Name change ahoy for nature botherers!
O-Kaay, this is getting weird…   Apparently Scottish Natural Heritage this week have decided to up the ante on the troublesome tiggywinklies on Uist - they’re going to start shooting them.
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SQA to introduce "balance" in exam marking.
The Scottish Qualifications Authority was under fire this week when it emerged that kids going to posh schools were given the benefit of the doubt when it came to exam results.
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Scots on the Box.
"Meet The Magoons" Friday C4, 9.30pm. "Still Game", Friday BBC 2, 10pm.
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"New" Technology allows nuclear clean-up speed-up.
Previous estimates that it would take a squillion, gazillion years to make safe Scotland’s nuclear legacy were revised downwards this week. The agency charged with hiding, I’m sorry, I meant to say, with "disposing" of the glowing detritus of nuclear power, is now claiming that the whole rather expensive process will now be completed a lot quicker.
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News this week provides lazy Editor with obvious gags.*
Summertime, and the living is easy. How very, very, true, as two separate stories in the nation’s press this week, give the Editor of The JT an excuse to indulge in two screamingly obvious gags for the price of one.
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Ostentatious? Moi?
Perhaps mindful of Frank "Where’s the buffet?" MacAveety’s less than stellar tour of duty in the post , new Culture minister Patricia Ferguson has issued a list of performances she will be attending during the Edinburgh Festival.
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Scots on the box: The Robin Cook Funeral, BBC Scotland, Friday.
Are there lessons to be learnt in the aftermath of Robin Cook’s death last week ?Well, here’s a couple: grown men are capable of acting out of bile and spite and relatedly: choose your friends wisely.
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Free money scheme a totally unsurprising hit with Executive Ministers.
Tawny Trot, Tommy Sheridan, revealed this week that Executive Ministers domiciled more than 90 minutes travel time from Holyrood can claim up to £10,500 of other people’s money to (ahem) "defray" additional living costs.
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City of Despondency worth about 20p new report finds.
A report out this week, er, reports that Dundee is the cheapest place in Scotland to be a student. The report fails to mention that the Planning Disaster By The Tay is a bargain, worth about 20p in old money.
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Average Scot sees "threat" of vigilantism as an opportunity.
The news this week that allowing members of the public to speed trap motorists in Strathclyde might pose the threat of vigilante style behaviour has been discounted by experts who really know us Scots.
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Jaggy Thistle University - School of Psychology and Religious Studies.
Unusually for academia, Professor Beaker combines the study of psychology with the study of religion, thus cleverly giving apprentice head-mechanics something to really get their teeth into. Because, when it comes to eccentric God Bothering, Scotland leads the world.
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Oh Lordy! It's Lally!
The worlds of politics and embalming were in shock this week when Pat "Doo" Lally, ex-Labour provost of Weegieville threw his hat into the Cathcart by-election ring and hurt his arm
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On one being given the key to the dressing up box.
You’re only 21 once, and it is only fitting that the media gave in-no-way-out-of-all-proportion coverage to the lucid musings of one particular 21-year-old this week.
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Aberdonian cabbie looks forward to strenuous bout of self-arse-kicking.
Aberdeen cab-firm owner, Derek Smith, returned over 40K of your earth pounds over-paid to him by The Royal Bank this week only to find that the esteemed institution had already written the money off.
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Immigration authorities insist asylum deportations borrow from European best practice.
With failed asylum seekers in Glasgow this week being dragged out of their beds in a dawn raid, the Home Office insist they are using best practice derived from European experience.
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Private schools benefit from new child-care scheme.
It’s the talk of the New Town! Yes, cocktail parties the length and breadth of the bits of Edinburgh that JT readers wouldn’t even be allowed to drive through, are abuzz with talk of the latest must-have accessory.
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Student prank carried out 30 years too late : if only there had been a traffic cone handy
It has been said that all political careers ultimately end in failure. How true. For evidence of the eternal verity of that saying, just check out the resignation this week of Mike Watson MSP.
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Scotland a world leader in aids to fat, lazy bastard lifestyle.
For anyone whose ever been cornered at a party by some bore droning on about how Scotland has historically led the world in scientific advance, news from boffin world this week will only confirm that we still lead the world etc in coming up with ideas that allow us to continue to just sit about watching the telly.
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"JT wins in frame to aid SNH recruitment to Inverness"
(Excruciatingly boring business news headline continues for another three pages)
(Interior, day, at the offices of top Inverness-based PR consultancy "Telling Lies fur Inversneckie". Senior partner, Angus Podgorny, is pitching for SNH’s business following the outright refusal of SNH staff to move from Edinburgh to Inverness.)
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Scots welcome 7 year run-in to all-UK Olympic fitba’ team.
With approval given this week for the fielding of a Great British soccer team in the 2014 Olympics, Scots fans welcomed the early notification of the proposed move.
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Announcing an innovation never before seen in all of human history!
Actually, that’s a lie. But this feature is new to The JT so you may want to know how it came about.
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Edinburgh and Glasgow admit to relationship issues.
In an often emotional press conference last week, representatives from both of Scotland’s largest cities finally admitted to relationship issues and pledged to get help.
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£1m bill to clean floor. Go on, guess who's paying for it…
Ordinarily spilling stuff on the floor would not call for a £1m clean-up operation. And, equally, er, ordinarily, you wouldn’t expect someone else to pay for the clean-up, would you?
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"What would you like to moan about?"
Scotland’s Children's Commissioner this week launched a consultation amongst the nation’s youth to find out what they wanted her to do for the next two years.
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"Towering intellect" bumps head on door frame, relocates to US.
The JT’s favourite German was at it again this week, as Prince Charles gave us not one, but two reasons to thank the Lord anew for the many beneficences accorded to us by royal rule.
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Scots squad struggle with thinking about two ideas at once.
A week in which our national fitba’ squad managed to crash out of the World Cup AND play the best international soccer seen this year
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"Taxi for McLetchie? " It's already here!
Gleeful disquiet growing at Holyrood over Tory Leader David McLetchie’s (ahem) "appropriate use " of taxis while on (ahem) "parliamentary business"
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Home Office confirms - "We intend to carry on acting like a bunch of fuckin’ Nazis."
Despite widespread protests in Scotland, including disquiet being expressed by Scottish Executive Ministers, Home Office minister Tony McNulty confirmed this week that "we will carry on acting like a bunch of fuckin’ Nazis."
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"Drowning slowly"- welcome to the (ahem) "Hawaii of the North".
It’s the Tiree Wave Classic this week, an activity which apparently involves drowning very slowly while hanging on to a windsurf board.
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He’s Back! And this time he’s bringing his dug!
Scotland’s brightest (and, let's face it, only) rising tennis star prepares to square off against the white clad Forces of Darkness (Tennis Division)
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"The Health Police Harasseth Us"
The Health Minister, Andy Kerr , announced this week that health workers will now actively encourage people in poor areas to seek out medical advice, leading the press to inevitably dub the project "The Health Police."
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Followers of fiction condemn work of fiction - work that one out…
With historic Rosslyn Chapel the site this week for the filming of rubbish novel "The Da Vinci Code", Church leaders have condemned the book as a work of fiction.
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New post for Gordie! (No, not that one…)
Gordon Brown was appointed Chancellor of the newly established Adam Smith College in Fife this week. I thought only Yoonies had Chancellors but never mind, we’re talking Fife here - they do things differently there.
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By-election results indicate can’t-be-arsedness at historic high.
With record low turnouts in by-elections in Scotland this week, political analysts with nae pals are asking the question on no-one else’s lips - why can’t the punters be arsed voting?
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Forth Road Bridge: "There’s no need to panic, probably…"
First there was a slight concern that the Forth Road Bridge might need a bit of monitoring on the old cables. Then there was the slight stirring of unease that the cables holding the thing up might corrode a bit over the next few years.
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Parly chaos over drink law hailed as an "intertextual masterpiece"- whatever that is.
Amid agreeably chaotic scenes, the nation’s satirists struggled this week to capture the full comic majesty of Holyrood’s attempts to (ahem) "reform" Scotland’s drink laws.
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Mooted extensions fail to pass The Private Ryan Test.
You know what it's like. Sometimes a news item triggers a sense memory and you think "hang on, that can’t be right can it?" and you find yourself rummaging around for an image.
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Scots on the box: "Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me."
That’s life innit? Months pass without me feeling the need to inflict my less than original thoughts on TV shows on the long suffering JT reading public and then two opporchancities come along at once.
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Editorial
I think, given my IT related experiences of the last few weeks, I can truly empathise with The Virgin Mary.
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"Recepción a Moffat… (Prestwick)"
The JT’s favourite airline "Eireoflot" or Ryanair, as the spoilsports and the lawyers insist we call it, have been up to their old and endearing tricks again.
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The meaning of words
CIA planes are regularly using Scottish airports to refuel as they carry terrorist suspects to places of torture.
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MP welcomes chance to live rest of life in total obscurity
David Mundell, the Tories’ only Scottish Westminster MP, has welcomed his appointment as Shadow Scottish Secretary by speaking exclusively to The JT, mainly because no other rag was interested.
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