harry94

That's where the PM/FM comes in. Boris did change his tone but early on, it was destructive with his havering on about shaking hands with people and giving multiple speeches where he made references to how we shouldn't overestimate the virus, this in addition to the practices in his own gov which nearly took his own life and exposed other important individuals. Like it or not, Sturgeon has polled through this pandemic as having legitimacy in how she's presented herself and being trusted in Scotland across the political spectrum whilst similar polls showed the opposite was true for Boris. You can't quantify the impact on the spread messaging has and comparisons between per capita case rates are always a bit iffy when questioned (e.g. testing rates and demographics need to be weighted) but trust in advice will undoubtedly have a positive impact and that's where the two governments have performed differently. In addition, it's not strictly true that policy would be the same with differing governments. Resources coming from the treasury impacts the sort of public health response measure you can reasonably maintain. Our spending approach has been nowhere near as aggressive as people seem to believe when you take a proper look at how other developed countries have approached things.

It's very difficult determine the effectiveness of the new restrictions from the headline figure of cases. You need to look at the channels that the virus has spread through and trace the clusters individually to determine the effectiveness of restrictions. For what it's worth though, if you take increase % on a rolling 7 day basis (to try and move away from issues with test backlogs etc), the rate of growth increase (not the growth increase itself) has actually been far steadier since the 6th September. Why that is though is hard to say.

Re the Edinburgh Airport rail link, Gateway's location is actually decent enough, I'm sure there are other airports where they have branded train stations that are actually a 5 minute light rail connection to. I think they just need to properly brand it and not take the piss with the additional charge. That being said, when you have a much faster and cheaper route from Dundee via the national express coach from the centre to the terminal building that runs into all hours of the night, it's a relatively poor solution. You can have the rail station as close as you like but there's no point if the other rail links from other major population centres aren't practical enough.

In fairness, Koch has just arrived a week ago. I'd imagine they will improve.

I'm not sure what you're referring to but a year or two ago, there was a fair bit in the press about the batch of that era being particularly promising in the 13/14 ages with more internationals than previously. What year group that correlated to exactly (and idk if players regularly play above their own age group), I'm not too sure and only as informed as whatever (usually optimistic) things the club put out.

It's the 2020-21 Nations League group stage.

There were a few twitter rumours re MK Dons sniffing around Dorrans again.

With Ashcroft and McGhee alongside, I think that would be quite a well balance back 3.

You can also theoretically join the EU customs union, even if in EFTA.

May's government proposed a CU, it was in their political deceleration document. Being within the same CU is a different story though. Parliament would have also needed to explicitly vote on directing the gov to relax their red lines to the extent of voting on FoM etc and they weren't willing to do that.

The vote was meaningless. If it passed, it would have resolved nothing. All it meant was that the UK gov had to put in place something in the future relationship stage (i.e. after Brexit itself) that they interpreted to fit the meaning.

He only had 2 assists in total but I don't think you can take a huge deal from that in terms of the argument for pushing a player forward, very different skill crossing from deep to being able to get into dangerous areas. I think he could be decent further forward, would love to see it tried. He's fairly fast and decent enough on the ball, I could see him taking players on and being a threat. There's a disproportionate no of left backs who have been trained in that position from youth because they are one of few left footers.

Shite on football manager.

You guys have the most annoying website in the league, those copyright pop ups for right clicks are infuriating.

https://www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/fp/polish-mourinho-czeslaw-michniewicz-not-dundee-radar-despite-reports/

We should have had the Polish Mourinho as our second pick.

If this keeps up to the next election, that'll be a year with a sustained indy majority in polling. Starting to get the feeling that Boris et al will just choose to chuck it and get it out the way. The next UK election in 2024 being focused about how he is going to put the belligerent Scots in their box and hammer them in the indy negotiations is the sort of campaign you'd think he'd love having. Combine that with the increased majority (removing 53 'rebel' seats and other quite shaky ones) and an excuse for boundary changes and I could see him sailing home again. I don't really think this gov have any ideological stance behind retaining Scotland tbh. They are just looking to transition towards their fantasy of the Singapore type tax haven but need a bit of time post Brexit to make the irreversible sort of changes required. If ditching us consolidates their power, they will do it.

Virtanen from Aberdeen would be a great addition if we're looking at players from there. Looks far down the pecking order (unless he's injured) so maybe a chance to get him in permanently with small sell on clause. I think you could argue he'd be an upgrade on Callachan in terms of bringing that combative element but also being capable of controlling a football. Agree we need to be a bit wiser with picking up the young cast offs from the OF and Aberdeen. It's not really a market we've really put much work into recently but our league rivals do seem to find decent deals there.

I don't think it is about that though, it's risk mitigation. Anyone can put a few hand sanatisers out and I'm sure the clubs will have people on board taking it seriously, that's still no substitute for reduced contact. The second tier clubs return to competitive football on October 6th. Is there really a good reason for a sports team to be in facilities together 7 weeks out? In all sectors, there's a push to keep people away from shared spaces as much as possible. The Hearts situation is what it is and was obviously confused by the relegation but I think the reaction to this has been embarrassing. The club have been training for a lot longer than any of their rivals and after a week or so of players having to train alone, should be back together for their second start to pre-season 6 weeks and 1 day away from the start of their new season. There's nothing unreasonable about that. It's not all about football and public health priorities are no 1 concern.

My understanding was that the SPFL clubs outwith the Premiership were all directed to not begin training together until 17th August but Hearts were given special privilege due to lack of clarity over league situation. Protocols have been tightened to protect health and logically, this date has been pushed back a week and Hearts have had that special status lifted - this is an obvious step you'd look at to reduce risk across the board. Given the players have had the opportunity to train at Riccarton together for a month, it's not the most dramaticin the world for players to have to have the next 5 or so sessions by themselves and resume alongside the rest of their league rivals. Talking about this decision in the context of rule breaches is garbage. This isn't intended to bring fairness or clarity, it's simply a decision on safety. The league can't continue in any form without this sort of framework in place. Indeed, we've got to be prepared for it changing again.

They were asked to come up with a statistically credible model for prediction of grades (with a bit of fudge) and they have done that. If you are doing that for 125k grades in total, you can come up with something with a model based on your inputs which could give you 80% accuracy in prediction and then have fucked over 25k of students results and maybe created contention in all the other borderline cases. Outliers and exceptional performers particularly hurt as they are hard to account for and will hurt the rest of the model. I think you're spot on re their being no decent option but I think that this really has to have been something led from parliament from afar, anything coherent you come up with is going to involve academic institutions and probably an exchange of money if processes are passed on elsewhere. If they weren't being invited into this sort of process by Scottish Gov, I'm not really sure what they were expected to do. In all honesty, I think the fairest system would have been to actually chuck a lot of this on universities and colleges. It would have been met with the same sort of agitation and fury but in terms of assessing applicants and allowing control factors for disadvantaged backgrounds etc, that's something where they at least do have some specialised experience with and could be forced to do. Indeed a lot of these things will happen anyway, just in a rushed fashion.

I agree with this but my worry is he's horrific at holding the ball up and winning stuff in the air with his back to goal, if we go the same way and style as we've done for a lot of last season, I don't see him being particularly effective either. We're going to need to build everything around his skillset and have the whole team playing that high press system winning the second ball etc. I think we're probably still missing a midfielder - I like Gowser and Dorrans but both are old and have injuries creeping in, just feel we also need a younger athletic option in there. Ness is finished and all the youth are more attacking options. Virtanen who was on loan at Arbroath from Aberdeen last season would fit the bill and seems to be able to play a bit.

Those are the two big errors I remember. Think you're maybe right about their being a third, I remember it being consecutive weeks at Clyde then home to QotS (in Colin McMenamin's debut) but it does sound familiar that he maybe did it in another away game. I do remember a few games where he was considered to have played well though. V Celtic in the cup - saved a shite penalty from Riordan and made a couple of really good reflex saves late on when we were chasing the game, I think if we pulled off a result that night he'd have been remembered very well for it. He also had a great game in that must win at Hamilton where we got beat and they went onto win the league, the team lost their heads after an hour with Curier being sent off and he was under quite a bit of pressure and made some big saves as we were chasing the game. In all honesty though, whilst it's been astonishing that he's had so many shots at top flight football and given some of the opportunities he has been (called up to a few Scotland squads), I have always thought he's got enough about him to at the least be playing at full-time football, there's obviously an element of luck there but I don't think it's a complete coincidence that he's had a decent career with 6 top flight seasons as no 2 years at top end of this division. It was embarrassing how much out of his depth he looked with that Motherwell side and apart from St Mirren, you never felt he was particularly good V us but f**k me if you ever had to score an important penalty against him. Even with all that luck, I find it very difficult to see Hamilton having a career near as good as that. I don't doubt he's a good trainer but you just couldn't see him playing a season at League One or League Two and standing out whereas the likes of Samson did spend their youth playing at these levels and grafted as no 1 at different clubs when released.

I think we were quite good defensively that season, MacKenzie and Palenik were decent so I don't think he was ever under a huge amount of pressure. In all honesty, it was a very good season on the whole and points wise, would have won the league in a few years. Also soundly beat Motherwell in the cup, I think wed have given the top flight team a good game that year if the play-offs were a thing. We were very lucky though as I think we offered a new contract and he turned it down which have us the opportunity to re-sign Rab.

Was Samson that bad with us? I only really remember two really bad f**k ups where he cleared the ball into chasing forwards, were there more I've forgotten? Just remember him as being pretty average in the second tier with some good games and some suspect ones. Don't think any dethrone Kelvin Jack for me. Genuinely think he had a howler a game almost, any long range shot was in and he'd collapse in a heap whenever he had the slightest contact. I suppose that was a good attribute as it got him off the pitch.