A Quick Look at the Papers

Friday’s “The Scotsman” carried the ominous headline…

“Olympic terror flights will divert to Scotland”

This was in response to Scots claiming that there was a massive pot of tax revenue being spent in London on the 2012 Olympics and they were seeing sod all benefit to Scotland in this profligate piece of recession busting expenditure.  This means that in addition to hosting a couple of minor games nobody else wants, Scotland has now the opportunity to welcome a few more potentially explosive events.

A Scottish Government spokesman put a brave face on the situation and explained why it was logical to divert the terrorists northwards…

(my thanks to Irene who posted this clip on Facebook this week)

 

and on a totally different subject…

 

Saturday’s “The Daily Telegraph” held a wee article on my favourite subject…political correctness and the local council.  In this case it was a council in York displaying a somewhat crude approach to the subject of hand actions – in this instance a pre-school group singing “Twinkle, twinkle little star” – complete with gestures.

It always starts with “staff had been on a course”.  This is where most problems lie with councils.  The old adage “a little knowledge is dangerous” is never so true as with the deadly combination of staff being put on a course covering a subject on which they know nothing beforehand…and the paranoia of local councils worried stiff about complaints of political incorrectness.  You just wanna slap them!

In this case staff had been on a course for signing for the deaf.  It transpired that the diamond shape the children were making to symbolise the star was also the sign for a particular female body part.  It mattered not that all signing is subject to context and where the hands are held – the staff told the weans not to make that particular hand action.  The council backed the decision as “sensible”.

J told me that at her school they’ve never used the diamond shape…but have always had the children hold up their arms, opening and closing fingers to symbolise the twinkling star.  Unfortunately, as far as my puerile brain remembers, this was also the sign used by barely-teen boys when ogling their female equivalents and usually accompanied by the exclamation “Honk-honk!”

Clearly context is everything.