On a personal note...

...our dear son, Tarquin, Torcuill, or whatever made-up name we're calling him this week, is soon heading to Upside Down World to live and work for a gap year. Or it might be a decade, I'm not sure. 

Readers who fancy either offering him work or a crash-pad are encouraged to contact me and I'll pass on any offers to said son. 

He is house-trained, a polite, Guardian-reading vegetarian. He is also 6 foot three and built like the proverbial so he would be an ideal choice for any light labouring duties salient in Australia, moving the Outback to the Infront and so forth.

Any help gratefully thanked for.

Oh dear...

It is reported in the Scotsman that Labour's Holyrood leader, Iain Gray, has reorganised his shadow cabinet and has promoted Jackie Baillie to a new role.  For our cheap and tawdry purposes, the relevant part of the feature reads:  "Mr Gray attempted to beef up his front-bench team by promoting Jackie Baillie."

Oh dear...

 

Strictly on the QT of course...

...but guess whose name's in the frame to steal the Best Actor Oscar in 2010? Whisper who dares film fans, but the word on the streets of Tinseltown is that Jim Murphy might just sneak in past those big bad boys, DiCaprio, De Niro and Smilin' Jack to bag a bald man. 

How so? 

Well, apparently Jim Lad is Secretary of someplace called Scotland and this week he had a meeting with some bankers guys who own the paper on a soccer team called The Glasgows Ranger.  Apparently, this club owes like squillions to the bank and the bank is looking to call time. 

Anyhoo, Jim meets with the bank and pleads for the future of these soccer club guys saying : "Please, don't pull the plug on The Glasgows Ranger, Scottish soccer needs this club."

Cue quiet tears shed all round. 

So why the Oscar buzz around Jimbo? Well, it turns out Jim's a big fan of another Glasgow club, The Celtics, who are like the biggest rivals of the Glasgows Ranger and the word is Jim would just love to see the "Hunny Bears" as they are called, go belly up! 
But, Jim, acting his ass off as a politician, managed to keep his face straight while pleading for the future of his least favourite team!  Plaudits all round as apparently Jim didn't slip out of character once. Well, truth be told, he did let he mask slip once as shown below, but what the hey eh? 

We luv yah kid, you're a winner!

"Act normal. Don't laugh, don't laugh.."

Arf! Eeeh, I love Kyola me...

From The BBC: "Excuse me man, I have reason to believe that you can turn me on." *

Jail for drug-dealing policeman
A police officer who admitted dealing cocaine while on secondment to his force's drugs unit has been jailed for 26 months.

Christopher McGinn was caught with the drug in a pub car park by Lothian and Borders Police colleagues last October. He was suspended from duty before resigning from the force.

The 29-year-old was told by Sheriff Roderick MacLeod at Edinburgh Sheriff Court that only a custodial sentence was appropriate.

Mr McGinn told The JT: "I now realise that when my superiors in the force described the secondment as valuable work experience we were not thinking along the same lines.They obviously had a more interdicting role in mind for me, as opposed to marketing."


Inside: * And that line is from?

"It's not all doom and gloom"

...although you'd never know from this interview with the New Head Of One Of The Myriad Offices Of Bureaucracy That Characterize This Great Game Of Ours. 

What I want to know is this: have Jonathan Watson and Ralph Topping every been seen in the same room together?

I mean, "Ralph Topping"? Even the name sounds made up. And respect to the interviewer here for managing to keep the yawn out of his voice...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/scot_prem/8316843.stm

No, honestly, I'm

...fine.I've just got something in my eye.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNEgKGEDfOk

From The Sunday Herald...

Senior Tories bid to block party’s only Scottish MP from top job

• By Tom Gordon and Paul Hutcheon

0 comments

Published on 18 Oct 2009

Senior Conservatives want David Cameron to drop his key Scottish lieutenant from a future Tory cabinet because they fear he would be no match for Alex Salmond.

The Tory leader is being urged to avoid making David Mundell the next Scottish Secretary, the Sunday Herald understands.

Salmond: "My friend, (actually more of a slight acquaintance really), Mahatma MacAskill"

Alex Salmond made it clear last night that  in comparing Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill to the very dead secular saint, Mahatma Gandhi, he was merely drawing attention to his colleague's sense of self-sacrifice. Mr Salmond said he was proud to count Mr MacAskill among that intimate circle of people he sort of knew, vaguely.

The  First Minister told The JT: "Like the  Indian leader, Kenny demonstrated great compassion in releasing the Lockerbie Bomber to die at home. If Megrahi doesn't hurry up and peg it, I fully expect Kenny to do the decent thing and die instead. I mean, fair's fair."

Addressing  criticism of the  Gandhi/Kenny comparison Mr Salmond said: "I don't see what the problem is, I mean it's not as if I'm comparing Kenny to Jesus Christ is it?"

That particular comparison is, we understand, being reserved for Mr Salmond himself who fully intends to be crucified and then resurrected as Saviour Of All The World. Mr Salmond confirmed to the SNP conference that he had yet to be crucified, pointing out the absence of manual stigmata:

Yes, we have no stigmata, we have no stigmata today!"

Not Kenny, definitely not Kenny...

Y-e-es...

THE EMANCIPATION OF THE WORKING CLASS THROUGH SOCIALISM: WHO NEEDS IT?

I MEAN, LET'S FACE IT, WITH THE INSTALLATION OF LORD MARTIN OF SPRINGBURN, IT'S JOB DONE IN'T IT?

Japan 2 -Scotland 0

Not especially under-pressure Scotland manager George Burley told The JT via a crackly phone-line from Tokyo that the meaningless friendly lost to Japan had been "useful". 


George, whose job is safe, because no one even cares anymore, said : "What with the high-profile call-offs from players who didn't fancy flying to the other side of the world for no reason in the middle of the season, it gave us a chance to hand caps to players you've never heard of before and are unikely to be ever heard of again, come to that.."


A squad player did agree with George that the trip was a useful learning experience. "I've learned that death is nothing to really worry about and may be infinitely preferable to enduring 12 hours on a plane pretending to listen to George's inexhaustible fund of 'when I played for Ipswich Town' stories." 


Crew on the Japanese Airlines flight confirmed that several players had requested  an extra cushion, blanket, eye-shades and  a seppuku kit to end it all, but cabin crew refused saying: "If we have to live through this, so do you." 


At Narita, engineers were called to the plane to investigate a strange droning noise emitting from the aircraft despite the engines being powered down...(please feel free to fill in the rest).

Inside: High profile call-offs likely as George announces next friendly opponents: The Tharggian Ladies' Knitting and Athletics Club, away, on The Planet Thargg.

From The Naiveman?

Scots soldiers seize 1.5 tons of marijuana

Published Date: 07 October 2009

By Lucinda Cameron

SCOTTISH troops have seized 1.5 tons of hashish during a three-day assault on an insurgent hot spot in Afghanistan.

Hundreds of Black Watch soldiers swooped into Lakari in southern Helmand Province under cover of darkness, on a mission to clear a bazaar of drugs and ammunition.

Two platoons engaged in fire fights with the insurgents, allowing another group to search the bazaar, where their finds included a block of hash the size of a football, and components for making bombs.

Locals looking on said they'd thought that the soldiers had seized at least 3 tons of marijuana, although back at base only 1.5 tons were logged.

A regimental NCO told The JT: " Er, I think the stash must've shrunk on the way back to the base, that's it, half of the hash just evaporated. Yes, that's definitely what happened."

The NCO then led his men in unloading an attractive collection of tightly-rolled Afghan carpets which the troops intend to send back to Fife  for Xmas.

Groaning under the unexpectedly heavy weight of the carpets the Black Watch NCO said :

" What with one thing and another, our families back in KIrkcaldy, Dunfermiline and Glenrothes will be finding Xmas hard this year, hopefully the gift of an Afghan carpet, which definitely doesn't  have anything hidden inside it, will go some way to making things easier."

In other, completely unrelated news, Scottish police this week revealed that record levels of drugs, including marijuana, had been seized in Scotland's cities.

A long time ago...

in a galaxy far, far away, a David Cameron, who this week promised to treat Scotland with respect, wrote exclusively for The JT:

David Cameron speaks to the (English) Nation

"English ignorance of Scotland is damaging the union, according to the UK Conservative leader David Cameron." BBC News Online, 15th September 2006.


"Hi, it’s David William Donald Cameron here, but please, call me Dave.

Y’know, most people know that I’m a pretty straight-talking kinda guy and that’s why I said what I said.
Too many people in England are just completely ignorant of Scotland, its people and its history and so, with a name like Cameron, it’s up to me to set English people straight on a few things. For example, did you know that it was a Scotsman, Alexander Graham Bell Fleming that made it possible for penicillin to be injected over the phone?

And the next time you enjoy a cup of Earl Grey you’ve got James Watt to thank for inventing steam.



And it’s not just in the field of science that we’ve got a lot to thank the Scots for.

"The Wealth of Nations"? Pretty important book in the development of political economy right? But did you know that it was written by Maggie Smith? It’s true. Back in the 60s, when I was very young, Ms Smith wrote the book between acting jobs. It makes you think doesn’t it? And then there’s Charles Rennie Macintosh, architect and interior designer who found the time to style the iPod. Could you live without your iPod? I know I couldn’t.

But hey, there’s more.

The next time you’re enjoying a day of grouse shooting and Angus, the beater, takes a sip out of his hip flask and then offers you a swig, just remember, as you surreptitiously wipe the neck of the flask prior to having a drink, that the Scots invented whisky. I can tell you, that it’s a beautiful sight, while travelling through rural Perthshire, to see the fields of whisky bottles glint as they ripen in the autumnal sun.
"But Dave" I hear you ask, "Don’t Scottish people have funny accents?" Listen, anytime I’m up in Scotland hangin’ with me Tory homies at Scottish Central Office they all speak exactly like me! So let’s have no more ignorance about Scotland.
Respect."




 That Tory leader bloke
 Data off Star Trek





Inside: Dear Sir, Am I alone in thinking that David Cameron looks like that android bloke, Data, off "Star Trek?". I think not.




(September 2006)

Antiquarian Curiosities: an occasional divertissement

Roy Livingston, inks on canvas, "Dogfight over Denniston", 1963.

Inside:  previous curiosities:

http://thejaggythistle.blogspot.com/2008/12/modern-life-is-rubbish.html

http://thejaggythistle.blogspot.com/2009/01/antiquarian-curiosities-occasional_15.html

http://thejaggythistle.blogspot.com/2009/02/antiquarian-curiosities-occasional.html,

When Jim met Henry

Professional Dundonian Jim Spence interviewed Henry McLeish last week on the review the latter is carrying out on the future (is there one?) of Scottish football. 
Bear in mind, this review is to be finished by January 2010.

Readers of the big Jaggy Thistle will remember that, as a politician, in his salad days, oor Henry  was a reliable source of innocent fun. Mainly because, well, let me put it this way... if you were required to illustrate the concept of someone being so dumb that they'd need a diagram to eat mince, you'd do it with a photo of Henry. 

Transcribed from an interview where Henry managed to use the phase "buy in" ten times, here's a flavour of oor Henry.

Henry: "This review will be different.... if we are open, make the process  totally transparent, then everyone has a buy-in, everyone will know what we're recommending and as a whole nation we can take this country forward.."

Jim : "Can you give us any hints or flavour of what your early recommendations might be?"

Henry: "No".

"Buy in, buy in, buy in, buy in, buy in, buy in, buy in, buy in, buy in and finally, buy in."