Archive
One for the Christmas list
I don’t plug books very often, but I am happy to make an exception for Changin’ Times, by my friend Sue McDonald, a coming of age novel set in ‘60s Edinburgh, a work that will appeal to women who grew up around that era and lived through a period of very significant change as the old order and attitudes gave way to new opportunities and constraints fell away.
Maybe I’ll write a companion piece about 60s Glasgow, but do not hold your breath. It wouldn’t be as charming as Sue’s.
Be afraid
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/09/27/trump-military-portland-ice/
No names, but I have heard of a US-born citizen, whose American parents are British by birth, who is taking steps to obtain a UK passport.
He won’t be alone.
Puzzled
Having just contributed as a British taxpayer to the considerable cost of an unprecedented second State Visit by President Trump, I feel that I have some excuse for breaking my personal prohibition on commenting on the politics of another nation.
It seems that by common consent Trump creates and curates great golf courses. But I doubt that connects to the slogan that headlines his campaigns. And that’s where my curiosity and this question lie:
What does Make America Great Again actually mean?
Not a word but,
What is a word you feel that too many people use?
@
Sneaky bastards.
How many slices are there in a standard Warburton Loaf?
14
How many slices are there in a Tesco loaf?
13
Think about it.
See you, Jimmy.
I have an Audible account. Indeed I have 50+ titles on Audible. But I have one problem with it, and this is it.
If you can’t do a Scottish accent, don’t do a Scottish accent!
Fix you!
Maybe it’s wrong but I am sorry for these people. What’s happened to them is the internet equivalent of stoning to death. Any company that would rush to judgment in this way should not be trusted.
EffOfcom
Anyone watching the Open has week must have been struck by the number of apologies by commentators for any ‘bad language that may have come through our microphones’.
At the height of battle on Sunday, only Scheffler seemed to be an Eff Word free zone, but a week before at the Scottish Open he was no angel either when the greens didn’t behave as he expected.
Not only golf either: a couple of apologies were offered during the Lions game today, the Indian captain turned the air blue at Lords last week and as for football, we won’t even go there.
I admit that I thought it was farcical. People know that many golfers swear when they find rough and bunkers. Often all the apologies do is draw their attention to something they may not have heard in the first place.
It wasn’t until a couple weeks ago that I discovered there’s a reason for it. Listening to,Chris Evans one morning I heard one of his guests refer to something as ‘batshit crazy’. He laughed out loud then apologised to her first having to apologise for her.
‘I have to,’ he said. ‘It’s an OfCom requirement.’
So now you know.
Attention!
www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyg0ly2ld8o
I took my wife Edinburgh Airport two weeks ago. She had to check bags so I went with her. With one thing and another I was in the car park for an hour and a quarter.
£24.
Airports are in a monopoly situation. They should not be allowed to abuse it.
RIP Chairman
To all the self-righteous fannies abusing Norman Tebbit on the socials today, a hearty up yours. He spoke his mind, he endured unimaginable suffering and he looked after his crippled wife for the rest of her days.
Spirit in the sky
I’m not quite a lifelong user of the NHS. I was three when it was set up but I have been a patient of the same practice in Gullane for 54 years. For the first 50 of those, if I needed to see a doctor I went to the surgery, morning or afternoon, clocked in and waited, for a couple of hours if necessary.
This morning I called, and asked for a routine, non-urgent appointment.
I can be seen on July 14, the receptionist advised me. Four weeks.
But that’s not all; if I have more than one complaint, I will need to book a second appointment. The alternative is to call again tomorrow at 8am sharp, in the hope that I will be answered before the limited number of short notice spots are filled up. I suggest that instead they assign a lottery ticket to each caller and then have a draw when all the spots have been requested. It would probably be a fairer system.
I have no idea how many patients are on the practice list but it must be in the thousands. I do know that seven GPs, one man and sux women, are listed among its complement of twenty-two staff: They work for a total of eighteen days per week. They need more, now.
Having a laugh
Someone I know very well has received a letter from DWP, advising that as he is about to hit 80, his State Pension will be increased by 25p a week. No kidding, 25 whole p. I bought a bottle of water on a flight last night. My friend would have needed to save his increase for a year to pay for it.
Given that the average UK life expectancy is 80, statistically it doesn’t actually cost anything. Nevertheless within DWP there is a branch, with a manager, (he signed the letter) employed to advise the lucky winners of their good fortune. Seems to me it would be cheaper just to give the over-80s an extra fiver week without bothering to tell them.
Scratch cards?
Big shout out to the Ryanair cabin crew on last night’s Barcelona Edinburgh service. It was a rough flight, seat belts most of the way but they were calm and helpful, without being helped themselves by the pilots who maintained radio silence all the way.
Big Brother
I was in a clothing store yesterday in which the payment point staff have been replaced by automatic tills, in an area that the customer can only exit by scanning their receipt. The one humanstaff member there explained that the new system was introduced to cut down on theft. She told me that they had caught significant numbers of miscreants. People in their 30s in mobility chairs are disproportionately high among them apparently,
I’m all for that. The system is easy to use and thieves should be deterred. However it still means that jobs have been lost. Will those overhead savings, and the reduction in pilfered stock be passed on to customers in lowered prices, or passed on to the shareholders in increased profits?
What do you think?
Alma
I learned today of the passing of a dear friend, Alma Lee, the founder and first director of the Vancouver Writers’ Festival, which I had the privilege of attending three times.
Alma was a great lady, a free sprit, and she sure as hell knew how to set up a Green Room for writers. In fact, she had two. There was coffee and muffins through the day. Later, when the last book had been signed there was a different menu.
God bless and keep you, Alma. If we wind up in the same place, I hope that you are in charge of the after hours provisions.
In other words…
Taken from an estate agent’s home description:
‘The home is accompanied by a garden and a private parking space, and it gives the new owner an exciting opportunity to carry out some cosmetic upgrades.’
Multi-tasking
Twenty odd years ago I was in the gents in the Bellagio in Las Vegas where the urinals are tall and traditional. An American guy was a couple of units away from mine. He had his dick in one hand, his phone in the other, and he was having a loud conversation. ‘Hi, I’m at the World of Concrete Congress.’ I remember thinking that there could be no finer venue, Vegas being built entirely of the stuff. However the fact that made the event stand out was this: he had made the call. Was his diary that full?
From that day on I had regarded this as unbeatably odd lavvy behaviour: until a couple of hours ago when I had occasion to use the facilities in M&S. These contrast greatly with the Bellagio. There, three initials are jammed into an unpartitioned shoulder rubbing space that is really only big enough for two and a half, and today the one on the right was out of use. The one on the left was in use, by a guy who is absolutely the new world record holder.
He was texting.
Badwolf
I haven’t watched it yet, but my first reaction is that I’m going to miss Ncuti Gatwa: not only because he was the first openly gay Doctor with a Scottish accent, but also because he’s a bloody good actor.
As for his regeneration as Billie Piper, didn’t she relocate to an alternative universe with a clone of David Tennant?
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