Fucking great, the BNP assholes are in this area...

*find the bigotry in that, yo

Where are they being rubbished?

hatin' on the Irish now!

I tremble! (Though not so much, based on who started the thread anyway.)

So do I, actually!

Flip it on its head - if I were to go "I've just been beaten up by a big gang of black scum", would you lavish me with sympathy and ignore my language or call me out on it? They may be a) black and b) scumbags but that doesn't wash away the negative connotations, does it? Bigotry begets bigotry, even among 'liberals'.

I'm not sure what use me going "aww, that's rough" is, for anyone really.

If there were people flinging around nasty racial abuse or threatening violence on this board they would get one thousand times the amount of stick Rumpy Pumpkin got above for one innocently meant if ill-advised phrase and well you know it.

Is what I should have said.

i think semantics of what is a ned and confronting drug etc. issues are both important. but apart from some aspects of violence and intimidation both have not a lot of relevance to the BNP?

Ms Kane said the word stands for a non-educated delinquent and is therefore degrading and insulting.

However, communities minister Margaret Curran accused her of focusing on "frivolities" rather than the blight of youth crime.

Ms Kane tabled a question asking the Scottish Executive to state its position on ministers using the term.

The former youth worker in the Drumchapel area of Glasgow wants the parliament to condemn its use, comparing it to ageism, racism and sexism.

Alienate youngsters

"If you were talking about any other section of society, let's say it was elderly people, and you used a derogatory term there would be an outcry," the MSP told BBC Scotland.

"Just because these young people don't have the vote and they live in some of the areas that you don't hear too much about or see too much about, it does not mean that they should not be protected in relation to language that is used against them."

The MSP has been supported by the charity Children in Scotland, which said such descriptions helped alienate youngsters from the rest of society.

Ms Kane and the charity said they were also concerned about the way young people have been portrayed recently.

Ms Curran insisted the priority of the executive was to respond to the problems encountered by communities and young people.

"I think it's much better that rather than blaming the people who use the term, you try to resolve the problem," said the communities minister.

Margaret Curran dismissed the call
"With all due respect I think you have a very strange sense of priorities.

"I'm quite happy to tell my constituents, the elderly women who are mugged, the hard-pressed families whose car tyres are slashed on a regular basis, that the policy of the SSP is to say to them be careful how you describe that because you might hurt their feelings."

Ms Kane told the parliament that statistics showed youth crime had remained at the same level for a decade.

"What's happening in other debates we have heard is a generalisation against young people all over Scotland," she said.

"These same young people have been badly let down. They have been pushed to the wall for decades and some of them are now the parents of young people we are now hearing concerns about.

"That is the result of poverty."

However, Labour's Duncan McNeill said that the word ned was used to refer to young criminals rather than all young people.

'Pharmaceutical consultants'

He said: "What are we supposed to call them - the guys that hang about the streets? Tracksuit ambassadors?

"Shoplifters as retail stock relocation operatives?

"Drug dealers as independent pharmaceutical consultants? What are we to call them?"

Ms Kane replied: "To call young people neds, drug dealers, shoplifters or any other thing is a huge assumption. They are young people."

In 2001 the word ned entered the Concise Oxford Dictionary, defined as a hooligan or petty criminal, a stupid or loutish boy or man.

I seriously suggest everyone clicks that link and reads it.

Neds have as much a place in the history of British/Scottish youth culture as Mods, Rockers, Punks, Casuals, New Romantics, Indie Kids, Goths and the like - cultures which are usually typified by the clothes that they wear and the music they listen to.

My daughter (12) and her friend (11) were spat at, sworn at and generally intimidated in the High Street in Edinburgh by a gang of the very type of JJB sports-wearing goons Rosie Kane is asking us to respect.

The reason for this harangue? The girls were wearing black baggy clothes and Nirvana and Foo Fighters T-shirts. "Ned" is far too polite a word for these people.
Neil, Scotland