Redstarstranraer

I did my PhD on the use of historical narratives to build differing conceptions of national identity, but thanks for the patronising advice anyway. You were the one who brought the bloody Normans into the debate about putting Gaelic on signs in contemporary Scotland. I beg leave to think that an irrelevant and unproductive line of argumentation. There is precisely no evidence for any of the arguments you have made vis-a-vis the supposed ideological promotion of Gaelic as a "false" national language. If you can actually evince some evidence of there being a declared agenda by the "ruling class" to promote the language in this way in 2019 I'd be interested to see it.

Eh? Who is "letting the aristocracy define Scottishness"? You brought up the entirely irrelevant status of the ruling class in 11-12th century Scotland to prove some kind of point, I really don't know what it is or what the hell it has to do with road signs. What is your argument here? Do you know? Kudos though, raising the Treaty of Abernethy as an argument about whether or not to put Gaelic on road signs in 2019 is some feat.

So Norman influence then, qualitatively different from the actual Norman conquest. The two things are clearly not the same, not sure why you would conflate them unless you had a tendentious agenda to promote a narrative of the history of these isles which minimises any difference and seeks to establish the idea that we're all exactly the same. The same sort of agenda that would lead you to oppose minority languages being used on road signs.

Which I'm sure you can evidence as part of a systemic, ideologically driven agenda connected to road signs and isn't a topos of threat that you've dreamt up without any supporting proof. Basic facts about Scottish history should clearly be taught at primary school. Certain historical narratives are always promoted above others but I don't think there is any evidence whatsoever of a nationalist-driven primary school curriculum. Not sure what this has to do with road signs. Again I don't know what evidence there is for this being an agenda consciously fostered by the authorities. Still not sure what this has to do with road signs. Are the Jacobites only relevant to Gaelic speakers? I'd argue that the effects of Norman influence (when did the conquest happen up here out of interest?) and the reformation are under-explored but that has sod all to do with road signs. But yeah, the ruling class is promoting Gaelic to suppress Scotland's history of class war and to bolster support for feudalism, or something

Totally agree, glad to see such strong support for the Gaelic I don't know though, not speaking a word of Gaelic personally I have to say that since moving from Galloway to Argyll I've found it quite hard to navigate with two languages on signposts. God knows I've lost count of the times I've been frustrated, smashing my head off the steering wheel in apoplexies of confusion as to whether Inbhir Aora is somewhere other than Inveraray. Not just me, the lines of tourists stranded on the A83 unable to determine if it is the road to Campbeltown or Ceann Loch Chille Chiarain is the bane of every summer. In all seriousness how insecure about yourself to do you have to be to get worked up about road signs featuring another language you don't happen to be fluent in? It costs nothing in the grand scheme of things and has zero effect on you personally. The fact that otherwise reasonable individuals get outraged by the idea of Gaelic being allowed some visibility outwith the areas they deem acceptable is truly baffling.

Fair play to Killie, an ambitious and fairly exciting appointment. Alessio has some pretty decent footballing pedigree albeit his record as a manager in his own right (admittedly a long while back at a pretty low level) isn't that great. You'd think though that working at the level he has since with Conte he can bring a lot to Kilmarnock. Bit of a gamble but then so is any appointment to some degree. Great to see an appointment that eschews the usual managerial merry go round up here. Scottish football really needs an appointment like this to work. The whole culture around the game here seems thirty or forty years out of date, with unimaginative chairmen appointing equally limited managers from a shallow pool of supposed talent washed out from the pubs of Largs. The media promotes and protects the same clique of journeymen out of a combination of nepotism, laziness, small-mindedness and the fundamental fact the journalists are as limited as the managers. It's like a symbiotic shiteness. Hopefully the likes of Alessio can demonstrate to chairmen up and down Scotland that you can look beyond the usual suspects and be a bit more innovative in terms of appointments and all other aspects of the game. So aside from when you're playing Hibs obviously I hope this works out.

Piss-poor incoherent trolling it may be but in all seriousness you'd think if there's one thing ***s ought to be able to spot after all this time it'd be spivs, charlatans and chancers proclaiming they had untold riches to plough into a football club. Or maybe not. Anyway does anyone know if these supposed Americans' wealth can be detected by radar?

Surely if the last few seasons have taught us anything it's that what matters isn't the team on the park but the size of the crowd. We should really go for it and put a crane in the corner with a hot tub suspended from it or something innovative like that....

Will be interesting to see what resignation/threat or manoeuvre will finally pierce Theresa May's Fuhrerbunker levels of delusion. Anyone else would have had the self-awareness to see their position was untenable months ago and spared themselves the ensuing barrage of (well-deserved) humiliation and ridicule. Have to assume this latest crisis, given all parts of the Tory party seem to have now exhausted all their patience with her, will finally cause her to quit. Complete failure of a politician. Indeed only one I can recall putting the metaphorical gun to their head and threatening to not pull the trigger as an incentive to swing a vote.

McGeouch was one of the most underrated players in Scotland for most of his time with us, albeit the constant injuries probably went a long way towards stopping him getting to where his talent could have taken him. I'm sure almost everyone would have him back at ER in a heartbeat. Won't happen though unless it's a loan I don't imagine. Aberdeen fans thinking a move to them would be a step up from Hibs is quaint though.

I'm afraid I think there's a lot of disingenuous pish being waffled by certain people here on this issue. Question Time supposedly consists of, according to the BBC's own website: "Topical debate in which guests from the worlds of politics and the media answer questions posed by members of the public". The BBC pick the studio guests, the location, the audience and subsequently edit the footage to show what they deem representative, entertaining or relevant. The BBC devised and have progressively tweaked the show's format. Nobody is forcing the BBC to make any of these editorial decisions. Given the BBC are actively promoting Question Time as an opportunity for the general public to grill politicians on the issues of the day it would not be unreasonable for the watching public to assume that those posing the questions are not affiliated with a particular political party. The BBC unashamedly promote the show as a forum for "Joe Public" to put his point across to otherwise relatively inaccessible politicians. This undoubtedly gives the impression the show is a more or less accurate representation of the vox populi and public opinion in general. I think it not unreasonable therefore that many of the watching audience may assume that contributors and questioners are not actually paid up members of political parties let alone hold or have held public office. The panel is presented as comprised of such individuals, not the supposedly random audience. In my opinion, and I do not think I would be alone in holding this view, councillors, party activists and ex-MSPs cannot legitimately be presented as members of the public. They are essentially politicians. Given the BBC apparently vets those who wish to get on the show via an application process either the BBC is fully aware of these individuals backgrounds and chooses to ignore them or those in charge of the vetting process are entirely incompetent. I do not think it is the latter. It may well be difficult to compile such a show without attracting applicants who are politically engaged, but I do not think it impossible to do so without either excluding actual party activists or at least making them identify themselves as such. It is quite clear audiences will esteem questions and points differently if they know they are being raised by individuals who have an actual association with a certain party than someone apparently unconnected to one at all. All any of this would take is asking a questioner where relevant to say "I am a member of X party" before making their point. If they refuse to do so then their contribution can be edited out in the post-production stage. If someone slipped through the net then the BBC could, say, exclude that party from the subsequent edition and reinstate them once obtaining a promise to desist. It wouldn't actually be difficult to do. The current format essentially allows political activists (who appear to be predominantly of one certain political persuasion) to make tendentious points and political attacks on their opponents whilst masquerading as ordinary citizens. That is fundamentally dishonest. The "yellow dress" woman or whatever she was called actually appeared on a Tory party political broadcast not one hour ago standing next to Ruth Davidson at what I assume was the Scottish Conservative conference. Presenting someone such as her who clearly is deeply associated (and one assumes a paid up member) of a political party as a "member of the public" distorts audience perception. For clarity this would hold true equally if the person involved was associated with the SNP. Many of the watching audience may well be duly cynical about the background of some audience members. In my opinion however the BBC is being deliberately and unnecessarily misleading by not identifying where it can that many of those asking questions are not politically unaffiliated members of the public as the show may lead the audience to believe.

Out of interest before 1945 what supposedly constituted a country in the opinion of adherents of this particularly asinine and obtuse strand of unionism? League of Nations membership? What about before then? Is it turtles all the way down?

Seeing as he's apparently away I'd just like to respectfully thank Mark Warburton for the memories. His absolute lack of tactical acumen played no small part in the glorious story of 21.05.2016. Gone (?) but not forgotten.

One of my mates down south is a Chester fan and brought this to my attention. Apparently a Morrisons down there used to be frequented by a cat that hung around the entrance, sat on trolleys etc. It died. Now the owner is trying to get the public to stump up 5 grand to 'immortalise' their pet in statue form outside their local supermarket: Brutus "The Morrisons Cat" 1 February at 16:08 · I'm trying to raise money for a statue of Brutus at Morrisons in his memory but for some reason I don't think Facebook actually sends posts with links in to all his followers' news feeds, therefore his Just Giving page isn't really getting out there as much as it could. Here is the link below but I've put a space in it. Just copy it if you can into your browser and remove the space before 'com'. Thanks so much www.justgiving. com/crowdfunding/Brutus Or PayPal email address:... See more Ridiculous enough, but the cause was supposedly taken up by certain Chester fans who suggested trying to organise a collection before their next home game in honour of a dead cat: http://devachat.freeforums.net/thread/58/bucket-collection-applause-update Thank you to all who contributed to the discussion on the other thread devachat.freeforums.net/thread/37/rip-sir-ken-morrison As mentioned we have sourced buckets and now someone has said they can sort out laminated pictures of Brutus and Ken for them. All donations will go to the crowdfunder that has raised over £2300 so far.A few have said they will be doing the applause on the 85 minute so thank you - and I hope many of you join in.Does anyone have contacts in the local papers who can help raise the profile of this? In case you're wondering the Ken whose memory they also apparently want to honour is Sir Ken Morrison the former chairman of Morrisons who also died recently. He was from Yorkshire and had nothing at all to do with Chester FC. His death seemingly just compounded the tragedy of poor Brutus's passing to the extent some Chester fans feel they need to hold a minute's applause for him. Evidently most Chester fans are ripping the proverbial out of these ideas and the initial suggestion must surely have been a wind up. Some are taking it deadly seriously though so tomorrow may well see some football fans in one corner of the UK collect money for a dead cat and applauding a dead grocer. The crowdfunding effort is sitting at 2,497 quid if anyone wants to donate: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/brutus Weʼre raising £5,000 to have a statue of Brutus the Morrisons Cat made in his memory and placed in Morrisons, Saltney where he can still greet his adoring fans. Brutus has won the hearts of thousands of local Morrisons shoppers as well as his Facebook followers from all over the world (www.facebook.com/brutusthesaltneycat). He's been visiting the store since it was built in 2010 and became a familiar face to those who regularly shopped in Morrisons, Saltney. He delighted children and adults alike with his cheeky 'cattitude', investigating shopping in people's trolleys as they left the store, jumping into cars to investigate, sneaking down the pet food aisle to see what kind of offers were on, and just generally being there daily for everyone to love and fuss. He had a gorgeous fluffy face and strutted around like he owned the place, oh and he loved the camera! In October 2013 he was diagnosed with Polycystic Kidney Disease. It's a condition he would have had since birth and sadly there is no cure. We managed this for 3 years with special food, daily medication and regular checks at Ben Jones vets. In January 2016 he became poorly and ended up in Chester Gates veterinary hospital. Luckily he pulled through that time and won their pet of the month award. His condition remained stable for another year however sadly New Years Eve 2016 was the last time Brutus was to visit Morrisons. He took another bad turn and this time, although he had another visit to Chester Gates he didn't recover and on Monday 16th January 2017 we had to make the extremely heartbreaking decision to put him to sleep. We are devastated, but there are also thousands of devastated fans locally, nationally and internationally! The number of messages I've received have been overwhelming. It makes us happy to know that he brightened so many peoples lives. We thought that a memorial to honour Brutus is only fitting, so that people can still say hello to him and have something to remember him by. Many people have expressed their wish for something to be placed in Morrisons, so this is what we are raising the money for, plus also for local animal charities.