P&J Column 8.10.15

alex-s-kirk

Heathrow Terminal 5 – the final frontier.

Ron Cluny, Official Council Spokesman

Far be it from me to revel in the discomfort of a political rival, especially one such as Alex Salmond, with whom the Council has always enjoyed such a constructive relationship. But I did have a wee chuckle when I saw that British Airways had refused to allow Big Eck to board one of its flights after he made his reservation under the name of ‘James T Kirk’. His choice of moniker does little to live down his reputation as a man puffed up with his own importance – it won’t surprise anyone that he considers himself to be captain of the ship – but I should have thought ‘Scotty’ would have been a more appropriate alias. In that respect, Nicola Sturgeon is an undoubted improvement on her old boss. It’s hard to imagine her trying to book onto a flight as one of her childhood heroes, like Princess Leia or Supergran. Overall, though, the surprise is that Salmond would countenance flying by any airline with “British” in the title.

It turns out that, for security reasons, Salmond always travels under an assumed name. I’m not sure who he imagines would be intent on doing him harm: maybe he thinks MI5 are keen to see him come a cropper. But he needs to be careful: as a well-known trekkie, his choice of pseudonym shows a lack of imagination that will pique the interest of internet hackers. Even now, great batallions of them are no doubt trying to access Salmond’s online banking, trying passwords like “WeAreThe45”, “WillieWallace1305”, and “DavidCameronIsAPudgyFacedNeep”

Hector Schlenk, Senior Research Fellow, Bogton Institute of Public Engagement with Science

As a scientist with a foreign-sounding name, people are always asking me questions, like, “Are you an immigrant, whose presence here is preventing us from building a cohesive society?” the answer to which is, of course, ‘”No. You’re thinking of the systematic demonising of the poor and weak, the dismantling of the National Health Service, the BBC, and the Welfare State – very institutions that bind this nation together – and xenophobic rhetoric. But it’s an easy mistake to make.”

This week, however, I have been addressing what is undoubtedly the question on everyone’s lips – does Burger King’s spooky, black-coloured Halloween Whopper really turn your number 2s green?

Like all good scientists, I sought to answer the question through a carefully controlled experiment. I had nothing but Halloween Whoppers for a week (imported by courier from the US), while Mrs Professor Schlenk acted as a control group, subsisting on regular Whoppers and the occasional Chicken Royale. After a while, we repaired to the smallest room and compared notes. I will draw a discrete veil over the fine detail of our findings. Suffice it to say that the results were explosive. The conjecture has been proven; the immigrant foodstuffs had no negative effect on cohesion, and our local Co-opie has run out of toilet duck.

Cava Kenny Cordiner, the football pundit who always makes it out of the group.

When your team is riding it’s high horse on the crest of a wave there is not no feeling like it. But when the bobble bursts, you come crashing back down to earth with a blimp. Just ask my old club, the Dandy Dons. It seems like only yesteryear that they had won 8 games on the spin, but after defeats to Hibs, Icy Tea and St Johnstone, oh how the turntables has turned.

The Dons was mince on Saturday. Thankfully I missed the worst of it because when they went 2-0 down after 10 minutes old Kenny done a disappearing act. I’m not normally a party-time supporter, but I was needing to get home to watch Scotland stick South Africa in the rugby.

Regulation readers might be surprised that I done that, seeing as how I has always been a football man, right down to bottom of my barrel. I never used to be a fan of the egg-chasing, but it’s a cracking game once you get into it, and I has been watching this world cup deciduously. Some of the stuff they gets away with is mental. If you done it in football you’d get a straight red, and maybe even a police caution. I know I did. The best bit of the tournament so far was watching England getting beat at home twice on the bounce. They is the first ever hosts to not make the It’s a Knockout stages. Just like Charlie Allan at the Bon Accord baths – they couldn’t get out of the pool!

See us live next year in ‘Dreich Encounter’ at HMT Aberdeen