scotch accent" I was too polite to correct her by informing her that Scotch is an alcoholic beverage and when referring to the nation of Scottish people , the correct term is of course Scots . God help her if she got someone with a really strong accent if she thought that she couldn't understand me :-)
I wasn't implying that Buzybee was being insulting towards Scottish people , I just wondered what her point was , whether she experienced language barriers , to which I would say that this can also be said about any regional dialect , or whether she was enquiring as to the location of Sky. The sun is shining , yes I know , a rarity for Scotland and I am happy. Roll on the summer :-)