Last week, Alex Salmond chose to voice what everyone else in Scotland knows instinctively: that David Cameron is the best weapon the pro-independence movement possesses. He could have gone further. For in any photograph where Cameron is joined by George Osborne and their Downing Street fag, Nick Clegg, the SNP tally men can notch up another, say, 5,000 votes in favour of separation. Indeed, faced with such a photograph of smug, ill-earned indolence and privilege, most of us would gladly take refuge in a political and cultural union with Uzbekistan.

* I didn’t get as much reading done over the holiday period as I’d planned, but I still managed to devour Ray Banks’ Dead Money, RJ Ellory’s Bad Signs and Caitlin Moran’s How To Be A Woman. They’re ace, gory and hilarious respectively.

* One of my favourite bands, The 4 of Us, did a really nice thing over Christmas: they packaged up their long-lost album Amplifier, remastered it and gave it away free to fans on their website and Facebook.

* I sold several ebooks over the last few weeks. I racked up my 1,900th sale of Coffin Dodgers this afternoon.

* Amazon UK’s meddling with VAT, if you’re interested in such things: it now applies 3% VAT to ebooks sold in the EU, not the 15-odd-percent it applied previously. When you’re selling books at 99p apiece, that’s a welcome development.

* It’s overkill for musical fiddling, but I remain utterly convinced that Apple’s Logic Pro music software is one of the best things since sliced bread. I’ve no idea how half of it works, but the half I do know is superb.

* The recipe for Bristol Dressed Pork in Jamie’s Great Britain is superb. And I don’t even like pork.

* I am heartily sick of “You’ve got an iPad! Buy our app!” ads appearing over websites I’m trying to read.

* Also, Facebook intercepting newspaper links and trying to make me install the newspaper’s app.

* Private Eye: The First 50 Years is a great coffee table book. Provided you’re interested in Private Eye, that is.

* And, er, that’s it.

Merry Christmas, everybody. I hope that Santa’s kind, that your relatives aren’t too annoying and that you have a very happy 2012.

Yours for £17. 

Companies spend billions on marketing and teaching their staff to sell – it’s time we got buyers’ training. The most cost effective way to start is to ensure every child in the country gets a basic understanding of personal finance & consumer rights before leaving school.

Needless to say, I didn’t bother lest I be the man responsible for making Scotland’s second-best music teacher think he or she was the first best. Imagine the consequences.

Anyway… The Pop Cop describes a thrilling line-up:

In the Artist of the Year category, two of the five nominees were 57-year-old Dougie MacLean and fellow veteran Dave Arcari, a relative spring chicken at 47. There was also Sandi Thom who, should you need reminding, hoodwinked the public into giving her 15 minutes of fame before said public escorted her to the exit.

I know Mr Arcari, and he’s a nice bloke. Talented, too. But he, like Maclean and Thom, hardly qualifies as “new music” – unless by “new music” you mean “new music from people who’ve been on the scene for ages”.

Mind you, it sounds like it was a star-studded affair.

The 2011 Scottish New Music Awards… will feature many new and unsigned acts as well as a guest list of celebrities from the global music industry. Some of the guests already confirmed include Nazareth, members of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, cast members from Still Game, former X-Factor winner Leon Jackson and many personalities from Radio and Television. Guaranteed to be a star studded event.

I realise Scotland isn’t exactly awash with famous people but for an event that the organisers had the brass neck to claim was “similar” to The Grammys and The Brits, is that really the best they could cobble together?

If you’ve even a passing interest in the Scottish music scene, you’ll love the Pop Cop’s full post. I’ll leave you with my favourite bit:

In an evening of amateurishness, the biscuit was well and truly taken by the room’s faceless voiceover man who, with genuine panic, announced just after 8pm that the ceremony was running precisely one hour and 20 minutes ahead of schedule… “if any bands feel like getting up and playing, we’ve got hours and hours of radio time and award time to fill”

Two undercover police officers were struck by lightning during a training exercise to help them snare drug dealers and gangsters.

The pair were hit by the bolt as they hid under a tree in a park as part of their covert investigating techniques.

I don’t know what’s funnier: the “hiding under a tree” stealth technique, or the being-hit-by-lightning bit.

Photo by Mupwangle

As you’ve probably noticed, I’m buggering about with themes again in an attempt to make the site a bit cleaner-looking. What do you make of this one, folks?

The theme gives me a few options to make the text look nicer, including intro paragraphs (above) and some very pretty blockquote formatting:

“Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.”
— Jack Handey

Is the Breville Solo VMW187 microwave oven a piece of shit?

Yes! Yes, it is!

I’ve just taken back my second one: the first one’s LCD display packed up after eight hours, and the second one’s door-open button jammed after a fortnight. It’s not worth the £50 I paid, let alone the £99 RRP.

Next week I’ll slag off a toaster, or something.

My two tyres were £30 less than the local Kwik-Fit was charging, and I didn’t have to put up with anyone trying to talk me into paying for wheel alignment, new brakes, aircon recharge, etc etc etc. Worth a click if you need car things done.