Thomas Banacek

Does he not still get paid to push Anne Begg around town in her wheelchair?

Every time I saw them I was minded of Little Britain...

Fact from a councillor

Tesco have held up up all plans for a new Tesco &/or housing devlopment(s)

in the west end until a decision is made about whether the Hazlehead

development will be be of Sports Trust or the preffered by private company

Someone who believes what councillors tell them?!?

AT 10PM ON A SATURDAY NIGHT! Why are there traffic wardens working at 10pm on a Satuday night?

Do you think the signs say "At Any Time" for fun?!?

I went to see The Wasp Factory there and it was amazingly good. Bodes well for the future.

As long as there's some good football and none of this defensive 4-5-1 pish that we saw at the last tournament, and the world cup, I will be happy.

I think 4-5-1 should be banned as a formation, it is anti-football!!!

Only been once, about ten years ago, saw some pretty good stuff, and there's always something on.

Really ought to try and go back again sometime.

Black shoe polish works a treat I find...

Beauty is skin deep.

Ugliness goes the whole way through.

They probably get shallow halfwits telling them how gorgeous they are to try and get a bit of pork sword action.

Looks won't last forever, and then what will they have to fall back on?

Normally I don't reduce myself to such things, but that Inferno is damn fine!

I saw a really good article in the paper on Saturday about the relaunch of the Lemon Tree.

I am really hopeful that this will turn into an excellent venue to compete on a national stage, never mind local

I can see the point. A theory put forward to me was that they intended to start a fund, akin to the Madeleine fund, in order to make some money out of the situation.

Either way, a messy situation, and a deeply depressing reflection of the way some people operate.

Am I alone in thinking that if Shannon's mother is guilty of neglecting her child, which is by no means certain, then the McCanns, who fucked off to a restaurant to booze and gorge on food while leaving their children asleep in bed, are also guilty of such an offence?

Apparently, a friend of mine who works for the Council says they have been offered the chance to refer folk to the Council's homelessness unit but have turned it down.

There's some discussion over this in the Politics forum.

From my reading of the situation, there isn't any extra money being given to Doonies, and it will only be saved if funding from other sources can be found.

So what actually happened to save the LT? Did the council decide to throw another big lump of cash at it since everyone was greeting into their cornflakes?

Aberdeen Performing Arts stepped in to take it over.

I think this will be a good thing, as long as they keep it as a cutting edge venue and don't launch into the despair of putting on tribute act after tribute act.

According to the Council agenda, there is a proposal to give the Save Doonies Campaign a chance to come up with funding to secure its long term future.

Good to see a constructive approach paying off.

A mate works as a self employed joiner and has occasionally been contracted onto some of the new build properties going up across the North East.

He says the levels of cost cutting through using cheap materials etc. would fear you. It's little wonder so many horror stories occur.

I think I will look for an ex-council house, I live in one the now and it is the business.

*sigh*

Dear KittyCat

Marischal College is funded from the Council's capital budget.

Services and places such as Doonies etc. are funded by the revenue budget.

The Council cannot simply take 27million from the capital budget to fill the gaps in revenue.

I have to say I occasionally attend Council meetings in my spare time, because I am a geek, and I went along to the budget meeting.

Nobody put forward a realisitc alternative to the budget savings which were proposed, unless anyone else out there has something to contribute then I fail to see the point in condemning those who are taking tough decisions on this.

I cannot understand why some folk find it so difficult to understand that in order to save a service you need to cut funding from another one.

I wonder how many of the thousands of people who have signed petitions actually visited the Bon Accord Baths, not many I will bet. Or saw how dilapidated the ice rink had become? I see it finally broke down the other week, I am amazed it lasted this long. I last visited Doonies a few months ago and it was distinctly underwhelming.

That said, I have no problem with Doonies being rescued, but it is the only city farm in the UK which relies solely on a council to fund it.

As for the tented village outside Marischal College, I suppose it is all fair and well to make a democratic protest, but am I the only one who thinks Cyrenians are going to be doing themselves no favours when the budget process comes around again in 12 months time?

WARNING SPOILERS AHOY!!!!

I thought that, while the concept was good, and it was fairly entertaining, there were a few too many problems which kept nagging in my mind.

1. Why the hell would you keep a camera on you when being chased by monsters?

2. Ditto but for climbing across rooftops

3. Why would you go back to get the camera after escaping the helicopter crash?

4. How the fuck could you fail to see a skyscraper sized monster when turning round to get the camera?!?!?

That apart some of it was really good, but like most horror films it was at its best when you didn't see the monster.

the guy is an intellectual cripple, I don't know how anyone could sit through 3 hours of his prattle.

Funny, he was saying the same thing about you.

Was an excellent show, I didn't know quite what to expect, some of it was a bit OTT, but you expect that from most American performers, and especially Henry.

He came across as articulate, knowledgeable and also incredibly polite and unassuming as well, which was refreshing.

Yatai, on Skene Street, is meant to be excellent. Here's the review from the Sunday Herald.

The real deal

Review by Joanna Blythman

Published: July 26, 2007

I shared a platform recently with Emeritus Professor Hugh Pennington, the UK authority on food poisoning. He was quick to squash any idea that the catering trade is overburdened with unnecessary regulation, testifying to the pathogenic horrors he has witnessed.

This chimed with media reports of the recent prosecution of an Edinburgh pub, one of those "Two For the Price of One" outfits. Rats in the garlic bread, bought-in food past its use-by date, fridges and stoves encrusted with sinister substances all for 6.99 a head!

As a regular eater out, I worry about my health, and it's not just the prospect of a kidney-knackering burger or a campylobacter-incubating chicken fajita, but also the prevailing imbalance in restaurant food.

Even when you eat out in good, clean restaurants, you generally end up with a meal that is too rich, protein-intensive, lacking in roughage and deficient in fruit and vegetables. Not a problem for the occasional diner, but an occupational hazard for both the liver and the waistline of the restaurant reviewer.

What a delight, then, to discover Yatai in Aberdeen, where the food leaves you feeling better, not worse. Its chef-proprietor, John Jones, has set up in his native city after seven hard years learning how to be a proper Japanese chef.

This is not someone who has a token six months at Yo Sushi on his curriculum vitae, but a young man who has showed the professionalism to clock up a serious training, including stints with Honda Europe, Shun in Tokyo, and the well-respected Zuma in London.

The two-tier restaurant is cute and simple. You see focused chefs working away with extreme concentration in the postage-stamp kitchen out front. The restaurant's mission which it wholeheartedly delivers is to serve authentic, informal Japanese food at affordable prices.

The menu is refreshingly daring. You choose from a selection of zensai (small dishes), char-grill skewers, sushi (rice and seaweed rolls) and sashimi (raw fish) that come in waves as they are prepared. On the vegetable front and this is a brilliant restaurant for vegetarians we nibbled away on a bowlful of edamame (soy beans), steamed in their pods and sprinkled with rock salt. They tasted like sweet little broad beans and slipped easily from their pods.

Interesting, too, were the half-moon slices of Kabocha squash, glazed in teriyaki sauce, char-grilled and served on fresh shiso leaf, a herb that tastes a bit like mint crossed with parsley and lemon balm.

The menu contains a huge diversity. We were knocked out by the soft-shell crabs in their light-as-a-whisper, dry batter. This came with an eau-de-nil coloured mayonnaise made from capelin roe (a small smelt) and wasabi (horseradish), and a salad of seaweeds, dressed with a garlicky, chilli dressing. Fine lemon sole, encased in excellent tempura batter was partnered by ponzu, a tart dipping sauce made from rice wine and vinegar, seaweed flakes and Japanese citrus fruits.

Juicy, chunky tempura prawns were spectacularly good when anointed with their slightly sweet, gingery dip. You really pick up the flavour and texture nuances of fish in sashimi. Ours featured small prawns, yellowtail and tuna. Succulent eel worked well given a sushi treatment, wrapped in sticky rice and nori seaweed.

Representing the carnivore choice, skewers of crusty warm pork belly with a miso mustard sauce were a triumph while chilled rare rib beef with chilli ponzu was clean-cut and classic. There is no stodgy carbohydrate padding on the evening menu, no redundant makeweight ingredients. Even desserts we had an unusual green tea ice-cream with a restrained sweetness and a sorbet of raspberries flavoured with ume shu (plum wine) are easy on the stomach.

Yatai is light on the wallet too, especially when you consider the cost of its lovely raw ingredients. It represents a big leap forward, not just for Aberdeen, but for Scotland.

Sunday Herald

Name: Justin O. Schmidt

Album: German Village

1. Pongyi thaing

2. Audio track

3. Puccinia arachidis

4. Raul Padilla

5. Samuel C. Fessenden

6. Hermann Mller (politician)

7. Ecgfrith of Northumbria

8. Hoarding

9. Navoiy Province

10. Barry Horne

11. Bad Image

12. Kakata

13. Takahiro Yokomichi

14. TravelCenters of America

15. Battle of Wytyczno

I don't think the A&R boys will be finding a single on there...

I've watched enough ER to know that you only try to resuscitate the patient so many times before you pronounce them dead.

The Council made the right call on this. They shouldn't have to keep throwing 250k plus at the venue. If it was a purely private venture it would have been finished years ago, the Council have merely given it a massive stay of execution.

For the chair of the board to state on STV that he thinks the Council has failed the Lemon Tree is absolutely ridiculous.

I recall seeing an EE "Big Night Out" section where they list the photos of people.

Someone had given their name as "Jeff Lebowski" and the dumbfucks printed it!

The paper is a comic anyway, all their shite about gypsy/travellers and how we should put them in concentration camps and stuff. I mean *YAWN*