IF ever proof were needed that the new Northern Ireland Assembly will be a Tower of Babel, let alone a bit of bedlam, it came this week with the newspaper ad seeking a sub editor for the Office of the Official Report (Hansard) at Stormont. As well as the usual qualifications, applicants are expected to be proficient in both English and Ulster-Scots.
Simultaneous transcription, whether by hand or machine, is hard enough without doing it in the little-known and hardly spoken Ulster Scots. The development stems from the insistence by Sinn Fein that Irish be an official language. Hardline Unionists countered with the demand that Ulster Scots be given equal status.
