P&J Column 23.8.18

We’ll try to remember Asbestos we can.

Ron Cluny, Official Council Spokesman

There have been complaints from the usual moaning minnies, after asbestos in an Aberdeen school was discovered and then mistakenly left in a skip for 5 days. As the (mercifully, heavily redacted) report says, the Line Manager in question “did not initiate procedure because he forgot about the incident”. Regrettable, certainly, but entirely understandable. I’m not going to underplay the seriousness of this incident, but in fairness, the average local government official’s day is as jam-packed as a  Greggs Doughnut  It’s a non-stop cavalcade of phone calls, appointments, meetings, phone calls about the meetings, meetings about the appointments, and fly time. We cant be expected to remember a’hin.

Especially those horny-handed sons of toil who man the Building Works Department, where ye dinna get a bonnie young P.A. to tell you what you’re supposed to be doing.

There’s an affa stuff to remember, and quite honestly it is only natural that sometimes things get unremembered. For example, last Friday? Complete blank.  I can recall not a jot after I popped in to that party at the Housing Office in Tillydrone and someone passed me a smint. Which reminds me, I need to make an expenses claim for my taxi there, and my helicopter home. So to anybody that wants to have a go at the Council for this, I would say to them; ‘h’min, that asbestos was sitting about in the school for yonks, so what’s another five days? Five days is nothing. There’s potholes on Commerce Street that we’ve forgotten all about for 5 years!  See how easy it is? I can’t remember the last time I didn’t forget something that I was supposed to remember. Or perhaps I did. I forget.  And I’ve got a P.A.

 

Shelley Shingles, Showbiz Correspondent and Miss Fetteresso 1983

O. M. Actual. Honest. To. Goodness. G! I am totes beside myself! The Beeb have just announced their contestants for this year’s Strictly and they have just made my day!

There’s loads of famous faces; like a wifie from the News, a boy from Red Dwarf and a bloke that used to play cricket, but they’ve only gone and included my all time crush – the totes adorbs Lee Ryan from Blue!

Lee is such a hunk! He was my favourite member of Blue, (apart from Duncan and Simon, obv) but Lee always combined that Boy-Next-Door charm with a y chavvie edge which was oh-so appealing. 

Me and Lee go way back. I’ll never forget the first time I met him. He was attending the premier of Stuart Little 2 in Leicester Square, and I was doing some glamour work, opening the doors of the limousines with an umbrella to keep the rain off the celebs. When Lee emerged from one of them, hair impeccable, suit shining, I’ll never forget what he said to me. “Aarrghh! Hold it up a bit love, the pointy bits gone in my eye!’.

Wise words from a true gent.

 

Ron Cluny, Official Council Spokesman

There have been complaints from the usual moaning minnies, after asbestos in an Aberdeen school was discovered and then mistakenly left in a skip for 5 days. As the (mercifully, heavily redacted) report says, the Line Manager in question “did not initiate procedure because he forgot about the incident”. Regrettable, certainly, but entirely understandable. I’m not going to underplay the seriousness of this incident, but in fairness, the average local government official’s day is as jam-packed as a  Greggs Doughnut  It’s a non-stop cavalcade of phone calls, appointments, meetings, phone calls about the meetings, meetings about the appointments, and fly time. We cant be expected to remember a’hin.

Especially those horny-handed sons of toil who man the Building Works Department, where ye dinna get a bonnie young P.A. to tell you what you’re supposed to be doing.

There’s an affa stuff to remember, and quite honestly it is only natural that sometimes things get unremembered. For example, last Friday? Complete blank.  I can recall not a jot after I popped in to that party at the Housing Office in Tillydrone and someone passed me a smint. Which reminds me, I need to make an expenses claim for my taxi there, and my helicopter home. So to anybody that wants to have a go at the Council for this, I would say to them; ‘h’min, that asbestos was sitting about in the school for yonks, so what’s another five days? Five days is nothing. There’s potholes on Commerce Street that we’ve forgotten all about for 5 years!  See how easy it is? I can’t remember the last time I didn’t forget something that I was supposed to remember. Or perhaps I did. I forget.  And I’ve got a P.A.

 

Struan Metcalfe, conservative MP for Aberdeenshire North

As someone who is in the public eye and indubitably prone to the odd fox’s paw, I have had to make many an apology. In fact I think I have said sorry more times than Justin Beiber (That’s a hip reference to appeal to the younger voters. Look him up. Grandpa!). But it seems that  we have now entered a time in our progress as a species where we (by which I mean politicians) can say virtually anything (by which I mean, ANYTHiNG) without fear that somebody who actually knows what they’re talking about can forensically refute what we are saying because as Trump’s lawyer Rudi Guliani said this week ‘Truth isn’t truth’.  When the truth is a moveable object and facts can be ‘alternative’, the very foundation of political discourse becomes as wobbly as Jacob Rees-Mogg on roller-blades.

And that, my good fellows, is bally brilliant for someone with a chequered past such as I.

That time Felicity my (former) researcher accused me of upskirting….wrongI had my phone out to photograph my new shoes for instagram and had no idea the camera was on selfie mode.

That time I was so drunk I drove home through fields from Oldmeldrum to Cuminestown decimating 3 flocks of sheep? Not my fault. Alien invasion. Go on, prove me wrong, I bally dare you!

That time I put Michael Gove in a headlock until he said “Struan is the best, I wish I was him and he is so witty and handsome to boot” before I would release him? That one’s true. Best. Tory Party Conference. Ever.