scotlad

There must be more to Patterson's situation than meets the eye. From being overlooked in favour of a centre-half playing out of position to now not even be getting a few minutes off the bench almost defies logic.

She was only marginally less awful than her immediate successors, I would say. Bequeathed a respectable majority by Cameron, she could have got her softer Brexit plan through the HoC but instead, stupidly and unnecessarily, called a general election, where she lost her majority - even losing ground to the hopeless Jeremy Corbyn - and ending up in hock to the nutters of the DUP. This led to years of gridlock, which in turn led to her position as PM becoming untenable, Boris Johnson succeeding her as PM, a Tory majority government full of clowns, a hard Brexit and a shambolically managed health pandemic, all of which have been disastrous for her country and could possibly see her party out of office for a decade!

Disappointing; I think he might have made a difference to our team. However, if he isn't interested and would rather cling onto faint hopes of making the England squad, then good luck to him - because considering he isn't even first pick for Newcastle at the moment, as well as the wealth of younger talent England have in his position, he'll need it!

Better looking too.

👏 For a while I've also been thinking the Christmas Tree might be a viable option for our team. We don't have many wide players but the formation doesn't really require wide players as such. What it does make use of are attacking midfielders (or inside forwards, if you like) supporting the centre-forward, and we have several decent players who can play there. Christie could even come in for McGregor as part of the central midfield three. The formation would allow us to get most of our best players on the pitch at once (with the exception of Tierney, although he is injured half the time anyway). The main negative point is we'd be relying on the full-backs to supply most of the width, but that isn't really much different to the formation we play currently.

Maybe they're hunting for new recruits. As far as I'm aware, two of the main requirements for membership of the Orange Order is that you're a member of a Presbyterian church and you're loyal to the British crown. Maybe the OO have looked at that part of Aberdeenshire, noted its support for Scottish unionism at the ballot box, put two and two together and made 1690. Anyway, there's been a petition launched against the march: https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-sectarian-orange-order-parade-in-stonehaven This Weegie, cognisant of his North East heritage, has signed it. 😉

🤣🤣🤣 "...bounced in the back by someone's belly" is pretty funny too, to be fair! The article refers to him as a Catholic but I'm sure he'd converted to Islam by then.

Goodness knows, I'm no fan of Humza's, but bringing his ethnicity into it is unnecessary to say the very least. Real dog whistle stuff from the shapeshifter Galloway, who was obviously playing to a different gallery at that point in time (and ultimately failed miserably). It's funny hearing Rishi talking about democracy being subverted - he's part of the same WM establishment who were quite happy for Galloway, then an MP for a constituency in Yorkshire, to come up to Scotland a decade ago and propagandise, using the same gutter tactics he always does, in a democratic event in which he was not even entitled to participate.

It wasn't so long ago that he was coming away with shite like this:

It's funny watching that knowing Ireland eventually appointed Giovanni Trappatoni and we appointed George Burley. 🙄 😂 I like Dunphy. His rant about Martin O'Neill, shortly after Ireland had been hammered by Denmark, is entertaining too. Moyes is the only Scottish manager I'd be happy with (but hopefully Clarke will be around for a wee while longer).

👍 That's where Galloway learned everything he knows.

According to this, Galloway and his team sent out two versions of election material; one to voters with Muslim names and one to voters with non-Muslim names: That truly is the measure of the man. 🙄

It is certainly that. Isn't obesity just behind smoking and alcohol misuse as our biggest preventable killer? Controls have been put on advertising alcohol and in the case of cigarettes banned altogether, so when you look at like that it doesn't seem unreasonable to apply similar controls to adverts for junk food. I mind when I was at school the only things we were taught to cook were cakes and other sweet stuff. Maybe that was just to get us interested initially but l only started cooking properly when I was a young adult and had left home, and that was mainly for financial reasons! I don't want to sound like Lee Anderson but you can feed yourself fairly cheaply if you're careful and set aside a wee bit of time. What they did do at my school was stop kids from going out at lunchtime (unless you had permission from your parents). I don't think we were allowed out no-questions-asked until fifth year. These days though you see swarms of wee fuckers, of all ages, wandering around munching all kinds of shite. I don't see why schools don't just stop them.

Cheers mate, I thought so. 🙂 That really is an insane amount of goals - and at 21/22 years old too. Nae wonder he had his pick of clubs! Can you imagine we had someone like that now?? I remember Charlie Nic having a good goal-scoring season when he went back to Celtic (who were pants at the time) but he'd already burned his bridges with Roxburgh, who had forwards like McCoist, Durie, Gallacher, McClair and a young Duncan Ferguson to pick from, so that was that.

It's possibly just paper talk, although, he is a regular and respected performer in Serie A, so maybe there is something to it.

I see someone has finally been found guilty and sentenced for the murder of Emma Caldwell. I'm surprised the trial hasn't been covered more widely, as it was a huge story when she was murdered back in 2005. I'm relieved for her family, who have finally seen justice delivered, but there are a couple of things about the case that puzzle me. Seemingly Strathclyde Police (as was) were determined to nail four Turkish men for her murder, so much so that a couple of detectives who worked on the case claim they were told by senior colleagues to forget about Iain Packer - the guy who was eventually found guilty of the murder - despite the evidence pointing towards him. Apparently the case was only re-opened in 2015 after someone leaked details of the investigation to a journalist; the police then allegedly spent more time trying to identify the mole than re-investigating the case. Packer was eventually charged after contacting a journalist in 2019 to put his side of the story across on camera, Prince Andrew-style. He did so of his own volition. If he hadn't he might got away with it. So what puzzles me is why were the polis hell bent on getting the Turkish guys sent down (one of them was subsequently jailed for raping another woman so maybe they knew he was a bad yin) and who was looking out for Packer, and why? And why would Packer take such a risk by allowing himself to be interviewed by a TV journalist all those years later?

Possibly, but having a father who had a successful Scotland career hasn't stopped Darren Fletcher's sons playing for England at age group levels! I see the son of Jason Koumas, the ex-Wales midfielder, scored for Liverpool last night. Both he and Robbie Savage's son, Charlie, play internationally for Wales, despite being born in England (I'm not sure where they were brought up though, to be fair). I like Conway; he has pace but he's a wee bit inconsistent. Hardie has scored more this season but would he offer anything we don't have already?

That's a good question. Maybe John Robertson - for Hearts! - back in the late 80s/early 90s.

Exactly. People moan about the government telling them what to eat, then expect the government to fix them once their bodies start to pack-in because they've been filling themselves with junk for years and years, no questions asked. In those circumstances you can't really blame the government for trying to look at ways to discourage people from getting into that nick in the first place. What I would say, though, is perhaps meal-deals aren't the worst culprit (unless we're including the infamous 'Munchie Box'!). For instance, why not focus on regulating the amount of sugar that is added to processed or pre-prepared foods? (Possibly because the SG has no control over that). Also, compared to even twenty years ago there are a lot more places selling food that's tasty but bad for you. Takeaways and eateries are everywhere. I think down in London they were looking at limiting the number of takeaways located near schools to try and address issues with childhood obesity. I know this is "nannying" too but at least it might get to the root of the issue quicker.

No one really takes Sarwar seriously though, do they? He reminds me of Greg from the TV show 'Succession'. He is just there because he's there; a bemused, out-of-his-depth placeman with no real authority, who commands virtually zero respect from those at the top of the tree, and is just hanging in there because he knows he'll never do any better. VDA is right though - we no longer have actual journalists in this country, we have propagandists. People picking up a wage, working to editorials, pumping out whatever message they've been instructed to pump out. If we do still have any actual journalists in Scotland there's gey few of them.

He did, aye, against the Netherlands. The game where Malky MacKay was in charge.

Robbo's probably got one more big move left in him - this could be it.

Sometimes when I read about cases like this I think perhaps Shari'a law wouldn't be such a bad thing.

If it's the clip I'm thinking of, Sweeney is being interviewed alongside the journalist Grace Blakeley. Blakeley is from the south east of England (and is presumably still based there), yet she was the one arguing it is unhealthy that the UK is so heavily tilted towards London and south east England, rather than Sweeney, the elected MP for a post-industrial provincial constituency! Why Sweeney, a supposed Labour "socialist" thinks, or even thought, the scenario he was positing to be some kind of positive baffles me. 😂 That was hilarious! Did you see the video? The "angry mob" was actually half a dozen or so OAPs with homemade placards standing patiently outside his office. One of them was so decrepit he was struggling to get up the stairs! I doubt they could even have beaten up Ross Greer (very badly).

Someone who plays Nathan Patterson occasionally would be nice.