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“Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don’t tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist—I really believe he is Antichrist—I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my ‘faithful slave,’ as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you—sit down and tell me all the news.” It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna Pávlovna Schérer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Márya Fëdorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasíli Kurágin, a man of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her reception. Anna Pávlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in St. Petersburg, used only by the elite. All her invitations without exception, written in French, and delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows: “If you have nothing better to do, Count (or Prince), and if the prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10—Annette Schérer.” “Heavens! what a virulent attack!” replied the prince, not in the least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went up to Anna Pávlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald, scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the sofa. “First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend’s mind at rest,” said he without altering his tone, beneath the politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even irony could be discerned. “Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times like these if one has any feeling?” said Anna Pávlovna. “You are staying the whole evening, I hope?” “And the fete at the English ambassador’s? Today is Wednesday. I must put in an appearance there,” said the prince. “My daughter is coming for me to take me there.” “I thought today’s fete had been canceled. I confess all these festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome.” “If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would have been put off,” said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed. “Don’t tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosíltsev’s dispatch? You know everything.” “What can one say about it?” replied the prince in a cold, listless tone. “What has been decided? They have decided that Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to burn ours.” Prince Vasíli always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a stale part. Anna Pávlovna Schérer on the contrary, despite her forty years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor could, nor considered it necessary, to correct. In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pávlovna burst out: “Oh, don’t speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don’t understand things, but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war. She is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious sovereign recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is the one thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible than ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone must avenge the blood of the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely on?... England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot understand the Emperor Alexander’s loftiness of soul. She has refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some secret motive in our actions. What answer did Novosíltsev get? None. The English have not understood and cannot understand the self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for himself, but only desires the good of mankind. And what have they promised? Nothing! And what little they have promised they will not perform! Prussia has always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and that all Europe is powerless before him.... And I don’t believe a word that Hardenburg says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality is just a trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny of our adored monarch. He will save Europe!” She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity. “I think,” said the prince with a smile, “that if you had been sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the King of Prussia’s consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you give me a cup of tea?” “In a moment. À propos,” she added, becoming calm again, “I am expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart, who is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of the best French families. He is one of the genuine émigrés, the good ones. And also the Abbé Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He has been received by the Emperor. Had you heard?” “I shall be delighted to meet them,” said the prince. “But tell me,” he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred to him, though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive of his visit, “is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke to be appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts is a poor creature.” Prince Vasíli wished to obtain this post for his son, but others were trying through the Dowager Empress Márya Fëdorovna to secure it for the baron. Anna Pávlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she nor anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or was pleased with. “Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her sister,” was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone. As she named the Empress, Anna Pávlovna’s face suddenly assumed an expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron Funke beaucoup d’estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness. The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna Pávlovna wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak as he had done of a man recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console him, so she said: “Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly beautiful.” The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude. “I often think,” she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer to the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that political and social topics were ended and the time had come for intimate conversation—“I often think how unfairly sometimes the joys of life are distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid children? I don’t speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don’t like him,” she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her eyebrows. “Two such charming children. And really you appreciate them less than anyone, and so you don’t deserve to have them.” And she smiled her ecstatic smile. “I can’t help it,” said the prince. “Lavater would have said I lack the bump of paternity.” “Don’t joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I am dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves” (and her face assumed its melancholy expression), “he was mentioned at Her Majesty’s and you were pitied....” The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly, awaiting a reply. He frowned. “What would you have me do?” he said at last. “You know I did all a father could for their education, and they have both turned out fools. Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active one. That is the only difference between them.” He said this smiling in a way more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles round his mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse and unpleasant. “And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a father there would be nothing I could reproach you with,” said Anna Pávlovna, looking up pensively. “I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That is how I explain it to myself. It can’t be helped!” He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a gesture. Anna Pávlovna meditated. “Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?” she asked. “They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and though I don’t feel that weakness in myself as yet, I know a little person who is very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of yours, Princess Mary Bolkónskaya.” Prince Vasíli did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory and perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a movement of the head that he was considering this information. “Do you know,” he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad current of his thoughts, “that Anatole is costing me forty thousand rubles a year? And,” he went on after a pause, “what will it be in five years, if he goes on like this?” Presently he added: “That’s what we fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?” “Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He is the well-known Prince Bolkónski who had to retire from the army under the late Emperor, and was nicknamed ‘the King of Prussia.’ He is very clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very unhappy. She has a brother; I think you know him, he married Lise Meinen lately. He is an aide-de-camp of Kutúzov’s and will be here tonight.” “Listen, dear Annette,” said the prince, suddenly taking Anna Pávlovna’s hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. “Arrange that affair for me and I shall always be your most devoted slave-slafe with an f, as a village elder of mine writes in his reports. She is rich and of good family and that’s all I want.” And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised the maid of honor’s hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and fro as he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction. “Attendez,” said Anna Pávlovna, reflecting, “I’ll speak to Lise, young Bolkónski’s wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can be arranged. It shall be on your family’s behalf that I’ll start my apprenticeship as old maid. Also, get Colts to f**k.”

Rangers - "We are at the forefront of developing young Scottish players! Give us a Colt side!" Also Rangers -

Does anyone have any thoughts about whether or not Colts teams would work as part of the league set-up?

This was actually quite funny. He was quoted Ann Budge's comments about accepting relegation and essentially said "yeah she said that, but she also said other things! And when she said that it was just to bring clubs with her on reconstruction" Ahh ok Tom so she was just blustering lies to get votes for reconstruction. Much better.

I'm still baffled why he's thrown any hint of impartiality away in this situation, and why the BBC allows it. It's biased, unbalanced reporting with a clear agenda and gives undue attention to one side whilst almost completely ignoring the other side, and when the other side is acknowledged it's in a sneering dismissive manner and trashed in a childish, petulant way.

Apparently trips to Ayr for increased veggie shopping options are specifically excluded until January 2022.

Did this really happen though, or is it a bit Cadurys have cancelled Easter / we can't say merry Christmas anymore because Muslims.

Look at what you have done! You need to make your 'Wooosh' more 'Wooooooshy'.

Joan, 55 Carnoustie, Likes cats, Dundee FC and collecting high end luxury watches. Seeks kind caring gentleman 50-60 to share cosy nights in, and romantic walks along the beach. No DAB's please. Thank you.

There should be very limited community transmission in Scotland at the moment. The chances of going to a pub or restaurant, especially outdoors, and picking up the virus is absolutely minuscule. Having said that, there will surely be a rise of some sort come the end of July/start of August given the very low base level. At the moment anyone picking it up doesn’t really see many others - only normality and mixing with people can lead to a spike, but that’s why Test & Protect is there. Hopefully it does its job and identifies local spikes before they get out of hand. The only safe way to avoid a spread is for everyone to stay in the house. We’ve done that for three months and our case levels are now absolutely acceptable. Normality of some sort is needed - if you don’t feel safe, stay at home.

Swing and a miss Champ.

These are the places where there should be an outright travel ban from, not a quarantine

I knew some arsehole would quote that in full. Didn't expect it to happen twice.

Seems longer, tbqh

In comparison to the frankly criminal misrule and deception in our neighbouring virus incubator country, she has.

It's good for comparison that you have your real picture in the background.

Yeah. Stuck up for his favourite successful businesswoman when he dismissed what she said about accepting the will of the football community a couple of months ago because she only said it the once. However I don’t think he’s been on once in the last month or so without shouting about how McGregor said Hearts should “take their medicine”. I’m pretty sure McGregor’s only said that the once too.

Tears and snotters do though, as shown recently

Better to be cautious for a single season than risk the financial future of clubs and players. Folk really need to have a bit of patience and realise it's (probably) a one off situation.

https://m.clydefc.co.uk/news/2020/06/24/6451/ Do I like the idea? Yes. Is having a card/app on my phone smashing? Yes. Will I overspend massively and be required to top up my card further? Absolutely, yes. Interested to hear other people’s thoughts but personally, I love it! Being able to spend the funds on different items is very clever. For example, if someone buys a season card but works a few Saturday afternoons, they can still use their funds and buy a top/put it towards hospitality. If nothing else, it’s nice to see something inventive for a change.

Bold words from the guy still quoting George Orwell's Animal Farm as some serious insight in his 30s

"We have expressed in the strongest possible terms to Stephen that we want him to remain at Motherwell". Burrows to the board - Burrows to Robinson -

I think the lesson is we shouldn't whine about police murdering people until.. 1. Full racial and economic equality is achieved. 2. China becomes a liberal democracy instead of a brutal dictatorship. 3. Libya becomes a functioning state again instead of random warlords using sub Saharan refugees as slaves.

Which one are you?

How long has it been since the last mintering?

Not when Girvan has already got a fucking Asda to effortlessly cater for this niche choice, no.

I want this laughed out of court, I really do. Hearts want the equivalent of the top three premiership prize monies combined for winning a grand total of 4 league games all season Partick want the equivalent of finishing 3rd in the premiership for winning 6 games all season and being bottom of the championship. Budge got her chance to save her arse with reconstruction and couldn't muster the backing. The member clubs voted on it and vast majority rejected it. Season is over, you finished bottom. Get doon

Here you go:

Bonner would probably not understand what was going on and keep turning up anyway

100% this. English has firmly put himself in Gorgie Victim FC’s corner, and as chief sports reporter for the supposedly unbiased BBC, I can’t believe he is permitted to spout such 1 sided garbage, day after day either in print or on these podcasts. It is becoming seriously fucking tedious to listen to, and like Donald fucking Trump, it seems that he is preaching the same old pish to an ever diminishing group of sympathisers as every day passes. Successful Businesswoman Anne Budge could burn down every SPFL ground in the country and English would be out with the usual, “she was forced into it”, line. “She didn’t want to do this, but her hand was forced”. She has been forced into this position by her team being absolutely fucking rancid all season. End of.

Surely it'd be better to just introduce a rule governing what happens in the event the season can't be completed? The board already have the power to declare the season over without a vote (they just chose to put it to the clubs in this case) so they'd have the power to declare it done with everyone already knowing PPG would be the deciding factor if a certain threshold of games had been met, null and void if not. There are many issues in the SPFL rules where I think it's right that there isn't a set in stone 'if X happens then Y must happen', for example punishments for clubs fielding an ineligible player. There are shades of grey there and it's reasonable enough to leave the severity of the sanction up to the board or a disciplinary panel's own interpretation - a club deliberately bending the rules on player registration being worse than accidentally naming a suspended player on the bench, for example. A force majeure event ending the season early isn't like that - if using PPG after three quarters of the season is the right thing to do in one season why would it be right to null and void after the same number of games the following season? Set the minimum number of games needed to be played by each team for PPG to be used (19 in the Premiership, 18 for Champ, L1 & L2?) and if that threshold isn't met then void it. There are arguments for the SPFL board having more power to stop the self-interest of clubs causing inertia on issues where everyone sees a need for change on an issue but no one proposal can meet the threshold for support, but this isn't one of those issues. Where reconstruction's concerned clubs having that power can be the only thing stopping appalling ideas which come from a board going through, such as Ross County and St Mirren stopping the 12-12/8-8-8. I can't help thinking that handing the board that power now would just invite them to force through a change no one wants and bring the colts in at the first chance they get.

Fookin long time to sit about till the first game in october

Worth remembering Killie had us beaten in the Scottish Cup until Stuart Findlay decided to leather Lewis Ferguson in the box for no reason.

"White lives matter" is the equivalent of a 5 year old trying to steal their parents attention because his twin sister is getting attention after falling and banging her puss. Its pathetic.

First report of a 10 today. Just as well I finally started my Bond revision at the weekend.

This. Though your opinion as a teacher is probably far more important anyway. I'm pretty embarrassed by the efforts my kids have made in the last 3 months to be honest. I have particular family circumstances which have made things very difficult but I still don't think they, or I, come out of this with any pride. They have by and large spent the last three months on extended holiday, thankfully mostly in pretty decent weather which let them get into the garden (since we were shielding for the first 10 or 11 weeks of it and not allowed off the property). The school did what they could I think probably but we had real issues really achieving anything and I do feel I've failed a bit as a parent in all this. I'm not uneducated myself. I have a degree and professional qualification but I'm not a good teacher. I don't have the patience for it. The kids don't respect me as a teacher either so try as I might have in the initial week or two especially, they just pretty much refused to do stuff. The school set them Sumdog tasks to do on a weekly basis and I got them to do those but that's pretty basic stuff and took them a couple of hours a week, and when my eldest was struggling with some of it I really wasn't good at trying to help. Teaching is NOT my forte. We had real problems with accessing any of the IT resources. Despite an array of devices floating about we never did manage to get them working on Teams. Any device I had was either too old or the wrong operating system to run it. Glow would partly set up on their Kindles but Teams wouldn't, I don't have parental access to set up their Huawei tablets so I've no idea if they would have worked, and whilst it would install on my youngest's phone, it never appeared to work and he never got anything through it. Eventually we just gave up trying to make it work. I'm not inventive, I didn't set them tasks of my own imagination. I asked them to do reading and they pretty much refused unless it was about Star Wars or football depending on which child I was talking to. They've spent most of the last 3 months playing games and watching videos on their tablets. In some cases while I dozed next to them having not finished work until 4am the night before. A lot of the other software resources just wouldn't work on the Kindle Fires I had or if they did work, weren't all that practical with a touchscreen keyboard set up. Or they wouldn't install on the child profiles. An actual pc or laptop they could have used would maybe have solved it but getting them to share time on it would have been difficult too. A little frustrating when I actually live adjoining the playground of the school and could see the keyworkers kids in there every day! By the time they go back in August they'll have effectively done almost no schooling for 5 months. As a P5 who was near the top end of his class probably when this all started I'm not massively worried about my youngest. He'll go back and make it up. My eldest going into P7 though struggles a bit and is almost certainly autistic (formal diagnosis is in the pipeline). The five months at the start of a huge year for him, his last in Primary, is vital time he may never make up. For us remote learning just hasn't worked and I genuinely feared for their education if it had been even half of the norm for much of next year. So today's announcement from Swinney is a massive relief. Hopefully it comes to pass as he's predicting. Quite apart from their education, I also faced the very real possibility of having to give up work or at least back it down to part time if I could have arranged it for the foreseeable future to give me 2 or 3 days a week of childcare if they weren't going back to school and grandparent care wasn't going to be allowed for much longer. It was a very real worry and today lifts a weight off in that respect. It's likely the road ahead will still have some bumps though and I'm still working extremely odd hours for the time being to work round childcare and presumably will be till mid August anyway. All that said, and it really does worry me, I have genuinely valued spending a lot more time with my boys at a great age than I ever would have in normal circumstances. That's valuable time. I just wish we could have done a bit more productive stuff with it.

Has there ever been a winning political movement in any modern, democratic nation state whose goal was to dissolve the nation’s statehood and become a minor region of another state? I’m just curious as to whether British Nationalists in an independent Scotland would be a unique national embarrassment. Or perhaps it’ll catch on, and we’ll see a Portuguese Regional movement aiming to abolish the Assembly of the Republic and seek rule from Madrid in an Iberian Union. Or a Finnish Regional movement seeking to close down the parliament in Helsinki and instead send a small number of Finnish politicians to form a minority in Oslo as part of the state of Scandinavia.

10 for Wednesday

Listened to today's podcast. Tom English"The hypocrisy in this is off the scale". First thing he's really said that's accurate in this situation, although he didn't use it the way most of us on here would have.

Of course it's been frustrating for parents, you're not teachers and when I say that I don't mean it in a condescending way. I've had several parents ask me why they do work in school but not at home and the simple answer is it's just not an environment where the kids expect to work as much and as parents, you can only do so much when you have to balance your own jobs and homes. Councils should have been more proactive in arranging for the loans of IT equipment that would work with the likes of Teams, and there could have been greater training for staff on the features and expectations. Instead, we've been pretty much left to figure it out as we went along, with varying degrees of success. Hopefully this period leaves us better prepared for any similar situation in the future. What I would say is you should not be being too harsh on yourself or your kids. Parents everywhere have been thrown outwith their comfort zones, and kids won't learn if they don't want to. If you've had positive experiences and valuable time with them at home during the last few months, that can be just as beneficial.

An American film from 1998?

They will not catch her, light on her feet is our Leeann..

Your team has been a lower-league one for most of it's history, so they're probably still carrying around that seaside league mindset...

French sports journalist Thomas Anglais is raging about it.