Talk of the town: 'Junior' staff have ideas above station

WHEN council leader Jenny Dawe hit back in the row over The Gathering, she said the decision of the Scottish Parliament's audit committee to accept the word of a "junior member of staff" over her own was "mystifying".

So who was that junior member of staff? A secretary perhaps? No - it was Stewart Argo, the council's media manager, a role that couldn't really be described as "junior".

Interestingly, the head of communications role, which became available late last year, remains unfilled at the city council. And a certain junior member of staff would be seen as one of the front-runners for the role. It remains to be seen how a formal application would be viewed by the council leader.

New seats will be fit for the King's. . unlike last time

Things are about to start looking down for the audience at the King's Theatre - and in this case that is definitely a good thing.

The seats are about to be replaced at the Old Lady of Leven Street and management are determined not to repeat a mistake of the past. When the present seats were installed in 1985, the decision was taken to install cheaper cinema seats instead of purpose-built theatre ones. But when you consider that cinema seats are designed to let you sit back in comfort and look up, while theatre seats should do exactly the opposite, the idea loses its appeal.

And now you realise why you shuffled in your seat so much last time you were at the King's.

Corpses more alive than MSPs

FORMER First Minister Jack McConnell, now a life peer, says question time in the House of Lords is "a damn sight more interesting" than proceedings in the Scottish Parliament.

That means things must be really bad at Holyrood.

When former Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith accepted a peerage, he said "It is like speaking by torchlight to corpses in a charnel house."

Only real hobgoblins will do

It's always a pleasure to be served by someone who is an expert on the product they are selling, so one reader was particularly delighted by the service offered at Lidl in Musselburgh.

As he scanned a bottle of real ale from Kent, the young man at the till chipped in: "It's made with real Bishop's Fingers you know." Next up was Hobgoblin ale... "I don't know for sure," he said with admirable honesty, "but I assume the hobgoblins are real ones too." The customer left with a bag full of beer and a smile on his face.