RiG

The Caley thank you very much.

A spell in League One will only be good if you enjoy the thought of us going part time.

For a long time I'd always said we'd be just as bad if not worse under Dodds. His recruitment in the summer was honking. However, the last couple of months and some truly bizarre recruitment in January makes it very, very hard to stick with the same opinion I had before.

Massive questions should be getting asked of Ferguson now.

No PPV but they have a dedicated commentary offering.

The club and ILI are / were clearly working very much 'hand in glove' on this so I'd be staggered if they didn't have some kind of input into the selection of the planning consultants behind the application. Whilst the application was approved it was, again, recommended for refusal because all of the concerns flagged by the planning department hadn't been addressed. FWIW I hope it is approved as the club desperately needs the money but this could have gone a lot better.

They didn't really though. They submitted a shoddy application to begin with and didn't address all the points of concern (loss of green space) when handing in the extra info. That said, it's still a bizarre situation and Highland Council still come across as pretty inept.

Imrie applied for the job.

It's not unusual for one company to secure planning permission or even build out a particular development with the goal of selling it to someone else for more money.

I'm not sure about taking in a load of loan players to see us through to the end of the season. Reeks of Falkirk ~ 2018 (ish). Obviously I hope they do the job and keep us up and even somehow propel us into the playoffs.

Strange move IMVHO.

Charlton have been rumoured to be looking at Harper.

At least we can interview him for the podcast now.

You probably feel that the bottom 5 are the ones who are most likely going to be battling it out to avoid the drop. Airdrie and Morton seem to go on reasonable runs every so often and probably have better players / managers than the rest of us down the wrong end of the table. Obviously Partick, Raith and Dundee United won't be near the relegation spots. I fear we are in real trouble.

Apologies for the irregular updates in this thread but I think most of you know where to the find the pod these days anyway. Nonetheless, the guys have recorded a new episode and it features an interview with David Wotherspoon

Suspect that's a bit of an appeal to the higher ups at the club to get the fingers out and help get new faces in. If we go with what we've got we're in real trouble.

Is Darren Mackie in there as well?

Or one of them is leaving.

As mentioned above we aren't being given access to players, coaching staff etc for interviews for the pod. Previously, we just slid into their DMs for a chat and then we had to go through the club / Gardiner before chatting to folks which was fair enough I guess. Recently, for whatever reason, we aren't being allowed to chat to anyone at ICT. For personal reasons I've not been as involved in the pod over the last few months so I am not sure if there have been more in depth chats amongst the guys and Gardiner about why this has happened. Nonetheless, I don't think we can expect any players from the club appearing any time soon which is obviously a real shame but there isn't too much we can do about it.

Raith have had a decent amount of cash pumped into them recently which goes some way to explaining their reversal in fortunes.

He was getting pelters from the away fans at various points in the game. Can't really complain when he gives a little back.

This is perhaps unfair given this is my first game of the season but we are awful. Staggeringly negative with a shaky defence and a non existent attack. A honking performance so far.

Some planning applications can be given the go ahead if the perceived "benefits" outweigh negative impacts from a development or deviation from local or national planning policies. An obvious one is the Trump development at Menie where it was recognised that the "benefits" from the project would outweigh the detrimental effects on the environment. More recently the Coul Links golf proposal wasn't given the go ahead as it was felt the socio-economic benefits would not outweigh the environmental impacts from that particular development. Obviously this battery farm is a different scale, policies etc but it wouldn't be that unusual if it were given the go ahead despite contradicting the IMLDP for example but the applicant would need to provide a robust argument that the departure is acceptable. I would surmise that this is not the case here and, as @Stephen Malkmus has mentioned, this is what you end up with if you hire some jobbers to prepare your application material instead of getting experts involved. Of course if HC do refuse the application there is the option of an appeal to the DPEA but that's not guaranteed to overturn the decision and if the DPEA were to uphold the original recommendation of refusal it would leave ILI in an almost impossible situation to move forward other than to submit a completely new application.