LongTimeLurker

@Bestsinceslicebread has claimed he was told by people on the committees of three (?) clubs that they are going to EoS next season. With the Lithgae Rose tribute act folding the first bit doesn't exactly come out of the blue. It would be more surprising if that didn't happen. No easy answers on the second bit. If there are people at the larger Dundee clubs that are wanting to be a tier 5 Midlands League losing some of the weaker links to the amateurs might not be viewed as a bad thing from their perspective. Think tier 6 is more realistic and what happens with Brechin City and the Club 42 rule is probably the key to whether that would be in a LL (could be EoS rather than standalone Midlands League) or HL feeder. The HL and NCL never mention Tayside in the context of north pyramid negotiations. You only ever really see that being discussed as a serious option on here (a bit like the EoS winding up with a Third Division).

Not so easy to do with 17 clubs and a massive hole in the fixture list being only an abeyance away in any two division format. Losing Jeanfield, Kinnoull and Luncarty to the EoS and Montrose Roselea to the north region makes what is left unstable in numbers terms.

Unless she knows something about OxfordAZ the rest of us don't? That seems unlikely so think she's probably just finding it difficult to let go of her nanny state role.

That will go down well with people called Caoimhìn.

Schools closed and many/most people away from their work closes the main issues that have been driving transmission in recent weeks. All these levels and all the nanny state regulations that go with it are largely just theatre to make it appear the politicians are in control and care about the welfare of the plebs.

Herd immunity can be achieved with significantly lower than 100% and most of the population has very little to worry about from COVID-19 anyway. Main advantage of having the vaccines is how it silences the drama queens that will latch onto whatever the latest doomsday scenario is that is being peddled once and for all in this particular instance.

Complicates the narrative surrounding any relegation avoidance inspired departure by VoL, Dalbeattie or Gretna, and would Edinburgh Uni depend on game day revenues the way other clubs do?

When he wasn't taking Coleraine and all that's in it AFJ posted plenty of stuff that made the ANP angle clear where both himself and the then Tynieness were concerned.

Think G51 is correct that the FF-FG Tweedledum and Tweedledee RoI elite will be in no rush to pressure the UK for a border poll rather than using the GFA to keep NI politics contained at arm's length from their 26 county state. Not sure I buy the idea that paramilitarism is such a threat in the present day though. There will still be plenty of very strong pro-Union sentiments, but a largely secular RoI embedded into the EU that is culturally and economically on par with the UK in most ways is not as problematic for Unionists as majoritarian Home Rule from Dublin in 1912 or the spectre of UI in the late 1960s after an Algerian style departure by British state institutions, so there are nothing like as likely to be people willing to risk their lives or do long prison terms over it. Think it speaks volumes that there has been so little heard from paramilitary groups over the prospect of the econonic border being mainly at Larne rather than Newry.

This will probably prompt some simpleton to post a cherrypicked Sweden vs Finland comparison and think they are being very clever. There is an example of a significantly different approach being taken from the western European norm in a country where unusually public health decisions legally had to be made by public health professionals rather than by the politicians with an outcome on cumulative mortality that was better than the UK's rather than horrifically worse. The jury is very much out on how effective the nanny state approach really was.

The media caters way too much to irrationality, because that helps sell papers and drive TV ratings. When COVID gets turned into a bigger crisis than it really is (an IFR of 0.2% would have been viewed as a massive relief back in January, and really does put it in unusually bad flu season territory), the NHS stops focussing on other matters like cancer screening to the extent they normally would be and people will die as a consequence in the years ahead, who will often also be fit 50 somethings. Public health decisions on how best to balance out the available resources and health issues should not be driven by what dominates the modern 24/7 cable news cycle and gives attention craving politicians the limelight and a chance to micromanage people's lives to an absurd extent.

....and when the new case numbers in all LA areas are now well below what was alleged to be the level 4 trigger point. If they do a u-turn with vaccination already in progress it will show once and for all that they are driven only by opinion polls and focus groups on this stuff.

Absolutely farcical.

Thought you steered clear of this thread? Think the levels get reviewed weekly on Tuesdays. If the OxfordAZ vaccine gets approved by MHRA next week access to Newtown Park might not be that far off given the Falkirk LA area already has relatively low rates on COVID cases. Although people talk about it only having 70% effectiveness, nobody in the trials got severe COVID symptoms after receiving the OxfordAZ vaccine, and it would be much easier to ramp up the rate of vaccinations with both OxfordAZ and Pfizer available in a UK context.

A futsal team from Perth managed to get on UEFA's website as Outer Milan: https://www.uefa.com/memberassociations/teams/2605078--outer-milan/

@Standalone is also a prime suspect for questions like this.

On Brexit you also need to consider the City of London's very dubious global financial role through offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands in the last remnants of Empire. There were plenty of upper class spivs who wanted Brexit for reasons related to what's going on in the present day with that, who have managed to get large swathes of the manufacturing heartlands of England whose industries they largely asset stripped out of existance decades ago to vote for something that really wasn't in their best interests because small minded muppets...

You do realise that the eXile ended its run 12 years ago and was written as satire to a large extent? That comes across as being similar to someone watching the latest Borat film and writing an irate post on here about Borat's daughter being forced to sit on the roof of a moving vehicle rather than inside. I'm not a fan of either Mark Ames (get the impression the Russians must have something on him and haven't read his stuff for years) or John Dolan (a complete crank when writing about NI politics to the extent that he makes Sinn Fein look moderate), but it's important to also realise that one of the co-editors of the eXile, Yasha Levine, was from a Russian-Jewish background so it's stretching credulity to beyond breaking point to imply that they actually supported Eduard Limonov and the National Bolsheviks rather than used him for satirical entertainment in a similar sort of way to what Sasha Baron Cohen did recently with QAnon or whatever they were called.

Thing is though NI is effectively staying in the EU in economic terms. NI is expendable in the world view of the hard Brexiters. They are much keener on keeping Scotland on board, because they don't want any land borders with the EU or EEA's common market area. It's a lot easier to push a Unionist line in the latter rather than the former sort of environment. What Ulster Unionism needs is a deal that keeps the UK very close to the EU in economic terms. We'll find out very soon now how likely that is.

The big danger with Trump in recent years has been that people have consistently underestimated him and the level to which his dog whistle slogans resonate with a very sizable portion of an American electorate filled with visceral level racists who can see that their majority isn't going to be a majority for much longer.

If, and it's still an if, the UK's regulatory agency the MHRA approves the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine next week good things are likely to happen on getting out of Level 3 (Nicola S told us that Level 4 will end on Dec 11 and with vaccinations started by then that will be difficult to do a U-turn on) well before March because the vaccination programme will be able to proceed a lot more rapidly than it would have with only the Pfizer vaccine available.

The Tories appear to have been wanting OxfordAZ approved back in late October before the English lockdown started (hence talk in the mainstream media of hospitals gearing up to start doing vaccinations imminently) but appear to have been told to do one by the scientists that would need to sign off on it at that point. Will be interesting to see what happens on MHRA approval now. The messed up dosage should be viewed as a highly embarrasing blunder by UK scientists given the importance of the Phase 3 trial involved. Suspect the political pressure at this point is too great to resist given the data does appear to support a > 50% beneficial outcome despite the blunder but the optics of the UK proceeding with a vaccine that gets knocked back elsewhere pending a repeat of Phase 3 will be interesting to watch unfold.

Obvious questions would be whether Clydebank and Kilwinning are getting cover for 100 sorted out in time for approval this season and potential promotion playoff entry, and whether Irvine Meadow (left out immediately above but are known to be trying to get the funding together) and Darvel will have floodlights up in time?

^^^Every indication that OxfordAZ is getting approved soon by the MHRA for use in the UK as early as next week. The second Phase 3 trial is mainly to ensure FDA approval in the USA who will be under political pressure to help Moderna.

All depends on how quickly the Oxford one starts getting used in addition to the Pfizer one that got approved today.