P&J Column 13.4.17

Politics and football don’t mix. Ask anyone who’s seen Ed Balls play.

 

Cava Kenny Cordiner, the football pundit who’d put you up.

I has seen some shocking things in football, like Robbie Winters practising penalties and Doug Rougvie without his teeth in.  But I has never seen nothing like what I seen on Tuesday night when Borussia Dortmund’s team bus got hut by that explosions.  Fortunately, no-one was seriously hurt, and we can only hope that there will be no repeat, like the last time I had a pie at Pittodrie and could taste it for three weeks.

Politics and football do not mix, as no-one who never seen Ed Balls play wouldn’t not tell you. And like I always turn around and say, violence has no place in football, except out on the pitch. The game got rescheduled for the next day, but Dortmund’s opponents, Monaco, was already at the stadium and hundreds of Monastic supporters found themselves stranded without nowhere to stay. Up stepped the Borussia fans who offered the Monacalese a bed for the night. That is a really beautiful gesture that everybody can applaud. Unless you own a B&B in Dortmund

PC Bobby Constable, community policeman (retired)

As a former officer of Grumpian Police, there is few things I enjoy mair than laughing uproariously at the misfortunes of Police Scotland. But even I found masel’ feeling sorry for the bobbies called oot tae a brak-in at a Tescos, fa went tae the een in Great Western Road in Glesca, instead of the correct een in Aiberdeen.  Noo fair play, if I heard aboot a shoppie door getting kicked in I widnae think it wiz in Aiberdeen’s West End either. Glesca is far mair likely, it being full of Glaswegians.  Nae doot we’ll get the usual moaning minnies saying this is fit happens fan ye centralise services, and hae staff in a call-centre a hunner miles awa fae the area they’re dealing wi’. Weel, havers. Back fan I wiz on the beat, we wis jist as bad. ‘Cos michty it’s an affa job the switchboard, ye ken. Jist constant stress and worry. I filled in eence in my Queen Street days and I tell ye, there wiz ayewiz somedee yarking on at ye. Niver a minute’s peace. I didna get a cuppie till I turned the phones aff a’thegither. As a result, it’s affa easy for officers tae get confused aboot exactly far they’re supposed tae ging. I mind the time I got the call: ‘Bobby, there’s a traffic jam in Dallas. G’wa there and dinna come back til it’s sorted it oot”. Weel I niver kent there wis a Dallas near Elgin. But I hid a rare twa wiks in Texas.

Ron Cluny, Official Council spokesman

As spin-doctor for Aberdeen City Council, you have good days and bad days.  On my bad days I like to see how other spin doctors are getting on.  And my, how my step lightens when I check on the progress of Donald Trump’s press officer, Sean Spicer.

I see that this week he has managed to cause fresh outrage by claiming that Hitler never used chemical weapons.  In a sense this latest mis-step is no surprise: Mr Spicer no longer courts controversy – he has wooed, wed and settled down with her in a clapboard house behind a nice white picket fence. But this was still an outstanding addition to his oeuvre.  Mr Spicer, you are living proof that a man with less gravity and historical knowledge than a mediocre pub-quizzer can, if he is willing to comb his hair nicely, pull on a pale blue suit and lay to one side all sense of decency and principle, rise to an office of national significance.  I salute you.

Scales of Justice: a new column by John Scales, legal correspondent

The Daily Mail has had to pay damages to Melania Trump for a scurrilous article it wrote about her.  The Trumps create real problems for the Mail.  One the one hand, Donald is a right-wing, authoritarian leader, who the Daily Mail should like.  On the other, his wife is an immigrant, and, moreover, a woman. A combination which is enough to give it’s readers an annuerism.  Happily, the whole tawdry episode has been resolved by the a transfer of millions of pounds from one billionaire to another; leaving the Mail free to return to the vital business of forensically comparing Melania’s legs to those of other world leaders and their wives.