On the election, the online petition site ePetitions has a call for an international commission to investigate Scotland's voting chaos as its top petition yesterday. To show the seriousness of the situation, a petition demanding that the writers of hit TV series CSI do not kill off Las Vegas investigator Sara Sidle, played by Jorja Fox, was beaten into third place.



Keeping it real estate
NEWS from America, where rap star 50 Cent is selling the 52-room mansion that once belonged to shamed boxing champion Mike Tyson. The estate agent involved told the the local newspaper, the Hartford Courant: "He's put a lot into it, and it's all very tasteful, except the stripper poles."



Boo hoo
DAN Gilfeather tells us that authorities cleaning up football are taking the fun out of the game for some supporters. As the Celtic players were coming off their bus at Ibrox on Saturday, each player was booed by the fans who were milling around. As they did so, Dan heard one fan tell his mate: "This is like the panto. It's not the same now we're not allowed to swear."



Type-casting
READER Alison Campbell asks: "So, the post of Home Secretary is up for grabs. There are millions of women with secretarial training who could work from home. How hard can it be?"



Tidy profit
SOME of the south side's most glamorous women attended a bar mitzvah celebration in Glasgow's Science Centre at the weekend, when one expensively attired guest couldn't stop her innate desire for tidiness in the centre's toilet by tidying away used paper hand-towels scattered around the basins.

Another haute-coutured lady emerged from a cubicle, saw the lady tidying up, and quietly left her a tip before rejoining the party.



Smart move
AND, talking of the south side, we hear of one teenage boy, incapable of keeping his bedroom tidy, finally receiving a bitter salvo from his irate mother that he would be thrown out of the house unless he returned the room to an acceptable level of cleanliness. She was stunned to arrive home the next day to see a van sitting outside the house, and discovering the enterprising chap had used his pocket money to hire a cleaning firm to sort out his bedroom.



Greasy rider
OUR story about the minister having to bring a kitten home in a Buckfast box, reminds Hugh Brennan in Kilbirnie of the classic yarn of the lad getting on the Ayr train at Irvine and putting a box marked Short's Pies - an Irvine delicacy - on the luggage rack.

Before the train reached Kilwinning, the chap sitting below told him: "Son, the grease fae your pies is dreepin' oan ma heid."

The boy of course replied: "Mister, they're no' pies, they're pups."



Dung-ho!
INSURERS Kwik-Fit tell us that home-owners turn to desperate measures to get rid of nesting birds, which can cause roof damage. It is against the law to remove nests that are in use, so a number of folk have contacted Blair Drummond Safari Park to get their hands on lion and tiger dung, which, it is claimed, scares off birds when spread on the roof. Personally speaking, a quaint little nest would be preferable to the whiff of cat dung wafting from the rafters, but what would we know?



Debunked
WE hear of a Glasgow mum whose young son came home from school and asked what it was when someone sleeps on top of another person. She took a deep breath and decided it was time to tell the lad the facts of life. The next day she received a phone call from a classmate's mother asking why her son was giving his pals such a vivid description of bunk beds.