numptorium n. the building used by the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, or by extension, the parliament itself. Etymological Note: Scots numpty ‘a stupid person’ + Latin -orium ‘a building or place where an activity occurs or a (type of) thing is located.’ (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
How do social media algorithms shape the way we communicate? A new book argues that the competition for clicks is changing the way we speak and write, from the so-called “YouTube accent” to the surprising evolution of the word preppy. Also: A...
What an irony that all the sources for this phrase should be genuine “numpties”! Hickey is a anonymous and possibly fictitious columnist, specialising in “sweaty sock” type hatred of the Scots. Jason Allardyce’s loathing for local democratic control extends to having published a map showing the best place to launch mortars at the Parliament, and George Kerevan is a self-loathing former nationalist who now pens Thatcherite hymns to business-at-all cost politics for the peculiarly anti-Scottish newspaper “The Scotsman”. There’s an unholy alliance between rabid right-wing press barons and rabid independence-or-nothing nationalists in Scotland, neither of whom ever wanted a Parliament. The only things they have in common is a hatred of democracy and an extraodinary access to the media. True numpties. (note: this is not a defence of the current Lib/Lab administration, merely the process of local political control)