View from the Midden with MTV’s (Meiklewartle TV) Jock Alexander
It’s been an inoculatory week in the village. We’ve a’ been livin wi the current situation for at lang that ony good news has us lookin’ at it a’ suspicious, as if we were spikkin tae somedee fae the wild lands oot beyond Huntly.
But no, it’s true, good times hiv come again, wi the UK’s approval o the Pfizer Covid vaccine. Pfizer, of course, also manufacture Viagra, so I hiv lang been a fan o their work.
The initial inoculations hiv gone to care workers and auld folk and quite richt too. Although I wiz surprised to see someone as elderly as William Shakespeare get it.
He wiznae wearing his ruff but michty I thocht he wiz lookin gye weel for a mannie born in 1564.
But onywye, hope has come again. Or it will dae, if the anti-vaxxers dinna manage to kill it aff.
So let’s jist call this oot noo – it winna change yer DNA, wir nae in the X-Men. And it winna pit a tiny microscope in ye so Bill Gates can track ye.
I’m quite sure he widnae waste the money on that fan yer iPods and Alexis and wifis are already daein that fine.
Fit wye is it that the free and easy flow of a’ knowledge thanks tae the interweb has made some gypes believe even mair sharn than afore?
So we hiv that tae combat, as weel as fears that some folk may be allergic – fit happens to the best of us.
I come oot in hives if I ging near a coconut, but this is nae a major problem in Meiklewartle.
So I’d say a no-nonsense approach is needed tae get these jabs deen. As it is in the fight against bovine parasitic bronchitis then so should it be against Covid – get abdy in a line ahin a fence in the cooshed and gie em a quick jab as they pass oot intae the field.
Nae exceptions, nae moanin, and maist importantly, nae husk. Pit Moira hersel in cherge o’ the hale thing and that’s that, there’s few things mair likely tae mak ye ging through the process than the sicht o’ her standing at the front door wi her airms folded tickin ye aff the list.
Of course it also means abdy that gings through gets a big green dod o’ paint on them so we ken they’ve been deen.
This will assist abdy as we’ll a’ ken straight awa fa’s had it.
Happy days are here again, though Meiklewartle’s vet may end up a bittie knackered. Cheerio!
Ron Cluny, Official Council Spokesman
As a professional political communicator – or spin doctor, if you will – you become very aware of the influence that others within your profession have had upon news coverage of major events.
I found myself reflecting on this today, as I played cliché bingo while reviewing the news coverage of the Brexit negotiations.
Vague talk of “freedom”? Check. Talk of a “big push”, invoking the glory of WWI (without, of course, dwelling on the dreadful cost?) Check.
Boris good, Johnny Foreigner bad, Britannia rule the waves? Check, check and check.
It is cynical and manipulative and takes us all for fools, and is, of course, the very way that I would have driven the narrative myself if I had been working for Number 10, as I would have calculated it the best way to reduce the heat on my political masters.
Quite how we ended up with Boris Johnson as our political master remains unclear to me.
I’m not sure quite why the Tory Party and then the nation decided it wanted to be led by a character straight out of Dickens’ Curiosity Shop.
But still, off he goes to Europe, striding on, eyes narrow, in a manner he hopes is purposeful but which just makes him look like he is suffering from acid reflux and wind.
Perhaps the oft-repeated promise of an easy, “oven-ready deal” is coming back on him.
I just hope that he didn’t offer to take care of his Christmas dinner by getting a similarly oven-ready turkey.
If so, Carrie might find herself presented with a turkey egg, an incubator and the hopeful prognosis that after some minor teething problems, dinner should be fully up and running and ready for the oven by Easter.