106-592: Dalmellington ( Scots : Dawmellinton , Scottish Gaelic : Dail M'Fhaolain ) is a market town and civil parish in East Ayrshire , Scotland . In 2001, the town had a population of 1,407. The town owes its origins to the fault line separating the Southern Uplands of Scotland from the Central Lowlands . Dalmellington sits at the issue of a river from the uplands into Dalmellington Moss plain. The town has
212-905: A 1996 trial before the Census, by the General Register Office for Scotland (GRO), suggested that there were around 1.5 million speakers of Scots, with 30% of Scots responding "Yes" to the question "Can you speak the Scots language?", but only 17% responding "Aye" to the question "Can you speak Scots?". It was also found that older, working-class people were more likely to answer in the affirmative. The University of Aberdeen Scots Leid Quorum performed its own research in 1995, cautiously suggesting that there were 2.7 million speakers, though with clarification as to why these figures required context. The GRO questions, as freely acknowledged by those who set them, were not as detailed and systematic as those of
318-476: A Roman thoroughfare and even possibly a Roman military station. During the time of the Covenanters , 900 soldiers were stationed in the vicinity. There were two castles in the area, Loch Doon and Laight Alpin. Eighteenth-century Dalmellington was a small rural village with some 500 inhabitants, but the modern way of life was already taking shape. Good quality coal was being produced from surface workings and sent down
424-625: A Scots language listing. The Ferret, a UK -based fact-checking service, wrote an exploratory article in December 2022 to address misconceptions about the Scots language to improve public awareness of its endangered status. In Scotland, Scots is spoken in the Scottish Lowlands , the Northern Isles , Caithness , Arran and Campbeltown . In Ulster , the northern province in Ireland , its area
530-510: A big security element to it; it's complex because it's in the public sector. [...] This is a business which had absorbed billions of pounds of taxpayers money and was still losing money. It was a business that faced significant challenges because it had an exclusive arrangement with the Royal Mail, and the Royal Mail itself was suffering from increasing competition in the parcels market and a declining letters market. The Post Office had previously had
636-462: A collection of children's nursery rhymes and poems in Scots. The book contains a five-page glossary of contemporary Scots words and their pronunciations. Alexander Gray 's translations into Scots constitute the greater part of his work, and are the main basis for his reputation. In 1983, William Laughton Lorimer 's translation of the New Testament from the original Greek was published. Scots
742-433: A continuum ranging from traditional broad Scots to Scottish Standard English . Many speakers are diglossic and may be able to code-switch along the continuum depending on the situation. Where on this continuum English-influenced Scots becomes Scots-influenced English is difficult to determine. Because standard English now generally has the role of a Dachsprache ('roofing language'), disputes often arise as to whether
848-491: A history as a rest area, market town, weaving centre and mining village. The Chalmerston open cast coal mine to the north of the village covered some 742 hectares, but the operations have now ceased and the first phase of the site restoration has been completed. The town used to have a working museum to record the history of the area, but it was closed in January 2017. Dalmellington is an ancient settlement of indeterminate origin. It
954-484: A month in November 2017. Speaking in 2024, Parker described a business in "deep crisis": The Post Office has a turnover of just under £1 billion, which makes it a sort of medium-sized company, but in fact it is an incredibly complex business: it's complex because it operates a network of around 11,500 sites; it's complex because it has a very wide range of products; it's complex also because it deals with cash, and cash has
1060-612: A more phonological manner rather than following the pan-dialect conventions of modern literary Scots, especially for the northern and insular dialects of Scots. Post Office Limited Post Office Limited , commonly known as the Post Office , is a state-owned retail post office company in the United Kingdom that provides a wide range of postal and non-postal related products including postage stamps , banking , insurance , bureau de change and identity verification services to
1166-674: A name for the Lowland vernacular. The Gaelic of Scotland is now usually called Scottish Gaelic . Northumbrian Old English had been established in what is now southeastern Scotland as far as the River Forth by the seventh century, as the region was part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria . By the tenth century, Middle Irish was the language of the Scottish court , and the common use of Old English remained largely confined to this area until
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#17328586302611272-513: A number of "partner banks" that the Post Office has agreements with. Although different services are available on behalf of different institutions, these may include cash withdrawals, paying in cash and cheques, and balance enquiries. Some post offices have cash machines , mainly provided by Bank of Ireland . Business banking services are also offered for customers of twenty different UK banks. A number of bill payments can be accepted on behalf of
1378-413: A number of paradigms for distinguishing between languages and dialects exist, they often render contradictory results. Broad Scots is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum , with Scottish Standard English at the other. Scots is sometimes regarded as a variety of English, though it has its own distinct dialects; other scholars treat Scots as a distinct Germanic language, in the way that Norwegian
1484-445: A post office for convenient collection. Poste restante mail can also be held for collection by people travelling. Since March 2021, Post Office no longer works exclusively with Royal Mail Group and offers parcel services from third party couriers including Evri and DPD , at selected locations. The Post Office provides credit cards , insurance products , mortgages , access to high street banking services and savings through
1590-449: A reported £102 million lost in 2006, raising concerns in the media regarding its ability as a company to operate efficiently. Minutes of a board meeting in April 2006 state that the company was insolvent and unable to meet its future debts. Plans to cut the £150m-a-year subsidy for rural post offices led to the announcement that 2,500 local post offices were to be closed during 2007. In 2007,
1696-612: A representative sample of Scotland's adult population) claim to speak Scots to varying degrees. The 2011 UK census was the first to ask residents of Scotland about Scots. A campaign called Aye Can was set up to help individuals answer the question. The specific wording used was "Which of these can you do? Tick all that apply" with options for "Understand", "Speak", "Read" and "Write" in three columns: English, Scottish Gaelic and Scots. Of approximately 5.1 million respondents, about 1.2 million (24%) could speak, read and write Scots, 3.2 million (62%) had no skills in Scots and
1802-461: A significant amount of business from the Government, so driving licences, benefits, that kind of thing. That had all moved online and so the Post Office was bereft a significant chunk of its contribution. The Post Office had a range of products which it attempted to sell, with varying degrees of success, and it also had a very complex structure in terms of its overheads and management. In February 2019,
1908-525: A statement on 9 January 2024, stating that she would "return my CBE with immediate effect". This had no formal effect, as only the monarch, on the advice of the Honours Forfeiture Committee , can annul honours. Vennells's appointment as CBE was formally revoked by King Charles III on 23 February for "bringing the honours system into disrepute". are set for supporters on either side a pegasus Or crowned with an ancient crown and gorged with
2014-501: A suitable medium of education or culture". Students reverted to Scots outside the classroom, but the reversion was not complete. What occurred, and has been occurring ever since, is a process of language attrition , whereby successive generations have adopted more and more features from Standard English. This process has accelerated rapidly since widespread access to mass media in English and increased population mobility became available after
2120-402: A variety of new ordinary and guaranteed services both for delivery within the United Kingdom and to international destinations. Postage stamps (including commemorative stamps and other philatelic items) are sold, while applications for redirection of mail are accepted on behalf of Royal Mail. Post Office Local Collect is a scheme whereby undelivered mail can be redirected at customer request to
2226-513: A variety of organisations including utilities , local authorities and others. These are in the form of automated payments (barcoded bills, swipe cards, key charging). The Santander Transcash system, which had been a Girobank service, enabled manual bill payment transactions, but this service was discontinued by Santander in December 2017. Post Office also runs its own flat-rate 118 Directory Enquiries service (118 855). Mobile phone top-ups are also available in Post Office branches on behalf of all
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#17328586302612332-471: A vulnerable language by UNESCO . In a Scottish census from 2022, over 1.5 million people in Scotland reported being able to speak Scots. Given that there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing a language from a dialect , scholars and other interested parties often disagree about the linguistic, historical and social status of Scots, particularly its relationship to English . Although
2438-666: A year were operating in the 1940s. With the decline of the labour-intensive deep mining, the area was dependent on its replacement, opencast mining. During the First World War an ultimately unsuccessful attempt was made to establish a gunnery school at Loch Doon. Although it was in breach of the Geneva Convention, large numbers of German prisoners were involved in its construction. The Loch Doon Aerial Gunnery School Railway ran from near Dalmellington station to Dalfarson, close to Craigengillan House. From 1997 to 2005, Dalmellington
2544-531: Is a language variety descended from Early Middle English in the West Germanic language family . Most commonly spoken in the Scottish Lowlands , the Northern Isles of Scotland , and northern Ulster in Ireland (where the local dialect is known as Ulster Scots ), it is sometimes called: Lowland Scots , to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic , the Celtic language that was historically restricted to most of
2650-575: Is a case for her having that honour removed, and I would like to know how she got it in the first place when the court case is ongoing. Added to that, she is now chair of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. Again, I would like to know why and what due diligence was done on her as an individual. On 8 January 2024, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak 's spokesman said he would "strongly support" the Honours Forfeiture Committee if it decided to look at removing Vennells's CBE appointment. Vennells issued
2756-575: Is also used, though this is more often taken to mean the Lallans literary form . Scots in Ireland is known in official circles as Ulster-Scots ( Ulstèr-Scotch in revivalist Ulster-Scots) or "Ullans", a recent neologism merging Ulster and Lallans. Scots is a contraction of Scottis , the Older Scots and northern version of late Old English : Scottisc (modern English "Scottish"), which replaced
2862-589: Is closely linked to but distinct from Danish . Native speakers sometimes refer to their vernacular as braid Scots (or "broad Scots" in English) or use a dialect name such as the " Doric " or the " Buchan Claik ". The old-fashioned Scotch , an English loan, occurs occasionally, especially in Ulster. The term Lallans , a variant of the Modern Scots word lawlands [ˈlo̜ːlən(d)z, ˈlɑːlənz] ,
2968-552: Is in Scots, for example. Scott introduced vernacular dialogue to his novels. Other well-known authors like Robert Louis Stevenson , William Alexander, George MacDonald , J. M. Barrie and other members of the Kailyard school like Ian Maclaren also wrote in Scots or used it in dialogue. In the Victorian era popular Scottish newspapers regularly included articles and commentary in the vernacular, often of unprecedented proportions. In
3074-745: Is lykest to our language..." ( For though several have written of (the subject) in English, which is the language most similar to ours... ). However, with the increasing influence and availability of books printed in England, most writing in Scotland came to be done in the English fashion. In his first speech to the English Parliament in March 1603, King James VI and I declared, "Hath not God first united these two Kingdomes both in Language, Religion, and similitude of maners?" . Following James VI's move to London,
3180-541: Is probable that the area was first occupied some 6,000 years ago, when humans moved inland from the West Coast along the rivers. It was certainly occupied by the Neolithic Period, as cairns and a few scraps of tools from this period have been found. In recent years traces of early human activity have been found around Loch Doon. There may have been crannogs at Bogton Loch and Loch Doon. In the medieval period Dalmellington
3286-410: Is provided in village halls or shops. There are also "mobile post offices" using converted vans which travel between rural areas. The Post Office provides information on services and accepts postal items and payment on behalf of the two collection and delivery divisions of Royal Mail Group, Royal Mail and Parcelforce , plus parcel services on behalf of Evri and DPD . Services provided include
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3392-575: Is sometimes used in contemporary fiction, such as the Edinburgh dialect of Scots in Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (later made into a motion picture of the same name ). But'n'Ben A-Go-Go by Matthew Fitt is a cyberpunk novel written entirely in what Wir Ain Leed ("Our Own Language") calls "General Scots". Like all cyberpunk work, it contains imaginative neologisms . The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
3498-561: Is the only self leveling curling pond in Scotland. Dalmellington Band is based in the village of Dalmellington and it is one of Scotland's oldest Brass Bands and has been in the forefront of the movement since its formation in 1864. The band have had notable success in contests and have their name inscribed on every major competition trophy in Scotland, including three Scottish Championship wins. The band regularly provide music for: concerts, gala days, weddings, church services, opening days, parades, background music and Christmas events. In 2014,
3604-550: Is used to describe the Scots language after 1700. A seminal study of Scots was undertaken by JAH Murray and published as Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland . Murray's results were given further publicity by being included in Alexander John Ellis 's book On Early English Pronunciation, Part V alongside results from Orkney and Shetland, as well as the whole of England. Murray and Ellis differed slightly on
3710-529: Is usually defined through the works of Robert John Gregg to include the counties of Down , Antrim , Londonderry and Donegal (especially in East Donegal and Inishowen ). More recently, the Fintona -born linguist Warren Maguire has argued that some of the criteria that Gregg used as distinctive of Ulster-Scots are common in south-west Tyrone and were found in other sites across Northern Ireland investigated by
3816-592: The Communications Workers Union . In 2018, the Post Office acquired Payzone 's UK bill payment business after it was split from Payzone Ireland , to expand its bill payment network. Perkins stood down as chair in July 2015 and was replaced in October of that year by Tim Parker , a businessman who had led and restructured a number of companies. He at first worked one-and-a-half days a week, reducing to two days
3922-703: The Criminal Cases Review Commission as "the biggest single series of wrongful convictions in British legal history". Post Office branches, along with the Royal Mail delivery service, were formerly part of the General Post Office and, after the passage of the Post Office Act 1969 , the Post Office, a statutory corporation. Post Office Counters Limited was created as a wholly owned subsidiary of
4028-470: The English Dialect Dictionary , edited by Joseph Wright . Wright had great difficulty in recruiting volunteers from Scotland, as many refused to cooperate with a venture that regarded Scots as a dialect of English, and he obtained enough help only through the assistance from a Professor Shearer in Scotland. Wright himself rejected the argument that Scots was a separate language, saying that this
4134-501: The Linguistic Survey of Scotland . Dialects of Scots include Insular Scots , Northern Scots , Central Scots , Southern Scots and Ulster Scots . It has been difficult to determine the number of speakers of Scots via census, because many respondents might interpret the question "Do you speak Scots?" in different ways. Campaigners for Scots pressed for this question to be included in the 2001 UK National Census . The results from
4240-719: The National Federation of SubPostmasters or the CWU Postmasters Branch); these are known as Agency post office branches. The remaining 1,901 branches (making up 16% of the network) were what are known as 'outreach services': these are typically small, part-time branches, perhaps making use of a mobile van or a village hall. The Post Office rolled out the 'ParcelShop' scheme in Summer 2019, allowing retail stores to accept Royal Mail Internet returns, in order to expand Post Office facilities. In some villages an outreach service
4346-618: The Post Office Money umbrella brand which was launched in 2015. Most Post Office Money branded products are provided by Bank of Ireland (UK) plc with Post Office Limited acting as an appointed representative and credit broker. However, with the sale of the Bank of Ireland's UK assets to Jaja Finance in 2019, Post Office branded Credit Cards are now issued by Capital One UK. Life insurance is provided in partnership with Neilson Financial Services Personal banking services are offered on behalf of
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4452-706: The Protestant Church of Scotland adopted the 1611 Authorized King James Version of the Bible; subsequently, the Acts of Union 1707 led to Scotland joining England to form the Kingdom of Great Britain , having a single Parliament of Great Britain based in London. After the Union and the shift of political power to England, the use of Scots was discouraged by many in authority and education, as
4558-772: The Romance languages via ecclesiastical and legal Latin , Norman French , and later Parisian French , due to the Auld Alliance . Additionally, there were Dutch and Middle Low German influences due to trade with and immigration from the Low Countries . Scots also includes loan words in the legal and administrative fields resulting from contact with Middle Irish , and reflected in early medieval legal documents. Contemporary Scottish Gaelic loans are mainly for geographical and cultural features, such as cèilidh , loch , whisky , glen and clan . Cumbric and Pictish ,
4664-579: The Scottish Highlands , the Hebrides , and Galloway after the sixteenth century; or Broad Scots , to distinguish it from Scottish Standard English . Modern Scots is a sister language of Modern English , as the two diverged from the same medieval form of English. Scots is recognised as an indigenous language of Scotland by the Scottish government, a regional or minority language of Europe, and
4770-461: The Second World War . It has recently taken on the nature of wholesale language shift , sometimes also termed language change , convergence or merger . By the end of the twentieth century, Scots was at an advanced stage of language death over much of Lowland Scotland . Residual features of Scots are often regarded as slang. A 2010 Scottish Government study of "public attitudes towards
4876-579: The University of Aberdeen , and only included reared speakers (people raised speaking Scots), not those who had learned the language. Part of the difference resulted from the central question posed by surveys: "Do you speak Scots?". In the Aberdeen University study, the question was augmented with the further clause "... or a dialect of Scots such as Border etc.", which resulted in greater recognition from respondents. The GRO concluded that there simply
4982-542: The Crowns in 1603, the Standard English of England came to have an increasing influence on the spelling of Scots through the increasing influence and availability of books printed in England. After the Acts of Union in 1707 the emerging Scottish form of Standard English replaced Scots for most formal writing in Scotland. The eighteenth-century Scots revival saw the introduction of a new literary language descended from
5088-449: The Kingdom of Great Britain, there is ample evidence that Scots was widely held to be an independent sister language forming a pluricentric diasystem with English. German linguist Heinz Kloss considered Modern Scots a Halbsprache ('half language') in terms of an abstand and ausbau languages framework, although today in Scotland most people's speech is somewhere on
5194-510: The Philosopher's Stane , a Scots translation of the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone , was published by Matthew Fitt . The vowel system of Modern Scots: Vowel length is usually conditioned by the Scottish vowel length rule . The orthography of Early Scots had become more or less standardised by the middle to late sixteenth century. After the Union of
5300-507: The Post Office agreed to sell its broadband and home phone services to Shell Energy and exit the telecoms market. The purchase price was around £80 million, with around 500,000 customers transferring to the new provider. Parker completed a second term as chair in September 2022. He was replaced in December by Henry Staunton , who had held senior board roles at a number of companies and had chaired WHSmith until June of that year. He
5406-562: The Post Office announced that Vennells would leave her role as CEO to become chair of the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust . It was subsequently confirmed that the new CEO would be Nick Read , who had held senior roles at several customer-facing businesses and had been CEO of the Nisa convenience store group. Read promoted "click and collect" services for retailers, alongside parcel drop-off services. In February 2021,
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#17328586302615512-477: The Post Office had failed to identify the root cause of accounting shortfalls in many cases before launching court proceedings against subpostmasters. The shortfalls could have been caused by criminals using malicious software, by IT systems or by human error, the report said. An earlier article by the BBC had claimed that a confidential report contained allegations that the Post Office had refused to hand over documents that
5618-461: The Post Office in 1987. The first managing director of Post Office Counters was John Roberts, who took up the post in 1987. A former civil servant, Richard Dykes, took over as managing director of Post Office Counters in September 1993. Dykes was succeeded in May 1996 by Stuart Sweetman, who continued to serve in that role until his retirement in November 2001. After the Post Office statutory corporation
5724-495: The Post Office launched its own mobile virtual network operator service, Post Office Mobile. However, in August 2016 it decided "to conclude the trial as the results did not give us sufficient confidence that mobile will contribute to our goal of commercial sustainability". In April 2016, the Post Office agreed to hand over up to 61 more branches to WHSmith in a 10-year deal. The deal was condemned as "blatant back-door privatisation" by
5830-480: The Scots language was also featured. It was found that 1,508,540 people reported that they could speak Scots, with 2,444,659 reporting that they could speak, read, write or understand Scots, approximately 45% of Scotland's 2022 population. The Scottish Government set its first Scots Language Policy in 2015, in which it pledged to support its preservation and encourage respect, recognition and use of Scots. The Scottish Parliament website also offers some information on
5936-467: The Scots language" found that 64% of respondents (around 1,000 individuals in a representative sample of Scotland's adult population) "don't really think of Scots as a language", also finding "the most frequent speakers are least likely to agree that it is not a language (58%) and those never speaking Scots most likely to do so (72%)". Before the Treaty of Union 1707 , when Scotland and England joined to form
6042-573: The Scottish Executive recognises and respects Scots (in all its forms) as a distinct language, and does not consider the use of Scots to be an indication of poor competence in English. Evidence for its existence as a separate language lies in the extensive body of Scots literature, its independent – if somewhat fluid – orthographic conventions , and in its former use as the language of the original Parliament of Scotland . Because Scotland retained distinct political, legal, and religious systems after
6148-622: The Standard English cognate . This Written Scots drew not only on the vernacular, but also on the King James Bible , and was heavily influenced by the norms and conventions of Augustan English poetry . Consequently, this written Scots looked very similar to contemporary Standard English, suggesting a somewhat modified version of that, rather than a distinct speech form with a phonological system which had been developing independently for many centuries. This modern literary dialect, "Scots of
6254-497: The Union, many Scots terms passed into Scottish English. During the 2010s, increased interest was expressed in the language. The status of the language was raised in Scottish schools, with Scots being included in the new national school curriculum . Previously in Scotland's schools there had been little education taking place through the medium of Scots, although it may have been covered superficially in English lessons, which could entail reading some Scots literature and observing
6360-522: The accountants felt they needed to investigate properly, that training was not good enough, that equipment was outdated, and that power cuts and communication problems had made things worse. In 2019, the Post Office was lambasted by the High Court for its 'institutional obstinacy or refusal to consider' that its Horizon computer system might be flawed. The judge, Mr Justice Fraser , characterised this stance as "the 21st-century equivalent of maintaining that
6466-680: The activities of those such as Thomas Sheridan , who in 1761 gave a series of lectures on English elocution . Charging a guinea at a time (about £200 in today's money ), they were attended by over 300 men, and he was made a freeman of the City of Edinburgh . Following this, some of the city's intellectuals formed the Select Society for Promoting the Reading and Speaking of the English Language in Scotland. These eighteenth-century activities would lead to
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#17328586302616572-405: The band celebrated its 150th year. The Dalmellington bug was an error in the Post Office Horizon IT system named after the Post Office branch in Dalmellington where it was discovered in 2015. Horizon was duplicating the acceptance of remittances despite the payment’s barcode having only been scanned in once. This would lead Horizon to be short because the subpostmaster repeatedly attempted to send
6678-409: The board of the new company was Alice Perkins , who had for a time led human resources management in the Civil Service. A ten-year inter-business agreement was signed between Royal Mail and Post Office Limited to allow post offices to continue issuing stamps, and handling letters and parcels for Royal Mail. The Act also contained the option for Post Office Limited to become a mutual organisation in
6784-521: The book" or Standard Scots, once again gave Scots an orthography of its own, lacking neither "authority nor author". This literary language used throughout Lowland Scotland and Ulster, embodied by writers such as Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Murray , David Herbison , James Orr, James Hogg and William Laidlaw among others, is well described in the 1921 Manual of Modern Scots . Other authors developed dialect writing, preferring to represent their own speech in
6890-435: The border between English and Scots dialects. Scots was studied alongside English and Scots Gaelic in the Linguistic Survey of Scotland at the University of Edinburgh , which began in 1949 and began to publish results in the 1970s. Also beginning in the 1970s, the Atlas Linguarum Europae studied the Scots language used at 15 sites in Scotland, each with its own dialect. From the mid-sixteenth century, written Scots
6996-508: The complementary decline of French made Scots the prestige dialect of most of eastern Scotland. By the sixteenth century, Middle Scots had established orthographic and literary norms largely independent of those developing in England. From 1610 to the 1690s during the Plantation of Ulster , some 200,000 Scots-speaking Lowlanders settled as colonists in Ulster in Ireland. In the core areas of Scots settlement, Scots outnumbered English settlers by five or six to one. The name Modern Scots
7102-403: The creation of Scottish Standard English . Scots remained the vernacular of many rural communities and the growing number of urban working-class Scots. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the use of Scots as a literary language was revived by several prominent Scotsmen such as Robert Burns . Such writers established a new cross-dialect literary norm. Scots terms were included in
7208-434: The earlier i-mutated version Scyttisc . Before the end of the fifteenth century, English speech in Scotland was known as "English" (written Ynglis or Inglis at the time), whereas "Scottish" ( Scottis ) referred to Gaelic . By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the English language used in Scotland had arguably become a distinct language, albeit one lacking a name which clearly distinguished it from all
7314-694: The early twentieth century, a renaissance in the use of Scots occurred, its most vocal figure being Hugh MacDiarmid whose benchmark poem " A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle " (1926) did much to demonstrate the power of Scots as a modern idiom. Other contemporaries were Douglas Young , John Buchan , Sydney Goodsir Smith , Robert Garioch , Edith Anne Robertson and Robert McLellan . The revival extended to verse and other literature. In 1955, three Ayrshire men – Sandy MacMillan, an English teacher at Ayr Academy ; Thomas Limond, noted town chamberlain of Ayr ; and A. L. "Ross" Taylor, rector of Cumnock Academy – collaborated to write Bairnsangs ("Child Songs"),
7420-446: The earth is flat." In spite of the court action against its subpostmasters, which was described by a judge as "aggressive and, literally, dismissive", the Post Office's chief executive Paula Vennells , who had in the meantime left the Post Office and taken up posts in the NHS and the Cabinet Office , was controversially awarded a CBE in the 2019 New Year Honours for "services to the Post Office and to charity". On 19 March 2020 she
7526-401: The fifteenth century, much literature based on the Royal Court in Edinburgh and the University of St Andrews was produced by writers such as Robert Henryson , William Dunbar , Gavin Douglas and David Lyndsay . The Complaynt of Scotland was an early printed work in Scots. The Eneados is a Middle Scots translation of Virgil 's Aeneid , completed by Gavin Douglas in 1513. After
7632-468: The future. In February 2013, Post Office Limited announced it was planning to move around seventy of its Crown post offices into shops. This would reduce the Crown network, which it stated was losing £40 million a year, to around 300. In November 2013, the government committed an additional £640 million of funding for 2015 to 2018 to allow Post Office Limited to complete its network modernisation. In June 2015,
7738-491: The government committed £1.34 billion of funding up to 2015 to Post Office Limited to enable it to modernise the Post Office network. As part of the Postal Services Act 2011 , Post Office Limited became independent of Royal Mail Group on 1 April 2012 and, in the same month, Paula Vennells was appointed as its chief executive; she had been with Post Office Limited since 2007 as the network director. The first chair of
7844-837: The government gave a £1.7 billion subsidy to Royal Mail Group so that it could turn a profit by 2011. This was to be used to invest across the whole network of Royal Mail, Post Office Limited, and Parcelforce . Eighty-five Crown post offices were closed, 70 of which were sold to WHSmith . This followed a trial of six Post Office outlets in WHSmith stores. WHSmith was expected to make up to £2.5 million extra in annual profit. 2,500 sub-post offices closed between 2008 and 2009. Redundancy packages were provided from public funding (subpostmasters were paid over 20 months salary, roughly £65,000 each). In 2010, David Smith succeeded Alan Cook as managing director. Smith had previously been managing director of Parcelforce, another Royal Mail subsidiary. In November 2010,
7950-603: The language in Scots. In September 2024, experts of the Council of Europe called on the UK Government to "boost support for regional and minority languages", including the Scots Language. The serious use of the Scots language for news, encyclopaediae, documentaries, etc., remains rare. It is reportedly reserved for niches where it is deemed acceptable, e.g. comedy, Burns Night or traditions' representations. Since 2016,
8056-567: The language used in different situations. Such an approach would be inappropriate for a Census." Thus, although it was acknowledged that the "inclusion of such a Census question would undoubtedly raise the profile of Scots", no question about Scots was, in the end, included in the 2001 Census. The Scottish Government's Pupils in Scotland Census 2008 found that 306 pupils spoke Scots as their main home language. A Scottish Government study in 2010 found that 85% of around 1000 respondents (being
8162-535: The largest was disposed of wholly to the Kilmarnock carpet manufacturers until the proprietor of the mill added a carpet manufactory with eight looms constantly at work. The yarn spun in the second mill was also manufactured on the spot, into blankets, into plaid, packing cloth, etc. There were also about 40 weavers working from home. Although by the 20th Century mining was the dominant industry, workers had to travel to outlying areas. Eight pits producing around 124,000 tons
8268-571: The local dialect. Much of the material used was often Standard English disguised as Scots, which caused upset among proponents of Standard English and proponents of Scots alike. One example of the educational establishment's approach to Scots is, "Write a poem in Scots. (It is important not to be worried about spelling in this – write as you hear the sounds in your head.)", whereas guidelines for English require teaching pupils to be "writing fluently and legibly with accurate spelling and punctuation". A course in Scots language and culture delivered through
8374-519: The major UK mobile networks. A passport check-and-send service is available for passport applications, where the post office staff check that a passport application is filled in correctly and has an acceptable photograph accompanying it. The service is not affiliated with HM Passport Office . Check-and-send service is not guaranteed service. The Post Office also offer a photocard driving licence renewal service. Selected branches issue International Driving Permits . In 2019, availability of this service
8480-487: The medieval Brittonic languages of Northern England and Scotland, are the suspected source of a small number of Scots words, such as lum (derived from Cumbric) meaning "chimney". From the thirteenth century, the Early Scots language spread further into Scotland via the burghs , which were proto-urban institutions first established by King David I . In fourteenth-century Scotland, the growth in prestige of Early Scots and
8586-591: The medium of Standard English and produced by the Open University (OU) in Scotland, the Open University's School of Languages and Applied Linguistics as well as Education Scotland became available online for the first time in December 2019. In the 2011 Scottish census , a question on Scots language ability was featured In the 2022 census conducted by the Scottish Government , a question in relation to
8692-420: The newspaper The National has regularly published articles in the language. The 2010s also saw an increasing number of English books translated in Scots and becoming widely available, particularly those in popular children's fiction series such as The Gruffalo , Harry Potter , Diary of a Wimpy Kid , and several by Roald Dahl and David Walliams . In 2021, the music streaming service Spotify created
8798-401: The old court Scots, but with an orthography that had abandoned some of the more distinctive old Scots spellings and adopted many standard English spellings. Despite the updated spelling, however, the rhymes make it clear that a Scots pronunciation was intended. These writings also introduced what came to be known as the apologetic apostrophe , generally occurring where a consonant exists in
8904-503: The other English variants and dialects spoken in Britain. From 1495, the term Scottis was increasingly used to refer to the Lowland vernacular and Erse , meaning "Irish", was used as a name for Gaelic. For example, towards the end of the fifteenth century, William Dunbar was using Erse to refer to Gaelic and, in the early sixteenth century, Gavin Douglas was using Scottis as
9010-497: The past (e.g. Corby or the former mining areas of Kent ). In the 2022 census conducted by the Scottish Government , it was found that 1,508,540 people reported that they could speak Scots, with 2,444,659 reporting that they could speak, read, write or understand Scots, approximately 45% of Scotland's 2022 population. Among the earliest Scots literature is John Barbour's Brus (fourteenth century), Wyntoun 's Cronykil and Blind Harry 's The Wallace (fifteenth century). From
9116-507: The public through its nationwide network of around 11,500 branches. Most of these branch post offices ( c. 99 %) are run by franchise partners or by independent business people known as subpostmasters; Post Office Limited directly manages the remaining 1%, known as Crown post offices. Since 2020, a public enquiry has been under way into the company's actions which led to between 700 and 900 subpostmasters being wrongfully prosecuted for financial crimes , in what has been described by
9222-413: The remainder had some degree of skill, such as understanding Scots (0.27 million, 5.2%) or being able to speak it but not read or write it (0.18 million, 3.5%). There were also small numbers of Scots speakers recorded in England and Wales on the 2011 Census, with the largest numbers being either in bordering areas (e.g. Carlisle ) or in areas that had recruited large numbers of Scottish workers in
9328-515: The seventeenth century, anglicisation increased. At the time, many of the oral ballads from the borders and the North East were written down. Writers of the period were Robert Sempill , Robert Sempill the younger , Francis Sempill , Lady Wardlaw and Lady Grizel Baillie . In the eighteenth century, writers such as Allan Ramsay , Robert Burns , James Orr , Robert Fergusson and Walter Scott continued to use Scots – Burns's " Auld Lang Syne "
9434-525: The thirteenth century. The succeeding variety of Northern Early Middle English spoken in southeastern Scotland is also known as Early Scots . It began to further diverge from the Middle English of Northumbria due to twelfth- and thirteenth-century immigration of Scandinavian-influenced Middle English–speakers from the North and Midlands of England . Later influences on the development of Scots came from
9540-562: The transfer, believing it to have failed when screen freezes forced them to log off. The Post Office held subpostmasters responsible for any shortfalls that couldn’t be explained and prosecuted them for theft and false accounting. It denied that there were bugs that could cause unexplained shortages. Dalmellington was proof a bug did exist and was used as evidence in the 2018/19 High Court case , where Sir Alan Bates and 550 other subpostmasters proved that computer errors could be to blame for accounting shortfalls. Scots language Scots
9646-473: The turnpike road to Galloway. The town grew after James Watt 's steam engine had made deeper mine workings feasible, and the completion of the railway in 1858. Apart from the coal mining, there were 8,000 sheep and 800 black cattle on the hills, and plans were afoot for the spinning and weaving of wool. These plans resulted in two woollen mills which flourished for a time in the following century. The two mills employed about 30 people between them. The yarn from
9752-807: The twentieth-century biographer of James Boswell (1740–1795), described James's view of the use of Scots by his father Alexander Boswell (1706–1782) in the eighteenth century while serving as a judge of the Supreme Courts of Scotland : He scorned modern literature, spoke broad Scots from the bench, and even in writing took no pains to avoid the Scotticisms which most of his colleagues were coming to regard as vulgar. However, others did scorn Scots, such as Scottish Enlightenment intellectuals David Hume and Adam Smith , who went to great lengths to get rid of every Scotticism from their writings. Following such examples, many well-off Scots took to learning English through
9858-585: The varieties of Scots are dialects of Scottish English or constitute a separate language in their own right. The UK government now accepts Scots as a regional language and has recognised it as such under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages . Notwithstanding the UK government's and the Scottish Executive's obligations under part II of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages,
9964-477: Was a book town , owing to the high number of bookshops in the town, although the last one closed in 2005. There are many Sites of Special Scientific Interest around Dalmellington, the most notable being the nearby Loch Doon . Selection of local views The Scottish Dark Sky Observatory was located near Dalmellington and is within the northern edge of the Galloway Forest Dark Sky Park , however it
10070-477: Was a "quite modern mistake". During the first half of the twentieth century, knowledge of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary norms waned, and as of 2006 , there is no institutionalised standard literary form. By the 1940s, the Scottish Education Department 's language policy was that Scots had no value: "it is not the language of 'educated' people anywhere, and could not be described as
10176-541: Was appointed interim chair in May 2024 for a 12-month term. In November 2024, the Post Office announced the planned closure of 115 post offices. The closures will equate to around one per cent of the company's retail footprint. As of March 2022 there were 11,635 post office branches across the UK, of which 117 were directly managed by Post Office Limited (known as Crown post office branches). The majority of other branches (9,617 in total) were run either by franchise partners or by local subpostmasters (who may be members of
10282-509: Was changed to a public company, Royal Mail Group, in 2001, Post Office Counters Limited became Post Office Limited. In 2002, David Mills was appointed as chief executive of Post Office Limited, a newly created role. Mills stepped down at the end of 2005. His successor, Alan Cook, was appointed with the title of managing director in January 2006. Cook had previously been chief executive of National Savings & Investments . With declining mail usage, Post Office Limited had chronic losses, with
10388-550: Was completely destroyed by fire in the early hours of 23 June 2021. The village has two schools within the "Doon Campus": Dalmellington Primary School and Doon Academy . Dalmellington Craigengillan Curling Club is the oldest constituted club in Dalmellington; it was formed on 3 December 1841 in the Black Bull Hotel and has continued unbroken since. In 2004 the members reinstated the outside curling pond at Craigengillan, this
10494-475: Was expanded from 89 to approximately 2,500 branches due to increased demand associated with the possibility of a "no deal" Brexit . In April 2015, the BBC described a confidential report that alleged that the Post Office had made 'failings' with regard to accounting issues with its Horizon IT system, which were identified by subpostmasters as early as 2000. The article claimed that an independent investigation by forensic accountants Second Sight had found that
10600-456: Was harshly criticised in the House of Commons, particularly by Kevan Jones , MP for North Durham , who said: Obviously, as a board member she knew what was going on, including the strategy in the court case and the bugs in the system. What happened? She got a CBE in the new year's honours list for services to the Post Office. That is just rubbing salt into the wounds of these innocent people. There
10706-652: Was increasingly influenced by the developing Standard English of Southern England due to developments in royal and political interactions with England. When William Flower , an English herald , spoke with Mary of Guise and her councillors in 1560, they first used the "Scottyshe toung" . As he found this hard to understand, they switched into her native French. King James VI , who in 1603 became James I of England , observed in his work Some Reulis and Cautelis to Be Observit and Eschewit in Scottis Poesie that "For albeit sindrie hes written of it in English, quhilk
10812-415: Was not enough linguistic self-awareness amongst the Scottish populace, with people still thinking of themselves as speaking badly pronounced, grammatically inferior English rather than Scots, for an accurate census to be taken. The GRO research concluded that "[a] more precise estimate of genuine Scots language ability would require a more in-depth interview survey and may involve asking various questions about
10918-456: Was part of Kyle Stewart and under the rule of a series of Norman lords, invited to Scotland by the king to assist in subduing the country. On behalf of the king they collected taxes and administered justice. It was during this period that "The Dalmellington Motte" was constructed. Events from the past have underlined Dalmellington's geographical importance, it is believed that the Doon Valley was
11024-551: Was removed on 27 January 2024, following disagreements with the Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch on matters including the appointment of a new independent director. In April 2024, CEO Read was "exonerated of all the misconduct allegations" in relation to claims made by a whistleblower, revealed in Parliament. This followed an investigation by an external barrister. Nigel Railton , previously CEO of Camelot UK ,
11130-432: Was the notion of "Scottishness" itself. Many leading Scots of the period, such as David Hume , defined themselves as Northern British rather than Scottish. They attempted to rid themselves of their Scots in a bid to establish standard English as the official language of the newly formed union. Nevertheless, Scots was still spoken across a wide range of domains until the end of the eighteenth century. Frederick Pottle ,
11236-491: Was translated into Scots by Rab Wilson and published in 2004. Alexander Hutchison has translated the poetry of Catullus into Scots, and in the 1980s, Liz Lochhead produced a Scots translation of Tartuffe by Molière . J. K. Annand translated poetry and fiction from German and Medieval Latin into Scots. The strip cartoons Oor Wullie and The Broons in the Sunday Post use some Scots. In 2018, Harry Potter and
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