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Seems the UK Government are yet again causing significant problems with their dithering. The media and indeed the people of England are currently losing their mind about schools being open or closed on Monday. In most of the country, kids are due to show up in less than 24 hours time, and nobody knows whether they’ll be there or not. Unions are encouraging teachers not to show up. There have already been several u-turns in areas like London and government statements are immediately reversed later on in the same day. Into the bargain many headteachers spent the Christmas break planning mass testing regimes that were dropped onto them on the last day of term. In Scotland, schools were announced as being closed for in-person learning until at least January 18th, on December 19th. This isn’t difficult politics - SAGE have said schools can’t stay open with R remaining below 1, as a result of the new variant. So the schools simply must be closed. Scotland has less than half the national average of new cases than England, and yet they seem determined to spread the virus even further down south. They’re in a full crisis but don’t even seem to know it. The BMJ are claiming doctors in London are choosing who to give oxygen to due to a shortage. In some areas ICU’s are as full as 136%. Patients are being flown hundreds of miles to free beds. The media are banned from reporting at hospitals, and while this is all going on there have been several demos actually outside hospitals claiming Covid is a hoax. In response the government are all over social media trumpeting ‘new changes’ as a result of leaving the EU that have already been made by the EU. A lot is made about how much material difference there is between the UK and Scottish Governments in all of this. There probably isn’t a massive amount in policy terms but it really isn’t difficult at all to see why the opinion polls land where they currently do.

On vaccination pace thus far, it should be stressed that Scotland is first in the UK and third in the entire world in terms of vaccinations per head. Only Israel and Bahrain are ahead, and both have vaccinated more people than we have doses at the moment. This idea we’re sitting about scratching our arses is just not accurate. The problem is supply - that is hopefully in the process of being solved now. I’m doubtful it’ll hit the numbers claimed but if it does, the wider UK should be close to doing the 2m a week that is, apparently, the aim. If supplies pull through and we’re not hitting at least 100k a week by the end of January, or the other parts of the UK are vaccinating at a faster pace, let’s start getting annoyed. But right now the facts don’t back up the idea that we’re vaccinating slowly.

45000 between 14 Scottish health boards about 3,000 per health board . Aye we need to be going flat out to do that. The problem is supply clearly not administering it. It's pretty obvious. A fair few on here seem to be losing their shit at a perceived problem which simply isn't there. 45,000 doses from AZ for the whole of Scotland. Let that sink in, there is your problem right there.

Week 52 update 2020 takes the piss one last time and offers up three deaths in the final four days. Up first, French fashion man Pierre Cardin: Obituary: Pierre Cardin - BBC News Riveting. He died at 98 so he's worth 27 Base Points, which the Deadly December bonus makes 54. Points for @50/50 Winner, @CountyFan, @doulikefish and @dundeefc1783. ========================= Up next this week was an MP you've probably never heard of, Ronald Atkins: Ron Atkins: UK's longest living former MP dies aged 104 - BBC News Ach, he sounds like he led a good life. He was worth 21 Base Points. He was a Solo Shot for @sjc and the Deadly December bonus adds an extra 21, giving a total of 92 points. ========================= Finally, last death this year was former football player and manager Tommy Docherty: Tommy Docherty, former Manchester United and Scotland manager, dies aged 92 | Football | The Guardian I'm going to be honest lads, this is another one before my time and he doesn't seem to have achieved much. I have too much to do today to be considerate so Tommy's friends and family get my sincerest condolences. Docherty died at 92 so he's worth 33 Base Points. That's doubled for Deadly December and gets an extra 25 for the Last Gasp bonus. That means 91 points for @Ben Twilly, @expatowner and @Sergeant Wilson. After all of that and for the final time this year, the standings look like this: 1. Bishop Briggs 520 2. JustOneCornetto 464 3. pub car king 410 4. Melanius Mularkey 398 5. Ned Nederlander 387 6. speckled tangerine 370 7. ToBeSomeone 366 8. thistledo 361 9. Musketeer Gripweed 343 10. peasy23 340 11. chomp my root, The_Craig 337 13. The DA 321 14. Fuctifano 320 15. Arabdownunder 309 16. Aim Here 300 17. cdisaaccie 295 18. alta-pete 287 19. sparky88 286 20. Lofarl 281 21. Sergeant Wilson 279 21. paulathame 272 22. Karpaty Lviv 271 23. Savage Henry 266 24. Billy Jean King 263 25. Flybhoy 257 26. weirdcal 250 27. 50/50 Winner 226 28. sjc 217 29. expatowner 216 30. psv_killie 206 31. Ben Twilly 198 31. dundeefc1783 196 32. dee_62 186 33. sureiknow 184 34. Mark Connolly 183 35. ICTJohnboy 176 36. qos_75 171 37. sleazy 169 38. microdave 168 39. lichtgilphead 166 40. Arch Stanton 164 41. D.V.T. 160 42. Bobby Skidmarks 155 43. CountyFan 152 44. choirbairn 150 45. Meden89 149 46. weejack 140 47. Indale Winton 134 48. Scotty Tunbridge 127 49. pawpar 124 50. statts1976uk 123 51. Bold Rover 122 52. gingette 119 53. The Naitch 111 54. Perkin Flump, The Master 106 56. Salvo Montalbano 105 57. 101 103 58. Shotgun 102 59. doulikefish 98 60. LoonsYouthTeam 96 61. Hamish's Passenger 94 62. BWAClyde 84 63. Ludo*1 83 64. HI HAT 69 65. lolls 67 66. Blootoon87 60 67. 19QOS19 58 68. Sweaty Morph 57 69. mathematics 48 70. BillyAnchor, RussellAnderson 47 72. Raidernation 45 73. cambozpar, LondonHMFC 44 75. 10menwent2mow 37 76. wellinwigan 35 77. Cardinal Richelieu 33 78. shuggz 22 ZERO POINTERS - @Eednud, @Empty It, @Henderson to deliver ....., @Miguel Sanchez, @senorsoupe, @thisal The spreadsheet has also been updated with these scores: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V64rLXKhrmZf-6K4D3RyN3cR5Z_i2rh-ztODUB_dQyI/edit?usp=sharing

Here's the last Scottish player to score in the Premier League for each of the current 20 clubs. Arsenal - Kieran Tierney (02/01/21) Aston Villa - John McGinn (04/10/20) Brighton - none in PL. Last in league Jamie Murphy (25/02/17). Last in top flight Gordon Smith (14/05/83) Burnley - George Boyd (04/04/17) Chelsea - Steve Clarke (25/04/98) Crystal Palace - James McArthur (21/04/19) Everton - Steven Naismith (12/09/15) Fulham - Tom Cairney (24/10/20) Leeds - Liam Cooper (20/12/20) Leicester - Paul Dickov (15/05/04). Last non-PL Paul Gallagher (07/04/12). Liverpool - Andy Robertson (28/09/20) Man City - Paul Dickov (19/12/00) Man Utd - Scott McTominay (20/12/20) Newcastle - Matt Ritchie (15/07/20) Sheff Utd - Oli McBurnie (06/12/20) Southampton - Stuart Armstrong (13/12/20) Tottenham - Alan Hutton (06/11/10) West Brom - Matt Phillips (28/04/18). Last non-PL Matt Phillips (11/01/20). West Ham - Robert Snodgrass (01/02/20) Wolves - Steven Fletcher (13/05/12) Last non-PL Barry Douglas (21/04/18).

f**k all wrong with cleaning toilets or sweeping floors. Proper arsehole couple of sentences there.

Must admit that I'd love to the see top league declared null and void. I have a lot of (otherwise-decent) FB friends who're diehard Rangers fans and the gloating from them atm is doing my head in. The absolute fury it would provoke would almost be worth it. I despise that club more than all the rest combined.

From the Heavens Above Twitter page (@HeavensAbove7) [emoji7]

Renton has proudly re-claimed this bed from the cat:

A plague on both your houses. I watched the game back on RTV - though I did scroll through chunks of it - and I'd say the following: First half of the first half. Celtic were top notch. This is the first time I've watched them play since we humbled them in October and they looked transformed. Not only better tactically but winning pretty-much every second ball. This formation was not one I'd seen before and, at times, they had the freedom of Ibrox. Only Greegsie and poor finishing kept us in the game. Second half of the first half. Celtic were still on the front foot. Better in possession and faster to the ball. Our front three of Roofe, Kent and Alfie were starved of possession and our midfield were well off the pace and I was never happier to hear the HT whistle at 0-0. Not, though, that our goal was really threatened much in that period. First half of the second half. Taking off Roofe and bringing on Hagi was a bold move. I I expected Kent to be the player coming off but it worked. This is why Stevie G is our manager and I am posting on a message board at 03.00. This quarter made the game much more a 50/50 with neither team doing that much. Then the moment that changed the match. No, not the sending off- deserved though it was - but daft wee Lhenny hooking Turnbull and Griffiths - Celtic's most effective players - and replacing them with Elyounoussi and The Londonderry Mare. On such poor decisions are OF games lost and won. Second half of the second half. We scored. Hoorah. It wasn't against the run of play as some have suggested as, by that time, Celtic had run out of gas and ideas. Big Ced had a chance to make it 2-0 but his shot on the turn went over the bar. The last 15 minutes were a bit of a procession and Celtic, having subbed their best players, were toothless. So if I looked at the game over the first 45 minutes I'd have changed my avatar to a Dick Turpin mask. Looking at it over 90? We got away with one to an extent but 1-0 wasn't really robbery.

How inappropriate of the plebs to expect that the *checks notes* Cabinet Secretary for Health (and Sport) would have an accurate understanding of vaccine supply for the biggest public health/economic crisis in multiple generations, instead of havering self-congratulatory nonsense predictions and then blaming everyone else for them not being met.

Oh no! Not the national debt!

What is it that fans of other clubs don't get Falkirk are in this league on merit due to years of being crap. We were justifiably relegated due to poor performance, remained down because we weren't good enough to be top of the table and we lost today because East Fife were better than us. The current squad and management is not miles better than anyone else in the league. Falkirk are a full time club with a budget and fanbase 3-4x higher than every other club in this league bar Partick Thistle. A well run Falkirk side with a good manager and budget which is spent wisely should not be in League One given the advantages we have over the other clubs in this league. Both of these things can be true.

Why the f**k would you use the 12 hour clock for Sportscene and the 24 hour clock for MotD...IN THE SAME POST?????

Good to see you’ve learned from the error of your ways in referring to Leitch as the CMO and are now checking notes to get the positions right.

The line of "children's lives have been put on hold" has started getting me rattled, as if they're the only ones who's lives have been slightly modified in the past 10 months.

Well when Aberdeen get games postponed for breaking rules, we never got the fortune of playing their weakened side. In fact they were stronger by the time we faced them than when the original game was postponed. Quite why Motherwell fans feel they deserve the 6pts, or deserve games against weakened sides while other clubs didn't, is beyond me.

Nothing wrong with having a pint when the season has ended imo

Speaking of the new stand at Tynecastle, the Hearts CEO at the time has invited the golf correspondent to a square go at the North's equivalent of Ruel Street. Completely sane behaviour as always from Gardiner.

Week 1 update I think this game was better back when someone could win with two deaths. Up first this week and year we have former American football man Floyd Little: Floyd Little, NFL Hall of Fame Denver Broncos running back, dies at 78 | NFL | The Guardian I don't even care that I can't load that article. He's dead. A first hit of the year for @Ned Nederlander yields 47 Base Points, 50 for a Solo Shot and 25 for the First Blood bonus for a total of 122 points. That's one hell of a scoring average to keep up. ======================== Up next this week was former basketball man Phil Westphal: Paul Westphal, Hall of Famer and NBA champion, dies at 70 Boston Celtics Phoenix Suns Southern California college NBA | The Independent I don't know what that means. Westphal was 70 when he died, so he's worth 55 Base Points. He was a Solo Shot for @Bishop Briggs so he's worth 105 points in total. As a result, the standings look like this: 1. Ned Nederlander 122 2. Bishop Briggs 105 3. Everyone else 0 The spreadsheet has also been updated with these scores: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-OTo44wF_W7A4Q0NFnd1sX3qEDdxTLDobvjhhSgnzkg/edit?usp=sharing

Falkirks a fantastic job. Great facilities, superb fan base, decent budget and your assured of your pay at the end of the month at least. Investment just been announced from the Rawlins. Not sure why there wouldn't be a good number of excellent applications for the job.

If it turns out anyone else died in 2020, well, tough shit. Thanks for playing everyone.

For someone who's supposedly 'scunnered' with all this, NS tone and use of language is remarkably different when it's bad news versus good news. A 5 post thread this morning on Twitter about impending restrictions preceded a re-tweet of a lengthy study on this new variant. Versus a solitary tweet about the AZ vaccine approval an hour and a half after the news broke. To me it sends out all the wrong signals. Granted things are a little bleak just now, but we really need to be hearing about vaccine progress as well as the all negative stuff. A good example being we get daily updates on deaths, hospitalisations, infections etc. But vaccination numbers are weekly.

I think I preferred the “Every Little Helps” advertising campaign tbh.

please

Here's our two up the hill at the back of the house yesterday.

The best bit about Busta's entry was he numbered them all

Gon someone explain the Neil McCann shouts to me please

Please let’s not have any more posts including ”but we are top of the league”. We are at our lowest level for over 40 years and making very heavy weather of dragging ourselves back to some semblance of footballing respectability. Being in the third tier would not be so painful if we were at least being entertained but the standard of football on show is very, very poor even when we have been winning. Yesterday was the lowest point so far but it was no surprise.

The last Scot to score for Arsenal before last night was...Kieran Tierney. He scored at the end of last season.

A happy new deer to all the P&B dugs from Skye.

Johnson on Marr parroting the famous cliché that schools are safe yet again. I'll say it again - if the government policy is stay at home, which it is in Tier 4 areas, this is because the prevalence of the virus is rife and at a severely dangerous level. Schools are not safe and never have been, and they are just going to spread the virus further. Within the last week, 1 in every 200 people in England and NI has been diagnosed with the virus and it's nearing 1 in 400 in Scotland. They have long reckoned the actual numbers are likely two or three times as high: keeping schools open is Government-sanctioned infection of the population. I accept closing the schools is a monumental pain in the arse, but know what else is? 50k+ cases a day. We need to go back to March here - only kids whose presence at home stops nurses/doctors etc from going to work should be in school. They can be taught in a hub school via a rotation or even remotely if required. If schools are safe, so are restaurants and non-essential retail. Suddenly, your stay at home order starts to look silly. If you're issuing stay at home orders, schools should be shut. End of discussion.

Big Country- Restless Natives

The summmariser at Alloa is Heather Dewar. 12 years employed by BBC, has undoubtedly presented more live radio broadcasts than anybody else on the show today, besides Richard Gordon himself. Her supposed crime today is that she took a short while to confirm one goal scorer at Alloa (due to the poor light), then took a short while to confirm the next goal (due to a number of bodies obscuring view). Or in other words, she patiently and calmly waited to confirm the salient fact of the name of the goalscorer to the listening audience rather than wildly speculating or making funny "golllllallll" noises like Biscuits and the Boys do. I think every week any female broadcaster on this show has to perform to a significantly higher standard than her male colleagues in order just not to get mentioned on here. Whilst a number of male broadcasters get a free pass on here, and if criticised are never gendered in that criticism. Sandra Brown excluded, who is by any objective standard rubbish.

Every. Fucking. Week.

Many thanks for your efforts last year. You have taken on a big job and a lot of ribbing over the inevitable hiccups. Best of luck for this year! My first entry was in 2017. If I had kept cyclist Sharon Laws as captain (before a last minute change to VC) I would have won that year. Spain gave me the wrong score for her and put me top of the list. Thankfully, after a while, the mistake was corrected. Last year was utterly dreadful in so many ways and, as the song goes, things can only get better! I wish everyone (including our picks of course) a happy and healthy 2021.

PJ Harvey - Big Exit

Tinpot & Hearts yet again. Embarrassing.

Surely, not being booked is a good thing, or are we saying a DM is only good if they go flying into tackles as if it were the 80's? He definitely doesnt tackle as much as McKenna or Jacobs but then he covers far more ground than either of them did. He's far more like Bowey than either of those two - another player whos technical ability was pretty limited. I dont think its any coincidence that moving Pybus further forward and having him close down higher up the pitch has seen both two wins and much improved performances from McKee and McCabe. Was the one tackle you saw the crucial one on the edge of the box right at the end of the game when he took it off Moffats feet, or were you still celebrating and missed that one too? ETA - blocking a pass and tackling are different but both equally effective. Watch the top teams like Liverpool and see how many times they tackle opponents and how many times they intercept and block passes

As a neutral, you forgot the 3rd myth, 55.

Yep, we’ve all torn into McPake when he was getting it so spectacularly wrong so only fair that we give him massive amounts of credit not only for the run we’re on but learning from the first game of the season and giving that c**t Neilson a schooling on how to set up a football team. That was men against boys last night and if more teams get at Hearts and press them high this season they’ll beat them as their team of auld c***s can’t deal with it. McPake is starting to learn from the silly subs he was making late on in games which I’m sure he himself would admit have cost us a few points., and he’s getting something out of players like Byrne who I’m not sure any of us on here thought possible 12 months ago. Althoigh I think we’re still too far back to mount any title challenge, I think we would all accept a comfortable second place finish and the opportunity to give ourselves a right good go in the playoffs which again, I did not expect to be saying a couple of weeks ago. Fair fucks, McPake. DDYB.

We've had three postponements due to the weather(Falkirk was due to their betfred cup game), so it's not a ludicrous situation imo. I think the only reason folk are getting their knickers in a twist is because of the late start to the season. If we'd started in August and had a full first quarter with all the games going ahead then nobody would be bothering their arse about a few postponements.

Apologies if this has been posted already, but after watching the Sportscene highlights, I read up on the Motherwell keeper Chapman and this is his current Wikipedia page

Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool: Lowest league finish since the 1950s Heaviest ever defeat to Watford (twice) First Liverpool manager to suffer back-to-back home defeats to Crystal Palace Stoke's first win at Anfield since 1959 Swansea's first ever league win at Anfield First league defeat against Burnley since 1974 Heaviest defeat to Man City since 1937 Heaviest ever League Cup defeat Conceded 7 goals in a competitive match for the first time since 1963

5 replies and no one has said it it yet ?

I used to play for the school team at both primary and secondary level until I lost my virginity then life just become less about concentrating and more about sliding into the fanny.

Graeme Spiers burner account found