Charles Bannerman

OK... so let me get this straight. She whinges incessantly that Westmonster won't give her enough cash for public services.... but still seems to have plenty for prescriptions, bus passes, university tuition for people who would be far better off in the Tecky Colleges she has starved of funds, and for various other vote-catching superficialities. And now she also wants to dish out £150 a week to everybody, much of which may well in the end reach the destinations suggested by Alex Jones - while food banks continue to flourish. She tells us she wants to be judged on Education (well that's you knackered then, dear!) but, whilst funding all these vote catching dodges, she is so miserable to local authorities that, for instance, Highland Council are looking at slashing 300 jobs in schools. What a nonsensical manifestation of The Emperor's New Kilt.

In his post-match interview, the manager seemed to suggest that Polworth had been unwell and wasn't going to figure at all, but insisted on coming on the bus and then seemed to manage to get himself a place on the bench.

Presumably that's one you also formulated on the Grassy Knoll, although the evidence does seem to suggest that refereeing standards aren't great. Have you been on to Alex Ferguson's lad at Doncaster in search of a solution out of the Book Depository stable?

That would depend on how often you attend Tornoto FC!

The match statistics are quite interesting. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/42205964 They are pretty level apart from a 7-3 ICT advantage in shots on target, resulting in a 4-1 scoreline. Sounds like a pretty god night for the attack force with four different men on the score sheet!

Would a postponement actually be all that bad a thing, given that the current schedule is for five games in the 15 days from Dec 30 to Jan 13 inclusive, arguably amid unease that injuries might start to accumulate?

As they say on Wikipedia.... "Citation needed".

When he spoke on Thursday, Raven seemed all but certain that he wouldn't feature.

You are dead right. I asked that particular question myself and I think what he was particularly gratified about was the response from fans which he said was "pretty overwhelming and humbling" and that it was "pretty unbelievable the number of comments I've had." Then there was an almost embarrassed pause and exhalation before he concluded his answer with "there's not much more I can say about that...." To another question, he said that he would "always be looking out for ICT and seeing where they go from here" and that this had been "the best time I've ever had at a club." It's not that often that you get the opportunity to interview players who are leaving clubs, but without doubt David Raven has departed with great dignity.... a word which could equally be applied to his nonetheless categorical questioning of the stewardship of the two seasons following the Scottish Cup win.

In terms of what was heard on the radio and seen on TV, it was the same stuff. Raven was simply expressing his dismay that he and his team mates had won the Scottish Cup in May 2015 and now the club is relegated and extremely strapped for cash. He just wanted to know how money from the likes of that and Ryan Christie's transfer could have been squandered in such a short time and to such little effect? The other line which emerged at the conference but has not emerged in broadcast yet although may well do in print tomorrow, since newspapers are usually able to do greater depth than broadcast, was that it was put to him that when the fans cheered him off v Livi, they were cheering a contribution which extends far more widely than simply scoring the winner v Celtic. He seemed very gratified at that proposition.

Do they not still send referee supervisors to games?

Quizzer..... you are echoing my own thoughts almost to the letter. As for weakening links with the football club, I believe that the more or less enforced sale of the premises several years ago was the thin end of the wedge there and that things got a lot worse as a cosequence of a personal squabble which had nothing to do either with the FC or SC. (And involves completely different individuals from the stadium lease scenario.)

Agreed. I think changes like this are needed both to widen the appeal and to make it more profitable.

Baron Taylor's Street???

I am just home after my traditional couple of quiet hours out on Boxing Night, which always include a visit to the ICT Social Club. Tonight I walked into the bar to find seven people - Laurie Redfern, a stalwart regular, Sandy the barman and five Rangers fans playing pool and playing Rangers songs on the jukebox. By happy coincidence, my arrival in the bar coincided with the jukebox proclaiming "Hello, hello...." to which I took great delight in responding, loudly "You WERE the Billy Boys".... which went down about as well as a Hail Mary in the Louden Tavern. But, as Corporal Jones used to say.... "They do NOT like it up 'em Captain Mainwaring! they do NOT like it up 'em." Into the bargain, I didn't particularly like what I think is the ongoing presence of a picture of Ibrox on the Social Club wall. This is the Social Club of Inverness Caledonian Thistle - much more recent winners than (The) Rangers (if at all? ) of a national title. There is baggage here that we really do not need. Get rid of the bloody thing! My point? If the Football Club is, as we now know, being reconstructed as an institution much closer to the community and the fans. This must therefore also become the case with the Social Club. Friends of mine, whose Inverness football past goes back a lot longer than my own, speak of glorious days when "The Caley Club" was full to the rafters with Caley fans. Even within my 15 year membership of the place, after it became the ICT Social Club, I remember far better times than this. In the new era of reconstruction, we really do need the ICT Social Club once again to become a social centre for the football club. This is an important sub-plot of the grander design which we all hope will assist general reconstruction. Changes in social habits, adversely affecting all licensed premises, have clearly not helped, but I also attribute much of the Social Club's decline in recent years to its regrettable divorce from the Football Club. I don't even want to mention The War once, even if I think that I got away with it, but let's be realistic. The place has been seriously hamstrung in recent years years by personal agendas, pursued on behalf of a disgruntled departee by a surrogate employee, now no longer with us, and culminating in the disastrous and ruinous Social Club AGM of 2015. The private agenda in question, which had nothing to do with ICT, was solely against Kenny Cameron who - like the surrogates and their associates - is no longer with us. That double clearout offers us a new opportunity. We now have a new club steward, with no personal agendas, and a new football club board. Perhaps this should also become an opportunity for the ICT Social Club to be brought back to a place of prominence and developed into far more than a money making opportunity for the football club. It should also be a central hub for the kind of cohesion which the football club board is clearly working to achieve for the greater good.

That is absolutely not the case. Dougie ASKED a number of questions, more or less all relating to the status of the stadium and in doing so it was clear (if clarification was needed) that his problem is with Tulloch-Sutherland and not the club. He also stated that his family's 500,000 or so shares would never be used pro-rata in a poll vote and would only ever feature as one of a show of hands. There was nothing heated about any of his interventions, nor indeed about the meeting as a whole. As for his departure, he advised the meeting that he had guests to meet so had to leave - and he did so on offering the club his very well received best wishes. There was no hint of acrimony at all. My own belief now is that there is scope for bridges to be built (good term - Dougie began life in inverness as Project Manager on the Kessock Bridge!) between the McGilvrays at least and the club, and this should be encouraged. Let's not also forget that, despite criticism of the end of his 5 year chairmanship, he played a massive part in getting the club - including Pele - there in the first place..... and even won the "£500 to a pie" on-air bet which I was able to arrange for him to make with Tam Cowan that ICT would be in the SPL within 10 years of formation!

Dougie needs to be given credit for stating at last night's AGM that his family holding of around half a million shares would never be used as anything more than a single hand up at a meeting. In other words he would not want to exert his pro-rata entitlement in a poll vote.

Absolutely not 25 years Scotty. It's more like half of that since, as I recollect, the "Tulloch" tag appeared after the January 2005 upgrade to 6000 seats. I'm not sure about the originally agreed duration of this deal, but the 2001 deal for control of the board through "Tulloch" directors including the chair was originally for 5 years but in practice extended to 10 or maybe more. For instance DFS took over the chair in 2000, passed it for a time to Ken Mackie who then passed it back to DFS who held it until 2006. Then "non Tulloch" Alan Savage held it for less than two years 2006-08 before Tullochs' George Fraser had it until 2011. Apart from AS, these are "Tulloch" chairmen from 2000-2011, and thereafter you could debate whether Kenny (2011-17) was a "Tulloch" chairman or not. In the case of the Tulloch-ICT association to date, I see the rough "balance sheet" for 2000- early 2018 (but this won't quite be exhaustive) as roughly reading:- THE CLUB HAS RECEIVED - around £2.5M of debt removed, £730,000 in working share capital, a stadium upgraded by two new stands to SPL standards, the gift of everything within the stadium perimeter, the gift back (to the Trust in 2011) of 730,000 shares, the benefit of some very good chairmanship (for instance Ken Mackie was hugely influential in negotiating SPL status during that fraught summer of 2004),absolution over the years from part of the stadium rent and other odds and ends such as the random Tulloch employees who kept appearing to fill gaps at busy times. TULLOCHS HAVE RECEIVED - control, since 2011, of Propco which owns the stadium and holds the lease, control of the Board for approaching 10 years (approx.), naming rights for the stadium for around 13 years, 730,000 shares (until given back in 2011), rent for the stadium and site, a lot of goodwill and positive publicity in the earlier years of the association and........ a whole lot of grief from people who either don't understand or decline to acknowledge that Tullochs have not only put a lot more into the club than they have taken out and that, were it not for their involvement, there is every likelihood that the club would have died in 2001.

MJ.... have you ever considered the alternative to the Tulloch involvement? What would you propose should have been done instead, if the Tulloch deal really was that awful? It strikes me that you are complaining about your free lunch, to which the alternative was starvation, because someone has asked you to wash the plates.

Along with Tesco Value Christmas jumper?

Methinks, Caleyboy, that you have an axe or two to grind with Tullochs!

I don't see it that way at all. The common bottom line is this - were it not for external financial intervention, neither club would have achieved a fraction of what it has done. In Ross County's case, the appearance is that there's been a constant, generous financial drip feed of funds which have allowed infrastructure to be built and wages to be paid at such a level that it has been possible to achieve Premiership football in 2012 and then sustain it, including top six finishes and a national trophy win. Otherwise, what might County have become? A Championship - League One yoyo club? In the case of Caley Thistle, the assistance - which may or may not total less than in County's case but has been far more life saving - has simply worked differently. This is because of the critical mess the club got into in around 2000 with its approximately £2.5 million debt. No amount of revisionism will alter the cold fact that if that debt had not been taken away, the club would have gone into administration or receivership. As we all know that debt was removed by Tullochs, the only game in town, who also provided working capital and then upgraded the stadium. The net effect of Tullochs' £5.3 - £6M intervention was, in five years, to effect a transformation from virtual bankruptcy to playing SPL football, debt free in a fully compliant stadium. However, two issues have intervened to alter the perception of that process in the eyes of far too many. Firstly, there has been a failure to realise, or to accept, that Tullochs aren't a philanthropic society although they have accepted a significant net loss by becoming involved with Caley Thistle. And secondly, we are back to the delusion that's too often held in football that the world somehow owes the game a living. Back in 2000, Caley Thistle had hugely overstretched its means. To be brutally realistic, I would also have to add - very reluctantly indeed because he also did a huge amount of good for the club - that this was under the chairmanship of one of the main complainers about the manner in which salvation from a potentially fatal event was then achieved. The club's future existence was secured by Tullochs, but what I seem to be seeing now is some kind of revisionist view that it might have been better after all if their considerable assistance had been rejected and oblivion had been allowed to ensue.

I don't think the home support was great at Hamilton either..... the total crowd figure is 1272.

You mean not totally unlike ICT being baled out by Tullochs?

KOB is correct. It should perhaps also be remembered that the world doesn't owe football a living.