LongTimeLurker

Worth bearing in mind prorege is a Cowdenbeath fan, who may not be heartbroken at the thought of Club 42 playoffs not happening due to a technicality. Some of the stuff he posted about the last set of playoffs certainly appeared consistent with that. Even without the grass banking, Bonnyrigg would have a decent enough capacity for League Two. One side and one end has hard standing with plenty of cover. He is also conviently ignoring the recent Official Catchup podcast tweet about the LL being forced to accept a boundary rule change that points to the colts team rule angle having been resolved.

Best place is probably the league website: https://www.eosfl.com/index.php

That's impressive for tier 6 even given the lack of top tier action.

Ross Gilpin?

Better yet how about catching up with the times and do what the Faroese and Norwegians are doing with fixed links to relatively small island communities. For example, £370 million in subsidies over 8 years is being spent on the various ferry routes between Aberdeen, Kirkwall, Lerwick, Scrabster and Stromness before we even get into the financial support for shorter routes within Orkney and Shetland themselves: https://www.shetlandtimes.co.uk/2019/07/23/firm-loses-legal-appeal-over-370-million-ferry-subsidy but anyone suggesting that £100 million or so be spent on a tunnel between Caithness and Orkney would be a good starting point for a programme of fixed link building to eliminate the need for doing that over the next generation or two will soon be branded as a nutter.

Think the guy behind that blog post was at the windup and wanted to see just how far renewables enthusiasts would be willing to go.

Incentivising vaccination at this point is rational and not comparable to the way Sweden got pilloried for following the pre-existing pandemic protocols rather than joining the over the top nanny state populist measures adopted elsewhere.

...and there's definitely no shortage of vaccine at this point in middle and higher income countries so no harm giving the morons who are still hesitant about taking it some added incentive with policies like the one Austria is contemplating.

Over 4 billion people have received at least one dose globally so not sure that's accurate.

Think I have already made it clear how far I think it should go if you read back through my posts.

If we have a large outbreak underway and some people have selfishly decided not to get vaccinated when they have been afforded the opportunity to do so, said selfish individuals should be the ones with restrictions on their movements so society in general can continue to function as normally as possible. If there is no large outbreak underway there is no reason to apply these restrictions. The problem we have is that the more this virus is allowed to spread because herd immunity has not been achieved the more chance there is of variants emerging that could endanger the state of near normality that has emerged. If you choose not to participate in the effort to keep things in check then society in general has a right to protect itself from your selfishness.

Life isn't always all about the individual. There's a reason that polio and smallpox were mandatory vaccines. It was possible to eradicate those diseases as a problem for anyone because the vaccines work so well. Unfortunately the COVID-19 shots are not as effective as that. A balance has to be struck between individual freedoms and protecting society in general. In addition to having freedoms we also have responsibilities and in contrast to what Maggie T claimed there is such a thing as society.

Don't see a problem with that approach personally. People have a right to choose not to be vaccinated but the rest of us also have a right to decide whether we want them around in public places if their selfish self-centred behaviour is causing serious public health issues.

Pollok have submitted their application and expect to have floodlights up along with all the other ground related requirements by February. https://www.pollokfc.com/2021/10/27/pollok-fc-sfa-licensing-update/

It's how Scottish football operates a lot of the time. How much interest do you think there is in rule changes at tier 5? The only reason this saga got any press attention from the national media previously was the Old Firm colts might get booted out angle. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-9906849/Rangers-Celtics-colts-teams-involved-huge-row-concerning-future.html Since that youtube interview George Fraser resigned as chairman of the LL due to the mess described and Thomas Brown was voted in instead. http://slfl.co.uk/lowland-league-elects-new-chairperson/

...beyond that these same podcast people had Thomas Brown on to explain how the boundary issue was being linked by the SFA to the rules changes the LL needed. Anyone expecting something official from the LL at this point or for anyone to go on the record in the mainstream media should bear in mind that Thomas Brown was reported to have been subsequently contacted by the SFA's compliance officer.

What you are forgetting Alan old bean is that there will also almost certainly be clubs dropping from the SPFL into the LL over the next decade or two, so the top east coast tier 5 clubs could easily wind up being the likes of Cowdenbeath and Stenny along with the Shire (suspect the EoS is their natural level though) and Berwick who are already there rather than some of the ones that are there right now like Civil Service Strollers and Stirling University. The national league levels have been skewed towards the east more than they should have been in population terms because the Second Division was formed from the Central League that was east coast dominated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Football_League and the clubs that managed to hang around from the collapse of the abortive Third Division that followed were from Angus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1925–26_Scottish_Division_Three Not saying the West is going to completely dominate but I would be very surprised if Pollok, Clydebank and Irvine Meadow in particular are not SPFL fixtures down the road. Not so sure about Auchinleck Talbot and Darvel long term given they are from relatively small towns but there will likely be a couple more west (probably Ayrshire) clubs doing very well in any given era. If someone goes up somebody else has to come down.

Also posted about by people from a couple of LL clubs so definitely appears to be legit.

Think being in the city itself helps them but certainly surprising that Civil Service Strollers have done so well so far. It will be a struggle for almost all of the present day LL clubs to be permanent fixtures at tier 5 or above (even for Bo'ness United with a repeat of a season like this one's) after all the top clubs from the west have arrived. Clubs finding their natural level has a long way to run yet.

I have consistently supported an all-encompassing pyramid on here precisely because I viewed the whole concept of having separate grades as stupid and backward so no idea where you are coming from with that third line. Clubs like Bo'ness United preferred the east region because the fitba was better than the nonleague seniors (at least in their part of the country, yes I know the HL was a very high standard) and there was no progression pathway to try to emulate what Bo'ness FC did in the 1920s. Once that changed it didn't take long for things to sort themself out.

Only because they were in the EoS rather than the east region. With clubs like Tweedmouth around in a four division format they are not going to wind up like Rosewell Rosedale and will eventually find a level where they win more often than lose so better days ahead. Finding your natural level is part and parcel of having a pyramid. How on earth did they manage to play 44 league games plus all the cups in 1948-49 without the benefit of the devil's incandescence is an obvious question but I guess that strays more than a wee bit off topic.

So to sum up, it's unlikely any SPFL club outside Angus would opt to cross the former boundary, none of Arbroath, Montrose or Forfar appear to be in imminent danger of falling through the trap door, but the rule change has nothing to do with the club who only six months ago tried to arrogantly barge their way into the LL with SFA board help as they are now perfectly content with being a community orientated HL club despite hiring Craig Levein and Andy Kirk whose contacts are mainly at the SPFL level in the central belt. Aye right!

The HL-LL boundary was implemented in the McRae-Regan era in SFA terms when Tom Johnston and the SJFA were still banging on about the Holy Grail and were expected to keep doing their own thing (which might still be happening but for Kelty Hearts). At that point, Cove Rangers (Alan McRae's club) and the LL clubs (mainly Spartans) were calling the shots to a large extent on the pyramid because most of Scottish football weren't paying all that much attention. In the Petrie-Maxwell era the LL no longer have the same level of influence and the rest of Scottish football is paying more attention now. The SJFA decided they wanted in after the mass migration to the EoS in the east and the SFA board tried to facilitate it only to be thwarted by the EoS having a veto over changes to playoff rules into the LL. Petrie and Maxwell have made it clear by their actions pretty much all the way through that they don't regard the HL-LL boundary as being carved in stone, so it's no surprise that it would get removed from the equation at some point.