BB FANS

I musta missed this - what was it?

Hah, you're right Jezi - it was just mine that cost that.

Not in my car My petrol cap is on the left and the nozzle on the dashboard is on the right. I made a point of checking this morning when I read this. I was actually dissapointed. LOL

I told you exactly what it was which just proves men don't listen

Men don't listen to what?

The instructions when women ask for directions

The main bit is speaking about the Spice Girls reunion tour and how he doesn't think they're a patch on the 80s despite their huge sell-out tour that apparently sold out in 38 seconds. Speaks about lots of things that remind him of the 80s and how he (and others) think this was the best era.

How a recent poll of the TV's Sexiest Woman Ever "nearly left (him) needing mouth-to-mouth" with Pamela Anderson coming first and Farrah Fawcett (qui?!) second.

Having lunch with Annie Inglis who had an Aberdeen's champion nomination. He told her he'd have liked to have been Buttons in the panto but she told him he was too tall!

How a dog called Trouble who was the pet of the late Leona Helmsley is getting death threats as he inherited £6 million after she died! Apparently he has £150,000 a year grooming and security expenses!

Taking part in a survey to find out his personal carbon footprint and being horrified to find out it is over fifty tonnes in comparison to the average being 9.4 metric tonnes for British people and 19.4 for Americans. The biggest problem with him is the flights to and from Orkney so quite rightly says he needs to learn to swim further!! You'd need to leave to get everywhere like 10 days in advance lol!!!

The main bit is speaking about the Spice Girls reunion tour and how he doesn't think they're a patch on the 80s despite their huge sell-out tour that apparently sold out in 38 seconds. Speaks about lots of things that remind him of the 80s and how he (and others) think this was the best era.

How a recent poll of the TV's Sexiest Woman Ever "nearly left (him) needing mouth-to-mouth" with Pamela Anderson coming first and Farrah Fawcett (qui?!) second.

Having lunch with Annie Inglis who had an Aberdeen's champion nomination. He told her he'd have liked to have been Buttons in the panto but she told him he was too tall!

How a dog called Trouble who was the pet of the late Leona Helmsley is getting death threats as he inherited £6 million after she died! Apparently he has £150,000 a year grooming and security expenses!

Taking part in a survey to find out his personal carbon footprint and being horrified to find out it is over fifty tonnes in comparison to the average being 9.4 metric tonnes for British people and 19.4 for Americans. The biggest problem with him is the flights to and from Orkney so quite rightly says he needs to learn to swim further!! You'd need to leave to get everywhere like 10 days in advance lol!!!

WELL DONE LEON! GREAT WIN.

And pay no attention to David from Big Brother who said that Scots never win reality telly LOL!

yippeeee! oh and I'm not going to be able to do this next week sorry be it summarising or copying and pasting lol.

Tax is not something new. “Pay to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s,” it says in the Bible. It seems quite straightforward, although many people get into the semantics of what was said and what was meant, sometimes to justify their own tax avoidance.
But I never find it straightforward! Especially not at the end of this quarter. For the last five years I’ve been away from my office base at home at this time of year and have had to cobble together my income and expenditure and invoices and bank statements to send away to the accountant in a suitable form. It’s not that easy when you’re in digs when you don’t have all your usual paperwork and paraphernalia to hand. At least this year I have a (tax deductible) laptop, finally – which has helped no end.
I often hear it said that charging VAT is just the government’s way of getting us to be indirect tax collectors on the treasury’s behalf. I suppose in a way that’s right enough.
I’m a member of Equity, and have had invaluable advice from them in the past. I read yesterday about a case the union had taken on regarding the question of VAT.
Beautiful film actress Saffron Burrows has been working on a film in New Zealand and “the taxman” here in the UK attempted to charge her over £18,000 in VAT on her earnings from the film. The union took on Ms Burrows’ appeal and after a lengthy battle, heard that the case had been won. One of the main findings of the tribunal was that “a performer provides acting services at the point of the performance, not where they are based for tax purposes”. It’s an important factor for those British artistes who work overseas, including some names who are making it big in Hollywood.
It does highlight the question of how valid VAT is, particularly if we’re mere tax collectors. Maybe we shouldn’t even charge VAT if we’re working outside our VAT area, or maybe VAT should be reclaimed in the country we’re working in. It’s a huge question that some enormous government department is no doubt working on, adding to our taxes as they go, coming to no conclusions and fighting with other countries’ tax departments over what’s right and what’s wrong.
All I hope is that I got my quarterlies done correctly!

“The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen” is a big favourite with many folk. And I often wondered if it meant Aberdeen’s actual lights, or if it referred to the “Merry Dancers” as we call them in Orkney, the Aurora Borealis. In a recent discovery, scientists have found the energy that causes the phenomenon. It comes from the sun in magnetic “ropes”, apparently formed from twisted magnetic fields in the same patterns as real rope is formed. The difference is that these ropes are 40,000 miles away and about as wide as Earth itself! I’ve only witnessed the spectacle a few times, but I’ll pay better attention next time it happens!

It’s a while till I have a “significant” birthday again, but there are two big celebrations going on at the moment. Toyota, the Japanese car manufacturer has hit 70, and this is also the diamond jubilee of the VW “Van”, that big favourite of hippies, surfers and all round cool people. I hope I age as well as it has!

After their big build up last week, it was a shame that the Spice Girls had to pull out of their “Strictly Come Dancing” appearance this weekend, due to an injury. Not-so-Baby Spice (come on, she’s 31!) twisted her ankle during the Las Vegas ‘leg’ of their tour. The girls hope to be on this coming weekend instead.

Working in panto is fantastic, and you learn loads from old pros. Slapstick and comedy are essential elements. Comedy is all to do with timing, and often it’s the inadvertent that gives us the funniest results. I heard a brilliant quote this week, from a museum no less. “I’m not in Public Relations, I’m with Accounts. I deal with FACTS.”

Check these out...

http://www.pavilionpanto.com/production.asp

Very nice. Are you enjoying doing panto Cameron?

Certainly am - that's us 44 down and 42 to go. It's gone really quickly!

Remember to watch BBC1 (Scotland if you can get it) tonight at 11.35pm...

You’ve heard about “lies, damned lies and statistics”. The debate continues as to who actually coined the phrase. But the truth remains; these are the three chief types of lie.
I couldn’t believe my eyes this week when I read about a national chain of stores, claiming that their sales of a particular item had doubled every week this year. That’s pretty impressive stuff, and to the casual reader probably a perfectly legitimate claim.
But here’s the catch. If they sold just ONE of these items in the first week of January’s sales, this week they would need to have sold over 1,000 BILLION of them to validate that claim. I doubt it very much!


Since winning the X-Factor a week ago, Leon Jackson has hardly had the chance to see his Mum. But he’s really impressed with his “Big Sister”! Leon tells that his mentor Dannii Minogue was more than just a supervisor, “she had the personal touch”. Lucky lad!


You know what I’m like for new and interesting foods, particularly now with a healthy slant. Well, I was really impressed when one of my panto colleagues appeared with wholemeal butteries. A workmate of hers had returned with them, fresh from Aberdeen! I had never heard of such a thing. I hope somebody sends a batch to food ‘guru’ Gillian McKeith!


I’ve mentioned driving with a mobile phone in my column before. It is the offence I would change to having a harsher penalty. The Crown Prosecution Service has just announced that driving dangerously whilst using a mobile phone will now carry a sentence of up to two years, on top of the three penalty points and £60 fine.




Christmas comes but once a year, and boy do I take it for granted. When I worked in the fish business, it was a hectic time of year. People ask if it’s not tiring doing two panto shows a day and I often feel like telling them how hard people work in the food and service industries. The sheer volume of fish going through the factory in December necessitated the office staff sorting the paperwork late into the night, ready for the next day’s selling. It wasn’t unknown for me to still be at work at two in the morning, and back in by 6.30am to kick off another day. So if you’re enjoying smoked salmon or turkey, or indeed any other fish or fowl tomorrow, spare a thought for those who have lacked any kind of life for the past week or two! Not something we think about all that much is it?
And as you sit back and sip your mulled wine, or doze after your plum duff tomorrow, here are a few more fascinating Christmas facts you might want to mull over.
· Just like the smoking ban, and a levy on poly bags, Christmas arrived in Ireland before the English got a hold of it. Three hundred years earlier! I’m glad the smoking ban didn’t take THAT long!
· Christmas cards may soon be a thing of the past. The tradition, which began in the 1830s, could be under threat from digital photo frames. A rise in sales of nearly 1000% over last year means that many more family snaps can be emailed directly to these gadgets. Good news for posties I guess!
· Cranberries are native to North America, and only a tiny percentage of the World’s production grows elsewhere. The fruit is Massachusetts’ primary commodity crop, and grows in wetland bogs. 70% of the state’s cranberry farmers have under twenty acres each, yet the local economy benefits by the ripe sum of $50 million a year.
· We always have goose, but Britain as a whole eats over 10 million turkeys at Christmas alone. If you live elsewhere you might enjoy ox tail and curried goat (Jamaica), or if you’re Austrian, braised fish with gingerbread and beer sauce.

Whatever you’re enjoying for Christmas, from cards to cranberry sauce, turkey to salmon terrine, I hope you have a great time. And remember to tune in to BBC1 tonight at 11.35pm for the watchnight service from Orkney! HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Thanks for that Cameron.