World record sprinter and in-house entertainer - all before he crossed the line - Usain Bolt’s gold for Jamaica in the Men’s 100 metres was one for the history books. Babies in Jamaica will be jumping out of their prams to start sprinting. (And never mind BBC News - Wikipedia has his World Record up [...]
A Scottish Ambulance service worker has just been jailed for four months at Edinburgh Sherriff Court by Sherriff Andrew Lothian who described his actions as ‘one of the grossest breaches of trust possible’. When a drunk woman patient lay half-naked in the back of his ambulance, Scott Jenkins not only made lewd remarks but crouched [...]
BBC commentator on Montell Douglas’s heat in the Women’s 100 meters: ‘She’s the fastest loser, which is good news’. You know what he means but you still have to laugh.
Henry McLeish is reported to be on the brink of agreeing to run as the Labour candidate in the forthcoming Westminster by-election at Glenrothes in Fife. What is he thinking of? He’s popular in the constituency, it’s not inconceivable that he just might win - but why bother? The mood of the time and the [...]
There was national horror yesterday at the news that Glasgow’s Stobhill Hospital left a dead man on view in a ward for seven hours to great distress among other patients who were even served meals during the period. While this is partly a management failure through a poor culture of care, it is a human [...]
Can’t quite get it that China delivered a breathtaking opening ceremony, can we? We nit-pick to lessen their achievement, maybe to reduce the inevitable gap between this and the kitsch we’re sure to go for in 2012. Let’s hear it for massed Morris dancers. So - the footprints in the sky were computer [...]
Watching the Russian Ambassador to the UN deny the Russian army presence in Georgia was an extraordinary display of brass neck. Terrifyingly his plausibility wasn’t dented by the assembled press corps. The only reason I ‘know’ he was lying, was a subsequent report from the BBC which I have no reason to doubt was accurate. [...]
British badminton mixed-doubles pair, Nathan Robertson and Gail Ems, were down 17-12 in the third game of a key match. They are to retire after this games. An over-heated commentator describing their situation as ‘retire or get to the semi-final’ said: ‘It’s stark. It’s brutal. It’s reality.’
And a BBC commentator, wanting to talk up [...]
Fancy a bet on Trooping the Olympic flag, a trot-by from the Blues and Royals, men running around assembling and diss-assembling field guns, Changing the Guard, a few Beefeaters, the odd Pearly King and Queen, a naval tableau of the heroic exploits of an island nation (somehow without offending the Spanish and the [...]
During the opening ceremoney, our own Hazel Irvine uttered two cringers:
She described China as ‘the least westernised country’.
Then she went on in a flush of enthusiasm, in praising them for their work in preparing for the 2008 Games, she said ‘They’ve had such a struggle to civilise themselves’.
Hazel’s probably a safe winner but Adrian Chiles, [...]
