Readers Comments

SIR, – The possibility that our generation could miss the opportunity to transform Aberdeen’s city centre in a way which will enhance it for decades to come is heartbreaking for anyone committed to the cultural and economic future of the city.

WELL here's to you, Mrs Robinson. Or maybe not. It's hard to be sure what part the scandal surrounding the wife of Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson played in achieving a huge step forward in Ulster's peace process at the end of last week.

SHE will kill me if I even hint at her name, but I cannot but recount how someone I know became very attached recently to one of her household appliances.

SINGING “I Have Confidence” from The Sound of Music at the top of your lungs can sometimes boost your own confidence when it’s ebbing low – as I’m sure some of you will know. It is not, however, a one-size-fits-all remedy for low self-esteem, performance anxiety or self-doubt.

What’s glory? What’s gold?

BITHIDH mi tric a’ smaoineachadh de dheanadh na seòid dha robh mi toirt urram agus mi fàs suas dha na nithean tha sinn a’ coimhead mun cuairt oirnn an diugh. ’Se daoine bh’annta bh’air a thighinn troimh nan Dara Cogadh, bha cuid aca air a bhith a’s na h-aon shoithichean còmhla – ’s e duine ainneamh a dh’aithnichinn a bh’air a bhith a’s an airm, agus bha’n fheadhainn a bha’s an RAF nas tearc builleach. Ach nach robh e àraid, do dhaoine bh’air a bhith air feadh an t-saoghail, gun d’thainig iad air ais gu Eilean Beag Donn a’ Chuain? Leig m’athair fhìn a-mach latha, mar a fhuair e tairgse bho fhear ann a Sydney, e furachd còmhla ris mar mhanaidsear air an tuath chaorach a bh’aige. Bha’d thall a’ deasachadh airson cogadh nas leodha thòiseachadh an aghaidh Iapan, dìreach mas deach na bomaichean a leagail air Hiroshima agus Nagasaki, agus bha cuid aca air aoigheachd aig muinntir Sydney. Agus dh’fhàg e sin agus thainig e air ais airson coimhead as deidh craiteachan beag do chaoraich, an àite na milltean a dh’fhaodadh a bhith aige bho smachd ann an Astralia. Tha mi smaoineachadh gu robh rud eigin aig a ghaol ri dheanamh ris, agus mar a bitheadh cha bhithinn-sa seo an drasda.

IT HAS been a strange week, beginning last Sunday when I found myself in a van packed with loudspeakers in the back yard of a dilapidated cottage halfway up a mountain on the outskirts of Belfast.

THE main thing about wooden floors is their inherent skiteyness. That’s why anything on four legs and wooden floors don’t live happily ever after. This isn’t something that bothers me on a daily basis, but the slippery aspect can have surprising consequences. One morning last week, as I rumbled around the bedroom half awake, something light brown about the length of a banana flew out from under the bed, bounced off the wardrobe and slid back under the bed.

THERE really are people out there who need to get a life, and the person who decided to ban shoppers from wearing jammies while shopping in Tesco is one such an individual. For goodness sake, what next? Why object to jimjams in particular? Would it be OK if we went shopping topless?

WHEN two young men decided that the Grand Prix season should begin a month early, not at Silverstone, Spa, Monza or Monaco but on the A9 in Perthshire, it’s reasonable to expect that sanctions against them would be severe.

I SEE that the great, the good and the greedy (the three Gs) are going to have a conference in Copenhagen that will save the world from climatic disaster. This raises some questions in my mind.