Charles Bannerman

Unpalatable as reality often is to the Politically Correct, the unfortunate fact is that there is a substantial body of poor souls out there - probably around a third of the population - who, through no fault of their own, are simply not able to grasp what the issues are here. And, by way of their standard vacuous sloganising and baseless assertions which they know won't be too critically assessed, this is exactly the sector of the population that the SNP have cynically exploited and currently have on board in a big way to vote yes in a referendum and SNP in Holyrood elections. However, even without the gaping cracks which are currently opening up before the SNP's eyes, this kind of support doesn't hang around for long. For instance this was what gave Labour their 1945 landslide but, despite delivering a welfare state, they were down to a paper thin majority by 1950 and the following year, Atlee was out. However here in Scotland it's a bit different. When the electorate got fed up with post-war Labour, they deposed them after six years but the SNP are trying on this dodge in a situation where a single referendum poll could change things forever. The aim therefore is to hold enough of them to get lucky once.

Which wonderfully explains how the Argyll and Bute canvassers got the "result" they wanted. You only knock on the doors that look promising to you, with seriously faded "yes" stickers in the windows, Andy Stewart songs blasting from within and saltires recently replaced by European flags in the garden. There you may well find people who are prepared to believe that Unionist MI5 supplemented postal referendum votes by 77% and everything was institutionally covered up by the BBC. On the basis of mince like this, you really do have to wonder how many SNP/yes votes are products of the Nats cynically taking the total p!ss out of the cerebrally disadvantaged lumpenproletariat. Heroes ofthe working classes? Merciless, opportunist exploiters more like.

I'm only now realising that "The Argyll Conspiracy" was actually a JOINT effort involving both MI5 AND the BBC!!! I think I must have missed reading that bit after going to change my pants, having wet myself laughing at the first part of a diatribe which is just about as verbose and paranoid as Mein Banff. I am now waiting for 007, with The Queen in tow, to abseil out of a helicopter into Beaut House, armed with a box of Milk Tray labelled "All Because The Lady Lost!" Surely even the most obtuse Nat must now realise that there are no further levels of gullibility left for them to exploit. I think I also got the same SNP leaflet as DD, but it was quite glossy so had rather too hard edges to use as toilet paper. My big regret is that no SNP canvasser has yet knocked on my door so I can wind them up. Never mind, there are always a few Saturday morning Natbaiting sessions coming up on the High Street. They never fail to rise to it, which is always hilarious!

Infamy, infamy! They've still got it in for you! And it's great to see that the oil the SNP banged on about from the 70s until the backside fell out of it so spectacularly suddenly doesn't actually matter after all. Then there's the £15 billion deficit, which will miraculously disappear just as long as Scotland gets to wave its own (hitherto scrupulously unspecified) magic wand at it. Presumably when that deficit gets even bigger for the current year as the backside falls even further out of the oil, the same totally unsupported assertion will be applied yet again. But most of all......isn't the term "Gers" - which are the Scottish Government's OWN figures! - just deliciously and ironically appropriate to define yet another financial basket case here?!

Look Comrades, just get used to it......YOU LOST! Once we recover from the hilarity of unearthing a body actually called the "Democratic Socialist Federation" (that will be as in German Democratic Republic and sundry other total misnomers, and with Wolfie Smith as President for Life?) we then start reading the delusional script.... where nobody has obviously thought through the maths (or been capable of it). Let's also recognise that their whole beef is based simply on the fact that reality didn't relate to what, with hallmark naive optimism, they RECKONED SHOULD be the case, based on householders winding them up on doorsteps. Very scientific, I must say! Now for the numbers. The People's Paranoia Party say they RECKON it SHOULD have been 53-47 to them in postal votes but they also RECKON that the actual postal outcome was 70-30 against them - presumably because some conspiracy had led to the postal votes being laced with false "NO" votes. Now IF that were to have been the case, then fairly simple maths shows that for this to happen, for every 100 postal votes cast, a massive 77 dodgy ones would have had to have been added. Furthermore, for the postal turnout to have reached 96.4% after these additions, the original "genuine" postal vote turnout would have had to be an grossly unbelievably low 54.6%. And from there the conspiracy deepens yet further since, apart from the large number of election people (none of whom has subsequently come forward) needed physically to supplement the PVs by a whopping 77% and to instigate and coordinate this fraud on a massive scale, it seems that the nasty unionist BBC is also in on this conspiracy up to the armpits by way of covering up this fraud through deliberately not having an exit poll. Now I do realise that your average Nat tends not to be the brightest of characters and that in any case a great many of them live in this magical fantasy world, especially when it comes to economics. But this latest series of paranoid ramblings quite simply transcends all else - including Grand Theft Auto!

Have we had Shaun's take on this result yet?

Stan's aphorisms in defence of the grievance dogma would do credit to theThoughts Of Chairman Mao. And I wonder when his train is due to arrive at the Finland Station? However I don't think he's going to convince the large number of people who no longer live in council schemes, wearing hand-me-downs and their parents only able to get to work on a bike. And after all this progress has been made, you find Sturgeon and Salmond asking us to pee it all against the wall by voting yes.

Power to the peepullll Wolfie Smith/ Comrade Stan! New black beret for the next Caledonian Socialist Workers' Congress, maybe? Your problem is that in a democracy, as opposed to the former Soviet Union etc, if the loony lefties get into power all the cash and money-making expertise will clear off elsewhere. So in the event of the nightmare scenario of a Scottish Yesserendum, in addition to the oil going t!tsup and possibly having a half arsed EU newcomer attached to a competitive and much larger non-EU sterling economy, you will also find that many of the NO voting benefit subsidisers will go elsewhere, leaving the yes voting benefit dependers to whistle for their public subsidies.

Just to clarify, my earlier comments were about the general experience of fans attending the game as a whole in the current era and not a specific reference to ICT.

So does that mean you have to crawl to and from your seat then? This is actually a serious observation since there is bound to be a grey area as to what constitutes necessary standing and some jobsworth steward desperate to assert his authority. Reading this thread is simply reinforcing the questions I already have as to how much tolerance football fans in general are going to be willing to maintain of a situation where they are paying serious money to watch football, simply to find their freedom of action severely constrained both inside and outside the ground - including the risk of being arrested under legislation which applies solely to football fans.

Whilst obviously warmly welcoming this, I am also reminded of the rogue poll which prompted the completely unnecessary "vow" which led to powers which the SNP now seem too scared to use - a literal case of inability to put their money where their rather large mouth is. I would therefore like to see more of the same - or better! But it does seem to me that the days worldwide of the lunatic fringe invading the mainstream may be numbered - although I'm not sure if this will happen early enough to prevent more expenses-hunting undesirable, brainless apparatchiks being elected as Holyrood lobbyfodder, or indeed The Donald becoming the next US President.

They can be in favour of what they want, but having been firmly told to take a hike in 2014 it would be really nice if this divisive rabble would desist from boring the backside off the majority of us about this pathetic, parochial sideshow. On the other hand I can see that they are getting desperate in case time runs out on them. After all, the very same global trend of "angry politics" which is contributing to support for nutters like Trump and Corbyn, the resurgent German right wing and that "Chorizo" party in Greece whose grasp of economics is about as loopy as the SNP's is also currently boosting crank organisations like the SNP. Things will move on though. They always do. They therefore need to get their second referendum before sanity and reality return to world politics. But should they get one and win it, when can we expect a third one once the economic realities sink in of half price oil, no Barnet Formula, the problems of being semi detached to a competitive non-EU neighbour with an economy 11 times as big and the departure there of high achieving high earners who will hence no longer be subsidising the lifestyles of the group which predominantly voted for separation?

So how many feet are there in a Canadian yard Scarlet??

Is the steward satisfied that you actually said "donkey" there Donview?

Given how prevalent injuries have been this season, it may be a decent idea to perform an audit, led by the medical staff, of how they occurred, just in case factors other than pure bad luck may be contributing. I hesitate to imagine how much - or how large a percentage of the club's expenditure - it has cost this season to pay players who are unable to do anything.

The shinty boys are also suggesting that, in addition to a football double photo, there could be a triple one with the Scottish Cup, the League Cup and the Camanachd Cup, which all now sit within 15 miles of each other.

Methinks The Doctor is stuck in some kind of late 20th century denial-based psychological time warp. No doubt he will be able to self diagnose.

But did he attend the final?

I remember the good old days when there used to be a load of hype surrounding a Scottish Qualifying Cup QF where a win would get you into the first round of the real thing!

Interesting. That was what used to be said about some Caley fans back in the early 90s.

This is a thread started simply by a usual suspect going off on (another) one post-match, with the OP currently sitting on a rating of minus 9 whereas Renegade's response suggesting he finds it pretty boring is on plus 6. But yet here it is, almost 48 hours on, still piling up the posts (OK this is one but I need to make this related point) and going strong. That would seem quite unfortunate, even in the avsence a Cup replay and the Clash of the Cupholders in Dingwall both within the next five days.

Absolutely. Excellent post. I would suggest that a joint photo with both teams, managements, club officials and both cups is an absolute necessity - even if it has to be taken on the Tore Roundabout. Then distribute freebie copies to every single Central Belt newspaper and monitor results.

I find the incidence of flu among footballers quite alarmingly high while, in contrast, they never seem to get colds.

According to the late Dennis Eames' "The Hub Of The Hill" published to mark Thistle's centenary in 1985, the club was founded in 1885 by a Diriebught miller by the name of Smith, possibly to provide his four sons with a means of playing. This publication, which I think RandB Comeback may also have been quoting, says that the colours were black and red from the very start, but I did also find evidence on the Historical Kits website that Renegade mentions that the colours were chocolate and white for a period until 1894. (Chocolate seems to have been a fairly popular colour in these days and it also appeared in the original colours of Forres Mechanics in the mid 1880s.) I have often wondered if there was any Glenurquhart connection with Jags since Glenurquhart Shinty Club, also founded in 1885, have always played and still do play in black and red - currently verticals. Thistle's original ground was indeed also at Diriebught and I wonder if Mr Smith owned it? To be specific, it was on the site currently occupied by the new Millburn Academy, formerly the Royal Academy/Millburn playing fields. In that case I wonder if any early Thistle players were ever infected by tetanus since it was in the ground at least by the 60s? Ask Dodo Sinclair. He contracted it there! Different accounts, including that of Dennis Eames and Caley centenary historian Alex Main, seem to offer somewhat different accounts of the roles of Crown and Union but it would appear that Crown were "absorbed" by Thistle in 1889 whereas Union were founder members of the Highland League with Thistle and finished fifth of the seven teams in the inaugural championship which was won by Thistle in 1894. However by something like 1896, Union in some way joined forces with Inverness Thistle in a further merger to form a club called...... Inverness Thistle. Consequently it can be seen that Inverness Thistle, a century on, were more successful than Crown or Union had been in maintaining some of their earlier identity when becoming involved in an unequal merger and were not hoist with their own petard in 1994! A more detailed account of the early history of Inverness football can be found in the added preliminary chapter (2011) in the online version of Against All Odds which can be found on this CTO site.

Coming from a supporter of a party which wants to turn the clock back to 1706 and beyond...... that's an interesting viewpoint!