Charles Bannerman

The best interpretation is one where William Blake, who wrote the poem, is actually saying how totally crap England (well he should really have said Britain but under the circumstances we'll accept England) was with its "dark satanic mills" and all the other trappings of the Industrial Revolution. What Blake is asking is how much better the country might have been if Jesus had actually paid a visit? - which one myth claims he did do. Then in the latter stages of the poem Blake resolves to jump into his Chariot of Fire and sort England out himself. Clearly the Chariot of Fire must have had a mechanical problem during the current World Cup. Also, it's therefore a bit unforunate that the film Chariots of Fire should be about a Scottish athlete Eric Liddell. Probably the best thing about the poem is that it gave a composer called Hubert Parry the excuse to write the tune. It's actually not fair. England get all the best tunes but tag the most awful words on to them - Land of Hope and Glory is another case in point whilst all we get is an Anglophobic dirge by a beardie in an Arran jumper. William Blake was a member of what you might call the Nutcase School of English poetry. Another member was Samuel Taylor Coleridge who was a complete dopehead. In fact one day Coleridge was composing a poem called Kubla Khan whilst out of his face on some kind of concoction. There came a knock at the door and he spent some time speaking to a man from a place called Porlock. When he got back to his seat, the trip was wearing off and he couldn't remember any of the psychedelic nonsense that had been going on in his head previously. Hence (mercifully!) Kubla Khan is very short since it really is a load of meaingless rubbish so we have good reason to be grateful to the individual now known as The Man From Porlock. On the other hand Coleridge did manage to complete the almost equally barking Rime of the Ancient Mariner. There is also a connection between English poetry and ICT since Terry Butcher's English residence is in a village called Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire. It was there that a poet called William Gray wrote what is known as the Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard - or Gray's Elegy - and Gray is also buried there. That's the one that begins "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day." Sometimes these school holidays get a bit quiet...... :D

It's six years ago now and I had forgotten the minutiae of the votes and meetings. But one thing I have not forgotten is the sheer statesmanship with which Ken Mackie led Caley Thistle through that difficult summer of 2004.

With any luck by August 14th, 21st century populism - with its attention span reminiscent of that of a brain damaged gerbil - will have clean forgotten about these damned things and will have adopted the next transient fashion... or indeed the next one after that.

Unfortunately it has to be said that TV is the main culprit when it comes to vastly inflated wages. The kind of money TV can put about creates ridiculous wage inflation not only in football but also in other varieties of entertainment. That, for instance, is why irritating plonkers like Woss and elsewhere in sport fatlads like Montgomerie can be paid ridiculous sums for what they do not very well. There are, of course, other factors which include the lunatic economics of football where these sums are paid to people who actually only work productively for their club for 90 minutes every fortnight. This scenario has also attracted the very rich who seem to be prepared to invest vast chunks of their fortunes in subsidising this for the sake of whatever personal gratification they perceive themselves to receive. This of course also appears to create the expectation among fans that rich people seem almost to have an obligation to chip in big time so that the said fans' season tickets can remain at a price which in effect only covers a small fraction of the cost of what they turn up to watch.

Less than that! MJ Lives! Heard the women who runs this site being interviewed on the radio last night. Totally barking mad. Apparently Jacko's coming back at some point to warn us all about the Illuminati and the Anti-Christ that's going to take over the world! I wonder if he'll have news about England winning the World Cup in 2014 I saw Michael Jackson in the High Street this morning with Elvis and Adolf Hitler. They were speaking to Lord Lucan who was riding Shergar.

I reckon Dougie will turn 59 some time this year. Teachers' New Year... very, very close now! Prize Giving just finished but unfortunately nobody is having a retiral dinner which would have created an extra opportunity tonight so we'll all have to wait for the Heathmount tomorrow afternoon. We finish at 12 (which actually means I don't have any classes tomorrow since the First Year aren't with us yet) and by about 3pm the Shiny Green Folders will have been long abandoned for the summer and we'll be fighting our way to the bar. But at Heathmount prices, it might be a decent idea to nip down to the Caley Club first for an inexpensive "loading dose". I presume you have something similar planned down your way Mantardo?

But I remember Dougie Kay. He was a couple of years ahead of me in school and was the goalkeeper in one of the best ever Royal Academy 1st XIs in 1969 (despite what IHE will inevitably argue to the contrary!). The father may just have been a little too old to have played at Kingsmills with Murd Urquhart. Jock McDonald played his first game for Jags in 1952.

So what about the North Korean team? Where are they now? Salt mine? Labour Camp? Guineapigs for nuclear testing? .... whilst the North Korean people are being told that their Glorious Eleven, thanks to the personal inspiration of The Short Arsed Leader, has won the World Cup!

Maybe that fine idea could be reserved for one of the bars in the Caley Club.

Aaah right! So that will automatically absolve you from becoming the natural successors of Fort William then? ;)

Are you worried about being politely asked to relegate yourselves to this league SG?? ;)

There are also valid points made in the next three posts which follow this one but I want to follow up on the very realistic concerns which Kingsmills expresses here because they certainly square with what I have gleaned in 25 years of writing "Clach Crisis" stories. The real worry IS the possible temporary respite. Since the mid 1980s, Clach have now gone through THREE cycles of "get into debt... go right to the wire.... save the club by selling off part of the family silver". In 1990, 1997 and now in 2010 the club was virtually out on its feet and effectively saved itself by selling off a slice of its assets. However there is a difference this time in that on both previous occasions the debt was paid off in full whilst on this occasion they have got away with 37% of it. One thing I am not sure about. Do they have any tangible assets left? What I really mean there is "do they still own the strip of land where the former Wine Shed is?" I'm just not sure about that. But irrespective of the answer, I really don't think there are the assets there to survive another crisis. There are therefore two options for survival. 1) Make the club viable in its own right which is something which, if I recollect a post from Gordyfromsneck (which I meant to follow up with him but forgot), they have not been able to do for the last 100 years. 2) The new regime will need to subsidise the club to the tune of around maybe ?30-50K a year. I really hope one way or another that HL football can survive long term in Inverness. Here's an interesting thought. Spool back to 1990.. almost exactly 20 years actually since it was late June 1990 that the Clach situation really went critical. Inverness football owned:- * Telford Street Park (eventually sold for ?1M but I have heard an informed claim that it could have been ?2M.) * Kingsmills Park (eventually - after Jags realised in 1993 that they actually owned it!) sold for ?486,000. * The Caley Club. *The Jags Club. * Clach Park, including the Social Club and the area which included the grandstand which (ahem! ) "burned down" in 1988 and which has undergone a 3 stage sell off since 1990. That is one HELL of a lot of real estate!!! In between, Inverness went into National League football. As a result of that quantum leap which undeniably has done wonders for the game in the town... trivia question... what does "Inverness football" now own? Answer: The Caley Club (unless Clach still hold on to the Wineshed strip) and I would have to add that even that has been subject to speculation (no more) about a sell off. Telford St and Kingmsills went into the Merger equation which also involved the sale of the Jags Club. That in turn went into the construction of the Caledonian Stadium whose structure went out of ICT's ownership on the enforced formation of the Trust (I've worded this ambiguously to keep Caley D happy!). And the Grant Street properties have gone the way I have already described over the lat 20 years. I will now become Devil's Advocate and ask.... progress?? ;) So.. bottom line... in terms of current values, how much LESS does Inverness football own in terms of assets compared with 20 years ago?

Were you thinking of any fan in particular there Scotty?

That is also my understanding, and even that simply on the strength that Alan Savage, his boss at Orion, is sponsoring Clach. Robbo has been going out of his way to stress that any involvement he had with Clach would be very tenuous.

No, no, Georgeios, the big words are pretty well fine... it's the GUFF that baffles me! :022:

Now you're taking the p*ss!! DC's previous post was quite impenetrable enough!

What the HELL's all that about? And what's this "built in Wifie"? Is this a similar idea to those hotels which offer a "free Wifie"?

Or maybe they went to boarding school, so only have surnames. :)

Jock Tamson? Ask yer ma! :) (I've got a feeling a few people don't get that one!)

Yes, i see what you mean too and it's to see that you are thinking critically and analytically about the question in a historical context!

These two go back a few years and are both about Wayne Addicoat. Alex Caldwell was giving Wayne a lift when Wayne said he neded cash. However he declined Alex's offer to stop at a bank. "I've not got my card," says Wayne. AC: "Have you left it at home?" WA: "No, Ross Tokely keeps it for me." AC: "Do you manage to remember your PIN number OK though, Wayne?" WA: "Naw... Ross Tokely keeps that for me too." And when some of the younger players used to live in a house on Ardconnel Street, they sent Wayne away down to McDonalds for some food one night. Wayne duly wrote down each player's order before heading out the door. A minute later, there's a ring at the door bell and here is Wayne. "That was quick Wayne!" "Naw... I've just forgotten to write down what I want for myself."

Lol, jews account for less than 2% of the population of the United States. I think he means more the pro-Israel vote and lobbyists (most of whom incidentally are not Jewish). Yes, I do. The direct Jewish vote is actually a little bit over 2% but the Jewish lobby, disproportionately to its size, is tremendously influential in the USA from the point of view of its status in the media and its money, with which politicians run campaigns. Jewish influence in American politics has for decades been well known to be significant and more recently, look at the tiny margin which George W Bush won in 2000. On the question of the Appeasement parallel, there are some broad similarities, but I don't think that is as direct as DC is suggesting. For a start, in the 1930s, much of Europe and not just Britain was guilty of appeasing Hitler who might well have been stopped short in 1936, before he was really militarily strong, had a stand been taken on the Rhineland question. However the main difference is that in Europe in the 1930s there was a clear and direct threat to the appeasers themselves of a second conflict engulfing the continent and they failed to to act in such a way as to protect themselves from it. Much of what motivated this was a desire to avoid a repeat of 1914-18 but there is no such similar danger in the Israel scenario. On the other hand, it could be argued that there is a limit to which the bigger powers can become involved in conflicts like the Middle East, even though they were involved in setting up the Jewish state in 1948 (and had to endure multiple acts of Jewish terrorism against them in the process by the way - please note that terrorism is not the sole preserve of Arabs.) We already have a substantial argument that intervention in Iraq should never have happened. I would also imagine that few would suggest that we should go and give the North Koreans a sorting out for sinking the South Korean ship. You could even stretch this argument to ask why for 45 years we "appeased" the Russians when they did what they liked to countries like Hungary and Czechoslovakia etc. There is a limit to which the larger states can become the world's policemen in a military sense. On the other hand there are probably diplomatic or economic pressures which the larger states could and indeed should be taking against Israel and which might well be effective, but which they are not applying. But there again the Appeasement analogy breaks down because sanctions of this nature would have been no use against Hitler and it was lack of early military intervention that was the problem.

Yes, I think if there's any appeasement at all going on at all, it is of the Jewish vote in the USA.

I'm not sure I get what you mean.

I am sure neither of them will take exception to me saying this but Annette.. Craig's "dolly" of the last 2 years or so... is absolutely gorgeous!!