Oh joy, the new Scottish booze legislation comes into force today. Supermarkets are reorganising their displays, pubs are spending thousands of pounds on applying for new licenses (which, in the case of North Lanarkshire, mean some 25 pubs won’t legally be able to sell booze from today due to delays in the application process. Council says don’t worry, cops say WE WILL BUST YOU) and staff will require mandatory training to make sure they don’t encourage drinkers to have another drink. Imagine it! Pub staff asking if you want another drink!

Apparently the move, which makes my life that little bit more annoying by preventing me from buying wine or beer when I do my normal 8am shop (you can’t buy booze before 10am now, which I’m sure will prevent alcoholism) is about “rebalancing” Scotland’s relationship with booze. There’s another bill along on Thursday which will flout EU law by trying to impose price controls on booze too. Rebalancing, again.

Which reminds me of a story.

Barney is a decorator, and he cracks me up. A while back he was telling me about a woman whose house he was working in, or trying to work in: she had one of those really yappy little dogs, and it was driving Barney daft. She did apologise for the dog’s incessant barking, and said she had no idea why it was so hyperactive.

“Oh, I know why it is,” Barney said. “It’s out of balance.”

“Balance?”

“Yeah. Sometimes their wee heads get out of balance, and they become really bad tempered. Easy to fix, though.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“How do you fix it, then?”

“Well, what you need is a little bit of metal. Lead’s best. And what you do is, you put the lead into the dog’s ear and that rebalances it.”

“My goodness! So how do you get the lead into their ear?”

“With a FUCKING GUN!”

I can’t help thinking some of our elected representatives would benefit from a similar procedure.