Charles Bannerman

Well the Nats did say they'd be looking for "material change" as an excuse to hold a second vote and they've got some more now. http://stv.tv/news/politics/1367060-poll-ruth-davidson-more-popular-with-scots-than-sturgeon/ This shows that Sturgeon's popularity is dropping like a stone and, at +16, she's how only the third most popular party leader in Scotland behind Ruth Davidson, well ahead on +41 and Patrick Harvie for God's sake on +19. This poll also shows that the Brexitrage bounce has been negligible and a small spontaneous June blip has declined to 48% for separation - presumably with some of the Brexitrage factor still to work its way out. Derek MacKay came up with a real belter on this 48% for separation. He said that this was within the error of the poll so the real figure was probably around 50-50. Quite alarming, isn't it, that the SNP finance secretary's numerical skills are so limited that he doesn't understand that errors work in BOTH directions! So "material change" since September 2014 falls into two categories. POLITICALLY the SNP has lost its Holyrood majority, its leader's popularity is going rapidly downhill, Maw and Paw Sturgeon coming unstuck at their local Cooncil elections and it emerges that the Brexit vote has had more or less no effect on opinions on a second referendum which a significant majority don't want. They are also caught between the rock of consistently negative polls and the hard place of the Bravehearters desperate for another bash. Then ECONOMICALLY we've had the terminal collapse of oil, back to back £15bn GERS deficits, and any separate, Barnetless Scotland trying to get into the EU to create a hard border with non-EU England which, in contrast with the EU, holds they key to 65% of its trade. "Material change" indeed!

Now, now CMIB! My Natbashing is no more persistent than their own legendary Tory- and Westminster-bashing, or indeed their incessant campaign to con us into a re-run despite what they were firmly told two years ago. As I've said in the past - look at it in terms of these Colditz prisoners disposing of their razor blades in the German pigswill. Every little helps.

As a Ross MP he presumably would be unlikely to be a visitor here so is probably unaware of your political views - otherwise you'd have had no chance! In his reply, which Westmimster department did he blame as a matter of interest?

Does your mummy know you've been posting your passport photo online?

Well I would if I could because that looks to me like an admirable way of getting these wee neds to shut up!

Johndo - once your audition for Still Game is over, maybe you should bow to the inevitable and come to terms with the fact that you will very soon be 60!

I trust the "94" isn't a reference to your year of birth, since your rather simplistic conception of what constitutes football support would seem to indicate the maturity level of an adolescent far below the age of 22.

You'd better watch out, Row S. These wee neds have Human Rights, don't you know, and taking photos of their anti-social and possibly criminal behaviour may have invaded their right to privacy. Then there's the danger you may face of being locked up and placed on the Sex Offenders' Register for taking photographs of minors.

There are some rather unfortunate views in there which I quite frankly find to be misguided. To say that boys in their mid teens "don't know any better yet" with regard to how to behave in public is nonsense. If they are such poor, naïve little souls and still so uninitiated in the ways of the word then what on earth are their parents doing letting them go to a football match, never mind one 100 miles away in a large city, unsupervised? You can't have your cake and eat it. Either they should know how to behave or they shouldn't be there unsupervised. This apology for them is rather like saying that it's OK for an dog to attack somebody in a public park because it's just a dog. What we are looking at here (and this is backed up by a personal account from Row S) are what are commonly known in education, and especially in staffrooms, as "Wee Sh*tes". (Don't succumb to the offence culture - this is pretty standard educational usage.) Then there's the apparent suggestion that the most essential thing in football is people making a noise and that doing so seems to justify any other collateral anti-social behaviours. Vocal support cannot be drummed up at any cost. There also seems to be this rather simplistic assumption about - it's appeared in several other threads before - that noisy football fans are somehow more "virtuous" than others. This is equally nonsensical. If people pay their money to go to a football match then, as long as their behaviour isn't illegal, offensive or detracting from the enjoyment of others, then they should be able to behave as they wish - and that also includes remaining silent should they so desire. And finally.... "Young team is the future of fans for the club". God preserve us!

Mmm... it maybe is, but in practice I suspect what they will do is to have this "conversation" among themselves and hence come up with the answer they want - as I said earlier, rather like Buenos Hornell's 1993 Courier survey. One of the main factors behind the large increase in SNP membership is that, following the complete implosion of Labour, they have inherited a lot of "Pure Deid Bilin', Pittenweem" types who seem to need some kind of a grievance to keep them going so have converted instead to The Cause. In fact, half of them are probably Westminster MPs by now. This, of course, is serious grist to the Party Central mill since these are JUST the kind of whingers, moaners and Little Scotlanders they are looking for. In one respect at least. Because the down side is the zeal of the recently converted. This kind of Facepainter is also just the kind that's mindlessly demanding "INDYREF2 NOW". Their problem is that the more astute within the SNP (I'm sure they have at least some!) are realising that the only "material change" that's taken place since September 2014 is that a large number of factors, frequently recorded on here, have actually torn the backside completely out of any feeble case they ever had in the first place.

Set yourself the 3 minute challenge Westhill... just to make it a little more interesting. The idea is that you try to annoy the hell out of them so much (usually just by talking common sense) that, within 3 minutes, you have them jumping up and down on your doorstep bellowing FREEDOM! On the other hand, you may not actually get the "pleasure" of a visit from them - especially if you are known to them as a non-supporter of The Cause. That's because, in order to get the outcome they want, they will as far as possible simply (a word I use advisedly) have a discussion among their own chaps and try to pass that off as "the will of the Scottish People". Mind you, if they do hold any of their promised Town Hall Meetings it could be good fun popping along just to annoy the various Cybernats and associated knuckledraggers who are bound to be there in numbers. In fact, once the score reaches 5-1 for common sense, we can then probably sit watching them trash the Town Hall toilets. PS - just been away and done their "survey". A joke indeed! I just took the p!ss.... but I'm now really worried that I'll be blacklisted and they'll make sure I don't get a visit from any Bravehearters looking for a "conversation".

The real concern is that, on this genuine international platform as opposed to the County Council which is Holyrood, this bunch of immature cretins will be taken by the rest of the world as representative of Scottish people in general. One further concern is that Grady and Monaghan may be publicly identified as former pupils of Inverness Royal Academy. I mean the "Rough Boys" from the High School never produced total roasters like this!

All I can say is that the last paragraph there doesn't seem to square with the regularly heard observation over a period of years that the main hospitality suite is not occupied on a number of match days.

But unlike you, Caleyboy, I am merely recording observations and relating perceptions as opposed to complaining.

That seems to suggest an alarming degree of fatalism! I would feel more comfortable hearing that urgent efforts are ongoing to create the kind of demand which seems to have been very consistent at Ross County for many years. Whilst not knowing the precise extent of that lack of demand or how occasional full cancellation is, the general perception out there seems to be that the lack of demand is considerable. This is turn may create a self fulfilling prophecy since people may be less likely to want to take up hospitality under these circumstances.

Green dot!!!! But we really shouldn't be laughing. This balloon is getting paid £75K a year to waste the time and money of the nation's supreme legislative forum with puerile nonsense like this. In any normal job outside politics, that would be a sacking offence. Being a cheerleader for 54 inept comedians doesn't really fit the job description.

I remember the clown who put down this early day motion when he was a pupil at Inverness Royal Academy! He was a raging, rabid nat even when he was a kid and seems to have regressed since then. http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2016-17/393 It's idiots like Patrick Grady and his pals that make you ashamed to be Scottish. If Grady finds a pressing need to put down an Early Day Motion he should go to the toilet first thing like everybody else. There he will doubtless produce material which will be more than familiar to himself and his fellow members of the 56, 55, 54. On which subject, I notice that numbers 56 and 55, are signatories of this motion along with 22 of their SNP former chums plus one lunatic from each of the Tories, DUP and Labour Party. Inevitably the arch-attention seeker Salmond is in there. This episode does, however, give a revealing insight into what goes on in the heads of nationalist inadequates like Grady and the crass immaturity which they have so clearly failed to shake off. Against their better judgement and largely for lack of too many alternatives, the people of Scotland elected these fools to represent them with respect to vital national functions. The manner in which they persistently behave is therefore grossly insulting to most of the population of Scotland whom they represent and is typical of the contempt in which these nationalists hold the people who have been misguided enough to vote for them.

Worked for the City Council did he?

Yes, for a country more reputed for its Navy, two World Wars certainly played their part in boosting the influence of the Army, such as through these cadets and the incredibly long time that drill survived alongside the promotion of religion in the Boys' Brigade.

I think what I did was to ask if there was room to expand revenues from match day hospitality? I don't know whether this is true or whether it is an urban myth, but I frequently hear it said that the Kingsmills Suite can often be an available nook since it is either very thinly occupied or there is no hospitality there at all for some games.

I always thought that the Boys' Brigade, with their captains, corporals and sergeants believed they were still guarding the Empire while the Scouts, with their District and Area Commissioners, believed they were still ruling it. In reality too, the Boys' Brigade did tend to be more of a working class movement with a strong presence in council housing schemes whereas the Scouts always tended to be rather more middle class.

These drill competitions, and indeed drill in general, always baffled me. I just couldn't see the point of performing random mass manoeuvres designed to get pre-mechanised troops from previous centuries into lines and squares in response to somebody shouting very loud at you. It was totally out of date but the argument was that it instilled "discipline" - in other words responding to commands without thinking too much. I suspect that, in the church based Boys' Brigade, a sub-agenda may well have been also getting Boys (capital B) to conform to religious diktats without thinking too much about that either. I have frequently thought that, although there was a lot of good in the Boys' Brigade, there was also an element of an establishment - both political and religious - ploy to ensure that the lower orders knew their place in life and conformed to that. Another "opium of the people". Drill was utterly pointless and out of date but you still had to pass exams on this nonsense before you could aspire to the Boys' Brigade's premier award The Queen's Badge (King's Badge to you Jock). Mind you until the several generations of officers who had done military service of some kind or another worked their way through the system, I suspect that those in charge looked back on all this mindless stamping and shouting with a degree of bizarre nostalgia.

I had a good laugh when I opened the Courier this morning. No, not Drew Hendry's or Fergus Ewing's column this time, but the paper's fairly long-running poll on whether Nicola should take a second, post-Brexit visit to the bookies. For weeks, support for this daft wheeze had rattled around, but generally in a downward drift, within the 28-30% bracket. Then the Nats announce their "conversation" and the number suddenly jumps up to 48%. Now, today, it's at 61%. Clearly a great deal of Cybernattery has been invested in saltire-painted keyboards and lion rampant mice in an instant response to the edict of Party Central. This, of course, also gives us a pretty clear insight into what this "conversation" really is. Nats going out to collect the opinions mainly of fellow Nats about having another bite at the cherry. Then, on St Andrew's Day (cheesiness of cheesinesses!) and, as somebody has suggested, at that cradle of the grievance culture which is Glenfinnan, they will announce that "the people of Scotland" overwhwelmingly want yet another divisive referendum. I'm not actually sure this is what Nicola planned since she very possibly is quite aware that the backside has fallen out of everything so a second bet on the Separation Stakes may not be a great idea. However she has possibly come up with this "conversation" wheeze as a means of keeping the Bravehearters and Facepainters thinking they were doing something for "the cause" and ultimately tumbling to the bleeding obvious in the course of that. However if they are only going to have this "conversation" among their own chums, what do you do when you get a result which is almost as absurd as Buenos Hornell's 1993 Courier survey claiming that, among a local population largely totally uninterested in Thistle and Caley, 83% were rabidly against a merger of the two? In a situation where the Nats only need to con and antagonise 50% +1 of the electorate into becoming ballotbox fodder for them on just one occasion of their choosing, they simply can't be allowed to keep inventing excuses in the hope of getting lucky once and condemning Scots to confusion and poverty for all time.

Indeed one very conspicuous feature of the photo is the waste land between St Valery Ave and the canal which we always knew as "The back o' Kavvies'" (for some reason rather than "The back o' Der's" One other resident of that junction was Dallas Fraser whom I was with playing in the foundations of the St Margaret's/St Mungo "new" houses when they were being built in the early 60s. Dallas fell on a foundation beam and badly burst his lip and I remember having to run the 300 yards to his house to get his mother. Then there was Ronnie Mitchell's mum who I think worked in Salvadori's, The Bankses, MacBeans, Mr Fraser the Hilton Headmaster, Bill Shand the future Firemaster a bit further down, the Camerons (Brian is no longer with us but Vic is still on the go). Happy times indeed.... including all those hours spent at "The back o' Kavvies'" playing football or cricket, re-fighting WW2, building the bonfire, "guarding" it in case boys from the Ferry came to create a premature conflagration and jumping from garage roof to garage roof.

Nah, I just happened to be watching The Italian Job on TV the other day.