Charles Bannerman

And if I am perceived as Nat bashing then that is possibly a reflection of my longstanding realisation that, in Scotland, the Nats are actually the problem and the threat to the future happiness and prosperity of us all, so need to be stood up to. Quite frankly, the outcome of the EU referendum is of modest significance compared with the decisive outcome of the September 2014 referendum, which the Nats are now desperate to overturn before their rapidly deflating bubble finally disappears. As for "pro Europeans in Scotland", I'm actually not all that sure that the Nats really fall into that category. I think their stance is "right lads - what EU result is best for the only thing we are capable of thinking about? Reckon it must be 'Scotland in - Rest of UK out' ...so we'll just say we're 'inners' and maybe get a few more Scottish votes that way and then we can get righteously indignant and offended if the Rest of the UK says 'out'." Please don't be deluded into the belief that the Nats are pro-European. Apart from the fact that many of them are actually anti, this is merely a side issue for them to try to exploit. Meanwhile, just like the previous questions of currency and oil revenues, they fail to give us satisfactory answers about why they whinge about powers resting with Westminster whilst claiming to support powers resting with Brussels. Oil revenues! I was reminded of what a damp squib these are by reports that the public purse is to make a net LOSS on oil of £39m. It was away back in the 70s that the Nats started telling us that "It's Scotland's Oil" - so if that's the case, then maybe the £39m loss should be taken out of Holyrood's block grant? Alternatively it could perhaps come from The 113 Dollar Man's royalties for Mein Banff. So maybe Alex was right after all about Grand Theft Auto being worth more than the oil!

So if they don't want to subscribe to the normal customs and practices of football, why was so much bending over backwards done in 2012 to accommodate them within the Scottish leagues?

Better still, how about just appointing someone out of the North or Main stand? There seem to be plenty in there who regularly know far better than any professionally qualified manager.

Oh well... with a name like Brendan that presumably ticks the box for being "Celtic Minded"!

Not when, just as the last time this happened in around 2007, people were seriously claiming fifth place whilst in the bottom six.

In other words conveniently ignoring the fact that Caley Thistle only had bottom six counterparts to play in the last five games while two of the teams placed "below" them had the more successful top six clubs to contend with.

Maybe that was what the "Yes2" comedians I saw last Friday were all about... except in the back of a Transit. At a time when their bubble is deflating with increasing speed, it's all the more necessary to keep their a*ses to the fire which, like any form of contradiction or challenge, they DO not like. And that's not only because the true Scotsmen and women they think they are will feel the heat all the more intensely. Hang on a minute, do all these tales of Panty Hosiery's MandS Y-fronts not therefore reveal that the Deputy Leader isn't even a True Scotsman? But to return to fires and holding Nationalist a*ses to them. Their electoral position, as shown a fortnight ago and despite all the hyperbole about "stunning victories", is now weaker than it was back in 2011. There has been yet another reshuffle in a desperate attempt to get to work the powers they shout about but which they neglect due to fixation with their singular obsession. And the 55, 54, 53 (???)..... continue to disgrace and embarrass the Scotland they claim to personify.

Ah! I see! A further separation referendum by stealth is now no more of an issue than oil being worth less than Grand Theft Auto. Now would that perhaps be because the Bravehearters are all instead wired into their DVDs of the latest SNP Bonkbuster? Free pair of MandS Y-front panty Hosiery with every pint of Scottish Bitter during this weekend's Gelluns Happy Hour?

So I see, post-election, and after a couple of conspicuous duffers obligingly jumped ship, the Scottish Nookie Party has been rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. The only surprise about Angela Constance is that she's been given another job, with John Swinney now becoming their latest attempt to make education work. There must have been one or two fair bricking their Saltire branded MandS Y-fronts before that reshuffle! However, the vital question remains unaltered - when are the SNP and their ministers actually going to start concentrating on running our services rather than continuing to obsess about their monolithic agenda and another referendum?

I'm not raising any issues, merely pointing out an error of fact in that sellouts at the Caledonian Stadium have never been other than very rare. Otherwise, I'll simply take the quoted observation as coming from the same stable as the notion that so called "sweetie rustlers" are not true football fans.

Apologies, the "any" came from Givemeacccc. But in general terms, there were a few OF games early on which attracted capacity crowds and that's more or less been it. Difficulty getting a home ticket for an ICT home game has historically been extremely rare so it's not really valid to raise this as an attendance issue.

You said "ANY league or cup game" as opposed to specific visits of the Old Firm in the very earliest years of SPL membership.

Can't say I can remember them ever having been here in the first place! Methinks you are relying somewhat on 20-20 retrospective vision through decidedly rose coloured spectacles!

Along similar lines - John Rankin.... Don Cowie.... Stuart Golabek..... Andrew Barrowman...... to name but a few. Pot, kettle, black?

Having now read a report in the PandJ it seems more probable that they were stocking up for the equally sad and pointless pursuit of a weekend procession of flag flying Separatist vehicles making a bloody nuisance of themselves touring round the NC 500, which now has local businesses worrying that if any other groups of cranks and nutters latch on to this idea, it may adversely affect the tourist trade. Appropriately, the photo caption refers to the separatist procession as proceeding along a section of the route called "Destitution Road"!

Well apart from there being nobody else in the shop looking as correspondingly ridiculous as the van itself, seeing them get back into it as I drove away did seem to be a pretty decent, albeit fairly unnecessary, clue.

Interesting bit of Old Firm thinking there - if you are not one of our suppprters, you must be one of THEM!

Many will also remember the harbingers of doom who believed that there was no life possible beyond David Bingham. Football clubs are resilient things and, hydra like, tend to produce fresh heads in abundance if any are cut off.

Scoobies - who was Billy Urquhart's father in law - was a BB legend. As Battalion Adjutant he was responsible for getting parades into order at Washington Court (roughly where Markies' male fitting rooms are now, but upstairs.) Scoobs had a regular admonition to fidgets - "Stop gu'ereen!"

You mean you actually LIKE loads of scaffolding about the place? Anyway.... whoever heard of a negative account of a pantomime?

There was a great bit of free cabaret in Morrisons this afternoon. As I was parking, I noticed, in the Parent and Child spaces, this beaten up old white Transit plastered with various stickers and with two flagpoles - one sporting a large lion rampant and the other a large saltire with "Yes2" inscribed on it. "Here we go!" I thought. And indeed, on entering the shop, I was not at all surprised to see this posse of what I can only describe as Braveheart Extras wheeling a trolley round the shop. I was equally unsurprised to observe that they had no children with them. I just wonder if they were filling their trolley at your expense and mine in order to spend the coming days and weeks, also at your expense and mine, visually polluting the front of the Scottish Parliament? Anyway, as this unkempt horde (the guy in matching camouflage hat and jacket plus extremely scruffy and badly fitting kilt was especially hilarious!) progressed in my direction, I noticed that one of them had on his T-short a large badge saying "Yes 2". So I just looked him up and down curiously and observed "But you haven't even been able to win Yes 1 yet!". The response wasn't quite audible but fairly easy to guess.

Definite green dot material!

Unfortunately football is simply yet another collateral casualty of the fact that, almost five centuries on, Scotland still hasn't managed to come to terms with the Reformation.

Sneckboy....these figures look pretty bang on to me but I haven't gone through them in enough detail to establish whether the rounding convention you use enables you to promote 3750 to 4 sig figs to 3800 to 2sf. If you've been going with 3751 then if you adopt what I would argue is a better convention using 3750, then you might be able to tweak Saturday's target crowd down just a bit! On the other hand, I'm maybe not convinced that using 2sf (3800, 3600 etc) actually achieves anything since all it does is says that differences of less than 50-100 are insignificant. Using 4sf, a 2015-16 average of, say, 3756 is a marginal increase while 3748 is a marginal decrease. To return them as 3800 or 3700 tends to convert that to no change or a more significant drop. I note with satisfaction that "post Armageddon" in 2012, the average actually went up, albeit slightly! What I note with less satisfaction is that, ironically, since Top 6 finishes and cup semis and finals became a feature from 2013, average attendances have taken a sudden downward hike of around 400 and have stabilised at a new lower level of around 3600. We also can't legislate for more localised effects like how many silly kick off times in the various seasons have been inflicted by broadcasters, creating tweaks of various magnitudes to the averages.

Yes, I know you were. But never mind - these happy days may well return sooner rather than later.