Charles Bannerman

I suppose I'd have to given the wonderful holiday I had at **** Campbell's villa in Spain. (Which I didn't declare to my employers.)

:015:

I trust that's a joke and not a simplistic attempt to make a generalisation between belief in the union and the Lodge, which I dislike with a vengeance.

Donmac... I actually took more exception to the first sentence there than the first! It implies, as I said, some kind of deficiency or moral inferiority on the part of the majority who did not hold Mr. Sillars' point of view and that in my book qualifies as narrow minded nationalist arrogance. By the way It's just occurred to me to my horror that some people might think I am arguing this from a Labour party perspective or even a Tory one, which I most definitely am not. I support no party at all and only trust a small minority of politicians since there are so many who are only in the business out of self interest. However, without espousing any political party at all, I have been a convinced lifelong unionist with a small "u"!

I do think that, in addition to any shortage of funds or fiscal prudence, there is the huge extra factor of geography. On the last day of the season, Sportsound - in the absence of rights to broadcast the FA Cup Final - ran a very comprehensive Pundits' Roundup of the various SPL clubs. Caley Thistle's reveiws from the likes of Craig Paterson, Gordon Smith and Murdo MacLeod were very good indeed. So was the pundits' perception of Inverness as a good place to live and to play football. But they could not deny what we have known for a long time - that the relative remoteness is a major disincentive for players to come here. Caley Thistle gets hit by a double whammy. There's not a huge amount of money around and at the same time, for any given level of quality, I'm sure they have to pay more than their rival clubs in the central belt. Caley Thistle also has an outstanding record for improving players whose careers look doomed. So, what has happened on a number of occasions is that underachieving players (Dodds and Dargo come immediately to mind) will come here because their current form means they are unable to meet their wage aspirations down south. During their time at ICT they are helped to realise their true potential again so by the time they reach the end of their contract here, they once again are able to compete in the central Scotland market. Also by that time they feel they have done their time "in the sticks" and want back home again. So now ICT find themselves in the completely opposite situation of a player whose status in the wage market place has now gone up and who in addition feels he needs more financial incentive still to extend his stay in the north. Stated simply, the club with the most limited financial resources is the one which, because of geography, has to pay over the odds for players, some of whom then want back home after a two or three year contract. Stated more simply, ICT, apart from having the most limited resources in the SPL, is also the club which, because of remoteness, has to pay over the odds for players who even then will want to get back home after a two or three year contract. By the way, I don't wholly subscribe to the theory that Craig Dargo was completely financially driven. The strong desire of his girlfried to locate wholly back south was, I believe, a VERY important factor as well. I also had a discussion along similar lines with Roy MacGregor last week. But as far as Inverness are concerned, the idea of leaving for a better wage down south doesn't always seem to work in practice... as former players and managers have found out!

Ah.. so the media are against you as well as the English then?

Alex... the 1979 Referendum, with its attached Cunningham Amendment, wasn't on the question of independence it was on the question of whether there should be a devolved assembly.... and even for that, it only attracted 52% support. Rosco 17.... I note that you have fallen into the traditional nationalist trap of stating that certain small countries are more successful than Scotland and then making the totally unsubstantiated assumption that this is because they are independent. Look at the other side of the coin... if these countries are alrerady more successful than Scotland, then how much worse would things get after Scotland lost its current substantial Westminster subsidy from the Barnett Formula and after the oil runs out in a few years' time?

Mantis, you mean Chic Allan was in the SNP but Alex Neil had never heard of him? kcj... yes, of course it's ALWAYS the fault of the English. (That was also the favourite whinge of Salmond until he put independence and his Whingeing Jock persona on the back burner pre May 3rd to make himself electable.) But what did the Darien people expect? If the guy in the shop next door is trying to expand, it's just sensible business to do everything within your power to scupper his plans. However if the guy next door happens also to be utterly incompetent, you shouldn't really even have to bother. William Paterson and friends would have screwed up anyway with their abysmally thought out scheme which saw them sally forth rather like prototype Argentina-bound Ally MacLeods, or perhaps latter day James IVs heading south for a doing from England Reserves at the Stadio del Flodden. These people squandered the wealth of the nation by going out there and trying to sell combs and mirrors to the inhabitants of a swamp! And unfortunately they didn't have radio in these days so they couldn't call up HQ to say "Sh!t lads, the game's a bogey.... DON'T send the second lot of ships!" They were about as clued up on international trade as Alex Salmond is about the Olympic Games, if you remember that rather sorry episode from his very first week in office. donmac298... your comments and Jim Sillars' are fairly typical of the sort of narrow minded nationalist arrogance that your views are the only right ones and there's something deficient about anyone who doesn't share them. Perhaps you should remember that there has never been anything other than a very significant majority AGAINST independence so you would do well at least to respect the views of the large majority of Scots, even if you don't agree with them. Anyway, Dame Margaret Rutherford in her reincarnation as leader of the Scottish Conservatives says they won't be backing a referendum.

So the total failure of the Darien Scheme had nothing to do with complete Scottish incompetence then?

I wish you Nationalist chaps would make up your minds! A decade and a half ago we had Salmond whingeing on urgently about "Free by 93" (whatever happened to that?!) And now the Nats have got the chance of the referendum they bleated about the Libs depriving them of, they're still not happy because they know **** fine they won't win it. The Tories have basically called the SNP's bluff. Remember Salmond is minority First Minister because... he has one seat more than the second biggest party, he waged a campaign which kept independence right out of the limelight because it's a vote loser... and he benefited hugely from a massive protest vote against Labour on completely unrelated issues (which apparently even had some members of THE ORANGE LODGE voting SNP!!! :015:) Hardly indicative of a groundswell in favour of going it alone.

So did you, like me, ever sit in English Room 7 (where you got the loudest blast, presumably because it was nearest the Welders) and when it went off you realised you only had 15 minutes to go until lunch time?

Sophia.. Pele made a huge number of excellent signings, but in addition had one or two pressed on him from "board level" who maybe weren't all that brilliant. Vetle, as I understand it, was one of these. Martin Glancy was another.

The extreme difficulty in answering this question is a tribute to the host of excellent signings Steve Paterson and his successors have made over the years. On the other question, the number of "duffers" is much, much smaller, hence a much shorter list of candidates for Worst Ever. It's fair also to say that this list features players who the managers of the time really didn't want but who were "given" to them. Vetle springs to mind as a prime example.

HC that's a relief! I would have to say that Darran Thomson was anonymous enough for me to have forgotten about him but I just couldn't imagine anyone going for Brian Thomson. I think we'll have to disagree rather less extremely over Mark McCulloch.

Harry Chibber... Brian Thomson!? The man was a legend! Scored a barrowload, including the vital goal v Stenhousemuir which gained access to Rangers in the Scottish Cup in 1996 and he was a star in that quarter final at Tannadice as well. He made a stunning debut v Ross County in the Inverness Cup Final in December 1995. Brian Thomson might indeed make the bench in my ICT Legends XI and I hope the Supporters' Trust manage to get him to the Legends' Night in September. I also happen to think that Mark McCulloch did a more than decent job too in midfield/defence. Obviously I wouldn't judge players entirely by their goals but there was a screamer of an equaliser v Dundee Utd in the Cup in 1998 and a wonderful goal for Caley Thistle at Victoria Park.... although he might just have been playing for County that day! Nope..Mark is nowhere near worth considering here.

Might "Borough Briggs" be a reference to the town's bridges... ie the site of an ancient bridge or bridges over the River Lossie to which BB is very close? By the way, metalgecko, the Hammer of the Scots was Edward 1st, of England, late 13th/ early 14th Century and not Richard 1st (Lionheart) who was around in the late 12th and early 13th

I'm with Scotty and Peleisgod on this one... made even more extreme by Vetle's complete lack of personal charm. There's the wonderful tale of how Vetle mouthed arrogantly back to Pele at training at Charleston one day and SP left him to run all the way back to the Caledonian Stadium!

I think MacAulays later became Kidds... just as Galloways later became Frankie Jews. Gilly Gunn... did he live in one of the stone built houses in St. Andrew Drive in Dalneigh? I think he had a daughter about my age in Dalneigh School.

I note that while Blackie force gets panned for his remarks about the standard of English in central London, I note no similar obections to similar comments I made just before that about Telford Street!

As a PE teacher? I have always had this very polarised view of Sergei. As an individual he was an absolute gentleman and I had a whole lot of time for him. But as a manager he just didn't seem to make it and I think there was more to that than the fundamentally defensive tactics which made that first season at Telford Street less than inspring. And there was also the issue of his very poor command of the English language (and for that to become a general view at Telford Street, it must have been bad!) Unless there has been a massive improvement, I would find it difficult to see how he could manage to teach. I sometimes wonder how he coped with his earlier days in Inverness when he would have arrived at Telford Street to greetings such as: "Howyadooenserg"?

I think it's got to do with full membership of the SFA. Before 1985, both Golspie and Fort William used to play in the Qualifying Cup for that reason, even though they weren't Highland League teams. Then The Fort got into the Highland League, leaving Golspie as the only "outsider" in the Q Cup. This, along with subsequent changes as a result of the election of Cove to the HL and then Thistle/ Caley, County, Elgin and Peterhead getting into the SFL, led to the number of Q Cup 1st round ties going from 1 up to 3 then down to none at the moment when there are the 15 HL teams plus Golspie to give the even 16 (and a new first round where the second used to be. Back in the old days I used to like to introduce the now defunct Qualifying Cup 1st round as "nine games from Hampden... ulness you draw Queens Park away." Fort William often used to pose a problem here when the first round was on the first Saturday in September and Claggan Park was booked for the Ben Nevis Race. (Former Jaggies will have fond memories of a visit to Claggan in the Qualifying Cup, quite soon after their famous trip to Celtic Park in 1985!)

The best Rock Ness moment I've had so far was on STV last night when Nicola McAlley's voiceover was referring to the Chemical Brothers as the on screen shot showed two guys carrying a chemical toilet across a field. Not a coincidence, I'm sure! I'm not a pop fan. Who are the Chemical Brothers? Is one of them an Iraqi called Chemical Ali?

Sorry I've had to continue my post here because I couldn't somehow extricate the quote I was using from what I wanted to say myself which was...... Interestingly enough David Dowling (who's been very much in the picture on this one as an SFA Council member as well as chairman of Clach) is taking a different view here and is suggesting that it could be MORE difficult eg for a Highland League club to get a tie with an SPL club. His argument is that the SPL clubs now don't come in until the fourth rather than the third round as before. Also, apart from the top two in the HL, there's no chance now of a 1st round bye for an HL club and there's the possible additional barrier of having to dispose of a 1st Division team in round 3 before moving on to an SPL draw in round 4. (And I don't think I'm betraying "off the record" confidences if I reveal that one of David's "dream" scenarios would be County at Grant Street in Round 3 followed by ICT there in Round 4!)

Yup, this monster certainly has a marvellous sense of timing. The 2007 annual early summer appearance not only once again took place just as the tourist season is about to get under way but also - miraculously - just 48 hours in advance of the announcement that people who might just have a hefty financial interest in this are bidding to have Loch Ness recognised as a World Heritage Centre! Now if that's not convenient...... Strange, isn't it, how all these so called "sightings" seem at best to command a certain grainy ambiguity. If this "thing" did exist then there would have to be a significant colony of them to survive so therefore we might at least expect a number of categorical sightings from such a population. After all Loch Ness is the most observed stretch of water in the world... droves of tourists, cameras galore in these days where everyone has one in their pocket, sonar investigations, "scientific" studies etc etc.... and what do we get? Absolutely nothing more than some strange blurred blip or smear which could really be anything of any size and when you can make out even a shape, they're all different. Strange also how it's so often just single individuals who make these "sightings" with no corroboration other than "well the minister says he saw it so it must be true" and the likes. Really, after all this intense interest over such a long period of time, why do all these alleged "sightings" seem to be so tantalisingly ambiguous with not a single categorical image?