ictchris

I doubt that either Bulger killer would end up in the Highlands or anywhere else in Scotland - they are being monitored by the Probation service of England and Wales and I imagine that moving them to a different jurisdiction would cause issues with monitoring. The reason he has anonymity is because if people knew his name there is a good chance that he, or someone with a similar name or appearence, would be attacked and possibly killed. We don't live in a society where justice is dished out by mobs, we live in a society of laws. Clearly the crime was horrific but the circumstances were far different to other child murders - both killers were so young they would not even be considered criminally responsible in most states. you can't judge ten year olds by the same criteria as adult prisoners.

What do you mean by "community club"? Because Stranraer are geographically far away from other senior clubs they have more right to exist than Stenhousmuir? More people support Stenhousmuir than Stranraer, Stenny have had a bigger average crowd than Stranraer over the last ten years by miles just about every year. Stranraer are actually one of the poorest supported teams in Scotland - so far this year their average crowd is probably less than Clach's! What sort of area are they serving? You say that Stenny have clubs on their doorstep so would be booted out under your system but the reason there are quite a few clubs in that area is that there are plenty of reasonably sized towns there. Larbert, Stenhousmuir, Camelon, Denny - these are reasonably big places, lots of people live in Central Scotland, hence there are more teams. What you are suggesting is the franchising of football and that certainly wouldn't work at the level you are talking about in Scotland. Good players will usually end up at clubs at a higher level, that'll be the case whether Albion Rovers are playing in the West Region Juniors or the Third Division. What's stopping Stirling and Queens signing all these hidden gems now? Nothing. Simply removing clubs from the league won't result in the resources (players, fans, coaches etc) being shared out among the remaining clubs. the good players will always rise to the top, no matter what the structure is. Going by current league standings you would have a lower league of Raith, Morton, Ayr Utd, Airdrie, Alloa, Stirling, Cowdenbeath, Brechin, Peterhead, Stenhousmuir, Dumbarton, East Fife, Arbroath, Clyde, Livingston, East Stirling, Forfar and Berwick. Is that so much more attractive and exciting than the set up we have at the moment? I don't think that the clubs who you would jettison (Queens Park, Annan, Albion Rovers, Stranraer, Elgin and Montrose) have many players who could add to the clubs staying in the league. Do you think that the existing SPL clubs and fans would be fired with enthusiasm about being joined by Dundee, us, County, partick, Pars and Queens? The only way to improve Scottish football is to improve the quality of play. The only way to do that is for clubs to be better run, to make better commercial decisions and to use this to sign better players. Expelling a few teams into the non-league set up or the Juniors wouldn't do anything to help this.

I can't go

Why should Stranraer be given entry to your league but Stenhousmuir be denied? Stenny's crowds are bigger than Stranraer's. Stirling, who you also mention, get a couple of hundred more, not many at all. The phrase a 'better concentration of players' is meaingless. If players who played for Stenny and Albion Rovers were good enough to play at a higher level then they will be signed up by a better team - this would be the same whether you had a league of 36 or 42. Clubs like Stirling Albion and Queen of the South are not sitting around saying 'if only all the best players weren't playing for Albion Rovers or Stenhousmuir we'd be in the SPL!'. Clubs in the Third Division aren't the problem in Scottish football. The problem is that clubs higher up in the leagues have squandered money and wasted opportunities in the last decade and more. Binning a few teams from the SFL won't make the SPL a better league, it won't make the national team perform better and it won't add any more fans to the gate. Let's be clear - the SPL will not get a bigger TV deal by admitting Dundee, Ross County, Caley and Partick Thistle. The combined average gate of these four clubs this season is around 12,000 - even if every single one of these people signed up to ESPN HD it would be a paltry ammount. No significant number of customers are going to sign up for pay TV to watch sides like us, Dunfermline, Partick etc. All ESPN, Sky et al are interested in is showing Rangers and Celtic games as they are the only one's that will attract significant audiences. Maybe (a big maybe) if Aberdeen or one of the Edinburgh clubs made a sustained title push (like Hearts in 2005/06) they might get an audience but the clubs outside the 'Big Five' are insigificant. Setanta's viewing figures for games like us v Accies last season or St Mirren v Falkirk were notoriously low.

That was true, they almost signed him on a short-term loan from Gremio before he went and played for PSG. If we are talking Old Firm, anyone remember when Rangers were linked with a ?30m bid for Ronaldo (the buck toothed tranny sh@gger not the gel haired diver). Or when Celtic were linked with Stoichkov? Both of these were when these guys were among the top players in Europe, it wasn't when they were 36 year olds heading to play in Dubai Beach soccer.

Pwopah nawty.

Certainly if you want to go in that direction it's probably worthwhlie. I work in IT and didn't even know what it stood for but IT is a varied market - I don't need a great deal of technical knowledge for my job but if you were wanting to work as a contracter or something like that then a Microsoft qualification would be good to get. I thought about going for a Cisco qualification but it's pretty expensive and I went into another area instead. I do think that getting some actual experience under your belt is as important as getting qualifications - dealing with on the job issues and problems is probably of more interest to a potential employer than having a certain qualification.

From a selfish perspective increasing the number of teams could see us promoted and that would be great. However, I don't think that the way to improve the SPL is to further dilute the quality of teams in the league for the sake of variety. Also, it's wrong to pin the blame on the Old Firm for the way Scottish football has become poorer over the last few years - if you think that any of the other clubs would agree to a 16 team league with 30 games a season then you're kidding yourself. That sort of set up would significantly reduce the money that clubs would make from the gate - currently SPL clubs play 18-20 home games per season, taking that down to 15 is a loss that most clubs wouldn't be able to take on the chin. TV money wouldn't increase to cover the losses and cup attendances are lower than in teh league so putting a group stage in the League Cup would be a non-starter. The main reason why Scottish football is in a poor state is due to the ridiculous decisions taken by the SPL board and the club directors over the last decade or so. The SPL had a great TV deal from Sky but rejected an extension to try to set up their own TV station - the stupidity of this still makes me smile. Then, just as the league pulled itself up by the bootstraps, they signed a massive deal with Setanta, just as many analysts were pointing out that the company were going into difficulties. The collapse of Setanta has left the SPL out of pocket on TV money for the second time in less than ten years, yet how many chairman, board members, chief executives have been held to account? Incidentally, on each occasion the Old Firm have been on the right side of the argument - they rejected the SPL TV farce and they (alongside Aberdeen) wanted to take the SKy option last time out. Blaming the Old Firm is always fun but in these instances they aren't the villans. One thing I do think would be a positive move is for there to be play-offs between the 11th side in the SPL and the 2nd team in teh First. No reason why this couldn't happen, it'd be a good wee end to the season and would liven up both the SPL and SFL1.

I can't go.

Boring stuff. Scottish football fans should stop being so small minded. All these shops just sell tartan tat, Edinburgh is full of them. News Update!

Eating fatty food does not necessarily make someone obese. There's no such things as bad food just bad diets. Taxing fatty food would simply punish the vast majority of consumers and would most probably cost almost as much as it took in. In addition to it not working I also think that it's wrong for governments to try and influence the choices of citizens in this way. We are all free willed individuals who are able to choose our diets without help from some bureaucrat. I think that it's the overwhelming urge to control and judge other people that drives these intiatives rather than any nobel concern for public health.

More creepy, statist control freakery from our Nationalist overlords.

To be fair to Hester, he wasn't one of the board who basically ruined the company. I don't think he should be denied anything on the basis that other people cocked things up. The political pressure on him has forced him to refuse his renumeration, which was contractually obliged to him. In terms of the staff members of RBS who are in line for bonuses, well the investments arm of RBS made a reasonably big profit last year - the only way that the bank will be removed from government control is if it becomes a going concern, able to operate in the market. Generating profits is the only way that this will happen and it will be far more difficult for the state to sell off RBS in the future if the government refuses to allow successful staff to be properly rewarded. The employees who have worked to generate these profits are obvious targets for other financial companies, both in the UK and abroad. Rewarding them at the market rate is a way to work towards easing the public debt that threatens to cripple our country.

Absolutely gutting. To throw away ten points from that position was just absolute madness - Lawson's sin-binning was absolutley ridiculous. The thing that makes it worse is that we were by far the better team, we scored some great tries and were tenacious in defence. Dan Parks was truly magnificent at stand off and the back row really excelled. You just hope that the stuffing hasn't been knocked out of the side before the next round of games. if Scotland play like that we can beat anyone.

Buckfast should sponsor us, as part of a PR fightback to repair their tarnished image. They could provide free refreshment for away fans travelling by train.

Don't think I am making it to this one. Will only know on Saturday morning.

Have we ever made money from selling on a youth player? We brought in guys like Xausa, Wilson, Robson, Brown, Cowie on free transfers from other clubs and sold them on. When you consider the market at the moment and the lack of anyone spending cash on transfer fees, the cost of running a youth system is such that you'd have to sell on a couple of players for a large fee every year and I don't think that would happen.

Hibs have to be favourites against County, although County will be flying at the moment. Dundee will fancy their chances at getting to the semi's. Huns v Arabs could be a good wee game, with United over thei post-Levein slump. Celtic will surely romp it over Killie this time.

I'd rather we didn't base our team on where someone was born. Presumably you wouldn't want Barry Wilson to ever have played for us as he was born in Fife, or Ross Tokely as he is from Aberdeen?

Owen COyle and Alan Stubbs were in that Bolton team as well.

I'd rather we adopted the ethos of playing the best players, regardless of where they come from.

Who cares? It really does sum up County fans though - they are winning 9-0 at home, an amazing result, and are having their best season ever yet all they are interested in is singing songs about us and having a communal Caley hate-off. Gawd luv 'em.

To be fair to David Sutherland, it's Cyril that said he'd put ?5,000,000 into the club. Poor journalism really, to be expected from him. I wonder if he followed Sutherland into the toilet to check how the magnate 'measured up' after the interview finished.

We did do well in parts but most of our promising back play came far from the French line. There were a couple of line breaks in the first half but bad luck and poor finishing caught us out. Bastardaeu is getting big licks in the press but hsi first score was an overlap and there was a missed tackle for the second. The French pack certainly smashed us and I thought our kicking was absolutely abysmal - we might see Parks back for the next game. On the plus side, Lamont looked pretty good and I thought Cusiter was impressive again. Good craic with the French fans as well. I am glad I wasnt' stuck behind the guys dressed up as chickens.

I am going to the game tomorrow. Looking forward to it, although I fear getting a result will be a bridge too far. We pulled off a brilliant win over the Aussies but that was based on tough defending and gutting it out - the big problem for us in the last ten years is scoring enough tries and looking at our back line, do we have enough pace and power and finishing ability to trouble the big boys? Hope has to lie in the Evans brothers, and the kicking of Paterson.