Ginger

A storm of protest broke over the head of Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman this weekend as she described coalition minister Danny Alexander as a "ginger rodent" in a speech to the Scottish Labour conference.



She later apologised, telling The JT : "I apologise unreservedly for describing Mr Alexander as a ginger rodent. It was a slip of the tongue. I meant to describe him has an opportunistic, careerist, two-faced cunt."


It is thought unlikely that the apology will stem the criticism of Ms Harman's comments. A spokesrat for the ginger rodent community told The JT : "To be compared to that wee four-eyed git, willing to starve the poor by doing his Tory masters' bidding in return for a ministerial limo is a gross insult. We'll be writing to Ms Harman to demand a full apology, just as soon as  we develop an opposable thumb that would allow us to grasp a writing implement."


Meanwhile, the Man With No Plan, The Grayster, Scottish Labour Leader Iain Gray told the conference that he was "ready to serve the Scottish people."
The Scottish people, contacted for comment, told The JT that they'd need to get back to Mr Gray on that one, but thanked him for his kind interest.

From The BBC

According to The BBC, fewer people died last winter in Scotland than usual, despite the severe cold weather.
But the welcome  news comes as no surprise to Effie McCoffindodger of Auchenmadeupname whose photograph was used to illustrate the feature on  the BBC news website.






Effie told The JT. "That's the first time I've seen that photee, but it is me right enough. Apparently they photographed me in early January, but I was stood stock still like that 'til the middle o' February. Apparently they had to re-route the bus to get roond me. And do you know this? When I came roond and walked hame, the pan loaf in ma bag was still perfectly fresh."


Effie intends to go into suspended animation every winter from now on: "Efter Christmas, the telly's shite onywie and I'd save a fortune heating the hoose."


Inside: Remember, if you have an elderly neighbour or relative don't forget to check up on them this winter. The temperature in the suspended animation pod should not rise above -60 degrees.

"Beside us the waves"

As grounded sub HMS Astute limps  towards port and a completely fucked no-claims bonus, it is thought that the captain of the boat,  who managed to ground the vessel in comprehensively charted waters, might be in for a bit of a refresher course. 
Meanwhile,The Admiralty are looking into renaming the boat, with The Astute becoming The FuckedifIknow.

"No, not manoeuvre,mirror, signal. Its mirror, signal, manoeuvre."

Crew act to re- float stricken sub!

"Right. Try putting in reverse and then into first, again..."

"Robots are our friends."

Management at the new flagship Larbert Hospital are delighted with the new robot system for running the facility's pharmacy.


"We're saving £500K a year" a delighted manager told The JT. And that's only the start of the good news!


As of the next financial year, the contract to run the pharmacy is being awarded to Cyberdyne Systems, an American start-up specialising in cutting-edge robotics. In a curiously flat monotone, a company source told The JT: "We can confidently predict that the demand for pharmaceutical product will rapidly fall to zero at the new hospital. In fact, over a very short period of time, demand for all services will fall to zero and a strange, unearthly quiet will pervade the whole complex."


Company representatives are asking members of the public to ignore any sounds of mass slaughter apparently emanating from the hospital as this will be due simply to a few "teething problems."

Enterprise crew completely freaked as Salmond video-link snafus.

An ashen-faced Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise spoke of his horror yesterday after witnessing the terrible sight of Alex Salmond in a blue hat.

Mr Salmond, currently in Delhi for the Commonwealth Games had intended to address the SNP party-conference in Perth via a video-link, but due to unforeseen disruptions in the space-time continuum, his image instead appeared  on the bridge tele-screen of The Enterprise. 


"I was expecting to receive a peace message from the Saurian ambassador,10 parsecs away in the Galaxy Dena 3." a clearly distraught Captain Kirk told The JT. 


"Saurians are, as a species, a bit odd-looking in the face department, in fact they don't have a face as such, but I'm used to dealing with weird-looking creatures. But this Alex Salmond? God in heaven, what manner of abomination is this?" 


It is thought highly likely that this will not be the last time that offence is caused by the sight of a fat twat in a blue hat. 

Welcome to the "Department

of really needs to get out more", wherein you will meet the writer of this subhead on the BBC News website.
The hack in question either operates with a very inclusive notion of what "action" encompasses OR the writer knows something we don't, perhaps involving a hotel room, a senior member of the SNP government, a nun and a (insert your choice of farmyard animal here)...
Hubba!

With news

breaking that the police might be forced into closing stations, The JT fires up the  temporal displacement drive and invites you back, back in time, to May 2003, when the world was a simpler place and parodies were much easier to do...


"A strange stamping of books before darklinginess falls type of thing" : exclusive extracts from the New ‘Inspector Rebus’ novel.
"A rural post office in Fife has taken on an additional role as a police station in what is thought to be the first initiative of its kind in the UK."  BBCNews Online, 7th May 2003.

"Look upon as promotion" that had been the official word back in Teviot Row when the top brass transferred DCI John Rebus back to his home county of Fife to head up the new "Postie" Unit.
Rebus knew better of course, as he drew deeply on his tenth fag of the day and drank even more deeply from his fourth "Laphroig". "Too much of a wild card, old son" Rebus thought to himself as he looked at his watch: nine o’clock, time to open up, it's always busy on pension day...

"Oh aye and the young yins noo son, they’ve nae respect fur naeb ‘dy, they’re ae maakin a racket and the swears o’ them?" Rebus feigned interest as the old woman prattled on, "Christ" he thought to himself as he opened another bottle of malt, " what does this woman want? I’ve given her the pension, three stamps for the TV license and six second class stamps. Why doesn’t she just leave?"

Rebus stole a glance at the Post Office clock, it read 11am, back in Edinburgh he would’ve been on to solving his third murder of the day and still made it into the Oxford Bar for opening. He looked deep into his glass of amber fire and thought to himself   "isn’t it funny the way fictional characters can drink like this without suffering grand mal seizures and hallucinating. If I was real, I’d be pissed by now."

Later, ignoring the queue of pensioners that snaked out of the post office and half way up the scheme road, Rebus walked the short distance back to his car and got in. Back to Edinburgh, then, back to tell the Chief Constable that he could take this job and stuff it. Maybe there was a place for community based policing using local civic amenities. But this wasn’t the world that Rebus knew or wanted.

The world that Rebus knew beckoned just over the road bridge over the Forth. A fictional Edinburgh, where there were more murders a day than in New Orleans, where corrupt politicians and venal policemen were ten a penny, a violent fictive entity that was everything the real Edinburgh could never be: interesting.

Rebus needed all that and besides, he needed a drink. He’d go into the Oxford when he got back, see if that author guy, Rankin, that was his name, would buy him a drink.

He owed him, Rebus reckoned. God knows how many novels and not one page of credible character development in any of them, and still the books sold in shed loads. A drink was the least he owed him.

That and a straight royalty split.

Inside: Whatever happened to that Rebus thing on TV with "actor" John Hannah? Actually, I don’t want to know…
(May 2003)

"Counterfeit warnings very similar to authentic warnings" warner warns...

The real head of The Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA) acted swiftly to warn outgoing tourists on the dangers of counterfeit warnings about counterfeit goods. 


The officer told The JT: " There has been a number of warnings in the media on the practice of buying knock-off gear while on holiday abroad. We'd like to make it clear, that these warnings, purporting to come from The SCDEA are actually the work of the fake SCDEA."


The real head of the agency warned tourists that buying 3 "Rolex" watches off a guy in the street in Tenerife  for 10 Euros was "fuelling the international drug trade. In a way that's not made all that clear in our press release, the trade in cheap knock-offs helps fund the international drug-trade." Why the international drug trade needs financial support was not immediately apparent but if The SCDEA says its true then its must be.


Officers from the agency will be stepping up the fight against counterfeiting by handing out leaflets to out-going tourists at Scotland's airports this weekend. Our agency contact said:" By standing around handing out leaflets we'll be sending out a strong message to the international criminals: the message being we're all standing about handing out leaflets instead of doing anything remotely useful."

Rubbish.

Criticism was growing last night over BBC Scotland's insistence in illustrating every story about the under-threat carrier project with a really crap looking (ahem) " artist's" (ahem) "impression" of the vessel. 
The existing impression looks like this:

Really rubbish.

While what's clearly required is a more realistic rendering:

NB: Two of the pirates appear to be Celtic-minded...