Yoss

Yeah, I'd love Arbroath to win. It'd be a great thing in itself, plus I'd much sooner play them in the next round. I probably won't go if it's Celtic.

I miss the Railway Stand. It has the best view in the ground.

Agreed, happy to keep with the players we've got. Murray is going to have to bring himself back into the squad though, with Mensing and Hill both out for a bit. I'm taking it from Smith being allowed to play in cup games that Hearts have no plans for him this season. (Either that or McGlynn was expecting to get dumped out at the first go.)

I can only echo all that. That Kilmarnock game was a thriller in its own right, and as fine a hat-trick as you'll see, Lennon's goal was a peach, and Brian Potter is of course a legend ( http://www.twohundredpercent.net/?p=2663 ). And I also wasn't at the Ross County game, which of course I regret. Kudos to those of you who did make every game.

Yeah, of course McGurn. But Laidlaw is sound, and I'm not at all worried about him playing if McGurn is still out.

Lloyd Young? Are the current crop actually any better or is it just that we don't have any choice but to give them a try?

Ah bugger, I was looking forward to that on Boxing Day.

dear lord.

Well that was the rumour but the club were very quiet about it and I always presumed there was probably a bit more to it. (I didn't think Renton was as bad as everyone else seemed to.)

I daresay we've all had times in our football supporting lives when we've been more or less skint and it's affected our choice of games, and of course there isn't an issue with that. I think the initial confusion was caused by it being phrased as a reflection on the fare being offered up by the club rather than personal circumstance. Anywa, I watched Glenrothes v Newtongrange Star on our blank weekend. Craig Winter was playing for Glenrothes, Keiron Renton and Joe Dunbar for Star. Dunbar looked lively while he was on the pitch, but was then booked twice for diving. Which I'm afraid made me laugh a bit even if I was far from sure about the decisions. Still never really got to hear what went wrong for him at Raith.

Conversely there's games we've won which we might not have done. That's football innit, but the tendency is always to count the missed chances and to forget the bits of good luck that balance it out.

Brief but poignant, that's as it should be. Last thing we wanted was another long corny goodbye, along the lines of the vomit-inducing last twenty minutes of the tenth doctor. Back in the old days, companions might be around for a few years and several dozen episodes and then they'd just leave, and the doc would say oh, is tha you off? Cheerio, then. And nothing more would ever be said. I'm going to make a big and entirely unjustified generalisation here and say this isn't just about Who, it's part of a much bigger cultural shift (mostly Hollywood-driven) about how audiences expect to be treated and how they expect the emotivity to be played out. It's sort of interesting to see how this has changed, within a pretty short space of time.

Very good, that. I'm glad they went out with a proper plot-based episode that kept the emotional goo to a reasonable minimum. (Compare and contrast with the tenth doctor's goodbyes to his various companions.) See, as long as there are possible explanations - and there's one you've just given us - and I don't necessarily want the programme to lead us by the hand and explain everything. A few loose ends are fine, so long as they're not actually in direct conflict to something else within the story. (Quite a few of these sorts of little points are often explained within the original script, but dropped because they're short of time / it seems contrived / it's just not necessary.) Anyway, as ever, there were no shortage of flaws in it if you go looking for them. The best episodes are the ones that are sufficient well paced and executed for you not to really mind them.

Don't agree with that at all, the series has been mostly good so far. (Edit - though to dismiss as kids' TV programme about a bloke flying through time and space in a police box as "childish nonsense" seems a bit odd anyway.)

There was a lot to like about last night's episode, right up to the point where they tried and failed to think of a resolution to the plot, and just got the doctor to wave his sonic screwdriver around instead.

I liked both The Invasion and The War Games, though I'd agree both were stretched over more episodes than they probably should have been. The Dominators and The Krotons were both pretty shit from the same series though. As far as the acting goes, it should be noted that most of the early stuff was done in single takes in more or less real time, they didn't have the luxury of current production standards where they can take three weeks to film an episode. (With that caveat, I didn't think Victoria was that bad, anyhow.) Ah, yes. "Emma Peel as jailbait", as somebody described Zoe to me one time. Bit harsh, I thought.

That's a reasonable list, for the earlier doctors anyway. The Mind Robber is a particular favourite, not least because Troughton is my favourite doctor. Unfortunately a lot of his series are now incomplete or lost altogether, but The Tomb of the Cybermen is another good one we still have. Watch something from the Tom Baker / Sarah Jane era too - The Brain of Morbius, maybe, though pretty much anything from that era is worth watching; Inferno is another classic, maintains the tension well over seven episodes (even though Pertwee is my least favourite doc and Liz one of the least successful assistants - she does, however, look curiously hot in this one while dressed up as a Nazi); I rather liked Castrovalva, from the Davison era, though Caves of Androzani is usually quoted as his classic; of the later stuff, The Greatest Show in the Galaxy is one that I liked, though it's probably worth warning you that no one else did.

There's little or no new evidence in respect of what actually happened on the day. What's new is the extent of what happened afterwards, the number of statements that had been modified before submission to the original inquiry, and all that stuff.

Were they singing this at Greater Manchester Police last night?

That's nothing to do with which club it happens to be. United are similarly unhappy about Munich songs, and justifiably so.

Sorry, thread's moved on somewhat since I was list here so I won't try and get this one going again, I think we've both alredy said anything we have to say on crowd dynamics and how crushes happen. Yes, pushing exacerbates it, that's a straighforward truism. Yes some fans were pushing, of course they were. The gloss you put on it, on which we disagree, was whether or not that pushing amounted to people "behaving like arseholes". You seem to be reading something more serious into the use of the term pushing than I would. Given, as we now know, that Taylor was working with witness statements which had been systematically doctored, it's a credit to him that he nonetheless had so little criticism of the crowd. This week's report, working off the original documents, is even clearer. Not that I'm going to pretend I've read right through it yet, but in summary at least, it's unequivocal. On the first page of this thread there are various posts saying the truth probably lies somewhere in between. In many other issues in public life, I'd say that's often a reasonable position to take, but this is not one of them. And if anyone didn't know that before there's no excuse for not knowing it now.

Weaker this week, I thought - not as dramatically tight and the morality lessons were laid on with a trowel. Still alright though, it has indeed been a promising start to the season and Smith is still an excellent Doctor.

We can discuss whether or not it's a reaonable interpretation of what Taylor said, sure. Just so long as we're clear, at the outset, that it isn't what he said, and that in applying a judgmental emphasis it is substantively different from anything he said.

"behaving like arseholes" is your interpretation of that quote.

If that's me you're referring to then you're misattributing those quotes. Once again, that is not how the crowd dynamics of crushes work at all. There is emphatically no evidence or substantiation for your "No, but it made it worse", there. Taylor didn't say so, despite your repeated attempts to suggest otherwise. This week's report is even clearer.