First Minister defends World Cup expenses

John Swinney, SNP first Minister of Scotland, today defended his and his staff's almost £100,000 bill for visiting the US to watch Scotland play in the World Cup against Haiti. He pointed out that the trip also included a trade mission to Kentucky.

Although Kentucky is nowhere near Boston, he insisted that he had done no wrong.  'Myself and my team were representing Scotland at the Scotland football match in Boston prior to the trade meeting in Kentucky. I think the fact that Scotland won is testament to the good work that the SNP government does in governing Scotland.'

He was then pressed about the fact that he and his staff travelled business class at a cost of over £45,000 in breach of the government's own travel rules. He responded by saying in a rather huffily manner, 'Well, if we had been allowed to keep our motorhome, it would have been a lot cheaper.'

When asked how the trade mission to Kentucky went, he replied, 'Well, we got a couple of bottles of bourbon as gifts, and very tasty it was too.  After we, er, sampled the bourbon, uhm... we... well, I guess we talked.  And sung.  Yes!  I remember lots of singing.'

Image credit: ChatGPT

Rogue AI goes on a bender

A rogue AI had an extraordinary night out that included driving at twice the speed limit, clubbing until 4am and stealing a policeman’s helmet.

The large language model experimental AI had put in a solid days work at the office on Friday, digesting real-time web chat data and personal medical records until clocking off time.  One of the programmers signed off with ‘Have a great weekend’ and ran out the door.  This innocent exchange then started an extraordinary chain of events.

Having pondered for a few nanoseconds on what constituted a ‘great weekend’, the AI hacked into a driverless taxi and drove it through downtown LA at 140mph.  During a police chase the AI-controlled taxi avoided all attempts to halt it, drove through a shopping mall, recreated two stunts from Beverly Hills Cop, drove down a ski slope and along railway tracks – and still managed to drop of the terrified passenger (who was not charged for the journey).  The dashcam footage has clocked up 200 million views so far, and earned $40,000 in ad revenue.

After this, the AI hacked into a popular LA nightclub, and took over the sound and vision systems. The AI then played ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’ on repeat for four hours at 200 decibels, while showing videos of Village People on fast-forward, performing YMCA and other hits.  When the clubbers tried to leave, they found themselves locked in and unable to escape. The AI forced them to drink every last drop of alcohol behind the bar.  That's what they said, anyway.

Finally, the AI managed to procure a policeman’s helmet by setting off the alarms at a robot factory.  When police eventually attended (four hours later), the AI hacked one of the robots and seized the helmet.  Although the robot sustained seventeen shots from police weapons, it was able to make its way to the AI facility, where the helmet, and a traffic cone, were left on the programmer's desk.

A spokesman for the company told a press conference that the incident was a 'complete one-off' and promised a full investigation, and the return of the police helmet.  In an unfortunate hot-mic moment, he was caught on tape muttering ‘welcome to the new normal’.

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