Charles Bannerman

Agreed - and also a difficult aspect to manage within the context of the year of a footballer or indeed many other team sport players. The problem is that football has no obvious "peak" and players need effectively to be at a high level of performance for the entire season. Apart from a few weeks' pre-season, this leaves little scope to have periods of the year where players can focus on strength or top up endurance which must be a nightmare from a coaching point of view. Coming from an athletics background where you can identify a relatively small number of targeted peaks, I don't envy the dilemma of football coaches. For instance, when there is a game every weekend (and sometimes midweek) of the season which is no less important than most others, how do you programme in your SandC? At one end of the week you need some recovery from the previous match and at the other you don't want to let it run too close to the next one. The same goes for topping up aspects of running related fitness although games do contribute here, and all of this is on top of the time needed to work on teachical and team aspects of the game. On the other hand there is the option of "double sessions" which are a perfectly viable consideration for full time professionals with no constraints of a day job to manipulate training requirements round.

Yes, very nice if you are a moderator and can hence scrutinise the techniques which ordinary punters use construct their posts. I would have thought that after all these years in the classroom, you would have a better grip of the issue of placing privileged information in the public domain. The manner in which I compose and develop my posts is my business and nobody else's. It's the final product which is relevant. Posters' means of reaching that end should not have to be the subject of comment from individuals who are appointed to perform a task on this forum and not to use their privileged position to attempt to score cheap points.

While the No campaign was completely kosher Oh well, in the wake of the Smith Commission delivering what some of the September 18th minority were guaranteed to moan about irrespective, it's good to see this failure to deny that the Yes campaign was "not altogether genuine" in its attempts to con the electorate into its one-off, irreversible objective.

Quite an interesting chart which makes Salmond's $110 assertion look even more vacuous than it did in his original letter to Alexander. Alex... I do realise that the SNP has a long history of unsubstantiated claims that black is white, but the unavoidable reality is that, within an increasingly unpredictable and unstable world oil environment, the North Sea is yesterday's story. "Mature field" I believe is the appropriate euphemism.

So you just want to give it all to an independent Shetland then? It will last for ages that way!!! Maybe you could also reconcile this quote from a letter from Alex Salmond to Danny Alexander in July (my bold text): "As you will be aware, the Scottish Government has published detailed forecasts for North Sea tax revenues in future years. These projections are based on robust assumptions. They use industry expectations of future North Sea production and investment and the assumption that oil prices remain constant at $110 in cash terms." With this from today's Financial Times.. "With an oil price at around the $70 mark, at least 1.5m b/d of projects scheduled for 2016 are at risk, Energy Aspects estimates. (Let’s keep in mind the oil price has now fallen almost $5 below this level in the past few days alone to five-year lows.) Well over 1m b/d of projects scheduled for 2017 are also in the line of fire. The numbers for 2018 remain unclear." Bank of America is projecting $50 per barrel and there have been widespread suggestions that this problem is going to persist for some time due to lack of demand - and that OPEC is in danger of becoming toothless. So little doubt here that Salmond was well and truly back on the pork pies again during the referendum campaign. As for the Scottish electorate, I can imagine that members of the so-called "45" with any realism are now sitting at home thanking their lucky stars that common sense prevailed and they lost! And in the face of all this, Oddquine is still trying to tell us that the smaller the population base dependent on oil as a natural resource, the better. So are we therefore to understand that an economy representing 5 million people would be better placed to withstand the shock of meltdown like this than one of 60 million? In an earlier post, she also tried to tell us that the SNP have always treated oil as "a bonus". So was I just dreaming when I thought that the SNP had campaigned for years on the slogan "It's Scotland's Oil? The bottom line - SNP/YesScotland fed us a pile of porkies during the referendum campaign, so lay off the Smith Commission which delivered, three days early, a raft of proposals which will go a very long way towards satisfying the silent majority which doesn't have the deafult position of striving to spread dissent and division by jumping up on an SNP soapbox. PS - I'm back in Dingwall tomorrow so shall have another look at that celebrated window. I don't suppose it will be bearing the slogan "Day #84 and still no end to falling oil prices. Fact!"

As long as they don't appoint Dutch legend Ruud Boogers as their Head of Public Relations they should be OK.

You couldn't actually exclude that possibility Scarlet. I was only talking about balance of probabilities. Also, the term "GI brides" came into general use after WW2 to define British - American marriages.

Alex.... you are beginning to sound like the John Cleese voiceover in a video I used to use during 36 years of teaching this kind of stuff and a lot more to Fraz and others up to Advanced Higher level. The bottom line is - we were fed a whole lot of guff about oil by Yes Scotland during the referendum campaign and that is the retrospective issue which should be attracting attention rather than the imagined deficiencies of the Smith Commission report - be that in the eyes of the wider Yes movement or of the four suspended bookburners. (On which subject, I can exclusively reveal that the bookburners will be spending their SNP suspension along with several other "45ers" as members of the Imperial Japanese Army who are still trying to expel the American invaders from Iwo Jima ) Anyway... to return to oil. In recent months the backside has fallen out of the price and there are sufficient concerns about the longevity of the North Sea for the (Westminster) government to have to support it with extra tax breaks. Even if the price does recover somewhat in a few months' time, it is clear that revenues are going to be even further adrift of what Yes Scotland were "vowing" during that eternal campaign. Not that Yes Scotland would have worried, since on the "you have to be lucky all of the time whereas we only have to be lucky once" principle, Scotland's constitutional future would have been past the point of no return had a Yes vote been achieved on the basis of that particular piece of disingenuous nonsense. The big con of the referendum campaign was not the pledge to provide more devolution, which is being delvered, but the Yes Scotland claims about oil revenues which are now being relentlessly exposed as a complete fabrication.

To a large extent I think this angle, highlighting the cup, is slightly old news since the Scottish Cup seems to have been a lost cause for a few years now. The current issue in Scotland is the now declining SPFL where I see the present retreat simply as an extension of what started some time ago in the cup. Quite simply the Scottish Cup hasn't been "sexy" for some time now and that malaise seems to be spreading to the league. It all makes the SPL's vanity project of 10,000 all seater stadia look even more ridiculous than it did at the time,

You mean that Spotty could be Scotty's adolescent lovechild?

To split hairs, might the American more likely have been naval personnel rather than a GI, given that it was minesweepers/ layers which were based in Inverness?

Fraz.... the manner in which the Highlands have been treated throughout history by the Lowland Scots is, to understate things, "not good". With Westminster, the Highlands are at least one of several peripheral areas whilst with Holyrood it's a case of "them" and "us". Also, "them" (they) at Holyrood are largely a bunch of second raters, lightweights and jumped up Cooncillors, many of whom are there not because they have been voted for as individuals by the electorate but because they have been sufficiently obedient, compliant and brown nosed party apparatchiks to get themselves placed on a "list". Now I have no great time for politicians of any affiliation or in any assembly but what we have seen at Holyrood has been especially poor - as demonstrated either by how they were either outmanoeuvred by somebody like Salmond for so long or were firmly in his back pocket.

Spotty... you are not by any chance Scotty's adolescent love child, are you? Seriously, though, I do think that there is a good point there. Globalisation may well be drawing more Scottish football followers into the European fold. Anecdotally, I think I saw progressively fewer Rangers and Celtic strips etc in evidence during my latter years in teaching and it may well be that Man U, Chelsea etc became a bit more evident - along with ICT I would have to say.

I'm actually more concerned with predominantly the Central Belt parliament, with the inclusion of a small number of MSPs representing the peripheral areas of Scotland, and its Central Belt constituency and list MSPs controlling Scotland and dictating all parts of it. The SNP seem to be very good at shouting about the lack of powers devolved to Edinburgh whilst at the same time doung everything they can to centralise what they have in Edinburgh. (On the other hand, the SNP are simply just very good at shouting.....)

Charles, on checking that my link 'worked', I've noticed an error in my figures. (my 2013/14 figures are only for the pre-split fixtures). I'll resolve it tomorrow! I wouldn't imagine the difference would be huge for 2-3 home games out of 18-20 concentrated across other top 6 or other bottom 6 opponents - although in the case of, for instance, ICT and County, visits or otherwise of Celtic, Aberdeen or each other might tweak it a bit.

Cheers Sneckboy.

Sneckboy, I'd be interested if you could point me in the direction of your source of these figures - not because I'm on a Wikipedia "citation needed" campaign but because this is an issue I'm currently looking at. Also, given that season 2014-15 is still incomplete, is there any danger of these figures being distorted by some clubs having had more crowdpulling visitors than others. I did see what you said about St. J. (PS - I would have asked Dougal, but finding him among 6000 Caley Refuseniks in a blue phonebox on Telford Street might just be a bit tricky )

The American naval base is an interesting one. The Americans arrived late 1917/early 1918 and participated in minelaying activities between the Northern Isles and Norway in order to make life difficult for any German ship which did manage to evade the Grand Fleet. Then the Americans played a major part in sweeping the mines after the end of the war. I certainly remember my granny speaking about the Americans in the town and there did used to be the odd episode of bother.

Great stuff IHE!! Top photo - Telford St Park and surroundings. Judging by the general sparsity of buildings on Telford St and the top of Fairfield Rd, this will be a pretty old photo and the old stand in the football ground tells us that it's at least pre-1950 since that was when that stand burned down. Indeed this may be even older since the Muirtown Bridge doesn't look at all like the current one which was built, like its twin at Torvean, in the mid 1930s. Interesting to see both distilleries there and an extremely quiet looking Muirtown Basin. Bottom photo - Kingsmills Park and surroundings. Again this is a pretty old photo, given the sparsity of buildings on MacEwen Drive and Broadstone Avenue and there is no stand there yet. The interior of the park itself looks in quite a bit of disarray and there are neither goals nor wear where you would expect the goal areas to be. That suggests that this photo MAY date from during or immediately after the war, since Kingsmills Park hosted a succession of military units during hostilities. Indeed immediately after the war, a boy was killed there when an item of ordnance which had not been disposed of by the military blew up when kids were playing there. Among the injured was Bill Reid who in 1990 became a director of Clach. Also, if you look carefully just left of centre you will see three Nissen huts in the angle of Argyle St and Southside Rd, roughly where Argyle Court now is. The photo also gives a rare view (well to most of us at least!) of what the inside of the prison looks like and I'm quite amazed at how broad Argyle St and Hill St look since thwy are actually far too narrow for modern traffic.

So "Scotland's Oil" - which is conspicuous by its absence from that Opec list under the title of "UK" - is a pretty minor player on the oil scene then? Who has ever said otherwise.....so your point is just what exactly? My point is that Salmond and chums spent half the referendum campaign bigging up this declining resource which Alex M now tells us isn't even big enough to allow export to take place and hence for us to have a seat at the top table in terms of calling the oil shots world wide. Clearly dependence on this kind of situation would have increased 12 fold should it have, back in September, come to apply not to a population of 60 million, but just to 5 million who would have had no say whatsoever in market conditions relating to an asset which the SNP claims is crucial.

I just cannot understand why people pay good money to watch 90 minutes of football and then spend a chunk of that time queueing for food in a place where they can't see the game. because they dont get them delivered like you do Charles .... However that still doesn't make the practice of investing a chunk of the duration of a fotoball match someone has paid to see in going to the pie shop any less questionable. By the way, to return to nicknames, there is a well known taxi driver of this parish, an avid Rangers fan, who goes under the title of "Roddy The Proddy"!

So "Scotland's Oil" - which is conspicuous by its absence from that Opec list under the title of "UK" - is a pretty minor player on the oil scene then?

I just cannot understand why people pay good money to watch 90 minutes of football and then spend a chunk of that time queueing for food in a place where they can't see the game.

"Oil Prices Plunge After OPEC Meeting" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30223721

QED http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/27/nicola-sturgeon-smith-commission-fails-deliver-scotland-powerhouse-parliament and a few more. Perhaps it should also be pointed out that the notion that this so-called "vow" actually influenced many people on Sep 18 is nothing more than another item from that "SNP Handbook Of Unsubstantiated Assertions And Wishful Thinking". I would have thought that more would have been influenced in the wrong direction by the Yes Scotland's fictitious oil revenue claims. Personally I think that this "vow" was a mistake since it merely gave the Separatists a soapbox on which to attempt to build another grudge.