Panda to your Every Desire (13 page)

Politics, say some people, is no laughing matter. But fortunately Diary readers disagree.

A BIG political story was the Scottish Tory manifesto stating that children should be able to leave school at fourteen to learn a trade.

“Or as one chimney sweep told me,” phoned a reader, “back to the good old days.”

POLITICS, and Clark McGinn tells us: “I was in a Dublin taxi as the dust was settling after their election. I asked the driver for his opinion on the change of government. He replied, ‘New circus – same clowns.”’

DO POLITICIANS have a sense of humour? First Minister Alex Salmond was asked to contribute to the book
Why Am I Laughing?
, a collection of jokes to raise money for a Scottish dementia charity. Says Alex: “What do you call a man who is nearly home?

“Hamish.” Well it made us laugh.

READERS who occasionally have to make speeches in public will feel sympathy for Bailie Phil Greene of Glasgow City Council who revealed, at the opening reception of the Glasgow International Comedy Festival, that his wife was not with him. He explained: “She said to me, ‘You’ll tell a joke, it will fall flat, and I’ll be embarrassed. So I’m not going.”’

But actually Phil did make us laugh in an ironic way. He apologised for being late as the Lord Provost’s limo was sent to collect him – and it got a flat tyre thumping into one of the potholes on the road that the council is supposed to maintain.

A SCOT serving in southern Afghanistan tells us about a Nato official who was keen to hear from ordinary Afghans how their lives had improved since the Taliban had been pushed out.

He asked a carpenter in the bazaar if business was good and was surprised when the chap said no.

“Oh,” replied the Nato official, “I thought it would have been great. We’ve been knocking down lots of doors recently.”

THE ARAB SPRING, and after the Egyptian Army issued a statement saying they would not resort to the use of force, an old army type tells us: “So the same tactics they used in the Six-Day War against Israel?”

AND OF course we are inundated with the West of Scotland text message which states: “The Egyptian Government wants the protesters to chill out by getting in their cars and sounding their horns.

“They’re calling it the Toot ‘n’ Kalm Doon.”

THE INTERNATIONAL war on terror, and a Newton Mearns reader reports: “On Sunday while having lunch with my family, I noticed that my granddaughter was very quiet. After a bit I asked what was wrong with her. She replied that she was upset because someone had shot Aladdin.”

MANY Irish were celebrating St Paddy’s Day in Glasgow while putting Ireland’s economic woes out of their minds. Apart from one student type who wore a T-shirt with a sad leprechaun on it. Below it read: “Ireland. Turns out the pot of gold was empty.”

DENIS MacCANN, outgoing manager of Glasgow’s Holiday Inn, told guests at the Holiday Inn’s St Patrick’s Day breakfast that Ireland was the first country to set up a “global social network”.

“Or, as other countries call it,” said Denis, “emigration.”

A KEEN observer of European politics, watching the Eurovision Song Contest, explains how the votes were cast: “So it’s eight points to the country to the left of you, ten points to the country to the right of you, and twelve points to the country that bailed you out.”

And another opined: “So the rest of Europe likes us enough to sing in our language, but not enough to vote for us?”

NATURALLY Osama bin Laden’s death has been the talk of the steamie.

As one chap in the pub opined: “I don’t blame him for having phone numbers secretly sewn into his clothes. My wife found a phone number in my pocket once and there was all hell to pay.”

SO ARE Diary readers feeling sorry for the Lib Dems after their shocking Scottish elections result? Em, not really. A political activist swears that on the notice board at the Scottish Parliament is a card reading: “For sale, sixteen-seater minibus, surplus to requirements. Would swap for nice five-seater car.

“Phone Tavish on …”

AND ANOTHER claims he went up to a Lib Dem and, putting his arm around his shoulder, told him: “Sorry you can’t play in the rugby sevens this year. Will we put you down for the football five-asides instead?”

FEARS that outgoing Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray has been emasculated by his decision to give up the leadership appears to have been confirmed. The parliamentary aide to Fife Labour MSP Helen Eadie has emailed Labour Party workers at the Scottish Parliament offering them a taste of home-baked goods. Or as she stated in her email: “Sorry for those not in the Parli building, but for those who are, there is plum and frangipane tart in my office made from Iain Gray’s very own plums! First-come, first-served!”

AT DUNDEE Sheriff Court, a sheriff asked for a psychiatric report on an accused who appeared a bit disturbed. It was later reported to the sheriff that no psychiatrists were available from Murray Royal Hospital as they were all required to attend a visit by First Minister Alex Salmond.

For some reason, this provoked merriment in the court.

OUR WESTMINSTER contact phones to tell us: “A lot of the damage at the London protest march has been blamed on the organisation UK Uncut.

“This is in contrast to all the damage done in Scottish cities at the weekend which is blamed on Scotland half-cut.”

“CAN YOU believe,” said the chap in the pub, “that Gordon Brown is being tipped to be the new boss of the International Monetary Fund?”

“That’s about as likely,” replied his mate, “as Tony Blair going on to be UN Peace Envoy to the Middle East.

“Oh wait.”

EVEN the Government’s proposed health service changes in England have an amusing side, says reader Jim Renton. He tells us the British Medical Association asked its members what they thought.

The dermatologists advised not to make any rash moves, the neurologists thought the Government had a lot of nerve, the ophthalmologists deemed the idea short-sighted, the radiologists could see right through it, the urologists were p***** off with the whole idea, and the pathologists argued: “Over my dead body!”

WELL done everyone who helped raise millions of pounds on Red Nose Day. The only person less than charitable was a Labour contact in Westminster who phoned to tell us: “Red Nose Day – the one day of the year the Liberal Democrats’ Nick Clegg can hide his brown one.”

SOME Glasgow chaps were discussing how dense a mate was when one declared: “He’s that stupid he thinks Tripoli is a big girl’s bra size.”

AFTER the Budget, Martin Morrison in Lochinver says: “My wife passed her driving test last week. Domestic harmony is thus enhanced as yet one more task is shared – now neither of us can afford petrol.”

THE LATEST news from Tripoli, a reader tells us, is that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, is unconcerned by the bombing, riots and guns being fired. “He is telling people it’s just like Greenock on a Saturday night,” says our reader.

OUR POLITICAL contact in Westminster phones to tell us: “It was Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg’s birthday last week. His wife had promised him a Ferrari, which never materialised. But she knew Nick could hardly lecture her on not keeping your promises.”

A DISCUSSION was taking place in an Ayrshire pub about the self-assessment tax deadline having just passed, with one regular opining: “Someone here said you should pay your taxes with a smile. I tried that, but they wanted cash.”

THE BUDGET reminds James Stewart in Hamilton of attending a House of Commons debate, which he later told an elderly aunt about.

Says James: “When we explained the voting division where the ayes go to the right and the noes to the left, she halted us to ask how can your nose possibly go left when your eyes go right?”

A SOUTH-SIDE reader phones to say: “If any more politicians are jailed in the UK, then we are likely to move to third in Amnesty International’s list of regimes with political prisoners?”

A READER in London tells us he was at a comedy show the other night in which one of the acts told the audience: “The English are worried about the euro being introduced here because they fear the loss of national identity and prices rising.

“In Scotland, they are just worried in case it means Poundstretcher has to close.”

GUEST speaker at the Trades House of Glasgow annual dinner, Tory MSP Jackson Carlaw, said he once spoke at a ladies’ club lunch where he asked how long he should speak for.

The chairwoman imperiously told him: “You speak for as long as you like, Mr Carlaw, but we will be getting the bus at a quarter past two.”

BELLSHILL-BORN Celtic chairman John Reid, former Cabinet minister, was commenting on Tony Blair’s admission he worried about his drinking as he would have a few G&Ts and a couple of glasses of wine of an evening.

“Where I come from, they give more than that to the budgie,” remarked John.

It’s tough being a student with fewer job possibilities, and tuition fees and loans to consider. But they still make us laugh.

A STUDENT at Strathclyde Uni was telling his classmates that his dad, before the term started, told him: “You’re going to be meeting a lot of girls at the university, so I got you something at the chemist’s.”

As the student “got a bit of a riddie” as he put it, his dad stammered: “No, I meant this deodorant.”

THESE are tough times for school leavers and students looking for a job. An HR worker in a Glasgow firm wonders if it was simply nerves which made one prospective employee, on the job application form after the name of his school, when asked “Dates attended” put in “Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday”.

AS STUDENTS returned to uni after the summer break, a south-side reader heard one student on the train at Whitecraigs tell his mate: “My mum opened an official-looking letter to me which turned out to be a big fine for not returning books to the uni library.”

“Was she mad?” asked the pal.

“No,” replied the student. “She was just delighted that I had actually been to the library.”

ST ANDREWS UNIVERSITY has many American students who occasionally suffer a bit of culture shock in Scotland. A reader in the Fife town tells us of overhearing one such student tell his pal: “I like these yellow lines to show you where the sidewalk ends.”

WITH the university going back, we asked for your student tales, and Grant Melville in Falkirk tells us they once entertained themselves in their Edinburgh student flat by tying a bottle opener on a cord, and hanging it out of the window so that it would tap mysteriously on the downstairs neighbour’s window.

Finally needing the bottle-opener, hours later they hauled it back up only to find on the cord an empty beer bottle with a note inside it stating, “Cheers pal.”

RUSSELL SMITH tells us about a medical student friend doing a clinical examination on the ward during his final year. The old lady in the bed was trying to help him in his diagnosis, and quietly told him: “I know I’m not supposed to tell you this but I heard two doctors saying I don’t have two neurones to rub together.”

A NORTH KELVINSIDE reader having a pint in Byres Road heard a student tell his pal: “I’m thinking of changing my name to Domhnall.”

“Is that Gaelic?” asked his mate. “What does it mean?”

“It’s Gaelic for ‘hoping this will fool the Student Loans Company’,” the chap replied.

A HYNDLAND reader on the train into town saw a little girl point at Glasgow University and ask her dad what that place was.

He replied: “It’s a school for big people,” before adding, “big people who don’t want to work.”

WE DIDN’T realise how tough it was for students these days until Jamie Kelly in Kilmacolm told us about his aunt who volunteers in a Stirlingshire charity shop where a student came in and said he needed a smart outfit as he had got a part-time job as a barman. After finding a white shirt, black trousers, belt and tie for him, she took pity on him as he was so desperate for shoes he said he would take any size between five and twelve, so she only charged him £2.50 for the outfit.

The following week a uni mini-bus arrived at the charity shop crammed with students who asked for “the wee wummin wi the glasses”.