Alex MacLeod

Not bad Sneckboy. Can you now engineer for our home games to be against Arbroath and Brechin. We're more likely to take a bigger support to Hellgin and Balmoor.

Charles a forty tonne truck is your average Tesco truck

As added to my last comment Labour had the chance to do something but chose not to.

Bearing in mind that those in Europe are not in the group stage and the Prem teams not in Europe will all be in different groups how do you envisage the region? Lets say for arguements sake that the Euro places are taken up by Celtic, Aberdeen, St Johnstone and AN.Other from central belt. We now have Inverness and Ross County in two groups of five. We now need to find eight teams within the region. HL winner, Elgin, Peterhead, Montrose, Arbroath, Brechin, Forfar, Raith, East Fife and Dunfermline. Not exactly a region that'll reduce travel costs for teams and fans so will the fan numbers increase as is hoped?

Final approval was given in 2010 as you state DD but actual planning started in May 2008 following a 2007 study commissioned by Transport Scotland. There were a number of MSP's, including Green's and City of Edinburgh Council, initially against this going ahead but most changed to supporting it after study of existing bridge highlighted its cable problems and that repair would require it be closed for at least three months. Link to timeline http://www.cbrd.co.uk/road-schemes/forth-road-bridge-replacement Considering that timeline I dont think the SNP could have commenced any earlier. To be fair to Labour though, after the initial report came out on state of cables in 2005 I think Jack McConnell pledged to the building of a new crossing. Way back before Scottish Devo problems were highlighted with the bridge not being able to cope with traffic increases and the sitting Labour party at WM looked into plans for a new crossing but then shelved them.

Charles I took the 10,000 a day as being roughly the number of HGV's. Figure from BBC article as quoted by road hauliers association is 11,500. Having used that bridge on average at least once a week in the last twenty years I can well believe these figures. Heres a more recent report than one you have linked which suggests total vehicles crossing is 66,000 a day http://freespace.virgin.net/wilcox.john/samweb/Forth_Road_Bridge.pdf Thats one every 1.3 seconds On your comment about tolls. It was the labour/lib administration who started the ball rolling on the abolishment of first Skye bridge tolls closely followed by Erskine. The SNP, as a minority government, continued this to include Forth and Tay bridges.

They may not be a major corporation but they are a very big company with some twenty offices around Scotland and a portfolio of properties at the higher end of the market. Nor are they stupid. Its TV coverage that this company wants not a few thousand fans. They know that even if any of the three were to go down they'd still get a lot of TV coverage in championship. With the company name on shirts and plastered around stadia McEwan Fraser get TV exposure without paying high TV advertising premiums. I would imagine that each team willhave been offered similar terms and that those terms are very favourable for us considering we're not taking up the option to extend with Subway

Not a rumour http://www.ictfc.com/news/club-news/1677-2016-17-new-shirt-sponsor

Charles you really are becoming very boring in your Nat bashing attempts. My brother is a bridge inspector for north of Scotland which includes Kessock and Skye bridges and he assures me that this crack could not have possibly been detected other than by constant radiography and non destructive testing on daily basis. I've witnessed a similar thing happen to structure of a north sea platform. Metal fatigue resulting from overloading is the real cause here. The bridge was not designed for 10,000 forty tonne trucks a day + however many cars, vans and buses. Thats one helluva strain on the steelwork. To try and blame the SNP for this problem is, in my mind, cheap and childish.

We will always endeavour to win a European place be it through the league position or cup but I wouldn't expect us to get there every season

I cant understand the regionalisation thing. How do you regionalise when so many league teams are in central belt and yet six of the top twelve are north of the Forth. If a case arose where none of those six qualify for europe then they are going to head six of the groups. The remaining teams north of Forth, Raith, Dunfermline, East Fife, Brechin, Montrose, Arbroath, Peterhead, Elgin and one HL team. How can regionalisation come about from that?

Haven't you just started a rumour re Henderson?

Unfortunately there's no sound http://movingimage.nls.uk/film/4145?search_term=Inverness&search_join_type=AND&search_fuzzy=yes

Not so. First two were Lab/Lib coalitions

Think DD if you look back you'll find SNP were a minority government from 07 - 11 and struggled to get parliamentary approval for many things. Charles you are so academic and clever perhaps you could give us all a lesson on metallurgy. This bridge is inspected constantly but until now no serious problems have been found and engineers deemed it safe. The most recent inspection has revealed some cracks in structural steel and engineers decided to take precautions. That cannot be blamed on SNP or anyone else for that matter. As for new bridge perhaps some should research the efforts labour activist Duncan Hothersall went to to stop this happening.

Game is off

Understanding from Twitter is that Hearts will reprint if you dont get on time. Details will be passed to them

Forecast is not good, with heavy rain and gales gusting 50 knots overnight and through tomorrow, but I believe Tyncastle can cope. Unless, of course, theres a structural damage risk

I doubt it. Late last night the decision was taken to close the bridge. Many of todays commuters may not have known this and left home at usual time only to find they were late. Traffic was not helped by an accident on one of the roads leading to Kincardine resulting in road closure. Assuming folk get there acts together, leave home earlier, change to trains etc, I think things will get to some form of normallity and the system will cope reasonably well.

He didn't actually come out and say the things he said. He was asked the question, a question I didn't think the press needed to ask, during his press conference on new deal and he answered in his usual honest way. I'm quite sure he would have made his thoughts known to Kenny long before this week. As indicated in previous post its last weeks news and now its time to move on and push on.

Thank goodness the current Scottish government had the foresight to build a new Forth crossing. Something previous administrations, and UK pre-dev, always put to the back burner.

Yogi spoke about a few things at a press conference attended by journo's from various papers yet no two papers have the same slant on the story. Its a free country with freedom of speech so the guy made a statement. If the media had quoted that statement in its entirety would there be the same comments being made I wonder. Nor did he say he didn't trust the club. My take on listening to his words on news was that he felt the club didnt trust him to do the right thing.

That is nonsense. If anyone can get me a ticket please pm. PM'd ya

Away to Stirling Albion or Cumbernauld

Christ there's IHE displaying his erse again