dougiedanger

UEFA have applied their rule to the letter, so why would there be any appeal? Sure seems harsh, but the rules are there and they have to be applied.

On the contrary, this thread is quite distinctive and should stand and prosper on its own merits.

As a few posters have said this is not a referendum on Alex Salmond; it is to ask you if you think Scotland should be an independent country. Our impressions of individual characters should not deflect from the very simple question we are being asked.

What, no CB??

2-1 Avoch so far, back from 1-0 down.

It was certainly in my top 3 football days following blues, along with winning the cup at wembley and being the first English club ever to beat club brugge away, seeing 9000 blues fans around the square and in the ground was exceptional. What are your away number usually and what do you expect for tomorrow's game ? Maybe knock a couple of zeros off your number.

Exactly, the fundamental issue is do we want to run our own affairs or do we want to continue to be dictated to by Westminster, everything else is secondary.

Saw youse at Barrowlands supporting Northside, thought you were going to be big. What happened?

...whilst you just keep on completely ignoring the arguments of others and making assertions based on no facts or rational argument at all. Without repeating the arguments you chose to ignore, let me just say that I too have an unshakable belief in social healthcare. The difference in our views appears to be that I acknowledge the fact that significant parts of our publicly funded health service are delivered by the private sector whilst you appear to be unwilling to acknowledge that fact. I am not telling anyone what is right. I am simply offering a few facts and giving a few opinions of my own. I am not telling anyone what they should be thinking but I am asking you what you are thinking and you are not rising to the challenge. Let me put it simply; do you think that current private sector service delivery in the NHS should be phased out and replaced with public sector provision? My view is that where private sector service delivery allows public money to be spent more efficiently then the government should make use of the private sector. That is because where the private sector can deliver services more efficiently it releases public money to spend either on other public services or tax cuts. That is a view shared by all the major political parties and, I suspect, by about 99% of the population. Where the parties disgree is whether savings made in this way should be reinvested into other public services or used to cut taxes. What is your view? Do you share the view of the SNP or do you take the view that poorer public services or higher taxes are an acceptable consequence of keeping the private sector out of publicly funded healthcare provision? It's a simple question and I really would appreciate a straight answer. Well you seem to have moved the goalposts somewhat, from promoting a US style healthcare system to now posing a rhetorical question on a common sense policy. Anyway, great to see you backing SNP policies.

It really looks to me as if this thread has partly degenerated into the argument that, in order to achieve a meteoric rise to the top of Scottish football, it has not been worth losing the opportunity to make a complete @rse of yourself in the Howden End on a Saturday afternoon. There is a lot more to supporting football than the rather 70s fads of swigging Scotsmac, licking stamps and a severe reluctance to admit that one's days of adolescence have long gone. Maybe you're right, but then again maybe you just don't get it that some people's adolescent experiences were not limited to the thrills of the Scripture Union quiz night or the BB camp at Carrbridge.

Yeh.... to the extent that the status of Inverness football has plummeted from the HighlandLeague to the top half of the SPFL Premiership. Right on cue.

To think of this in terms of numbers only is to accept the limited perspective of a science teacher. Just as important is type, the kind of supporters lost, dismissed by some as riff raff and deadwood, but who were the actual fans who went out and supported the HL teams and kept them going, and without whom there would have been no viable bid for senior league status. If the new club lacks character and the new stadium lacks atmosphere, it is because of the loss of these kinds of fans. For all the smugness and condescension of some on here the loss of those fans has fundamentally weakened the club.

You have a very naive view of the US healthcare system, as I say everyone gets their cut, and it is completely inefficient. What is clear is that your views of traditional British values are quite different to those of many Scots, and you are sounding increasingly like a desperate Tory if you think that having an unshakable belief in social healthcare equates to being a big bad "Marxist." But anyway, you just keep on telling us what is right and what we should be thinking.

If you had ever used the US healthcare system, I doubt you would be holding it up as an example of good practice, and certainly not of efficiency and value for money. It is absurd to say that the drive for profits cuts out inefficiency; everyone wants and gets their cut, so that costs are sky high, as are profits. The great irony in this and in the broader referendum debate is that it is the Scots who are holding to traditional "British" values, and that it is the erosion of those values by the market-driven ideas espoused here that has created the chasm that may well lead to a definitive parting of the ways.

Never voted Tory in my life and unlikely to start now! Sounds hoora like a Tory "healthcare" policy.

A Thatcherite speaks and tells us what to think. Thanks!

Saw plenty of reasons to dislike him but his nationality wasn't one of them.

Will Savage apologize for saying all Yes voters are basically anti-English?

What an embarrassment Savage was, warbling on about being English, divided nations and fears for after the vote. Came across as a buffoon.

Question Time from Inverness, by feck that Highland accent is fair changing. And Savage comes across as uninformed and self-serving.

CB's non-irritating, refusenik alter ego--I knew it.

Clacher is basically right, fear and ignorance are BT's only weapons and we either stand up and overcome them or fall into line and know our place like we have done for centuries.

Granvillesque.

With respect, SP was making a valid point from the perspective of someone born in the Highlands, and that perspective mirrors that of many in subsequent generations. It is great that you have witnessed progress in your time here, but again with respect, the experience of people born and bred here may not exactly reflect your own. And yes, begin governed from London is indeed a yoke and a shackle as you put it, for countless reasons.

Great post SP, people in Scotland will only realize their full potential if they free themselves from the very culture of control and domination that you describe and which is very much alive today. Maybe in the future so many young Scots won't have to leave to realize their ambitions.