Driving point home
IT'S as if equality never happened. Reader Malcolm Boyd received an email from a friend which stated: "Please be careful on the roads. Lots of people are drinking excessively and letting their wives drive."
Fare enough
GROWING old continued. A reader confesses: "I was telling a story involving a bus conductor. My son asked, 'What is a bus conductor?". When I explain, my daughter says she thought I had said 'a busking doctor'."
The cat's pyjamas
A FEMALE reader who does not want to be named tells us about Christmas: "I really don't want to become a crazy cat lady, but I just realised that I bought my cat a Christmas gift and automatically took the price tag off so she wouldn't see what I had spent."
And talking of gifts a Bearsden reader says his teenage son opened a present from his grandmother which was a t-shirt. When his son read on the label that it was "stain proof" he shouted out: "Challenge accepted."
Band on the run
OUR old colleague Scott Reid sees that Simply Ned won a race yesterday at Leopardstown Racecourse, just outside Dublin. Said Scott: "I'm more devastated to learn that this a racehorse and not a Scottish Simply Red tribute act."
Big yellow taxi
WE mentioned the voice activated Amazon Echo which obeys commands and answers questions when you call it Alexa. Nikki Glaser ponders what you would use it for and states: "'Alexa, play Joni Mitchell' - drunk moms.
And there is a rival device, the Google Home. Says Alison Calhoun: "My aunt got a Google Home for Christmas and she already has 'Alexa'. This morning we were messing around with the Google Home and asked, 'Okay Google, what do you think of Alexa?' and it answered, 'I like her blue light' and from across the room Alexa turned on and said 'thanks'. I'm scared."
Santa banter
WALLOWING in some post-Christmas blues, Damien Owens observes: "I note that my daughters’ sense of wonder has abated now they’ve got the stuff. ‘What do you think Santa’s doing right now, girls?‘ ‘Who?’"
Penmanship
ONE of the most watched programmes over Christmas was the BBC Scotland produced Mrs Brown's Boys - a statement that will make half the population happy, and the other half wondering how low civilisation has sunk. We always remember Mrs Brown's Boys creator Brendan O'Carroll's colourful description of his time in Borstal after being caught shoplifting. "I was no fool. On my first day there, I was in the canteen and the older boys said, 'So what are ya in for?' and I said, 'I killed me Da.' And they said, 'What?' And I said, 'I killed me Da. I stuck a pen through his eye.' And nobody came near me."
Brendan also has some advice which folk could do with following at New Year. We met him in Glasgow's Pavilion Theatre which was the British launchpad of Mrs Brown's Boys and he said that after every show he simply ordered a pint of water in the bar as he was so high from the show that drinking alcohol would have been meaningless.
Bin there
TV presenter Richard Osman speaks for many just now as he comments: "Can you even begin to imagine when bin day is?"
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here