Choosing a title for a post on here and occasionally coming up with an old-school Fleet Street pun of a one can often take more time than penning the post itself. As with selecting an accompanying image I feel best illustrates the piece (or will provoke a titter), getting it right sometimes means a longer delay between writing and posting than I’d care for. It’s not always the case, of course – a title and image that fit can just as easily appear before me as soon as I’m writing the first paragraph; but another factor I now have to contend with is the possibility I’ve used the same title before. Due to the fact the Winegum has been in existence for eight and-a-half years, there are over a thousand posts on here and the odds of me coming up with the same title every once in a while are quite strong. It shouldn’t really matter, and I’m pretty sure few if any readers see a new post and think, ‘Hold on a minute – he’s used that before’; but I confess it does annoy me if I stumble upon an old post and there it is again. Anyway, I digress (what’s new?); the fact is I was convinced the title of the previous post, ‘Living on Borrowed Time’, was too obvious not to have been recycled, but I went for it anyway because it fitted. And it proved to be perfect, even if I didn’t realise the borrowed time upon which Humza Yousaf was living would expire within 48 hours.
The self-pitying crocodile tears that fooled no one when summoned-up by Mrs T and Theresa May as they fell on their own respective swords were in evidence once more when the Scottish First Minister – nicknamed ‘Humza the Brief’ by Andrew Neil – announced his resignation yesterday. Walking the plank before having to endure an expected and humiliating defeat in a no-confidence vote this week, Nicola Sturgeon’s doomed successor enjoyed a mercifully short time in office, serving just thirteen months as Scotland’s unelected dictator. For a man with such a piss-poor record as an SNP Minister – first in Transport and then Health – it’s hard not to wonder how it was he managed to get the gig in the first place; one hesitates to suggest he achieved his goal simply because he ticked all the right boxes that a ‘Progressive’ Party like the SNP prize so highly, but he evidently didn’t get there on the basis of competence or capability. This pompous, humourless, arrogant and egotistical individual has shown the Scottish people the grim reality of what happens when Identitarian zealots grab the reins of power; we’ve already seen what a disaster this has proven to be in Canada and Ireland, but the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reign of Humza the Brief has provided the UK with a nightmarish vision of the kind of leader that awaits the rest of the nation if the dogma that has captured the country’s corporations and institutions is allowed to seize the throne.
A country run by a man who hates the country and its people is not a country in a fit and healthy state, and Humza Yousaf gave every impression from the off that he was ashamed of his nation and its history. Like Brian Clough arriving at Leeds United and hardly endearing himself to the players by telling them to throw their medals in the bin because they hadn’t earned any of them fairly, Humza Yousaf didn’t even bother to disguise his contempt for the Scottish people, exhibiting all the worst traits of the privileged metropolitan snob; tapping in to the cult of victimhood crucial to the Woke mindset, he also rarely wasted an opportunity to wear his oppressed minority credentials by denouncing Scotland’s ‘whiteness’; would he, one wonders, have visited Nigeria and denounced its ‘blackness’? It’s a curious way to introduce yourself to the people you’re supposed to be leading, to play the race card to 96% of the population and say it’s because of them that a Trans Muslim of Colour with Mental Health Issues isn’t managing the Scotland national team. Beyond the SNP inner circle, I should imagine there won’t be a moist eye in any house north of Berwick following Yousaf’s exit – unlike his own tearful resignation performance. Mind you, had Humza the Brief had his way, he could’ve received reports on the private conversations taking place in those houses and dispatched McKnacker to the door should he perceive them as potential ‘Hate Crimes’.
We seem to reside in an age in which those utterly incapable of doing the top political jobs somehow end up with them; Corbyn, Biden, Boris, and Liz Truss spring to mind, but perhaps Humza the Brief is the best/worst example of this depressing trend. The only saving grace to it is that it doesn’t take long before their incompetence is exposed, and Scotland’s outgoing First Minister was gifted with a talent akin to (as The Hollies once memorably put it) King Midas in reverse. From being caught driving without insurance when Transport Minister to calling a striking nurse struggling on a pittance ‘patronising’ when Health Minister to the infamous incident when he publicly accused a nursery of ‘Islamophobia’ because they wouldn’t accept his infant daughter – how dare they? – Humza Yousaf already had a track record of gaffes and bungles that made it blatantly clear he wasn’t cut out for high office, not to mention numerous examples of his vain, entitled hubris that that revealed what a complete c**t he was. However, as Wee Ms Krankie’s anointed heir, Yousaf was earmarked for the post he duly proceeded to spend a year blundering his way through, and ending the power-sharing agreement with the Scottish Greens that precipitated his swift downfall was a characteristic misfire destined to end in tears.
According to reports, the decision to curtail the Bute House Agreement was greeted with cheers by many SNP members who had grown weary of a Party that had tested even the SNP’s twisted ideological agenda. The Scottish Greens are England’s Green Party turned up to eleven; the SNP entering into a coalition with them was like a governing Labour Party entering into a coalition with Just Stop Oil or Extinction Rebellion in England; they’re that extreme when it comes to living their lives by the diktats of St Greta. Giving a collection of middle-class eco-fear mongers a slice of power was disastrous for the Scottish people – not to mention the SNP’s poll ratings – so one can understand the desire of Humza Yousaf to bring the arrangement to an end; the problem with this decision was that Yousaf had not exactly endeared himself to anyone outside of his Holyrood court, and the fact the SNP had depended upon Green support to ensure their own survival in government meant the end of the coalition left both the First Minister and his Party in a perilous position. It goes without saying Yousaf will be replaced via another internal election in which the Scottish electorate have no say; but the Scottish electorate, as with the UK as a whole, deserve better.
READER’S DIGEST (1938-2024)
Magazines – remember them? I used to buy quite a few at one time, everything from music mainstays like Uncut and Mojo to Vogue (which I liked because of ‘the articles’, obviously); then, with the exception of Private Eye and the Radio Times, I just stopped buying them at some point around a decade or so ago. It didn’t help that they were becoming increasingly expensive, but I guess, like a lot of people, I found the information contained within their pricey pages was easier (and cheaper) to access online. Long after one ceases to fork out for such items, it’s strangely comforting to realise they still exist; therefore, when one abruptly folds, one is overcome with a sudden rush of nostalgia. The news that the UK edition of Reader’s Digest is to end after 86 years comes as something of a shock in that I didn’t realise this one-time fixture of the waiting rooms in GP’s surgeries (not to mention my grandparents’ shelves) was still being published. Collecting articles from periodicals around the world and reproducing them in a convenient, bite-size compilation, Reader’s Digest hit on a winning formula that made it a familiar sight in households that harboured modest intellectual aspirations back in the 50s, 60s and 70s; along with National Geographic, it was a handy window into a world its readers weren’t prepared to invest in any further than a mere monthly sample at an affordable price. As relatively recently as 2000, Reader’s Digest could still sell over a million copies in the UK a month, but that world, along with Reader’s Digest itself, is now evidently gone.
© The Editor
Website: https://www.johnnymonroe.co.uk/
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winegumtelegram 
Hardly the most challenging guess on the planet, but credit where it’s due for the prescience of flagging the impending downfall of Humza The Useless.
Now we face the prospect of viewing endless haggles between the corruptly incompetent SNP and the vociferously vacuous Scottish Greens, along with the string on Caledonian nonentities hustling to take over the sinecure now vacated by The Useless. Given the irrelevant nature of Scotland itself, all that bears a close similarity to a crowd of bald men fighting over a comb.
It all makes ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ seem relatively important, along with the reported demise of Reader’s Digest.
I grew up reading regular hand-me-down copies of the Digest and would credit RD with encouraging an interest in a wide range of topics and even in the use of the language itself. Clearly, along with most hard-copy magazine output, it couldn’t survive in the internet era, which sees both the user base and advertiser base evaporate but, in its time, it probably contributed more than a little to overall literacy and awareness.
A departure as predictable as Humza’s perhaps, but with somewhat more regret at its passing, at least Reader’s Digest achieved something productive in its lifetime.
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Re Reader’s Digest, I remember quite a stack of them sitting on the shelves in my grandparents’ ‘front parlour’. As a child, I found them less intimidating than other grownup magazines mainly due to their size, which was closer to that of the familiar American comic book, and I regularly perused them in the absence of anything else to read when staying there in school holidays. Colourful and easy on the eye, I didn’t realise I had a sentimental attachment to the magazine until I heard it was ceasing publication, though I suppose I’m not alone amongst those of a certain age who never bought it.
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Is this you btw?
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No, it’s not me. Funny thing is the guy that does that apparently routinely gets asked if he’s me.
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