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The news is actually full of articles about George Galloway calling a dude a windae-licker on Twitter. The dude (@Hawfa) set his privacy so we don't know what led George to discard him in such a fashion but you can guess the guy said something stupid. Stupid enough that George didn't feel the need to argue the point but beyond stupid so he felt the need to insult the guy.

I couldn't find any definiton for "windae-licker" beyond "idiot". If you type "slang" into the search it finally results in references to "retarded" people. You don't get any such references to "retarded people" unless you also type "slang". Not to be disingenuous, I realize that George was not giving a formal address to the pope in which slang would not have been used. I still don't see how it's that bad unless the guy was known to be mentally handicapped and Galloway used the term knowing that it applied.

Personally, I call people gimps all the time. In Canada, that's about the equivalent. It's not a word I would use in debate with a respected opponent but certainly one I'd use with an idiot and quite often with friends when we laugh at our "retarded" gaffes. Normally I don't even think about it as anything other than a graphic word for extreme stupidity either mental or physical. If I was trying to find my glasses and they turned out to be on my face (it happens... they get dirty when I'm not looking) I'd laugh and call myself a gimp... or a windae licker (now that I know the term)

I have, with one person, used it to insult someone who happens to be disabled but that's because he ****ing deserves it. Not all handicapped people are nice.

windae-licker is, in the Scottish vernacular, window licker, a reference to a mental disability. Not sure, with George's extensive vocabulary, he should be using the term. I would say that here, the connotations of that phrase would make it offensive, like the term spastic, a word that was once commonly used but no longer found tolerable.

Gimp wouldn't in my eyes be anywhere near as offensive. Depends I suppose, where we come from and what we deem acceptable

Galloway actually apologized for the comment. Didn't really see that coming. He stated that when he used it he had no idea it had any connections outside of meaning "moron" and claims the event has changed the way he will be using twitter in the future. No more arguing with critics that sling mud lest everyone end up dirty.

Yes I really believe he didn't understand the connotations. If he really wanted to insult his intelligence but using an obscure scots dialect term he would have called him a numpty, a ba'heid or something like that.

Gimp now is fairly offensive having a bdsm connotation thanks to american usage of the word, don't know about anywhere else but here gimpy used to mean someone with a limp. bad leg gimp meant crippled.

Bring Out the Gimp - Pulp Fiction (9/12) Movie CLIP (1994) HD - YouTube

It's cultural imo some words are viewed as more offensive than others depending where you are. Take bollocks for instance, in the UK it means someone is talking nonsense and is quite innocuous but some American posters were deeply offended by it until it was explained to them.