Charles Bannerman

Col... it was the SNP who "invaded Poland" on that one. They were the ones who, from the 1970s, continually flooded us with "It's Scotland's Oil" sloganizing and used alleged oil wealth as the cornerstone of their campaign for separation. Alex Salmond absolutely savaged a Labour MSP at Holyrood for doubting his dogma of the centrality of oil revenues to the separation case and it played a massive part in the nonsense the plied us with up to September 2014. I am sure Salmond has no intention of apologising since, despite being an apology for a politician, he doesn't do apologising. Since then, the backside has fallen out of the oil myth - as it always was going to do - and suddenly the SNP throw into the bin what they have been shouting for 40 years and dismiss oil as "a bonus". What the current GERS figures show is that, without the "here today, gone tomorrow" of oil - on which they based a case for separation forever - Scotland spends £15 billion a year more than it earns, irrespective of the £1.9 bn "non oil" improvement which only amounts to a tiny fraction of an intractable problem. I don't see why the GERS figures should be conveniently ignored when they tell us something the SNP doesn't want us to know. The media are no more than telling us the truth by quoting numbers which, without their vigilance, the SNP would go to the ends of the earth to conceal just like everything else that doesn't suit their single policy dogma. Indeed we don't know how Brexit is going to impact us... but that didn't stop Sturgeon's fantasy economics on Tuesday. But what we DO know is that Scotland is currently running a deficit larger than your average banana republic but is preserved from the consequences by being part of the UK.

Sack Foran! Appoint Sturgeon!!

DD I'm afraid I'm going to have to take minor issue with you here! If the "case" is "discredited", that would appear to suggest that at some point in the past it did have some credit or credibility. However I am very much of the view that it never had a vestige of either of these in the first place. It's just that events which have unfolded since September 2014 have exposed the Nats unsubstantiated(able) and optimistic burblings even more starkly for the nonsense they always have been and also shown that what they tried so hard to brand "Project Fear" was nothing more than very legitimate caution on the part of the Believers in Britain. It would be a fascinating exercise in video journalism to select a range of clips of people like Salmond, Sturgeon and the rest of the Nat Pack holding forth, pre-referendum, with all this disingenuous bollox and intercutting these with a similar variety of post-referendum news clips about the plunge in the oil price, unemployment in the oil industry, the plight of Aberdeen, the absolutely dire GERS figures for both succeeding years. You could also throw in admissions from various former SNP spin doctors that what they were saying, and especially the White Paper, was really pie in the sky. The Nats had been desperately hoping for a surge in support after the Brexit vote but this simply hasn't happened. Indeed what is far, far more likely is that the 44.7 will start defecting to the side of sanity at a rate of knots, now it is becoming clear that Scotland on its own would be an even worse economic basket case than Greece. On the basis of these numbers I just can't see the EU touching this politically fractious new state with an economy of which most banana republics would be thoroughly ashamed, and therein lies the fundamental fallacy in Wee Nicola's city-hopping tour. The chances of a separate Scotland getting into the EU with finances as catastrophic as that are minimal - the EU does have standards to maintain after all - and even if it did, the accompanying fiscal requirements would make Greece look like a picnic. And it's at this point that you wonder what would happen when it dawned on the SNP's core support that the price of getting into the EU was the slashing and butchering of their benefits..... PS - looks as if the CTO Natpack are still out somewhere purchasing their latest consignment of red ink.

Looks like I'm going to have to wait until the AGM then to find out who Caleyboy is!

.....which today tell us "another year, another £15 billion black hole". http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-37167975 Scotland has a per capita shortfall in its public spending more than TWICE that of the UK which is therefore subsidising us to a pretty whacking extent. Thank God for the Barnett Formula. And of course, "It's Skintland's Oil".... aye, all £60 million worth of revenue - a whacking, and now terminal slump of NINETY SEVEN PER CENT! So what price the SNP's Second Oil Boom? $113 a barrel? I somehow don't think so! So what's Wee Nicola saying to all this? First Minister Nicola Sturgeon insisted the "foundations of the Scottish economy remain strong". She added: "The lower oil price has, of course, reduced offshore revenues, with a corresponding impact on our fiscal position - this underlines the fact that Scotland's challenge is to continue to grow our onshore economy." OK so she kicks off with the standard SNP unsubstantiated assertion, then quietly dodges the fact that the oil industry is terminally knackered before finishing with a statement of the bleeding obvious that all economies should be trying to do all the time. The only trouble is that we can't grow ours because the only thing Superwoman and her chums are interested in growing is the Brexit Grievance, to which end she is too busy instead grovelling for interviews with minor EU apparatchiks in sundry European capitals. So there you have it - hard, official Government figures which show how badly the SCOTTISH economy DID ACTUALLY perform... far more relevant than yesterday's optimistic tosh about how much money the SNP actually THOUGHT (I should say HOPED) MIGHT be lost as a result of Brexit and a complete smokescreen from the real problem which is just one of many that they are continually refusing to address due to a quite "separate" fixation. And once again, amid all this "summer surge for independence" where, apart from the odd inane and irrelevant one liner, are all our local and formerly very voluble Nats who used to have plenty to say?

This is just standard SNP disingenuous bollox! Yes, 62% voted to remain but go about Scotland today and you really won't find people jumping up and down complaining about the way things have turned out. It's not a hot topic of conversation in pubs and cafes and certainly not the hot topic of grievance which the SNP would like to make it. All the appearances are that a lot of this 62% aren't really *rsed either way and in fact the strongest opinions that I hear are those of fishermen and farmers saying they are absolutely delighted to be shot of the EU. This is because powers over agriculture and fishing will now come back home - specifically to the Scottish Executive who therefore appear to be saying that they don't want these powers and would prefer that they reside in Brussels. Bizarre! The only people who are jumping up and down about any of this are the SNP because they think it represents their best chance of a grievance. That in itself is pretty ironic because the SNP used to be rabidly anti-European - until they came up with the wheeze of the slogan "Independence In Europe" so they changed their tune... as they tend to do with any issue if they think it will benefit their efforts to achieve their only policy. I do realise that Wee Nicola has got the Braveheart Wing to appease, but all this nonsense about a second Neverendum is quite simply and unnecessarily prolonging uncertainty which should have ended when they got the bum's rush in September 2014. I do seem to remember that several months ago there was great sound and fury about some "summer push for independence" - which seems to have amounted to a couple of statements that a second referendum was "highly likely". I suppose that's the minimum she feels she can put on the table in order to keep the Bravehearters quiet and to avoid a riot in the Gelluns on a Saturday night. The reality is that Wee Nicola is bricking her tartan knickers at the thought of Neverendum2 because there's not a shred of evidence that they would be any more likely to win it than #1, and that's before brutal realities such as the collapse of oil and a hard border at Gretna are examined in detail. As for their economic claims, various economists have been on during the day rubbishing the whole thing on the grounds that nobody who understands economics actually knows.... so what chance does the SNP have? There have also been some pretty heavy suggestions that this whole thing is just an attempted pre-emptive strike in advance of the GERS figures - and by that I don't mean P3 W2 D1 Pts 7.... I mean the expected forthcoming economic revelation that Scotland's economy is highly and increasingly dependent on being bailed out by the rest of the UK. But hey.... where are all the Nats that used to be so voluble on here? DD, myself and one or two other Believers in Britain are really missing hearing what the view is from the other side of the fence. Maybe they're all away celebrating Team GB's medals.... especially the 14 out of 17 that Scots won in partnership with team mates from elsewhere in the UK?

Oh well, there's one who rose to the bait

"Place of origin" at these major championships is always a nightmare. For instance the swimmer Stephen Milne has been listed as "from Inverness" but moved to Perth whilst a toddler and learned to swim there. Inverness also gets far more credit than it is due because loads of team members over the years from all over the Highlands have been brought into Inverness to be born at Raigmore. One of the GB marathon runners is a Eritrean refugee while the hurdler Tiffany Porter is effectively American and her sister runs for the USA. If you looked closely, you would also have seen all manner of hues and pigments competing in the vests of Norway, Denmark etc etc. Maybe Wee Nicola has been panicking about losing lots and lots of what they hope would be future Scolympians due to repatriation and that's why they've been combing the ranks of their supporters for disgruntled Germans and hard done by Gaelic speaking Australians to stand up and make a fuss when they are told to do so, just to keep the grievance factor going. I wonder if they have been as scrupulous about seeking out any English who perceive themselves to have been disadvantaged by Brexit and immigration rules?

That's my take as well. There are (at least?) two grounds on which the stats presented need to be questioned. 1 - As HTG says you can't compare two averages like that. You at least need to know squad sizes. 25 players at 50K = 1.25M but 20 players at 60K = only 1.2M... bigger average, smaller total. Then even squad size will fluctuate during the season. 2 - And you don't know how accurate the numbers contributing to these ambiguous figures are in the first place. I'm rather surprised that STV claim to have total knowledge of all the Premiership clubs' wage bills.

What Caley Thistle's budget is RELATIVE to St J's, be that in reality or by way of dodgy stats, is completely irrelevant. What matters is Caley Thistle's budget in ABSOLUTE terms. St J's financial arrangements, which we don't know, have no bearing whatsoever on the cash available to Richie Foran. I just can't believe that such a meal is being made here of the basic fact that you simply can't spirit money out of nowhere!

Intriguing that STV seems to know more about ICT's wages than the shareholders do, since these aren't even detailed in the club's accounts. Then there's the Ross County figure of EXACTLY (!) £36,000. What on earth has that club been doing with its money if it's needed millions written off by Roy MacGregor and STILL pays thousands a year less than anyone else?? You should never believe everything the media tell you!

Sorry if this latest dose of hard facts "talks Scotland down", but the final Rio reckoning tells us that Scottish competitors have won 4 gold, 11 silver and 2 bronze from a total of 13 events. However, of these medals 3 gold, 10 silver and 1 bronze came from teams and combinations with team mates drawn from the 55 million people in the rest of the UK - teams and combinations which, even in the unlikely event of separate all-Scottish equivalents even qualifying and/or being funded to go to Rio, would have been highly unlikely to have been good enough to win medals. Take as an example Eilidh Doyle winning a bronze medal as part of Team GB's women's 4 x 400m relay team. Had she instead been part of a Scottish team then the athletes' times indicate that Team Scolympia would not only have failed to win a medal, not only failed to reach the final but would have had the slowest time by over two seconds in the heats. In practice, it would never have got near the Games in the first place. So when you remove all those medals that Scots won because they were part of GB in team events, you are left with Andy Murray's tennis gold, Callum Skinner's cycle sprint silver and Sally Conway's judo bronze. And of these, we have to wonder how Skinner and Conway would have fared if they had not had UK training facilities and backup based outwith Scotland. In short, a separate Team Scolympia would have lost 80% of the medals that Scots won with Team GB so - especially when you look at this alongside the state of "independent" Scottish football - the term "Better Together" does rather tend to come to mind!

So what is the ICT player wage bill, and what is the source of that figure?

On the first point - even if they do, that's money which doesn't therefore have to come from other club sources for youth development. On the second - it might be an idea to try to get the Kingsmills Suite working at full capacity first.

I wonder if you would have taken a similar view of some complete layman sounding off about treatment of the mentally ill of Lancashire?

Caleyboy - you just don't seem to get it! Once again you seem to be falling into the trap of expecting the people who run the club in their own time to go out fundraising so you can purchase a product which you consider to meet your satisfaction at a price which is round about half what that product costs to produce. As it happens, the board already in many ways go above and beyond the economic realities and are even found, for instance, running car boot sales so you can partake of cut price football. There may indeed be some ways in which traditional revenue streams could be spruced up. For instance I understand that match day hospitality could be extended, but the overwhelming consideration is that the board finds itself running a company in a totally artificial market. There simply isn't enough demand for the product at prices dictated by the wage requirements of the company's employees. When this happens in the real world, you don't find the directors of Marks and Spencer, Tesco etc rushing about organising car boot sales etc so their customers can buy their products at a fraction of what they cost to produce. At Caley Thistle, you do. That's because in football there seems to be this expectation that other people will either make efforts to bridge the monetary gap on the consumers' behalf or subsidise the loss from their own pockets. If you want to see a better product at ICT, which has lived a charmed financial life so far, what are YOU prepared to do about it? In order to meet wage demands which are way above what the market can realistically sustain, would you be prepared to pay more at the gate for a superior product or go or help with the car boots sales? (Maybe you do - I don't know.) Football's fundamental problem is that players are paid far more than their realistic market value and until that situation is resolved, this kind of thing will continue to be commonplace. So much for the board. Now the management. It also seems from this thread that spectators have been so busy watching in detail the body language of Foran and Rice in the technical area that they can't have been able to watch the game at all. Either that or what we have been seeing are completely anecdotal and random "observations", with the individual's own spin on them, which have actually been contradicted by others who were also at the game. What business is it of people making such observations as to how the professionals charged with running the team go about doing so in detail? What has it to do with them whether Richie Foran jumps up and down waving his arms about or adopts an entirely different body language? That's Foran's business and nobody else's - irrespective of how strong the belief of these observers is that they know far better than experienced football professionals about how to run a team. It's maybe time for understanding that you don't solve football problems by throwing money at them or shouting loudly.

CaleyCol - you almost make it sound as if the SNP are some kind of decent chaps who can be reasoned with or some kind of reconciliation arrived at! The reality is that they are utterly uncompromising in their pursuit of the only thing that matters to them and will pursue the single outcome the loaded system says they need by any means or deception they can come up with. As a result they need stood up to and exposed for what they are, especially to the poor souls who have been conned and deluded into supporting them. They have suppressed criticism and opposition through the bullyboy tactics of the Cybernats and allied cranks of which there is no shortage in their ranks. We must therefore take every opportunity to stand up for what the majority of the Scottish electorate have already told the SNP they believe in. Indeed we would by now have achieved much of the reconciliation you seek if the SNP had accepted the democratic will of the Scottish people they CLAIM to champion.

Just as I'm going to whisper the revelation that Cybernattery is actually a vote loser because I wouldn't therefore want them to give it up, I'm also going to whisper this one.... I really don't see the point of all this faux-offence because I think they already have the votes of all the people who are dim enough to be taken in by it. Faux-offence is very much a law of diminishing returns and the more of its bandwagons they jump on whilst continuing to allow the functions devolved to them to disintegrate, the more likely they are instead to antagonise many of their supporters with half a brain enough to see through the con trick. It is therefore a vote loser... but I wouldn't want them to tumble to that one! But really, all this posturing and dashing off to various European destinations for interviews with token, reluctant minor foreign officials is becoming a complete joke. I'm not actually sure whether she does it to build up an expectation which they then hope will be "cruelly dashed" or whether she has actually inherited some of her predecessor's delusions of grandeur.

You are dead right 12th man. I'm sure somebody from Hearts would come up with some reason not to sell match day tickets but, at a time when Scottish football is desperate to get fans through its gates, this does seem like something of an unwanted complication. It's not as if you had to book in advance because grounds are going to be sold out. There also seems to be a strange irony that Hearts are scrapping a link in the ticket selling chain here in the form of match day cashpoints whereas ICT(POTH) have put in an extra one in the form of the pre-turnstile sales points. (That's not a judgmental statement and merely illustrates a contrast.)

This is merely scratching the surface of the problem and shifting it about to different parts of Inverness. It's all the jakies and junkies that need tackled. How, I'm not entirely sure but soft touch isn't the answer. Yes, I know I'm beginning to sound like Silver Surfer, Cabbie and Reliant Robin who contribute so regularly to what I call the "Care in the Community Column" beside the letters in the Courier, but they are being far too soft on anti social behaviour. On the other hand, the article doesn't make it all that clear whether is jakies and junkies or tourists that are the problem.

It appears to have its roots in a fundamental fallacy which has underpinned much of SNP dogma for a very long time. The fallacy is that the starting point for justifying separation is the presumption that separation is a good and sound idea. It's a bit like supporting an assertion that your ship will fall off the edge of the earth once go get to the Bahamas by assuming that the earth is flat. We saw quite a lot of this kind of illogical thinking on here during the 2014 referendum debates where the separatists would try to build a case that separation was good based on the assumption that separation is good. You can, of course, see where this comes from because a large number of Nats are incapable of perceiving the world in terms other than a separate Scotland being good. As a result, when fundamental and often quite obvious weaknesses in the notion of a separate Scotland are pointed out, since the "Scotland good" dogma is taken as a "given" which is immune from challenge, any such challenge is therefore rejected in the form of the vastly overused and mindless cliche "talking Scotland down". In fact it's more or less in the same category as that 1950s McCarthyism "un-American activities". For instance, suggesting that investing most of your cash into sending fleets of ships to sell bibles and beads to the Central American Indians of Darien in the 1690s was actually a pretty obviously naff idea is a good example of what Nats call "talking Scotland down". It was a Scottish idea which could not therefore be totally naff, so the only way it could have bombed so spectacularly was that it was sabotaged by the English..... or Westminster by more modern nationalist convention. Note also, therefore, the link directly to the Nationalist Grievance Culture. Similarly, if the cliché had existed back in 1978, it would also have been applied to those of us who were somewhat sceptical of Ally McLeod's assertion that Scotland was going to "win the World Cup". More recently, doubting $113 a barrel has come into the same category. Regarding sport, what an excellent allegory it is for the current political situation! In combination with their team mates from the rest of the UK, Scottish sportspeople are currently enjoying and participating in an unprecedented run of success which places their Team GB among the best in the world. Then, in wild contrast, you look at the "independent" entity of Scottish football - failed, inept, with a chip on shoulder inferiority complex and utterly unable to compete in its location right next door to a much larger and much more successful market of which it is no part.

Oh well, if you're happy to rate Scotland's sporting prospects alongside those of Iran and Chinese Taipei who also currently have 3 medals....... "Talking Scotland down" - I really do love that inane cliche which Nats trot out when someone illustrates a reality which rubbishes and exposes their hyperoptimistic, propagandist "$113 a barrel" overstatements.

It's all down to what economists call "elasticity of demand" which is how extremely or otherwise purchase levels respond to change in price. With some products, demand will increase rapidly as you reduce the price (elastic) and with others the change will be much less (inelastic). One of the factors influencing this will be how the quality of the product is perceived. Income = number of units sold x unit price and in order to maximise income you need to adopt the price on the elasticity of demand curve which produces most from that number x price product. It would be interesting to get detailed figure on the elasticity of demand for SPFL Premiership football, but clubs have no option but to maximise income. This is especially the case when operating costs are artificially high - such as when a player market that doesn't reflect economic reality.

The thread title says "Better Together?" Well looking at this story.... http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/scotland/37076734 ....the answer would appear to be "Definitely!" As I write (7pm Sunday... I say that in case there are changes to the linked text as events unfold), 16 Scottish performers in Rio have won, or are guaranteed, medals in a total of 12 events. However of that 16, only THREE are in individual events. The other 13 are in vital combination in GB teams with people from elsewhere in the UK. If Salmond had achieved his "Independence Day" back in March then Team Scolympia would have produced only a poor shadow of that. For a start, Scotland would have neither have been able to raise nor afford Scottish combinations in most of these events and where it could, medal prospects would have been infinitely less without this vital partnership from across the entire UK. So, far from winning medals, most of that 16 would never even have got as far as Rio in the first place in Team Scolympia. Football is different. You just have to assemble your 11 guys plus subs and you field them, however downright poor they are, but this mediocrity is still persisted with. The Olympics are different. You have to be really good even to get there and a small country like Scotland could neither finance nor even find teams of a sufficient standard. Team Scolympia would therefore be tiny and in particular it would be devoid of the combinations like rowing eights and relay teams where Scottish performers in Rio have enjoyed great success - because they have been part of that larger and far more viable unit. And all of that is before you consider how many top Scottish sports people benefit from GB training facilities which are overwhelmingly in England - facilities which would no longer be available to prospective Scolympians. Indeed I'm just a bit mystified as to why the media keep stressing about how many "Scottish" medals there have been. Like the Brexit vote, what happens in Rio is the product of the single unit which is Great Britain. So Rio does rather nicely encapsulate the Better Together principle.

This idea reminds me of this.... http://www.igf.org/ ... and even that seems to be changing its title to retain any credibility at all. The Society for the Relief of Indigent Gentlewomen of Scotland was basically set up to subsidise posh women of the upper classes who hadn't found a man to support them but who also considered it below their status to get a job. Believe it or not, people of lesser means actually paid money into this fund so that daughters of chinless wonders, many of whose ancestors had acquired their status by cheating, stabbing and fornicating their way into positions of wealth and influence, didn't have to get off their backsides and get a job. The notion is absolutely obscene! On yer bike darlin'! However it is being replicated in uncanny fashion here where ordinary working people are being asked to fork out money - which could otherwise be used to buy books, sports centre memberships or a new bike for their kids - to subsidise the wages of footballers whose salary expectations vastly exceed their crowd pulling ability. And even when folk do have genuinely spare money, would that not be much better pointed in the direction of genuine charities helping people in need. To be honest, it seems even more bizarre that the targeted group in the football context should be people who don't actually attend matches and who therefore stand to gain even less from their generosity. Let's be realistic. The 10,000 who attended the 2015 Cup Final over and above relatively regular ICT fans only had a passing interest in this club. Consequently they are looking for no more than their single day of glory so strike me as less likely than most to part with money for nothing in order to subsidise the wages of players who earn far more than they do themselves for a much shorter working week. I know this sounds a bit Thatcherite, but it's maybe time that a bit of financial Darwinism descended on football.