Kingsmills

Ten games now under their new manager without a single victory culminating yesterday in a defeat at home to Luxembourg. The big question of the day is not Sturgeon or Salmond but Kenny or Bertie has Bertie Vogts been supplanted as the worst international manager in history by Stephen Kenny ?

Hopefully, we will witness the sort of football that the club had something of a reputation for in the past, particularly in the days of Steve Paterson. Who can forget the likes of being 3-0 down to Ayr at half time in the cup only to come back and win the tie on the day or that dramatic game at Cowdenbeath where 4 goals were scored after the 90th minute. However, between now and the end of this season, I will happily accept winning every game 1-0 in scrappy unentertaining fashion.

I disagree. I love the away kit and hope we retain it. I suspect that the season will start with a limited number of fans in grounds but, assuming things go well, back to something much closer to normal, including the ability to purchase a pie and a coffee, by the turn of the year. Still an outside chance that we could be back in the Premiership if we can maintain and build on the current run of results if not necessarily form.

Certainly a better week to be an ICT fan than a Hearts fan...

At least twice.

We have reached the stage of the season where it's points not performance that count and that's another 3 in the bag to extend our winning run. If we can keep grinding out results then a play off place remains an increasingly distinct possibility. In past seasons a play off place other than finishing second in the league has been a bit of a poisoned chalice due to the fatigue involved in having to play the extra play off rounds after a long and full season. However, this season could be different with a quarter fewer league fixtures and no Challenge Cup games. Any of the play of places might represent a prospect of promotion this year. Still plenty to play for and we seem, at last, to be on a bit of a run with almost no lingering worries about falling into the play off position at the wrong end of the table. This mediocre season could yet end well.

But maybe not quite yet

Okay, forget about a repeat of the scoreline. Right now, I'll settle for 3 points by whatever margin

To be fair to AS, once he got an award of legal expenses for the Court of Session action, he returned the cash that had been crowd funded.

As a matter of fact, none of the taxpayer's money went to AS. It all went directly to his various lawyers to pay about 90% of his legal expenses actually leaving him slightly out of pocket in that regard. As far as The Alba Party is concerned, it was founded last Autumn by the TV producer, possibly now retired, Laurie Flynn and registered with the Electoral Commission back in November with minimal funding. I imagine that it will now attract sufficient donations to fund an election campaign and, only running on the list, will avoid the considerable expense of funding individual constituency campaigns. I imagine that most of the campaigning will consist of press conferences or press releases by AS which, given his profile, will gain wide coverage perhaps supplemented with a single run of leafletting. Amusing how only about a third of Scottish based journalists and none of the London based media can pronounce the Gaelic word for Scotland. Perhaps it should have been named The Caledonian Party or since AS seems so prickly, The Caledonian Thistle Party !

Arbroath at home in the league always puts me in mind of our very first league game at Telford Street all those years ago. Who amongst us at that time would have predicted that, within two decades, we would go on to play in the finals of both the main knockout tournaments and win the most important of them as well as finishing the third best league team in the whole country. We may have fallen back a bit, maybe more than a bit, from those heady days but a remarkable journey non the less. Right now, I would happily take a repeat of the very first league result and scoreline.

Fantastic performance and result to end Scotland's tournament. Wins in London and Paris for the first time this millennium. Congratulations to Wales on winning the tournament but, with a little a little more good fortune and a bit more discipline in the two games we lost a very good tournament for Scotland could have been a great one. Well done to all concerned. Very good omens for the future.

I agree. He has the quality to play in the Premiership. However, there remains just an outside prospect that that could be with us.

So, after a rather fraught last session, the current parliament has been dissolved and the starting pistol fired on the marathon six week election campaign which, depending on results could have a significant impact on the short to medium prospects of an independence referendum and, more immediately, the policy for recovery from the shock to many of our systems of the pandemic. Unless something completely dramatic and unexpected occurs, it is clear that the SNP will be, far and away the largest party in the new parliament just as they were in the last parliament and the parliament before that. The only real intrigue in that regard is whether they will, for the second time, gain an outright majority of seats in a voting system designed to prevent precisely that. Current polling suggests that will be a very close run thing which may come down to a single seat. Who then will come second and form the official opposition? In recent times that has been the Conservatives. They firmly nudged Labour into third place in 2016 led by the charismatic and, for a Scottish Tory, popular Ruth Davidson who was also, at that time at least, rather politically astute, by contrast the Scottish Labour leader was very much lacking, in fact, I had to refresh my memory regards who was their leader at that time. Contrast that to the present day. Both parties vying for the silver medal have new leaders. In my view, Anas Sarwar is measured, engaging, charming and, in the dog days of the last parliament showed himself to be measured and politically quite sure footed. The linesman, on the other hand, has about as much charisma as Jackson Carlaw, the last permanent holder of the position and is, in my view, charmless and completely lacking in personality. Further, in those same dog days, he showed that he is impetuous, politically naive and generally inept and with with regard to the doomed vote of no confidence in the First Minister, he placed the cart so far in front of the horse that there was never going to be any prospect of uniting the two. For those reasons, I would expect Labour to supplant the Scottish Tories as the official opposition. As far as the minor parties are concerned, I can't really see the Lib Dems moving from their current total of 5 seats by more than a single seat up or down. Until Alec Salmond's announcement today I would have predicted a modest increase in the representation of the Greens from their current total of 6. I suspect that there will be 8-10 members representing pro independence parties elected on the regional lists. I doubt, the way the system is designed, more than 1 or 2 will be from the governing party and it will be intriguing now to see whether those will be Green MSPs or from the new party. My personal hunch is that the only candidate of the 'Alba Party' who stands a realistic prospect of election is AS himself and that is, by no means, certain. Interesting few weeks in prospect.

HT; ICT 2, Arbroath 1 FT; ICT 4 Arbroath 2 ICT; D McKay Arbroath; Hamilton.

Assuming the SNP constituency vote is as the polls currently predict, they are unlikely to have more than one or two MSPs from the regional lists anyway. Assuming this party, which was actually registered with the Electoral Commission back in January, and has effectively been taken over by AS, gains any sort of traction, the party which may be the most likely to lose out are the Greens.

The egoist Alec Salmond launches the Alec Salmond party with it's chief spokesperson Alec Salmond. Comforting to have at least this element of predictability in a world that has become so strange and unpredictable in the last year or so.

I am sure you are right. All parties will be disappointed that it didn't work out. A player with considerable ability and even more potential who seems destined to have a career blighted by recurrent injuries. I wish him well for the future.

Not withstanding AS's assertion that he is 'moving on', I predict that at some point during the election campaign he will make at least one further statement designed to undermine the SNP and his successor as party leader and First Minister. This will be particularly the case if his perception is that the campaign appears to be going well from her point of view.

For what it's worth, the one thing I do agree with you about is that Leslie Evans should resign and, should she not, should be dismissed It's wrong that neither has happened.

Clearly, someone is to blame. The whole benighted affair was overseen by Leslie Evens, the Permanent Secretary and Scotland's most senior civil servant on a salary much greater than that of many including the First Minister and why she remains in post remains a mystery to many. However, to say that both reports were a whitewash does a great disservice to James Hamilton who is a highly respected lawyer of great integrity, somewhat ironically appointed to the role by Alec Salmond when he was First Minister due to his high level of integrity and complete neutrality when it comes to Scottish politics. He took over over two years to compile a very comprehensive and detailed report including interviewing both AS and NS at length. I appreciate that you are somewhat bitter at the terms of the report but to impugn Mr Hamilton as you seek to do is disgraceful anf wholly unjustified.

We were a very long way from our best but credit to part time Buckie for being so fit and competitive after such a long enforced layoff. The main thing is we are through and a potential banana skin avoided.

Very many congratulations to Brora Rangers for beating a reasonably strong Hearts side 2-1

I don't know whether or not she was telling the whole truth about that. As you say, only she knows that. That said, I can think of no obvious motive for her to claim that the first she knew was on 2nd April or 3 days before.

I was interested to listen to the linesman on the radio this morning explaining why the Conservatives were pursing their motion of no confidence in the First Minister and explaining that the finding by a majority of 5/4 divided on political lines, that the First Minister, in the course of 8 hours of evidence, gave an account of a meeting that was 'not fully accurate and potentially misleading' was so serious that nothing less that the rolling of a (First) ministerial head would do. I couldn't help wondering where that standard of accountability left a Home Secretary who was unequivocally found to have breached the ministerial code on a number of occasions and a Prime Minister and government, in which DR was at the time a junior minister, who the highest court in the land unanimously found had misled, not just parliament, but the monarch who had to sanction it, for the true and illegitimate reason for the protracted prorogation of the Westminster Parliament.