To "The Villan " and "Sugarfoot Jack": I used to teach in the Arts Faculty of a University in the UK, and I remember how members of Staff, with humorous intent, imitated a Billy-Connolly-style Glasgow accent, with the additional implication that those speaking with such an accent were ignorant, crude, ill-bred and ill-mannered. The fact that I have a Glasgow accent isn't the worst thing about such a demonstration of crass ignorance; it's the fact that the University was itself in Scotland, though as is usual there was a great preponderance of English Public Schoolboys among these "Academic colleagues". Was it E M Forster who said that, in Britain, "people are branded on the tongue"?

Returning to the current diversion taken by this thread, there was a Court case in Glasgow some ten years ago when some youth was arrested by a Police officer for using the very same "P" word in referring to a shopkeeper. When the case came to Court, and the shopkeeper was asked his name and occupation, he replied that he "keeps the wee Paki shop in ****** Road". Case dismissed.