And you thought that the Glasgow Empire was tough!

There's a huge pot of money available nationally (well, a huge pot of money if you don't do the sums and work out how much each library authority would get if they were all successful in bidding for it) for increasing community involvement in public libraries. If the bid's successful then the library authority has to involve the community in the running of the libraries. Actively involve the community... As many library authorities don't actively involve their staff in the running of their libraries this is quite a challenging option. I'm happy with this idea in principle but only with certain provisos. Consultants and the people far, far away from the dirty end of public service delivery generally have a view of the general public as being made up of extras from the wheatybangs adverts. And so some are. On the other hand...

The "Knuckler's Elbow" in Carbootsale had a comedy night last Friday. The comic wasn't very good and was dying a death. After ten tortured minutes he stopped and asked: "why's nobody laughing?" In answer a chap stood up and said:

"Because you're not fucking funny."

and shot him in the leg.