Wewease the mugwumps

MOST persistent buzzword of the year so far? Weaponised. This week alone it has been applied to everything from nonsense to Boris Johnson – though admittedly there isn't much distance between the two – and has recently been hitched to such disparate entities as gossip, viruses and cans of Pepsi (that last after a riot at an American university). People are even talking about “weaponised autism”. According to one definition, it's “the focused application of nerdiness”. I always thought that was collecting beer mats, but what do I know?

The launching of “weaponised nonsense” into the lexicon came a few days ago courtesy of Lindy West, an American feminist, cultural critic and activist. She used the phrase to describe the syntax-mangling interview Donald Trump gave to Associated Press (AP) in which he talked a lot but said little that made any sense at all – even after AP had put in loads of those square brackets.

If you want a flavour, here's Trump's take on how he'll build his Mexican wall for less than the $25 billion that people who know what they're talking about say it will actually cost.

“I think $10 billion or less,” he told AP's Julie Pace. “And if I do a super-duper, higher, better, better security, everything else, maybe it goes a little bit more. But it's not going to be anywhere near [those] kind of numbers. And they're using those numbers; they're using the high numbers to make it sound impalatable [sic]. And the fact it's going to cost much less money, just like the airplane I told you about, which I hope you can write about.”

Got that? Me neither.

The following day, puckish Newsnight presenter Evan Davis echoed a recent Daily Mail article by asking if Boris Johnson, who had previously been little heard of in the election campaign, would be “weaponised” by the Tories. It brought to mind an image of Double Oh Bo-Jo walking into Q's man cave and emerging with a Nerf gun disguised as one of those stupid folding bicycles. But actually all we got was a column in the next day's Sun newspaper in which the Leave-promoting, EU-wrecking Old Etonian gasbag called Jeremy Corbyn a “mutton-headed old mugwump”. If that's weaponisation, I'm a spud gun. Mind you, it's more weaponised than his ultimate target, the Labour Party, is ever going to get. Sure they're tooled up, but not in that sense.

Men finally using their loaf

TALKING of man caves and gadgetry skills, a new report from market intelligence ninjas Mintel finds that it's now the kitchen rather than the shed in which the under-40s feel most at home.

While nearly half of men over 65 are fairly confident when it comes to tackling basic DIY jobs – and yes, that includes assembling flat-pack furniture – only a quarter of 16 to 34-year-olds know their rasp from their elbow. But about the same percentage say they feel “very confident” making cakes, cupcakes and even bread. To those of retirement age, on the other hand, “making bread” seems to mean sitting back and enjoying the benefits of those triple-lock pensions we hear so much about these days: certainly only 12 per cent of the over-60s think they could rustle up a sourdough starter or a batch of rolls.

Predictably, the picture changes a bit as you head north. It seems Scots men still value Billy bookcase-building over meringue making, news that some will find appealing and others appalling. But overall, says Mintel: “Britain’s young men are more confident with a pastry brush than a paint brush … far from feeling emasculated, for today’s young men the ability to cook appears to be a more important indicator of modern masculinity.”

God bless you, Mary Berry.

Unhappy Snaps

LIFE used to be simple for wedding photographers. You turned up, did your business between the end of the ceremony and the start of the fights – a window of about an hour in Glasgow, a bit longer in Edinburgh – and then parked yourself as near to the free bar as was possible without attracting the attention of whoever was paying for it.

Not so in 2017, because the latest must-have wedding accessory is footage of the happy event shot from a drone-mounted video camera, which technological extravagance is going to keep any wedding photographer busy (and sober) well into the wee hours.

It's innovations like this which are causing the “nuptial equivalent of an arms race” according to the latest edition of Country Life, the magazine for the posh set. It's perhaps a rather unfortunate comparison given the murderous effect weaponised (sorry) US drones have had on weddings in rural areas of Afghanistan. But it's true that the average UK wedding now costs £27,000 – about the same as the average UK salary – and that nearly 5 per cent of weddings in the south-east of England cost over £100,000. And it's true that Country Life wants all this vulgar excess to stop – though they don't quite put it like that. “Pared back” is their preferred choice of words.

Reading between the lines, what they actually mean is this: it's all very well for a society wedding to be lavish and costly, but where's the fun if everyone starts doing it? Reading even further between the lines, it means cost-conscious, under-stated, inconspicuous and drone-free will soon be the new posh where weddings are concerned. That's got to be good news for everyone – including photographers.

Minksy Dinky Do

DIRTY Diary regulars may remember last week's mention of 1980s Aberdeen band The Jasmine Minks in a report of the stushie which has erupted over whether an Irvine Welsh-scripted film about their former label, Creation Records, is Scottish enough to be funded by Creative Scotland. Bigging up its Tartan-tastic credentials, you will recall, putative director Nick Moran said Creation gave the world two of Scotland's most successful bands and the Diary had the temerity to suggest he probably didn't have The Jasmine Minks in mind on either count.

News of our bold (and completely unsubstantiated) assertion evidently reached Minks guitarist Wattie Duncan in his eyrie in the Granite City, and he has been in touch to set the record straight.

“Although we most likely are not one of the two bands there is still life and music in us yet,” he writes. “We have a new song called Ten Thousand Tears newly released in order to raise funds and awareness around Motor Neurone Disease.”

One sufferer close to home is Wattie's brother Phil Duncan, formerly a leading amateur cyclist who once represented Scotland. The single is available through the Bandcamp website and all money raised goes to MND Scotland.

By the by, Wattie doesn't say who he'd like to play him in the Creation film, if it is ever given the green light. But from the band photo he has sent, I'd say Ryan Gosling isn't going to be getting a call.