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Phil Spectre now.

Its good that minter has accepted scotland isnt in the uk anymore

Dexter in very different fettles.

Personally I want people involved in health care to pass basic training but maybe that's just me

One of the more batshit crazy notions in Scottish politics right now - and that's a tough competition - is the idea that the present Scottish Government don't want independence.

Whether you like it or not, there are at least some Unionists who think any mixture of the following: (a) that 2016 wasn’t a mandate because the SNP didn’t win a majority (b) that 2016 wasn’t a mandate because it was too soon after 2014 (c) that 2016 wasn’t a mandate because the conditions set by the SNP and Greens were hypothetical/not the same/not clear enough (d) that the fall in the SNP’s seats share and votes in 2017 in some sense politically “overrode” any suggestion 2016 was a mandate because they were losing momentum (e) that 2019 was really a Brexit election so you can’t treat it as a fresh mandate for an indyref (f) that any mandate sought less than (say) 5 years after the first referendum sullies the idea that the first referendum was being respected (g) that even if politically the SNP had a mandate for indyref2 for pragmatic reasons it was wrong to pursue it while Brexit was in limbo and the new settlement unclear (h) that you shouldn’t make a referendum the public political priority during a pandemic. Unionists are not a monolith. Not all of them (just the loudest ones) are “NO SURRENDER”. A Holyrood single party majority on an unambiguous pledge to hold a second referendum, secured almost 7 years after indyref1, will change the balance of sentiment. Even if the UK Government’s response is to be NO SURRENDER it will be a more extremist position within its own umbrella and will probably be the wedge that splits them from moderate Unionists. The underlying public support for a wildcat referendum just objectively will be higher if you keep the powder dry for now than if you reveal your hand. And, paradoxically, that’s more likely to get you a negotiated referendum. Some of them might. Your task is to persuade the roughly half of Unionists who don’t vote Scottish Tory that that’s just not a democratic position. Give Starmer’s Labour the breathing space to switch on this and see how viable and legitimate the Tory Government looks after that. The European Courts would never have had any interest in the legal question of whether the Scottish Parliament has the legislative competence to enable an independence referendum. It doesn’t engage and never has engaged any questions of EU law. We are not “occupied” or “subjugated”. We are constrained by a set of constitutional arrangements to which, in their infinite wisdom, the Scottish people reaffirmed their explicit consent in 2014: warts, risks, flexibilities and all. It is better to exhaust the avenues of less bad options first in such a climate. That’s what impatient Salmond-ite yer da’s haven’t yet grasped.

Don't think this is an uncommon view at all to be honest, and will probably become more so the longer this drags on. Scottish football relies on, thrives on physical attendance at matches. Take that away and you're not left with much. Watching games being played out in training-ground atmospheres on a stream is a poor, poor substitute. I suppose you could argue that it's still better than nothing though, which is what we are back to now after last week. It's a perfect storm at the moment. Atrocious leadership within the game. The unshakeable sense that another shafting is on the horizon. League suspended again with no pathway to any restart. Promotion and relegation extremely unlikely when clubs have not completed even half of their fixtures in an already curtailed season. Prospect of null and void, which potentially introduces a whole host of other problems. Presumably refunding season ticket money for an event deemed not to have taken place. How is any prize money distributed? Can player contracts be cancelled? You're then looking at trying to get through to perhaps August having played 11 or 12 league games in a year and a half. Chuck in the ongoing economic havoc, fans getting out of the habit of going to games and the unappetising prospect of yet another season at this level watching the kind of football that has been on display this season and I can see a fair few fans saying F**k it, and wouldn't blame them. Next season is going to be a hard, hard sell.

I think that even more now to be honest.

People buying up the housing stock they don't intend to live in artificially raises the prices, blocking other buyers and raising the demand for rented property and the rent they can charge. The laws and taxes should be changed but it doesn't excuse the predatory exploitation.

The Scottish Government, quite understandably, don’t want the courts involved. They want a negotiated referendum, so that a UK Government is committed to encouraging Unionists to participate rather than to boycott, and then to respect a Yes vote. If a court case wins, the Nats lose the reassurance of the result of the referendum being respected: “we didn’t agree to this referendum we think it’s not binding the Union is reserved go away” Boris would say. If the court case loses, the Nats lose the bargaining chip in the referendum negotiations of being able to threaten a wildcat referendum if the UK Government keeps saying naw. They become vulnerable to bad faith arguments like “it’s reserved never again” rather than the Edinburgh Agreement becoming the established precedent for “good constitutional behaviour”. Also the Lord Advocate clearly is worried the Scottish Government would lose a case like this so wants no part of it. They want independence. They’re just not stupid about the best route to achieve it.

Watching the NFL when I had that feeling of being watched....

I doubt Kamlesh Khunti would've survived secondary school around these parts.

Comic Sans FFS

If any Millwall fans come on here lurking about to see what the opinion of Campbell is I'd just like to say your club are a bunch of horrible gammons and I wish you nothing but sadness.

Aye. The other is in the Albert Hall.

Apart from a six month spell he was dreadful. No one took him seriously after telling everyone we’re weren’t going down. Pressley was eccentric and on the spectrum, he thought/thinks he knows everything about everything and I for one was delighted to see the back of him. Crazy b*****d..

Niche as f**k but there was a photo of the tank driver at the time and, to this day, his t shirt absolutely fucking cracks me up.

There will be Tory MPs praying for considerably more horrific things to befall Marcus Rashford, having had the temerity to be black, working class and successfully show them in the light they deserve to be shown in. Hopefully he continues to humiliate them.

No. He was an atrocious manager for us and every other club he has been involved with. On an unrelated note - horrific to think that Yogi was basically begging to be our manager right before we appointed McCracken and Miller. If we had given it to him there's a very decent chance we'd not have this navel gazing about that failure Pressley and would instead be talking about our chances of making the playoffs in the Championship.

You know a party which is actually even named LABOUR has lost its way when the favourite candidate to be leader is a guy who has been subject of criticism over failure to properly pay the labour at his own family business.

Pretty sure I will speak for a fair number of Kilmarnock fans when I say that we would happily take Derek McInnes as our new manager if he ever left Aberdeen. Also I’m not too sure why the Hibs fans are so happy. I doubt Aberdeen would want Jack Ross it McInnes left but if they did I would expect they would just take him. After all Aberdeen are a far bigger club than Hibs.

ALLOA 1 - 3 CHAMPIONS RESERVES You know something, FOLLOWERS; I can understand why some of these NANO-CLUBS in this NANO-LEAGUE might be SANGUINE about the prospect of the season being declared null and void due to their PLAGUE-RIDDEN FILTHY PROVINCIAL HAMLETS rendering their clubs' players EVEN MORE FEEBLE. It's because any automatic promotion hopes they had were SUMMARILY RENDERED NULL AND VOID as soon as the GORGIE GOLIATHS graced this league. Not that a RISIBLE OUTFIT like Alloa have to worry about such things. The only promotion that they indulge in is at the behest of THE COLONEL and his GREASY ZINGERS every time their RAMSHACKLE ground welcomes the television cameras. (Hearts won again btw)

A former landlord of mine set up his own organisation for local landlords to exchange information (basically to blacklist former tenants, from what I could gather). He was invited to give a presentation at some national landlords group...I forget which, but I knew the name at the time. They put a copy of his PowerPoint presentation on their website for people who couldn't make it and, wow...if you've any doubt about the kind of immoral scumbags you're dealing with, just take a look at the kind of advice they give each other. All of the stuff on how your should never refund tenant's deposits (and how to get away with it) was one thing, but they have a derogatory acronym for vulnerable people who might be susceptible to selling their property for buttons, and advice on how to pressure them into giving it to you. Vulnerable people includes lone pensioners, the bereaved, the handicapped, etc. Your mate who rents out the house he inherited from his maw might well be a decent sort, but the folk who rent property for a living are not good people, and you should watch your back around them.

What's that you say? You all want to see the greatest Browns hype vid of all time? Well, here you go.

I took a swing at fundamentalist nats above, so now, for balance, a swing at yoons (note - not all Unionists are yoons). Yoons: Interest in Scots and Gaelic is a parochial nationalist plot. Also yoons: if you can't pronounce Scots words properly it's the nationalists' fault.

Ferenc Puskas outside the Marine Hotel after winning the European Cup with Real Madrid at Hampden Park. 1960.

Those are part of the game. A pile on after scoring isn't.

I worry that people will be so happy to see level 0 as "normal" that they will forget what normal really is. It's not so long ago we had some balloon on this this thread claiming last summer was pretty much normal.

Football fans are a bunch of mugs. Paying someone else's fine because of their f**k up, riddy.

Kilmarnock fans using their bizarre, Liverpool-esque sense of injustice to gormlessly crowdfund their club fine. Doncaster will truly be having sleepless nights over this one. You sure showed him!

Me when we snapped the ball that last play:

Yeah, I’d go along with that. I was glued to the game today and last week. Earlier today I even went as far as checking what the other teams in the bottom 6 fixtures are like over the coming weeks. Contrast that to games during November and December when I was just glancing up at the games when I heard Jock Brown getting excited and spent most of the 90 mins amusing myself on Twitter or P&B. As you say, I think the uptick in enthusiasm is down to a combination of factors; new manager, a couple of positive results/performances, new signings coming in, and the fact there’s only 5 points separating the bottom half of the table. Unfortunately I don’t see any way where we’ll get fans back inside stadiums before the season finishes but if there’s even a glimmer of a chance that some sort of crowd could be in come April/May time, my enthusiasm levels would take another jump.

That’s the gruesome twosome had their ops done. Wee bit longer before that can get outside but they are not for telling.

Higgins doesn't drop that ball without that cheap contact. He may still not have got the TD but the Browns would've been on the goalline. Similar momentum shift to the interception touchdown by the Bills last night.

I know a guy in Prague. He's my Czech mate.

The Boomers pretending that they’re part of the Lost, Greatest or Silent Generation when really they just drank most of the milk before dealing a marginally shitter hand to Generation X and Millennials will be the driving force of UK/Scottish politics in the 2030s, because they’re going to be a less influential voting block. Thank f**k.

I met him on a Sunday and his heart stood still.

Wankers who hoover up ex-council houses, Charge double the going rate of LA rent and advertise with "No DSS" should be first up against the wall.

Girlfriend got vaccinated at PRI today, said it was fairly busy so hopefully not long we have to suffer with restriction.

If you heard Tony on Sportsound I think you may change your views on the highlight above. There was some initial confusion over a lot of the guidelines that were being issued on a frequent basis but nothing was done to break any guidelines deliberately. Car sharing. The Club did not endorse or suggest the players share cars. And when the club found out they told the players to stop. To add to the confusion Jason Leitch only a few weeks ago on national radio said it was acceptable to car share if it was the only means of getting to your work. No arrogance on that one but an admission it happened. Sitting too close at lunch. . Again and admission it happened once in a hotel on route to the game at Dumfries however the Club assumed the Hotel they were in had taken proper precautions. No arrogant there either but an admission it happened. Sitting too close on a coach. Held their hands up to that one on the same journey to Dumfries. They thought one person per double seat was enough (as per public transport). No arrogance but an admission it happened.

If you sign up for the £12.99 per month option and use the promo code NHL2021 you get your first month free and then just cancel it after. Starving Premier Sports of £13 Hibs St Johnstone

I'm expecting NS to extend the lockdown until the end of February, regardless of what happens between now and the end of January. It's shite for those impacted (and I include myself in that), but if they are planning on having the most vulnerable get their first dose by mid-feb, and it takes around 3 weeks to be effective, then waiting that extra month will ensure those vaccinated are sufficiently protected. Many of us here have always said we could get behind the lockdown if the time was being used purposefully, and that would meet that criteria. A solid explanation of lockdown till 3 weeks after the last of the most vulnerable gets their first dose, then back to the routemap to work our way down the levels (reviewed weekly and applied properly) as hospitalisations etc continue to fall would be acceptable IMO.

Only manager who is a confirmed fit and proper person to be a manager to remain undefeated.

The Proclaimers - The Joyful Kilmarnock Blues

Well, I don't think there's any other reality other than it has to be pish. I genuinely wouldn't see the point in 'living' if so.

Dundee fan kidding on he isn’t genuinely fearful of considine.

A couple of more games like that and they can say dubai to ten in a row.

Seemed like very few birds around on today's lunchtime walk. However, my spotter was on good binoculars form, and we ended up with some nice views. Just about enough light to get reasonable pictures.