Labour councillor claims Edinburgh 'does not have a regional accent'

The city’s finance convener has been chided for saying Edinburgh “doesn’t have a regional accent per se” during a committee meeting.

The remark, which was met with jeers from councillors across the room, came up during a discussion of the council’s proposed new AI policy at last week’s policy committee meeting.

An SNP councillor said the idea that an Edinburgh accent doesn’t exist would “come as news to the majority of folk across our city who speak with it every day”.

Finance convener Mandy Watt was asking for clarification on how AI systems that could be piloted by the council would understand different accents and languages, in part due to its status as an ‘international city’.

A council officer responded to her question that modern AI systems being piloted were able to adapt to a range of accents.

Another officer said that during trials of the Magic Notes social work AI tool last year, the software was able to easily adapt to accents it took in.

Cllr Watt said in full: “Edinburgh maybe doesn’t have a regional accent per se, because it’s such an international city.

“So it’s going to be learning from a lot of different things. How does it learn from all the different languages?”

SNP councillor Danny Aston told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “The idea that Edinburgh doesn’t have an accent will come as news to the majority of folk across our city who speak with it every day.

“But maybe it’s no surprise coming from Labour, who don’t seem to care about Edinburgh, with Anas Sarwar saying he wants to be a ‘Glasgow first minister for Glasgow’”.

He added that locals should be proud of Edinburgh and its place as Scotland’s capital city.

Councillors did not agree to pass the new AI policy at the meeting, instead referring it to next week’s full council meeting.

This was due to concerns that, due to new rules around deputations in the councils, not all parties that wished to comment on the new policy were able to do so.