Charles Bannerman

My mother lived in Wick for the entire duration of that prohibition and my father for some of the time also. They both well remembered when it was lifted shortly after the war. Apparently there were numerous illicit stills up country.

Presumably that is on the basis of the right hand soldier's tartan which does look rather like MacKenzie.... unless there's an outside chance that the light colouring may not be white but yellow and they are Gordons??? Don't think so though.

So did I! But it certainly seems not to be in that photo which appears to have been taken between 1939 and the early 60s. My main reasoning here is that the Temporary Bridge, which was built in 1939, is there along with the suspension bridge and both were replaced by the current bridge in about 1961. In addition River House, which is beside the Glenalbyn, is not there and it also went up in the early 60s. I don't quite know what to make of the number of cars which might give and indication of when during that period the pic was taken. In general there don't seem to be too many around but on the other hand the Castle Street Car Park is pretty full. However although I can't make out individual vehicles (maybe IBM can!) there is the impression that some may be lighter coloured which I tend to associate more with the post-war period. But the absence of the Glenalbyn is still puzzling me!

From what one of the Hospice people said on radio on Friday night, the practicalities are such that it's expected only to be possible to sell to a small number of individuals. It should be remembered that in MOST scenarios, any purchase, apart from rights to attend the AGM, receive the accounts and ticket priority, is effectively a donation to the Hospice, as it has been in the past to the club from those of us who have small, token holdings. These shares don't float and there is at least one previous occasion where ICT shares changed hands not for above the face value of £1 but significantly below. The one exceptional scenario would be if someone wanted to gain influence or a degree of control over the club by purchasing large numbers of these shares - either to create a holding or significantly to enhance one they already have. On the other hand, unless any existing shareholder happens to have an especially soft spot for the Hospice,I do note the wisdom of the final sentence of the DD quote above.

You mean just go back to the "blue" of inaugural season 1994-95?

The Trust is controlled by Trustees who originally were/?included David Sutherland, David Stewart and ex Provost Allan Sellar who is now quite elderly and I believe may have stepped down. In that event a Muirfield Mills representative MAY have succeeded him, but I don't know. In terms of what the "charitable trust" actually is, considerable hoops had to be jumped through back in around 2000/01 in order to meet the legal criteria for setting it up. For instance, as I recollect, the ICT Trust actually has to be in a position to assist any sporting cause although I am not aware of it ever having operated outwith the ICT remit. Whether it would be able to assist non-sporting causes I don't know, but in any case I think all of this Trust-Hospice link is very highly unlikely. The Muirfield Mills consortium, for instance, exists specifically to benefit of ICT but also expected "clout" such as having a board presence in return for its investment. One of the reasons for it taking so long to set up MM's involvement with the club was the negotiations over just that. I therefore couldn't see MM voluntarily offloading its interest in that manner and in any case the Hospice statement says that the shares originate from a Highland business family while most, if not now all, of the MM guys work abroad. On the other hand it has been suggested earlier in this thread that it's former club director Sandy Catto and his family who are behind the donation and I am 100% convinced that this is correct. The clincher is the fact that Sandy Catto's personal shares and those held by Scotlog, which is a Catto family business, add up exactly to the numbers quoted by the Hospice. As I recollect, quite a large number of these shares constitute all or part of the 300,000 odd that were originally bought by the late Ian C Fraser (Coffin John) in the 1996 share issue and subsequently sold by him to Sandy Catto for a sum which I think I know but would be reluctant to state here publicly in case slightly wrong.

I'm surprised IHE has missed the opportunity for a jibe in the "Keep Clear" notice right in front of the Kingsmills turnstiles.

You'll be telling me next that you dragged her out of the house, carted her away to the Ness and chucked her in. She drowned.... so you decided she wasn't a witch after all.

That Members' Club was an important and potentially sticky component of the merger. Initially the proposal was to have separate Thistle and Caley supporters' bodies but it was fairly clear that if the merged football club was going to work, perpetuating this kind of distinction wasn't going to be helpful, and a unified Members' Club was needed. The problem was that the Thistle side (and indeed not without some justification) feared that some of the Caley interests might try to use this unified Members' Club to further their aims for a complete takeover - which was the main issue of the middle phase of the saga. But in the end this threat, and the fear of it, fortunately went away, the unified Members' Club came into being and has over the years evolved into CJT. Meanwhile its original 50% has been diluted to the 10% which CJT currently has. This represents, as I understand it, a voting right as opposed to a conventional shareholding per se, which is presumably why it doesn't appear on Yngwie's list.

I think you possibly are a bit wide of the mark Roughi, but don't worry about it. What you have quoted is actually the second most common misconception in North football - after the commonly observed fudge between the Highland Football Academy and the Ross County Academy. The ICT Trust is a charitable trust which was set up by necessity in the early 2000s, effectively as a vehicle for spiriting away £2M+ of debt which had accrued up to that point. Names associated with it over the years have been David Stewart, David Sutherland and Ex Provost Allan Sellar - who is now quite elderly and I believe MAY have stood down. I have a notion where most of the Trust's shares came from but am not prepared to say in case I am wrong. CJT or CaleyJagsTogether, on the other hand, is the current title of the supporters' organisation and is effectively the successor of the Supporters' Trust. When the club was first formed, the supporters' organisation held something like 50% of the equity in recognition of the Thistle and Caley assets which were invested in the new club. However, mirroring the growth and developing nature of the club, this was progressively diluted over the years and I really don't know at what level that holding now stands. Certainly Yngwie's figures don't appear to mention this individually so it may well be that it is no longer very large at all in % terms. As a result, what you describe doesn't really look like a potential avenue for fan ownership. But what should be recognised is that the appearance on the market of as big a slice of the total equity as that 19% does offer opportunities for the possible emergence of a significant "biggest" (as opposed to "majority") shareholder among the current bigger players. This could especially be the case given that a Hospice representative was saying tonight that the holding, for practical reasons, is likely to be sold off in a small number of hence quite large parcels - and that there had already been expressions of interest. I have no doubt the ICT community will be alive with all manner of speculation and conspiracy theories in the weeks to come!

That rather looks like the Bruce Gardens Electric Flats photographed from the top of Maxwell Drive.

The Tryst indeed it was.... in fact was it ever the Hebridean in any of its guises or am I imagining that?

Aye... pretty rough it was in its day. The Thornbush Inn of East Inverness.

Is that Culloden House or somewhere down the A9?

That alleyway stinks of p!ss these days. Never mind - at least that's not as bad as the dreadful pong from Lush that pollutes much of the High Street.

See how desperate people have always been to get out of Wick!

God knows what Miss Rose would have made of you!

I thought we had seen the last of over-reaction to death when Diana departed.

No, it's the corner of Ness Bank and Bridge Street - with the Palace Hotel and the Cathedral on the other side of the river. The windows to the top left of the photo are of what is now again called the Shapla but in the early years it was called ???The Hebridean. And even I can identify the nearest cars as a Mini a Beetle and ?a Triumph Herald Police car.

Agreed, but given the inaccuracies in possession stats, is the difference between 52% and "a shade under 50%" significant enough to support a distinction between the first five games and the rest? The graph is very revealing indeed though, as a general indication and in this case, the trend it shows seems quite robust enough to survive the use of a discontinuous variable.

Are the possession stats and the means of measuring them accurate enough for that magnitude of difference to be significant? You sometimes see some really bizarre ones.

Will that be Mason's electrical shop on the corner, centre photo?

When did they start offering Domestic Science to boys at the Royal Academy? Would this have been something you took up in your latter days at school, after they started ranking "O" Grade A, B, and C from I think 1973?