Charles Bannerman

I make it 58 points - or at least that's the figure at the start of the season which progressively drops down to whatever it ends up as, depending on how the season has been going. We have to remember that this is a purely theoretical consideration which, in the case of the 58 point value, would in practice never happen but whatever number it is at any time becomes more and more likely as it progressively diminishes until you reach the final value. How do we get 58? It is theoretically possible, albeit inconceivable, that all 12 teams would win half and lose half of their 38 games. This means that they all end the season on 57 points, with goal difference determining the bottom two. Hence one more point - ie 58 - on the part of one team would be enough to guarantee safety... and also the title. However even that remote 58 point possibility only survives until the second drawn game of the season, after which the theoretical target drops in a way which is determined by results, including draws. So at any point in the season there is a particular total which guarantees freedom from relegation, although it is very difficult indeed to work out.

Haven't a clue I'm afraid. It was some time ago.

Which of your incarnations was that IHE?

Dave, an ex-policeman, was at school with me and is an expert on local history. Before the churches joined, I wonder if they used to have "Rebel Meetings" in the Queen Street Hall?

Definitely Beauly. Not much to go on regarding date but maybe has the ambience of the 1880s?

The Hayloft era of the 70s was indeed legendary!

Are you sure it's not a Morris Minor behind the women IBM?

Ian MacLean taught Physics in Room 20. His nickname was Fred since he was said to look like Fred Flintstone. He came from somewhere around Kiltarlity and was a great car enthusiast. For lunch he would often boil meat and tatties on a Bunsen burner whilst marking homework and glowering at his classes doing exercises.

Was that the church hall which was home to the fairly short lived 11th Company of the Boys' Brigade? Was the church in question an extension of the Merkinch Church (6th Company) and [possibly called St Mark's?

I met Jim Calder in the gym this morning where he still works out regularly, although can't at the moment run since he's hurt his knee. (I'm not sure this actually upset him too much!) I told him about this thread and we discussed penalties. I reminded him that he saved two in a successful shootout in a Cup replay at home to Stranraer in January 1997 after Paul Cherry missed his and he reminded me that there was a period in his ICT career when, including misses, two thirds of the penalties taken against him were unsuccessful. I think those of us old enough to remember that era look back nostalgically on a wonderful pioneering age for ICT when nobody (execpt, apparently, Dougie McGilvray!) knew how things were actually going to progress. That first decade from D3 to the SPL - and in particular years 2-5 under Pele from D3 to D1 and the quarter finals of the Cup - was an intriguing era of rapid progress where new territory was being discovered again and again by a club which was leaving its Highland League origins and making progress through the national hierarchy. Jim Calder, and many others, played vital roles in that pioneering epic.

I bet you're glad you did now!

I can also see the sense in this arrangement from a team point of view. Given that there is another game on Saturday, it seems better to me to get players and management home by 10pm on the Wednesday night rather than at 2 o'clock on the Thursday morning.

Scarlet, I would hazard a guess that there were probably more than one American seaman who did that in Inverness after WWI and I do remember reading something in the Courier some time ago about one instance.

They don't like it up 'em Captain Mainwaring. Those whingeing Jocks DO NOT like it up 'em! Classic bit of Cybernattery from Bobbyjag there though. Right down to not realising that the correct word is actually "misogynistic".

People who pay Income Tax ARE the better off, and they pay it in proportion to how well off they are. DD is absolutely right. Priority number one for the SNP is generating discontent with Westminster and what a miserable and disaffected society they have created in recent years by creating antagonism among those who don't even realise they are being radicalised. The other thought this Christmas Eve is the misery and Anglophobic, "Bah London", Scroogelike resentment which will hang over so many Nationalist Christmas dinner tables tomorrow, given that, rather like haemophilia, Scottish Nationalism is a disease which tends to run in families. Just imagine the miserable wakes that families of these political inbreds will hold as they sup their Scotch Broth, munch their Christmas haggis, chew their neeps and swallow their Festive porridge, all washed down with the best Malt Whisky - and all at 3pm so they can avoid watching The Queen. Oh - whilst opening their non-Palace of Westminster Christmas cards from their relevant representative of the 53 and a half.

Canada maybe, but I'm not so sure about the Yanks who have stuck slavishly to antiquated (ironically "Imperial") units like pounds, inches, yards etc. However some of these are of their own specification, including the gallon since an American gallon is almost 17% less than a UK one. This must also be a rare example of the Yanks having something which is actually SMALLER in scale than our version

As it happens, they didn't actually deal out much death at all because they were laid across the Northern North Sea so late in the war that they were hardly in place before they had to be swept back up again. This, I believe, kept the Americans in Inverness for some time after the war. Indeed I would not be totally surprised to be told that there were more fatalities among those removing them than there were on any enemy vessels which may have struck one.

Yes, the departure of Ee Durty Weekurs (not necessarily said in jest - Wick had two men sent off!) does complete a very different North - South non league picture compared with maybe 30 years ago when the North teams had a huge advantage. On the other hand, one (or rather a combination of two) of these North teams has gone on to win the Cup and another has also reached the final so what we're talking about here is what's left. I do wonder, though, where the balance with respect to this shift lies between the two possible factors - weakening in the North and strengthening in the South.

That is a great image! I'm not sure if it's an early colour photo or an altered black and white or what? It appears to pre-date the mid 30s because you can see what I take to be the bridge which came before the present one, which in turn dates from around 1934. You can see Holm Woollen Mills in the background but not a lot else then. And of course it's far too early for Torvean Golf Course to be there or the Rugby Clubhouse. The houses on Glenurquhart Road also look in an early stage of development and you can also see on the far mid-left that it's also too early for the original 1950s Queens Park track to be present. However the part of the Queens Park beside Glenurquhart Road looks largely as it did until a few months ago when construction of the West Link began.

I wonder if Ex-Baillie Gallon was a bit of a drinker?

It unfortunately also has to be recognised that these simplistic and superficial representations will also tend to appeal disproportionately to those among us who are less able to grasp the concepts behind what is being discussed. So I would suggest that a large part of SNP support comes from the one third of the electorate or even more who simply don't have a scooby about what's happening and never will. However what does appeal to them is the superficiality and the sound bites DD refers to and many of them will be the same people who, for a long time before that, obediently placed their X in the Labour box - also without the remotest clue about what the issues were.

Relative to your views, I'm sure most papers are - even the National whereas the Herald reads more like the product of a bunch of closet Nats. Probably a more subtle approach than the National which is sort of like the Daily Worker with thistles on.

Well you would hardly expect the separation-leaning Herald to run the headline "SNP fail to match summer poll peak despite Corbyn"

Bang on DD and the other great thing about Natbashing is that they absolutely hate it and positively foam at the sporran at the very thought of it. Of course my comments on the SNP exude ridicule and contempt because this is indeed a ridiculous and contemptible party who can think of nothing else but the highly regressive process of re-creating a failed state by turning the clock back more than 300 years. And of course what I say is often also heavily laced with satire which is a well established medium for political comment. Rants too... because they are great fun, especially when people get offended by them! I fear that far too few people understand what a pernicious danger this single issue pressure group really is and that the manner in which they have grown is alarmingly reminiscent of the sinister development profiles of so many nationalist movements. Many years ago, Invernessians used to turn out in numbers at the Town Hall for the General Election declaration. In 1970 I remember this poor wee wifie called Athole Cameron standing there disconsolately on her own having just polled a couple of thousand votes for the SNP. At that time the SNP was simply a caucus of the kind of cranks that movements like this seem to appeal to and who are still there in numbers in the party's ranks. But by October 74 they had invented "It's Scotland's Oil" (that's the stuff they now tell us was never more than a bonus but on which they built a party) and they took second place. But this time the renowned Nationalist rentamob had come into being and took over the Town Hall steps to regale everybody with incessant and intimidating chanting after the declaration. These people's progeny are now probably the new generation of Cybernats. It was at this point that I began to worry since this so called party had now become something much more sinister than a bunch of harmless nutters. Since then, having started with the crank element and added in the sort of Sturm Macteilung mentality, they have moved on to stage three and conned more votes out of an unsuspecting public by telling them whatever they want to hear by way of baseless assertions and downright fantasies like $103 a barrel. These three steps, however, have now gained the SNP a position of power and it's here - totally predictably - that they have seriously come undone, having presided over a lengthening series of disasters, most recently the Transport Minister's Stiffening Truss End Member. And, when given the opportunity literally to put their money where their mouth has been for a long time by way of exercising the powers they have been given, what does John Swinney do? Nothing. Instead he meekly rubber stamps Tory tax practices because they value their own party's skin far more highly than the interests of those Scottish people who have sleepwalked into voting for them.

They don't like it up 'em Captain Mainwaring, they do NOT like it up 'em.....