Malcolm Malcolm

Shane Duffy picked up an awful lot of bad habits very quickly during his time in Scotland.

Fucking hell, lads. Scotland is a grey area because it's a historical European nation with its own legal system and it increasingly has some of the apparatus of a state. It is not recognised as a sovereign nation but the idea of sovereignty is contestable, especially because Scotland has a tradition preceding 1707 of popular sovereignty (which is generally the norm) and England has a tradition of parliamentary sovereignty, which it insists applies to the whole UK. This then brings us to competing interpretations of the Treaty of Union of 1707. Scots generally regard it as the establishment of a new state between Scotland and England based at Westminster. However, there is a tendency in England to regard the union as effectively an expansionist continuation of the already existing English state. Malcolm Malcolm's opinion is that the UK is a historical anomaly more like a diminished Austro-Hungarian Empire than any comparable modern nation state. The easiest way to remedy that would theoretically be to establish a modern federal United Kingdom with a profoundly reformed constitution but in reality that is practically impossible, and that is why we remain at a constitutional impasse. Anyway, when it comes to Britishness Moyes is for some reason a forelock tugging twat.

He is but he was articulating the mainstream opinion about football in Scotland. England as a nation has a massive superiority complex, hence why they didn't seem to see much wrong with having six teams in the failed Super League.

He wouldn't be permitted to vote because he lives in Preston and in supposedly backward Scotland we don't judge your right to vote on these things based on your ethnicity.

The reason is cultural imperialism or hegemony or anti-Scottish prejudice or whatever you want to call it. Simon Jordan was rambling on the other day about how the SPFL Premiership is a 'poor league' a couple of sentences after saying he didn't know enough about Rangers to comment on Steven Gerrard. He wasn't challenged on his self-professed ignorance. This is the default opinion of most things here south of the border and the reason stuff like the subject of this thread is so annoying is because this pish gets absorbed and regurgitated by a lot of Scots.

Moyes is a good lad who does an awful lot of decent work behind the scenes and lives with a lot of humility, but he is also weirdly obsessed with filtering his ideas about football through a nationalistic idea of Britishness.

There was a physics teacher at my school who would be a creepy c**t chatting up all the underagers then every year at the 6th year leaving night he'd go home with one of the lassies he'd been perving for years. The lad from my school who was struck off spent years appealing it, and when that didn't work he spent another couple of years trying to set up a private school in the same area.

A teacher in my old school was struck off for shagging a fifth year pupil. However, three of his colleagues (that I know of) were also predatory shaggers and never met any consequences for their actions, except for one who got divorced.

That sounds utterly grim. We really need to move away from this pish.

The housebuilders are a significant part of the problem here. They want cul de sacs with new access roads and new schools all funded by the taxpayer while they walk with taxpayer money through Help To Buy.

I have a theory that anything prefixed with the word 'super' is generally anything but.

Beckham is the personification of the problems that have led us to this shitty situation.

If not, why not?

I'm a bit disappointed the auld duffer's custom made Land Rover hearse didn't lead to a very public and embarrassing mishap TBH.

Arran Blonde. It can be hit and miss but a good batch is a fantastic brew.

Imagine that was your Da.

Meow. Swing and a miss, though.

It's not the healthiest approach to life to spend it in bars, but there's nothing wrong with a quiet pint or with older men who are single or widowed. Life can throw anything at you. Scottish people are too gossipy and judgemental about this stuff. It reeks a bit of the kirk and social conservatism.

Lennon has my sympathy and I hope it's not a sign he's in a bad situation, but describing solo pint drinkers as 'lost causes' is surely a bit much.

I do a fair bit of amateur joinery without any particularly fancy equipment. My grandfather was a joiner to trade and passed some of it on. Anyway, as Pete has said, if you find the right timber yard it won't be a problem. I use timber yards to get specific wood types cut to size for projects pretty regularly.

I learned during the pandemic that I hate wallpaper. Removing it should be enough to put anyone off the shite for life. It's hard work and it almost always ages terribly.

Yeah, the story of the French warship is pretty sad. There's a decent novel about it by Neal Ascherson called The Death of the Fronsac. I don't think I've ever seen the front of Gourock (and Dunoon) in my lifetime quite like it was last summer. We could do with being better custodians of a lot of places in Scotland.

He also wasn't exactly on the ball when the majority of the Hooray Henries decided to dispute the idea that Black Lives Matter.

Howe is no doubt a capable manager but you'd think Celtic were trying to land Arrigo Sacchi from AC Milan. Celtic would do well to remind themselves of what happened when Owen Coyle snubbed them for Bolton. I'm also unsure why the media seem to think I should care so much about the purported abilities of Dominic McKay.

I was just discussing this with a friend at the weekend who was enjoying the sunshine and said scenes while his daughter played with her pals at Battery Park. A greenie for 'magnificent fjord like scenery' - I'll be stealing that one . The long summer evenings last year were quite something.