aaid

Did Angus Robertson get that uniform at the Kinloss closing down sale?

Someone who may or may not have been a hate figure for opposition fans at one point during his career?

It's not an establishment stitch up, at least not in the way you mean it, it's the reality of devolution. Power devolved is power reserved. In building the case for Indyref2, this is a much better outcome for the SNP than if Holyrood had to pass a legislative consent motion which would be ignored. This demonstrates the democratic deficit much more starkly.

What's wrong with Jordanhill? As Scotland's only "academy" school I thought all you Tories were supposed to think it was brilliant. Ruthie never stops banging on about the place.

While in the main their day to day treatment would have been no better than the slaves they worked alongside it's wrong to describe them as slaves, slaves had no choice in the matter and for them it was a lifelong bondage. They were indentured servants, who served a fixed term and at the end of that were freed from their contracts which generally lasted for up to seven years. These were either people who went voluntarily or were prisoners transported, most notably royalist prisoners from the War of the Three Kingdoms and Jacobites post Culloden. The vast majority of indentured servants would have been ordinary poor men and women who signed up to escape poverty.

Exactly.

Scots were involved in both slavery and racism but I doubt they were any more involved than any other immigrant group in the US at that time, although I think Glasgow particularly could do a lot more to recognise it's part in the slave trade. I've done a bit of genealogical research and have two separate sets of relatives who ended up in the US and took part in the civil war. Both families originated in Wigtonshire and ended up in the US by way of Antrim. They were all Covenanters. One family went over in the 17th century, they settled in the south, in Virginia and the Carolinas. No doubt descendants of those fought on the confederate side. Other branches of this family moved onto Kentucky and a member of this line was a Union general - although not a very good one. Another family went over in the 1850s and settled in Michigan and also fought on the Union side. Two extended families that originated in the same part of Scotland and to all intents and purposes are the same and yet one fought on both sides. The reality is that the side you were on in the civil war depended largely on the state you lived. If there were more descendants of Scots on the confederate side - and that's a big if - then it's because the initial Scots emigrants settled in the Southern states. Trying to link the Klan to some form of Scots lineage is laughable. It was the 19th century equivalent of modern new-nazis adopting the Celtic cross and Norse symbology.

The Trident submarines run on Windows XP. That's not a joke, it's deadly serious.

Gorden Kaye shuffles of this mortal coil. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38718282 Thoughts etc.

No, the rules are the same for loans as permanent transfers. Here's the relevant sections from the regulations. 5.3 Players may be registered with a maximum of three clubs during one season. During this period, the player is only eligible to play of cial matches for two clubs. As an exception to this rule, a player moving between two clubs belonging to associations with overlapping seasons (i.e. start of the season in summer/autumn as opposed to winter/spring) may be eligible to play in of cial matches for a third club during the relevant season, provided he has fully complied with his contractual obligations towards his previous clubs. Equally, the provisions relating to the registration periods (article 6) as well as to the minimum length of a contract (article 18 paragraph 2) must be respected. 10.1 A professional may be loaned to another club on the basis of a written agreement between him and the clubs concerned. Any such loan is subject to the same rules as apply to the transfer of players, including the provisions on training compensation and the solidarity mechanism

This is fake news, it cannot happen. At least not this season. FIFA regulations state that a player cannot play for more than two clubs in a season, Burke has played for Forest and Liepzig this season.

As an aside, Cahill obviously went down as well and had to have treatment, a second stretcher came on to the park at one point but it obviously wasn't needed as he was up an on his feet after 3-4 minutes. What then happened was that the ref then sent Cahill to the touch line where he had to stand until Mason had been taken off, the substitution made and play restarted, in fact the 4th official physically stopped him from coming back on too early. Clearly, they needed to take as long as they did to stabilise Mason and get him off the pitch safely so no issue with that. The officials were only going by the letter of the law but it was one of those circumstances where the letter of the law just looks ridiculous. Fair play to the ref, he got Cahill back on as quickly as he could but I suspect even he thought it was stupid. i guess it's one of those situations where you would want to see referees use a bit of common sense but then that would lead them being accused of being inconsistent.

If that were the case then the first press conference would make Sean Spicer's look mild.

Apparently Darryl Broadfoot is leaving the SFA to join a PR consultancy at the end of March. It appears though that he will continue to give PR and Comms consultancy to the SFA in his new role. So are the the SFA getting another media kingpin in or are they outsourcing Comms?

I was at the game but it was up the other end so thankfully never saw anything. Medical staff were on straight away and there was no "get a move on" nonsense that you sometimes get, pretty obvious straight away it was something serious.

Hull have just released a statement saying he's got a fractured skull but is in a stable condition.

That is true, but that doesn't mean that - on both sides - that people have made their minds up once and for all. There will certainly be an element of that but also there will be many who haven't changed their view because nothing has happened or they haven't heard any different arguments to make them change it.

One of our better and more experienced players, I be amazed if he wasn't.

Naismith scores for Norwich

If you take the polls as they currently stand there hasn't really been much of a change since September 2014. There's some ups and downs, but it's all in the margin of error and you could argue until the cows come home but I would say that support for Independence is broadly where it was back in 2014. There was a little increase immediately after the Brexit vote which has receded and which looks like it was an immediate reaction. There's also anectdotal evidence of people switching both ways as a result of Brexit although I don't think that's been quantified. I think it's safe to say that the base level of support going into the next referendum campaign is around 45%. In reality, you wouldn't really expect there to be much of a shift as while it's clear that the constitution is the single most important issue in Scottish Politics - some would say the only one - and there has been a lot of noise around a "second referendum" - largely from the Tories - the arguments for and against haven't really advanced since 2014. Even Brexit is currently just a huge big unknown. i think there's good reasons why this is the case. Firstly, all the political parties had to fight Westminster and Holyrood elections which took all their time and resources and in the case of Labour knocked the stuffing out of them. I think the SNPs strategy was to get the elections and the EU referendum out of the way and then they could start a long, relatively low key, path towards building support in advance of going into the 2021 Holyrood elections with a unequivocal pledge to hold a second referendum in their manifesto. i don't think any of the political parties expected the EU referendum to turn out the way it did, although by the looks of things, the SNP at least had considered that it might and had a fall back plan in place. Secondly, Brexit completely changes the landscape but - until this week - we had very little clarity on what the UK government hope to achieve and even now we still have very little other than a vague and often contradictory wish list. That makes it very difficult for the SNP to formulate any sort of policy until they know what it will look like. We're now starting to see some debate and discussion on things like currency and the like which is to be welcomed. If an Indyref2 campaign kicked off today, we've got the following. Base support for independence is around 18 points higher than at the start of Indyref1. Yes Scotland is in a much stronger position as while the official organisation was disbanded, the various grass roots and support groups and organisations are either in hibernation or never really stopped. Better Together is a fractured alliance. Next time around it will be a Tory led and fronted campaign, which will be an anathema for a lot. In the wake of Brexit a lot of the the 2014 BT arguments have either been shown to be empty threats or promises or are no longer valid. There are still weaknesses in some of the economic arguments which need to be addressed - and quickly - although I think they are largely different arguments from 2014. I'm not necessarily saying that the next Indyref *will* be won, there is a lot of work to be done to make that happen but with all that in mind, I can see how it *could* be won.

He's paraphrasing

For anyone who missed the inauguration speech, here's the highlights.

Key point is that next time - assuming its in the context of Brexit - there isn't really a status quo, either option will represent change and there will be two very different views of what the future will be.

Did ye, aye.

I generally find its better to not look at the comments sections. You very rarely get anything interesting as any line of argument degenerates pretty quickly. About the same as mentioning Ian Durrant on here*. I do occasionally dip my toes into Herald's comments for light amusement and I see you giving as good as you get. *did you see what I did there.