Scots Scotch (quite some) slap-stick

The advice given to parents by Lewis Carroll’s Duchess — “Speak roughly to your little boy,/ And beat him when he sneezes,/ He only does it to annoy,/ Because he knows it teases” — would not find a lot of support today. Scotland has banned the physical chastisement of children by the administration of slaps, smacks or a spanking. In 1979, Sweden became the first country in the world to do this, Scotland becoming the 58th, the Scottish parliament making corporal punishment of minors a criminal offence. The law overrides objections raised by a group called Be Reasonable, which appears to hold by the old tenet that sparing the rod spoils the child, and claims that the ban is “negative and elitist”.

In the meantime, in an unrelated development, what might be called another form of ‘slap-stick’ drama, unfolded in the northern UK city of Newcastle where the prominent Brexiter politician Nigel Farage at a public rally was given not a slap on the wrist but a milkshake in his mug by an unidentified critic of his policies who chose to express his dissent by what could be described as udder means. This incident has given rise, in Scotland and elsewhere, to a mini industry producing ‘Shake’ T-shirts at what might aptly be called a good clip, even as Fargists deplore the entire business as yet another exudation of the milk of human unkindness.