Photogags

Alastair Darling previews new Fringe show:"My strategy for saving the entire financial system."

While burying George Burley at sea, Tartan Army gloss over fact that George wasn't actually dead.

Newest member of crew now knows what "that button does."

Audience find that they need another Chinese performance an hour later...

Jumpers for goalposts? Marvellous!

For ages it's been bugging me. George Burley reminds me of someone. Tonight it came to me. He looks like a certain football manager.

As you know...

I'm not normally one to intrude on private grief, but I really couldn't let this one go...

Via the J Arthur MacNumpty blog,(http://macnumpty.blogspot.com/),below is a quote from the US based Boycott Scotland site, set up to boycott Scotland or something over the release of the Lockerbie bomber.

With typical measured American restraint the site editorial reads :

"Mr. MacAskill, the so-called "Justice" Secretary of Scotland, you should be ashamed of yourself. You know nothing of justice, nor will we ever forgive your heinous action, and it is our sincere hope that the people of Scotland will strongly voice their opposition to what you have done. You have shown to the international community that your government and the United Kingdom as a whole will stop at nothing to pursue the neverending and relentless acquisition of oil revenues."

I would draw your particular attention to that last sentence, the one about oil.

I know that our American cousins have gone their own way in developing the English language, but I would've thought that even they would've heard about that fraught relationship said to pertain between kettle, pot and drawing comparisons between certain chromatic values.

"Year of Homecoming": Plan B

Worried Scottish tourism chiefs are meeting this weekend to discuss the implementation of "Year of Homecoming Plan: B". The move comes after Plan A, "get thousands of Americans to visit" was somewhat scuppered by Kenny MacAskill letting the Libyan bomber go and the Americans taking the huff.


It is thought the new plan, unlike the old plan, will focus primarily on overseas visitor markets which meet one crucial criterion - not being the USA.


Key points in the new plan include:

• Emphasise the key role that Scottish immigrants/scientists/inventors etc. played in the creation and development of any country that is not the USA
• Make up some plausible number of Burns suppers held every year in any country that is not the USA
• Point to the many bottles of whisky that every year are drunk by people who aren't citizens of the USA
• Studiously ignore the formation of the Tripoli Tartan Army
• Pray that something turns up
• Work on your cv

Inside: US visitors replace tentative "Homecoming" idea with definite "Homestaying" decision.

The Jaggy Thistle solves the riddle...

Archaeologists this week revealed this little stone carving, found on Orkney and believed to be 5000 years old. The claim is that the carving represents the human form.

Hmm.

We here at The JT's archaeological reconstruction lab take the view that after some 5000 years, bits of the carving have gone missing.

Add those missing bits back in and we have:

Makes much more sense.

Lockerbie release: "I'll be standing right behind Kenny", pledges Alex, "wearing my cloak of invisibilty"

SNP Leader and First Minister Alex Salmond has pledged to get right behind Justice Minister Kenny McAskill after the latter released Lockerbie bomber Al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds.

Mr Salmond told The JT: "This is the first time a member of the government at Holyrood has made a decision that may have real, international repercussions of an unquantifiable nature. Thank fuck it's Kenny's balls on the line and not mine."

However, Mr Salmond promised to support his Justice Minister 100%. "Any time Kenny has to face the media on this one in the weeks, months, years and decades ahead, he can rest assured I'll be standing right beside him - wearing my cloak of invisibility."

Mr Salmond's support is not without caveats however.

"If the supposedly terminally ill Megrahi obligingly pegs it in a week or two, then I'll be glad to pay heartfelt tribute to Kenny's compassion and wisdom.

If however, Megrahi's spotted months from now windsurfing off Tripoli then I fear Kenny will have made a tragic error of judgement which is his responsibility alone, and the decision was reached by him and no one else. I'd never even heard of this case to be honest."

Inside: Did Megrahi do it? No idea. But the captain of The Vincennes, the US warship that earlier brought down an Iranian airliner, "by mistake", was not only not court-martialled, the Americans gave him a medal. A medal, after killing 290 people.

From The BBC: "Age takes toll on wild red deer"

Age toll taken on wild red deer

A study of wild red deer on the Isle of Rum has found their ageing process can be dramatic and sudden.

Scientists at Edinburgh University studied a thousand of the animals, immortalised in Sir Edwin Landseer's portrait Monarch of the Glen.

They discovered that while males showed the first signs of ageing later than females, when it did catch up, their decline could be much faster.

The boffins observed that the deer became less wild the older they got.

"We noticed that instead of charging around, the older male deer preferred just having a nice sit-down or pottering about in the shed.

Older female deer spent most of the day looking for bargains in charity shops and having rambling conversations about how the young deer of the day are much wilder than they used to be, and telling anyone who'll listen that "it was all fields round here when I was a girl, actually it's still all fields, because we deer live in fields don't we?" etc etc"

Inside: "I came down for breakfast and said hello dear to the wife. I knew she was a deer because of the antlers sticking out of her head."

Look Richard, there's a simple explanation...

Concern over 'urine officer' pay

An MSP has raised concerns over a Grampian Police officer convicted of diluting his urine sample being suspended on full pay for four years.

Sgt Ewan McHardy, 41, was stopped for suspected drink-driving while off duty in Elgin in 2005.

He was found guilty on Thursday of tampering with his urine sample.

North East Labour MSP Richard Baker is asking why McHardy was paid for four years, thought to be about £160,000, before the case came to court.

The editor of The JT told Mr Baker : "It's quite simple, first the plod diluted the urine and then he spent the last 4 years extracting it. QED"

Norway 4, Scotland 0

"Ett George Burley, det er bare én George Burley..."

Words fail me

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8195284.stm

From The Scotsman: Evidence that "Smeato"...

... also missed out on those elementary logic classes at school.

I miss my anonymity,' says airport hero Smeaton

Published Date: 11 August 2009

By CRAIG BROWN

GLASGOW Airport terrorist attack hero John Smeaton has spoken out over the difficulties that his celebrity has brought him.

Speaking during a preview of his new Edinburgh Fringe Festival show, An Audience With John Smeaton, he said that he found it hard to walk down streets without being stopped.

"There is nothing better than having people come up to me and patting me on the back, it's lovely," he said. "But losing your anonymity is just not as nice as you'd think. I miss being able to walk down the streets, to be drunk and have nobody say anything about it."

Mr Smeaton later told The JT, "I just don't understand why my public profile since the terrorist attack hasn't diminished at all. Its almost as if me continually seeking opportunities to self-promote has impacted on my public recognition factor.

Being continually recognised as a hero means that its difficult to do the kind of thing a non-hero would normally do: like walking down a public streets ripped to the tits."

God knows...

I'm often tempted, but usually I resist the urge to comment here on matters foreign. "Foreign" in this context refers to goings on in That England.

However...

Feast your eyes on this charming man. His name is Philip Blond and, according to The Guardian, he's David Cameron's favourite Tory intellectual.

Leaving aside the obvious temptation to describe that category as a contradiction in terms, (OK, I won't do it again), I will make only this comment.

If this man's photograph isn't in the dictionary illustrating the word "oleaginous" then it should be.

Profit-poor RBS to pursue innovative retail banking strategy

RBS downbeat despite £15m profit

Royal Bank of Scotland Group, which is 70%-owned by taxpayers, has reported a pre-tax profit of £15m for the first six months of the year.

The statement from RBS was downbeat, highlighting the £1bn loss after paying tax and dividends to the government and describing the results as "poor".

The investment banking division fared well, making about a £5bn profit, while high street banking had a harder time.

Bank chief Stephen Hester said "The retail banking sector remains problematic, with pressure on margins, forcing profits and most importantly bonuses downwards."

With this in mind and drawing on the public's investment in the bank through the bailout, Mr Hester announced a programme of re-programming the bank's network of cash-point machines.

"As of Monday, customers making a withdrawal will receive the amount requested net of a compulsory donation to the bank's bonus fund. "

In essence, this charge is very similar to the existing bank charge regime where we charge you £30 for a letter telling you you're a tenner overdrawn. We're just now making the fact that we're taking the piss more explicit."

"Please completely remove your card and take what little money we've decided you can have"

"I mean it's not exactly er, um..."

Rocket sites 'could make profit'

A rocket test range on the Western Isles could be turned around to make a profit, the chairman of community landowner Storas Uibhist has argued.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) contractor QinetiQ is to cut 125 jobs across sites linked to the range.

Ahead of a meeting with Defence Minister Quentin Davies, Angus MacMillan said consideration should be given to expanding the range.

Mr Macmillan told The JT: "I can't see any great difficulty in thinking up alternative, profitable uses for the ranges. Producing an innovative strategy doesn't require the application of a specialised skill set; one, say, associated with a narrow field of technological or scientific endeavour. I can't think of an analogy that applies to the current case of testing rockets but I'm sure it will occur to me later."

From The BBC: (Edited for logic)

Gaelic schools fund gets £800,000

An extra £800,000 for a project promoting Urdu in schools has been announced by the Scottish Government.

First Minister Alex Salmond confirmed the spending ahead of a meeting of the Cabinet in the Western Isles.

The money will take the level of funding for the government's Punjabi Schools Fund to £2.15m this year.

Mr Salmond said the investment would help expand Polish education in schools, and lead to more people using the language.

He said: "The Chinese language makes an enormous contribution to Scottish culture.

"Hindi is a key part of Scotland's unique culture and history and it's incredibly important that we invest in its future."

Scottish tour

In January, the Scottish Government embarked on a drive to become more bilingual, through plans including recruiting more Klingon speakers and encouraging correspondence in the language.

Inside: Things you never hear:"What did we do on Friday night? Nothing much, just a couple of pints then we went for a gaelic. God, I love a good gaelic me."

Lovely fags...

'Castaway' hopes to quit smoking

A businessman who has smoked 30-a-day for decades is to maroon himself on a remote Scottish island in an effort to quit the habit.

Former merchant banker Geoff Spice is due to land on the small isle of Sgarabhaigh, off Harris in the Outer Hebrides, over the weekend.

Mr Spice, 56, will spend four weeks in solitude with only some books and the island's sheep for company.

It is thought that by the second week Mr Spice will be experimenting with sheep's wool wrapped in book leaves and by week three anyone passing close to shore in a small boat with 20 Marlboro will be able to name their own price...

Inside: No excuse needed:http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2amx7_rollerblading-alcohol-cigarettes2_fun