P&J Column 25.1.18

UKIP – It’s almost as if they’re just not very nice people.

Ron Cluny, Official Council Spokesman

In politics, sometimes you just need to brazen it out.  Under pressure because you failed to adequately check who owns a wall before paying 6 figure sum for its renovation?  Batten down the hatches and ride it out.   Watching in growing horror as the Council’s magnificent and historic HQ is cast in permanent shade by the monstrosity being erected in front of it?  Say, “Well at least it’s not as bad as what used to be there” and run out of the press conference.  It is not pretty, but it is in the nature of the game we play.  But just occasionally, some rhinoceros-hided chancer takes the art of unabashed brass-neckery to such new heights that all one can do is stand and applaud.  So step forward please, Henry Bolton, the (soon to be ex-) leader of UKIP, who, after ditching his wife and infant child to take up with a glamour model half his age, then pretending to dump the model because of her racist views about a future member of the royal family, believes it to be appropriate to take a leaf from Donald Trump’s playbook by saying that he is going to stay on as party leader in order to “drain the swamp.”  More bare-faced effrontery could only be shown by an incontinent dog standing for office to better represent the interests of hard-working lamp-posts.  So, well played.  Well played, Mr Bolton.  But just in case you are under any doubt about the truth of the matter: you, Mr Bolton, are what would be found by dredging the very bottom of the swamp.  And our sides are sore from laughing at you.

View from the Midden; rural affairs with Jock Alexander of MTv (Meiklewartle Television)

It has been a columbine wik in the village. While the wider world has been getting’ a’ het up over the latest political scandals and controversies, Aiberdeen has had some good news at last, wi a new service fit has taken aff in the face of cooncil cutbacks and oil and gas doonturns. I’m spikkin, of course, aboot Wiggy and Friends Animal Rescue, the voluntary pigeon ambulance service. So it’s nae a’ doom and gloom if yer a doo in Europe’s oil capital.

Noo pigeons normally hae a fairly cushy time of it in this neck of the woods. Glorying on, pooping awye, and, proverbially, aye pecking. So it is only fair that they gie something back. But is having them act as paramedics really practical? The only thing we use pigeons for here in the village is providing the filling of Feel Moira’s Game Pies. Although, as aayewis fan it comes tae Moira’s cooking – it’s always best tae consider the doos, and don’t. Cheerio!

Cava Kenny Cordiner, the football pundit who always checks his coupon

I know I sound like a token record, but Football is not the same game as what it was when I was playing it. And that was never more truer than when I was watching the Spanglish football at the weekend, when Real Madrid’s Goal-machine and pin-up boy Cristiano Ronaldo got booted in the puss and checked his injuries by using the physio’s iPhone.

I was watching the game round at my pal, Dunter Duncan’s house. I must admit, I never seen the kick happen live, as I was checking my accumulator. All of a sudden, Dunter says to me, he says “Ronaldo’s using a mobile to look at his coupon!” So I says to him, I says “Me too, I’m £40 up!”

Give Ronaldo his juice, his dial did look pretty rough. But I can just imagine the abuse I’d have got if I’d done something like that when I was playing. One time, when I was playing for Locos, they had to drag me off the pitch when my forehead split open but I wanted to carry on. Mind you, the injury had happened when I nutted the wee nyaff who’d nutmegged me and the ref had sent me off, so it wasn’t really up to me.

This week also finally seen an end to Alexis Sanchez-Vicario’s transfer saga. First he was going to Guardiola at Man City, then he was going to Conte at Chelsea, then he ended up with Mourinho at Old Trafford. Dunter says to me , he says, ‘That’s not just a saga – it’s a saga coach tour! Put that in your column’. So I has done. When I seen the wages Alexis is going to be getting, it made me wonder how he sleeps at night. And I reckon it’s on a very comfy bed surrounded by piles of money.

See the Flying Pigs live at HMT Aberdeen in ‘Now That’s What I Call Methlick!‘ June 2018. Tickets available now.