Charles Bannerman

To answer Scotty's points in the order in which he makes them.... I'm sure Richard did mean Inverness City and therein lies an interesting scenario. Clach are on the verge of the abyss and if they go under, Grant Street is either up for grabs by a new user or the Council make a bid themselves for it (as Peter Corbett has already suggested) and make some kind of community facility out of it. Either way, this potentially opens the door for Inverness City who currently lack a permanent home. City's predicament is NOT the fault of the Highland Council although for some reason a perception has been created that it is. City's predicament is to a large extent a result of themselves ignoring the fact that they were told right at the start that they would have to vacate the Meeting Park for Northern Counties CC late winter but they chose to ignore that and when they were then asked to leave as agreed, they very publicly held their hands up in horror and claimed they were being badly done by. Either way, Highland Council has a problem (which it does not deserve) but a problem all the same - and one which could well be solved if Clach were to fold. As for City going into the Highland League, I think they are very aware that ?50-60,000 a year is the absolute minimum required - and that's before you even start to think about being elected by the league. I am not sure whether or not Inverness United was registered with the SFA but would ask the question if this would be permissible on the part of a club which did not exist (outwith a kids' side)? The other consideration is that any move to call the team Inverness United would have been very short lived indeed because Clach were only part of the merger discussions for 12 weeks in the summer of 1993 before it became a two horse chariot and it was a further 4 months before the name Caledonian Thistle emerged as the title. The name, as I recollect, was not really an issue right through the period of the merger votes and the immediate Rebellious Autumn aftermath. Although doubtless discussed, it only emerged as a bargaining tool in December 1993 when the SFL elections became imminent and deadlock still prevailed. Caledonian FC! Now there's an interesting one! I certainly know that Caledonian FC was allowed to continue to exist as what was called a "constitutional shell" well after the votes to transfer assets in December 1994. This was in effect a necessity because the Caley vote was merely one on the basis of a necessary 50% to invest the club's assets in shares in CT since the 2/3 to invoke constitutional changes was never achieved. So in fact, as far as I know, Caley has NEVER been voted out of existence (but see the end of my comments)! I have a strong recollection of reading through the Caley Constitution at the time of asset transfer (the 50% resolution was proposed by Hugh Grant and Willie MacLean and approved by the Third Battle of Rose Street) and spotting two glaring loopholes which the Rebels strangely never exploited. One of them I unfortunately forget, but the other was the statement in the Constitution that Caley's Registered Office would be at Telford Street Inverness. Clearly that could not continue to be the case, especially after the ground was sold (unless a cupboard in Currys was rented in perpetuity!), but this arrangement needed a 2/3 majority to cease - which was NEVER achieved (publicly at any rate). Stranger things than this were challenged legally but thios one wasn't. I certainly also recollect that the Rebels did briefly plan another legal campaign on the basis of the shell of Caley continuing because I was thrown out of a "public" meeting about it in the late summer of 1995. But as far as I can see, the constitution of Caledonian FC, as it stood at the AGM in 1993, has NEVER been changed in any way - so the club presumably exists. The only chance might be that, after the extended memberships lapsed following the asset vote, the only members left were the Life Members and they may well have done something about that. I must ask Jimmy Falconer about this rather intriguing scenario now I have been reminded of it.

To invoke that well used football cliche, they have now, literally, been reduced to taking "one game at a time". On Sunday the Supporters' Trust wrote to the administrator proposing that they might take over the football side while he sold off the company's assets to meet debts which are a swingeing ?280,000. Gordon MacLure's reply was bleak to say the least, and absolutely central to the situation in which Clach now find themselves this week. He can only allow the football side to continue if there is an ongoing flow of cash to sustain it which is not from the Company's normal revenue sources which he needs to meet debts. In other words there is an acute short term cash flow problem. He has told the Trust that his major concern is that fundraising proposals, many of which will come to fruiton in March, do not address the need for cash NOW and that he could not guarantee that the players would be paid this Saturday. The Trust has secured the several hundred pounds needed to fund wages and a bus to Formartine on Saturday so that will go ahead and Clach should therefore survive at least over the weekend. However the Administrator is also concerned that the Trust also needs to find the portion of his fee required for him to administer the ongoing football side - around ?600-700 per week - otherwise he doubts if he will be able to allocate much more time to football as opposed to disposing of the business. In other words allowing the football to continue is causing an increase in the Administrator's fee which football operations have to find. In response to Mr MacLure's email, the Clach Supporters' Trust has called an emergency meeting for Friday night which will also be attended by James Proctor of Supporters Direct. What effect this will have is unclear but, apart from a vague rumour I heard about some kind of gesture from outside, I am not aware of any further interest in the club, which is why the assets (mainly land) will be sold off over the next couple of months. So in summary, it looks as if they should survive this weekend and thereafter it is on a week by week basis, at least until revenue streams like their Dinner and the Aberdeen game come on stream in March. But let's definitely NOT conclude that all will then be rosy. Surviving until March, and then to the end of the season merely create a little more breathing space.

A WHAT???!!!!!

As far a I recollect, the Second Gulf War started on the ground into the second half of March 2003.

That would be a bit difficult given that the ICT 1 Celtic 0 result was on 23RD MARCH 2003.

Back in the days when police forces operated minimum height rules, the Met once reduced theirs to something like 5 feet 7. Recruits who came in under the new rule were thereafter known as "Metrognomes"! At one time Sutherland County Constabulary had the most demanding requirement. Recruits had to be at least 5 feet 10 inches.... or as Mae West once said "Never mind about the five feet... let's talk about the ten inches."

It was February 1976 and there were reputed to be over 3000 at the Meeting Park (I know... cos I was there! ) to watch Highland beat Selkirk I think something like 20-0 to win Division 2 of the National Leagues and gain promotion to Division 1, the then top tier with the likes of Hawick, Gala etc. An early video of Bill MacLaren's Rugby Special still exists somewhere I think. Highland had entered the league at the bottom in Division 4 in 1972 and jumped up to the top with three straight promotions. Of the list of players, I'm not sure if Kenny White was still playing for Highland 1st XV but Beans, Dave, George Halliday and Colin High certainly were, along with the likes of Chunky Hamilton, Alan Rose, international second row George Mackie and the legendary international wing forward and general inspiration Nairn MacEwan. Baillie! It's not so many years ago that you could stand on the Queens Park on a Tuesday night and know from the tone of the whistle blasts over on the Canal Field that it was Colin coaching the team that night. My first memory of Colin was when I came into 1st year at the Royal Academy in 1965 and there was this PE teacher of whom apparently all the 5th and 6th years were s**t scared and who used to make offending seniors hang from wallbars until they dropped off. And, many years later, I can just imagine the response that a Millburn pupil would have got when he asked the question: "Mr. Baillie, how do you spell your name. Is it with one "i" or two?" :010: You could write a book about Colin Baillie (and if I could find a publisher I possibly would) - but let this little known fact suffice for the moment.... In the late summer of 1940 with the victorious Hun staring threateningly across the English Channel and down the throat of a beleaguered people who stood alone in the world, how did the nation respond and achieve salvation? "The RAF won the Battle of Britain" I hear you say, but you merely sniff at the periphery. Britannia actually rallied with the Birth of Colin Baillie... to which the terrified Nazi Hordes spontaneously yelled "Achtung, achtung!! Alle ist kaput!" and cleared off in panic to invade Russia instead. Yes folks, Colin will turn 70 this August!

Aye... electricity that's been generated in a power station by burning more fossil fuel because renewable sources have already been spoken for against other uses. Oh, but there's also the alternative of hydrogen power... from hydrogen made by electrolysing water using electricity from a power station.... etc etc. There's a lot of pseudoscience out there - and that's before I get started on the myth of biofuels grown in spaces which would otherwise be used for growing food anyway. Hey Gringo... have you never put petrol by mistake into your diesel locomotive? :030:

Is it beyond technology to fit all new cars with a chip embedded in the neck of the tank and to market separate installable chips for older vehicles - one type for petrol, the other for diesel? All you would need to do then would be to instal corresponding sensors in the pump nozzle which would set a loud alarm off, or even make the pump fail to work, if they sensed a chip of the wrong type.

I think much of the problem is that Britain has ceased to be an industrial power so we have to employ people instead in Sports Administration and Health and Safety. :) Seriously, though, I do have a suspicion that the legal profession and the media have a lot to answer for. However if I were to allow this response to take a political turn I might also suggest that since the mid 90s, and especially since they came to power in 97, the (New) Labour Party, having ditched Socialism for the cause of electability, needed a substitute bandwagon and espoused Political Correctness. But to return to lawyers and the media. In an increasingly litigious society where firms of solicitors specialise in compensation claims there is an increased risk that someone will sue and the Law will be assinine enough to uphold the claim. As a result those who call the shots are less willing to put their necks on the line. As for the media, certain sectors of it (and I would single out Fascist rags like the Daily Mail) are obsessed with attributing blame, even when blame is not really all that relevant a factor. For instance on Saturday the Mail's weather coverage plumbed the depths of blaming the forecasters. Again, those who call the shots have become unwilling to put themselves in the firing line. Also, as the generations which suffered the Depression and two World Wars die out, we are left with a society which has known nothing but the Welfare State (which has become the Nanny State) and has never had it so good. (I suspect Harold MacMillan was just a few years early coining that phrase.) Life has become incredibly soft and always manages to offer an instant fix which also maybe means that people have become terribly precious about themselves as well as rather incapable of making their own realistic decisions.

Or, as the Howden Enders sang at the Jaggies at Inverness Derbies during the merger..."What's it like to, what's it like to, what's it like to play in blue..."

Righ'eenuff mun! :010:

OK... I've just come back to this thread after several days and I see that it has had further activity. Initially, please note that in my original post I deliberately placed the term "Trust" in inverted commas to acknowledge the fact that there are varying viewpoints on the nature of this arrangement. However I would have to emphasise that, in almost a decade now since the "arrangement" was made, I have never really been aware of its precise nature being an issue among ICT fans. For instance it's not exactly the kind of thing that groups of scandalised people sit around discussing over their post match dram in the Social Club week in week out, nor is it the talk of the terraces Saturday after Saturday. Yes, a certain view of the arrangement does exist, but apart from one or two people on here it really seems to be a viewpoint which, despite having being stated very forcefully by those who subscribe to it and having had a decade to gain currency, has spectacularly failed to do so. I think the take of most fans (and this is my take as well) would tend to be:- * In 1999-2000 Caley Thistle's financial situation had become dire in the extreme. That threat to the future of ICT was removed by a transaction involving the Stadium. * In 2004-05 the extreme need to return from playing SPL football in Aberdeen to a 6000+ seat capacity stadium in Inverness was met and financed in a very short timescale. And it would appear that, in the view of the vast majority, these vital ends are what matter while very few people seem to feel "disadvantaged" or "cheated" or "done" or whatever by the means of achieving them.

It was the night before the derby in Dingwall. That's possibly a contributory factor.

Given that vodka is in effect a 37.5% solution of ethanol in water, I could guess about minus 20 centigrade, so unless you are in the darkest inland Highlands you should be OK. :021:

Which reminds me... has anyone mentioned Farmfoods?

Yes, I thought that by now Dornoch Caley would have been screaming for the collectivisation of the West Coast crofters in advance of taking their produce into market in carts drawn by tractors produced according to the Five Year Plan! :D :P :P

You're maybe right by a short head there JB but since I've defected from beer to white wine in the interests of weight control, that doesn't bother me too much and I would maybe also suggest that any lead Tesco has is confined to lagers. ajsict92... aye, the good old days of the Rose Street cafe where a Saturday wouldn't be off to a proper start before I'd had my breakfast with a fresh tomato! The Tesco Inshes cafe is a complete joke with all kinds equipment that breaks down at the drop of a hat... in one case the coffee machine for THREE WEEKS! The food sits festering and hardening and getting cold because so few people now use the place - a vicious circle which also means that they close early due to lack of business. I have complained to Tesco more than once and have been waiting for over a month for a reply to my last email and on one occasion my daughter had to return a cold dinner. Then there was the occasion when they ran out of rolls but said they weren't allowed to go and purchase any of the thousands in the shop! It has two advantages. A convenient location for me (but the new ASDA will become even more convenient) and the fact that sort of unofficially free papers seem to lie about the place (which I think people just take off the stands in the shop). So I use it from time to time but am very careful about what I buy. But in general, though, I prefer to eat in Morrisons so I have taken my main weekly shop there as well and am much happier with the entire experience. One thing that mystifies me about Tesco in Inverness is the degree of resentment, unpopularity, bad feeling and bad PR the company has generated here but people still seem to patronise the place in droves. Apart from some kind of Tesco fixation in this city, lack of competition is certainly a factor so as far as I am concerned they can't bring ASDA on fast enough. Hang on a minute.... reality check... look what we've got here - a bunch of BLOKES spending hours discussing the relative merits of Supermarkets!!

I also have to say that I did a shopping in Asda whilst passing through Elgin before Christmas and was reasonably impressed. Then there's Lidl and Aldi. A bit basic perhaps but some very good bargains. The ambience of the shop is a big factor for me though, and there was nothing to beat Safeways in that respect although Morrisons have gone some way towards compensating for its loss. I used especially to like shopping in Safeways Rose Street and the cafe was excellent there, as was the case with Safeway Millburn Road. Morrison's cafes are not as good as the old Safeway ones, but Tesco Inshes has deteriorated so much that it now makes Morrisons look good. In days gone by Tesco Inshes used to be good for a quick tea after a home game in advance of going down to the Social Club but it seems they now can't be bothered openiong that late so I have to do with a swift Morrisons ready meal at home. You will have followed that supermarket cafes are important to me

Incredibly.... "neither of the above". (By the way I am assuming you mean "they Tesco" as opposed to "they Morrisons") I shop in Morrisons because I prefer the ambience of the shop and the brand image, the shop is handy for parking for town, their prices APPEAR to be more competitive, they do a rather nice bottle of Cava, they do extremely good rollmops, their fresh food is a lot better in range and quality, I am fed up with Inverness being Tescotown, Morrisons are not obsessed with clubcard points and the cafe at Tesco Inshes in particular is a complete joke. Tesco do have a couple of things going for them though. Their "Tomb Raider Lady" self service checkout is a bit more efficient and I like their grapefruit juice. Oh yes, and whilst I haven't bought a turtle since my kids were big fans of the Teenage Hero Mutants, I am absolutely sure that any Morrisons sell will, like Monty Python's parrot, be dead, deceased, defunct, no more etc etc....

On the other hand, compared with British School of Motoring cars (as opposed to learners in general) Tesco and Morrisons lorries are extremely fast! I have to say that Tesco used to be slower than Morrisons though.

Going on what I've just heard on Radio Scotland Travel, Inverness is in effect almost cut off. As at 4pm the A9 was reported as shut at Daviot and shut southbound at Blair Atholl. It is also blocked at two points in Caithness and the A96 is closed between Keith and Huntly. The railway, as we have seen above, is closed and the bus service to Aviemore from where you could take the train is presumably also out of action because of the road closure at Daviot. I believe the airport is currently open. Does Morrisons' stuff also come up by rail? I try to buy as little as possible from Tesco for a number of reasons (although I do welcome their decision to remove the dreaded Tesco Lorries from the A9) and do most of my shopping at Morrisons.

Aye... pints of vodka and coke wasn't it? And honestly... Mannie and DC... I'm really not trying to be snobbish at all but there's just a few things about televised darts which I find a little bit surreal and OTT and really quite funny.

Which reminds me of the American golf commentator who once came across with the line "Colin Montgomerie is a great athlete!" Sid Waddell, though. That's the Geordie guy isn't it? Yes, he was highly entertaining and extremely knowledgeable but we don't seem to hear so much of him these days which is a pity. I believe he also had a very good degree from a very good university.

Whilst flicking channels, I note that there seems to have been quite a lot of coverage of the world championship Darts on TV of late. Is there a qualifying standard for this tournament in the form of a minimum Body Mass Index which these men have to achieve? If so, can we expect a cameo appearance from Colin Montgomerie at some point? In general I find it all a bit "Sunreaderish" but I have to say that the frequently interviewed bling laden Cockney Geezah is often quite good value!