Talk of the Town: How a Hearts fan has a blast at Hibs stand

IT'S always nice to see someone happy at their work, and there was probably no happier employee in Edinburgh yesterday than Louise Burnett.

The demolition expert from Dalkeith was literally whistling while she worked – after the lifelong Hearts fan was allowed to destroy Hibs' historic east terrace at Easter Road.

A delighted Louise, 28, whose family are all season ticket holders at Tynecastle, works with specialist firm DSR Demolition, and described her latest job as "brilliant".

"They told us about two or three weeks ago and I couldn't believe it," she said, adding: "It's work so I am doing my very best to be respectful. You can't stop what's going on in your head though, can you?"

And with a derby match at Tynecastle later this month, she couldn't resist a little dig at the famous rivals, saying: "Now Jim Jefferies is back I've no doubt that Hearts can beat Hibs – and it will be nice for them to come to a stadium where they can still get a seat."

A fare way to make some extra money in a crisis

EVERY cloud has a silver lining, or so the old saying goes. And so it proves. The Capital's newly unveiled emergency plans for evacuating the city in the event of a terror attack include instructions to cabbies to head straight out of town, refusing requests to drop passengers on the way.

Presumably, the meter will be ticking the whole time – pray the terrorists don't strike after midnight.

Holyrood hogwash

SCOTLAND'S Futures Forum is the Scottish Parliament's very own think tank, intended to rise above day-to-day political point-scoring and think big thoughts. But sometimes the high-minded reflection topples over into gobbledegook, such as: "It is proposed that the main project for 2010 will comprise a series of futures-based interactions with key public, private and voluntary sector organisations. Methods such as appreciative inquiries, backcasting sessions and wind tunnelling will be utilised in order to explore and capture lessons for the wider public sector in Scotland on how to innovate through the downturn."

Appreciative inquiries? Backcasting? Wind tunnelling? Answers on a postcard, please.

Spotty research

THE thought of a child falling ill is, you would imagine, every parent's nightmare. Then again, nearly a fifth of Edinburgh parents would consider exposing their child to chickenpox to get the problem out of the way, according to a recent survey – 18 per cent of capital mothers would take their child to a "chickenpox party", where all the children happily catch the illness and are duly rewarded with a week off school.