vikingTON

Scenes.

NHS GP practices. Today is the second time this week and what feels like the 17th time this year that the GP practice has called and left a voicemail that contains... err, no worthwhile information other than to 'contact the practice'. Cue ominous music. Then you set time aside during working hours to call back and wait on hold as the automated message runs through all 800 variants of trying to palm you off elsewhere. Then you get through, confirm all your details with the receptionist, who then discloses from Fort Knox... a completely routine update about a appointment/prescription that would have taken 0.04 seconds to fire off by email - with an option to respond at your own time too. The term 'Byzantine' doesn't work because theirs was the height of organisational skill in a world of dungheap barbarians. The NHS is run according to the whims of stupid boomers who have had 25 years to learn how a computer works but demand that everything still revolves around their ignorance.

Who needed last week's title decider when this duel of minter club statements between Buckie and Brechin could have been served up instead.

Shame, I'm sure that seemed like a real zinger in your head too.

The existence of automatic relegation spots is completely and utterly irrelevant to your claim that setting minimum criteria for promotion is against the premise of a pyramid league system. No matter how many times you try and flail towards *whatever* point you're hoping to achieve here.

Erm yes because Team Continuity Nicola has done such a sterling job of running the show.

The comparison being that the English pyramid system has also excluded play-off entrants just this week for failing to meet the criteria to step up to a higher level. The play-offs will continue without the excluded club - just as the SPFL play-off will continue with the club eligible to move up. Thanks for playing anyway - looking forward to your next tinfoil hat meltdown already.

Which is completely irrelevant to your tantrum about entry standards being applied to clubs being promoted.

Well no, because a pyramid structure is not in fact intended to provide automatic progression between levels. It is only there to provide the opportunity for progression - subject to criteria. Which is why the English pyramid has similarly excluded a league club from play-offs at tier 5. So long as the criteria are proportionate and clearly set out then it's in no way a contradiction to require minimum standards for progression. The bigger issue is that minimum standards weren't put in place sooner and aren't applied to homeless clubs. This would stop Cove and Edinburgh stinking out the SPFL with their unfit ground and unfit club/business model/ground respectively. And the criteria should also be used to chuck out those within the SPFL who don't get their house in order too.

Why has the final showdown not been scheduled for next Saturday - is it due to cup progression from this weekend's games?

Why is it crap for them? Unlike the pyramid anorak brigade who obsess about ventilation!!!111!!! on this website, I really doubt that Huntly and Largs fans really define their seasons by whether a completely different club gets promoted or not to a different league.

You're fooling absolutely no-one with that spin.

Can you identify where in the BHA it stated that the SNP would ignore an objective fact-based review of child healthcare provision if the conclusions don't match up with Greens' garbage identity politics hot take? Seems a kinda strange thing to bake into a deal nearly three years beforehand.

Nice try at repackaging your party statement from earlier in the day, but requiring one vote to survive a single confidence vote is really not a worse position to be in than having Lorna fucking Slater stinking out your Cabinet all the way until the next election because of Nicola's dodgy deal. Or having an EGM of a handful of fruit-loops decide whether your government retains its majority or not. Yousaf was mistaken to stand up for the BHA earlier in the week but gunging the Greens first was a competent response to events, which suggests that an adult was also present in the room last night.

There's nothing wrong with a manager having a clear Plan A; there's everything wrong with a manager who doesn't have a Plan B. It's also an insult even to the limited intelligence of many professional footballers to believe that They Cannot Possibly Cope with having two fundamentally different tasks to do. They do it all the time when on international duty or whenever they move from one club to a new one. It's just coaching narcissism.

Literally a punt over the top catching out these absolute jobbers.

Rather than the Sky half-time of insight 'just having to accept' that you're going to chuck in a barrel load of goals by playing your shan philosophy with no fit players against the current league and European champions, I would suggest... doing something different and defending competently might in fact be worthwhile changes to make.

Rising GDP is linked to rising living standards for the vast majority of societies and the population living around the world. Degrowth is largely irrelevant to the environment because the greatest consequences on the latter will really not depend on whether developed economies like the UK grow at 1% or not at all. Just another example of the eco fruit-loops going down a pointless cul-de-sac for the sake of their hair shirt ideology.

Buckie are qualified to be part of the pyramid - they're not qualified to move up to a higher level though. The idea that the spot should just be handed over to whichever non- entity in the division has the correct licence is utter pish.

A: Any rule or regulation that obstructs maximum ventilation!!!111!!! between leagues every season triggers the pyramid anorak brigade on here.

Also mentioned in another Westminster-based analysis: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/apr/25/humza-yousaf-forgot-the-rule-leaders-who-want-to-look-tough-look-stupid It would be quite fitting if the Greens contrived to get themselves emptied from government over this.

Degrowth does nothing to explain how the lights will be kept on or the heating used in a still actually baltic country, never mind the unstoppable and rightful desire of billions of people to improve their standard of living above their current God-awful level. It also does nothing to address issues of how food is grown to make agriculture more productive and genuinely sustainable. Any Green political party that still outright rejects nuclear power and GM crops in favour of dung for dinner and here's a bottle tax alternatives does not represent a serious solution to their cause but are rather just 'back to nature' fruit loops. With the Malthusian consequences that would have for 8 billion people on the planet baked in to that perspective.

Alba are pretty much the mirror image of the Greens in terms of flailing around on opposite sides of utterly tedious culture wars and identity politics, so it seems like an easy W for them to keep Slater and the other fruit loops defeated and stewing on the side lines. Not least because further opening a schism between the SNP and Greens opens up significant opportunities for Alba* or any other pro-independence party on the second vote next time round. * It probably won't actually be Alba who exploit because they're incompetent, but that's not going to be their attitude right now.

Presumably the tears and snotters all over Lorna's original work prevented the utter word salad in that third paragraph from being spotted and professionally redrafted. Student union level diddies.

Party activists under most circumstances - when polled - will support the policy that puts their party in power, or has been signed off by its leadership. That's a vote of confidence in their own party. That doesn't make the actual content or idea of the Bute House popular - I doubt anybody will have wean names or tattoos they need to change now it has come to an end. Your previous point overlooks the reality that Harvie/Slater put their neck on the line to defend their cushy ministerial posts and are the undoubted, massive losers of the week's events. That they are blowing smoke is only to be expected to appease their own base of activists. Any government that relies on the support of proven clowns like Slater and Greer deserves blown up.