The latest topical insights from Aberdeen musical sketch comedy team, The Flying Pigs, written by Andrew Brebner and Greg Gordon.
Ron Cluny, official council spokesman
As a spin doctor in a local authority, I looked on in some awe as Nicola Sturgeon stood behind the Bute House lectern to bid her farewell.
Communication remained, to the end, one of her key strengths, and her resignation speech was an outstanding example of its type: a solemn and statesmanlike taking of leave; a dignified lament on the brutality of modern politics.
If we can leave to one side the fact that she has been one of the leading figures in Scottish politics’ descent into brutalism, it was pitch-perfect.
It was right that Nicola should have one final shottie ahin the lectern. It is the place where the most enduring memories of her time in office were formed, as she led Scotland through the Covid pandemic with a clarity and poise that were often lacking from the utterances of her tousle-haired counterpart in Number 10.
Though it is, perhaps, not the highest praise to say that she did a better job than Boris Johnson.
Outperforming an overpromoted scarecrow whose incontinent verbiage has all the coherence of the clicks and burrs of a dolphin caught in a drift net is not something to be enormously proud of (and that’s being pretty hard on the dolphins). But holding a nation together and giving it a sense of purpose in a time of crisis surely is.
Keeping that sense of common purpose going once the crisis is averted? That has proved to be the hardest challenge of all.
Professor Hector Schlenk, senior researcher at the Bogton Institute for Public Engagement with Science
As a scientist, I have been following the week’s news stories with interest and alarm, as the initial shooting down of a so-called “Chinese spy balloon” was followed by no less than three other unidentified objects being blasted from the sky by the USA.
Norad General Glen D VanHerck (who, I expect, will be played in the movie by Ed Harris), has said that the US military has not be able to identify “what the three most recent objects were, how they stayed aloft or where they were coming from”.
How can this be so? Well, these objects were found in the stratosphere, around 18km above the earth, higher than where planes fly, but below where outer space starts. Think of it as a hostile place beyond the fringes of the familiar, where mysterious forces circulate. A bit like Peterhead.
Today, I gave an update on the United States’ response to recent aerial objects.
I am grateful for the work of our intelligence, diplomatic, and military professionals who have proved once again to be the most capable in the world. pic.twitter.com/G6thrrQrP8
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 16, 2023
The nature of these objects remains mysterious – a mystery rendered more difficult to solve by the fact that they’ve been blown to smithereens – and so, inevitably, some commentators have insisted that we consider the possibility that these objects were extraterrestrial in origin. But, can such a hypothesis withstand scientific scrutiny?
True, we live in an infinite and expanding universe, containing an infinite number of planets, but just 0.1% of them possess the right climate, chemical composition and orbital distance from their respective star to have any chance of producing life.
It follows that an even tinier percentage will be sufficiently advanced enough to travel interstellar distances faster than light. And a fraction more minuscule yet would bring their own balloons.
The most pertinent question, of course, is to ask of the superpower in question: “Why are you bothering with aerial reconnaissance in this day and age, when you can already see everything the West is doing on TikTok?”
Tanya Souter, lifestyle correspondent
I da ken about youse, but I hid a shock this wik cos o’ the siesmical news – a constant in wir lives for so mony years has gone wi nae warning. I jist canna believe they’ve stopped making Lilt. It’s like pairt o’ ma childhood has come tae an end.
We could niver afford a tropical holiday fan I wiz a bairn, so my ma wid jist gi’e me a can o’ Lilt and a sunlamp and tell me tae get on wi’t.
Plus, for me growing up, it wiz an important stepping stone tae proper Malibu and pineapple.
Onywye, it’s been quite the wik for food and drink news. My pal Big Sonja wis telling me that a mannie in Telford had nicked twa hunner thoosand Cadbury Creme Eggs.
I wis worried it might affect the supplies available in the shops, but luckily, jist like the eggs, the thief wiz foiled.
It’s jist as well they caught the boy, cos naeb’dy could iver get through twa hunner thoosand Creme Eggs afore the best before date, nae even Big Sonja! Though she did eence eat 12 McDonald’s Happy Meals in one sitting. Ruined ‘at peer kid’s birthday pairty.
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