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.