Fortunately BBC Scotland has found a new topic to be exercised about: Pandas.
The image above may or may not be of Tian Tian & Yang Guang, they all look the same to me. Poor Tian Tian though lost her Panda cub, turns out, according to a conservationist on Newsnight Scotland last night, Tian Tian's miscarriage was caused by press interest in her pregnancy - it was all too much.
Clearly Tian Tian read one Daily Mail headline too many:
It goes without saying, headlines like this during any pregnancy will have an inevitable deleterious effect on the unborn fetus and so it turned out for poor Tian Tian. And it wasn't just the Daily Mail:
The Daily Mirror's heartless reportage was even worse, many visitors claimed to see Tian Tian weep after being shown the headline above.
Meanwhile, during this morning's edition of Call Kaye, Kaye 'I'm not a Tory' Adams suggested the Pandas were a waste of money and the Scottish Government had miscalculated (I'm paraphrasing here) even although the £600k annual rental is being covered by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, I think we all knew it was only a matter of time before blame for Tian Tian's miscarriage was attributed to the SNP.
It goes without saying, the producers of this blog (that would be me) offer heartfelt sympathy to Tian Tian at this time and in a break from the normal behaviour, offer respect & kudos to the intrepid journalists of the Daily Express for the diligent snooping that led to the astonishing front page story below.*
A spokesperson for Police Scotland said in a press release:
"Inquiries are ongoing although I can confirm a man from the Dumfrieshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale area is being questioned."
He/she went on to say:
"Although the Edinburgh Zoo penguins had motive, we are not pursuing that line of investigation at this time."
David Mundell was not available for comment and if I'm being honest, probably wouldn't speak to me anyway.
* We can only assume the inclusion of an image of Diana was for the purposes of reminding Express readers that while Pandas are well-thought-of, they're not as well-thought-of as Diana and its readership should not lose focus on the important things in life.
LOL
ReplyDeleteThe point is, was Philip involved in the panda thing as well as the Diana thing, and for that matter does he know anything about the McCanns?
I saw a tweet from the idiot Alistair Tory Darling that the pandas were a waste of money, all spent by Alex Salmond, although I seem to remember his friend Nick Tory Clegg getting the credit for bringing the pandas to Edinburgh. They were, someone like Caron Lindsay reminded us, loaned to the UK, not Scotland (thanks to Mr Clegg having a jolly to China and buttering up the leadership, while telling them off for their human rights policies).
I'm not sure how that fits in with the Zoological Society of SCOTLAND paying for their stay.
Anyway, Darling seems incapable of seeing anything happen anywhere in the world without blaming it on Alex Salmond. If he were anything other than a grubby little spiv of a politician he'd probably be treated for paranoia.
Aye.
ReplyDeleteI think I saw your comment on twitter, that twitter account (A_DarlingMP) is a spoof, loads of folk were taken in by it because who ever it is (I suspect someone from BBC Scotlandshire or National Collective) their satire is so good it seems real
I had a good hunt around finding out who's paying for the Pandas on account of Kaye Adams sneekily conflating a comment about the costs of having the pandas with the Scottish Government.
Apparently (from what I can gather) the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland owns Edinburgh Zoo and it is Edinburgh Zoo who's paying for them. the RZSS gets the odd grant from government but their main income seems to be from other activities, what ever they may be.
Obviously its a money spinner, the conservation aspect is a happy coincidence.
I also read about Clegg being involved, to be honest, I don't think he had much work to do, £600k per year for a couple of pandas (and apparently China have them in captivity coming out their ears) is a bit of a no brainer.
The hand wringing going on is because there are hardly any wild ones left.
I still think it was Mundell, if the birth took place he'd be even more out numbered, Tory HQ couldn't tolerate that at all...
;-)