Chips With Gravy Train!!!

There's me getting lumps torn out of me by Will Mackem in Hak Mao's comments box over that doctored picture of myself* published on Perspective a few weeks back - [Doesn't he know that: 1) As an SSP Press Officer, Alister is a sworn enemy of the SPGB?** 2) The retro Barcelona football top comes with extra padding in tribute to Maradona's time there as a player all those years ago?] - and I then click on the BBC website and read one of those stories that has me gnashing my teeth, in between gnashing a mutton pie, at being born 18 years too early.***

Though I can't believe it myself, apparently there is a longstanding concern about health and diet in the West of Scotland and, short of making Carol Vorderman books and videos compulsory on the National Curriculum in Secondary Schools there, they have come up with Plan B - outright barefaced bribery. (In officialese, "incentify".) By being rewarded points for forgoing the chips with gravy and opting for that exotica otherwise known as fruit and vegetables, a Glasgow Secondary School pupil can build up over a term a tally of points which means that at some point in the future they can redeem the points for a selection of goodies that even includes an iPod. (Granted you will need to eat a lot of tofu to be able to claim that top prize.)

Naturally being one of life's trailblazers, whilst I was a student at Secondary School I hit upon a similar idea of combining a love for music with the swearing off of junk food. It involved me bunking off school dinners the day The Redskins released their debut album Neither Washington, Nor Moscow . . . going down the town centre to buy it when the ink of the empty rhetoric was still wet on the sleevenotes. Unfortunately, that was just the one time and for the rest of my schooldays I settled every dinner time for the burgers and chips, and the two helpings of apple pie and custard for dessert. It's not my fault music was so shite in the mid-eighties that I had no other times when I had the excuse to bunk off.

But I really want that ipod, and I think that if I shave the beard off and talk in a loud voice about my love for Blink 182, Green Day and Lord of the Rings, I might be able to do a Brian MacKinnon. Watch this space - or Crimewatch UK - for further updates.

* That doctored picture of me on the net resulted in one of my family voting SSP on May 5th! And the SSP claim that they are after principled socialist votes ;-)

** That's me in paranoid ultra-left 'everybody is out to get us' mode. Think of it as my audition piece for getting that space shuttle ticket for my one way trip to Planet ICC

*** Situation Vacant - Chief sub-editor for the Inveresk Street Ingrate blog. Must be able to break down long rambling sentences that go on for ages into digestable chunks. Must also be able to recognise that the bad jokes on the blog have been placed there deliberately, and should not be tampered with.