Ross Priory explosion- mystery deepens, overtime claims rise...

"Right lads, remember, look busy"

The facts are these. 
At midday last Wednesday, an explosion was heard coming from the Ross Priory Wood, damaging some woodland, outside Gartocharn.
Strathclyde police at the scene have conducted a fingertip search, are pursuing several postitive lines of enquiry and expect the investigation to take some considerable time.


So, what happens next?

• "Fingertip"search to be followed up with middle and proximal phalanx searches.

• Leaves lying around thought to be work of previously unknown terrorist cell "The Autumn Winds".

• After watching the Claims Direct ad on C5 before Tricia, several residents of Gartocharn are now hurriedly  preparing claims for post-facto-post traumatic stress. One resident will tell The JT: " after I saw the news item about the explosion on the telly, I've haven't been able  to sleep until bedtime."

• Police enquiries likely to continue until decent levels of overtime claims have been amassed. I mean, after Xmas, January is such a long pay month isn't it?

Inside: This is true. A building near the wood is owned an operated by Strathclyde Yooni  and used for functions. I suppose members of the Yooni's Chem Soc can account for their movements on or around the time of the explosion?

Hugh/Stan pleased at the award

Politician of the year/ one half of classic comedy duo, Stan/Hugh/Laurel/Henry continued to confuse the fuck out of everyone last night by insisting in morphing between his two visual personaes.
A Holyrood source told The JT: " It's fuckin' weird like. One minute you think he's just another middle-aged man, the next, you're looking for his fat mate."

Its Hugh Henry!

It's Stan Laurel!

Its either, or...

Ye-e-s...

The BBC in reporting the engagement of Prince William and hingmae have been not at all over the top in describing  the extent of unconfined joy the news has occasioned.
As in:                                                                                        










Technically, in the interests of balance the Beeb should follow up with this:


                                                                                                                              

But no, I won't be holding my breath...

"Nobody knows the trouble he's seen."

Just now in then, in the quotidian grayness of the everyday, you come across an event that forces you to question all your values, forcing a recalibration of what you previously knew to be "right". 
Such an event occurred this Sunday, dear reader on turning to The Scotland on Sunday and reading a feature on George Mathewson, a complete and utter banker and one time chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland. 
George tells the paper, that due to the banking crisis he's been forced to work on, scrapping his retirement plans. In working on, lets be clear that that doesn't mean he's greeting the customers at B and Q. By working on, in George's case, this means (and I quote):


"Mathewson sits on several boards, including a hedge fund and will take up a new post of chairman of Perth-based Stagecoach in January." No doubt cruel toil  necessary to top up his winter fuel allowance.


Lest you start to tear up as I did, read on in the feature and you discover that George in one year, during his RBS tenure, received a cash bonus of £759,000.
And presumably equally generous bungs  in ever other  year of his tenure.


Truly, no one knows the trouble he's seen...

And as...

 the storm-lashed ferry Hjaltland battled south to Rosyth after failing to dock at Aberdeen, there was only one question on the minds of passengers.

" What time's the bar opening? "

"I cried all the way to the chip shop"

Readers of a certain age may recall the above greatest lyric from the world's best ever love song. 
Readers of a less certain age are now invited to agree with me that this is now officially the world's greatest lyric.

“Keira, Keira, eat your dinner. 

Keira,Keira, you can’t get much thinner. 

Go to a restaurant with Michael Winner.

 Keira, Keira, eat your dinner.”

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

Ah yes, that makes sense...

I know from the stats that a majority of my exalted readership are exiled in Foreign, cruelly cut off from the Mitherland, so forgive me if the next bit doesn't ring any bells.


BBC Radio Scotland, faced with declining  listener numbers are just about to launch a new daytime schedule.


I've got my own ideas on why the numbers are slipping, an argument that can be summarised in just five words: "Fred MacAulay and Tom Morton" but let's leave that for another day and consider instead the identity of the new, noon-time news show anchor.That would be BBC Scotland rugby pundit John Beattie. 
Er, OK.
Now I'm all for programmers thinking outside the box, and Radio Scotland seriously needs a massive kick up the arse because most of the output is middle-aged and white breid, but John Beattie, fronting a news show?


What's next, Chick Young presenting a series on post-existential French philosophy? I might be wrong here, but it feels like a presenter-shift too far. Like it or not, news coverage on radio (especially on radio) has to  convey a certain gravitas, I'm not sure John brings that to the yard.
Imagine:
"And reports are just coming in that World War Three is underway. In a moment, we'll be attempting to  contact those reporters across the globe not yet engulfed in a radioactive firestorm, but first, what will this all mean for the Six-Nations schedule?"


Inside: "And coming up next on BBC Radio Scotland, relationship advice from Jim Traynor."