LongTimeLurker

Meanwhile in Moscow, Vlad points out some home truths:

Not as easy as it sounds given the Swiss are part of the Schengen zone and in the EEA in all but name, while Boris and co don't want either of those things.

There was an incident that happened at a North Sea gas pipeline substation around 1977 or so and there was a long high profile trial related to it that eventually collapsed for procedural reasons. The SNP started decades before that and are unlikely to have viewed links to something like that as beneficial electorally so if anything it's more likely to have been done to damage Scottish nationalism than support it.

Given the number of hijackers involved 9/11 was definitely a conspiracy, because more than one person was involved in a secret plan. What it wasn't unless you are in Alex Jones sort of territory was an inside job. Think the paranoia about Kezia Dugdale was driven in part by her father being in the SNP.

Were there not Labour activists who were convinced she was an SNP plant on a mission to undermine their party?

Recharging large lithium batteries is best done indoors where it's dry, so if it is battery based better to trundle them back to a suitable charging point in a storage container. If you have grass rather than 3G like Camelon there's no obvious need for lights to be out every day of the week.

^^^jealous his club didn't do this as it's probably a lot cheaper than doing a fixed installation. If you can run something bright enough for a couple of hours off a rechargeable battery this will probably be the way most smaller clubs do it from now on given the way battery technology has advanced in recent years. Then you can trundle it off to a locked storage unit for recharging which should also help from a ned proofing standpoint. https://www.right-light.co.uk/floodlights/football-floodlights

Can see why these memoirs would have to wait until after McGuinness died. You can't be done for libel where a dead man is concerned.

Always thought the caption to that was, "He really does look just like Fidel Castro". Hopefully Fidel Jr wins and really annoys the Greens by doing so. It's more a pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia that upset them and has placed him in their target hairs:

Labour are the traditional left wing party in the RoI (there are others nowadays as the left has splintered) and usually haven't had much support beyond the Dublin area and the other larger towns and cities, while Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are both centre right. The divide between the latter two still tends to revolve around what side your ancestors were on in the civil war back in the 1920s to a certain extent more than anything hugely ideological. The SDLP in NI started off with some left wing rhetoric and a left wing sounding name but soon turned into what was effectively a continental style Christian Democrat party aligned closely with the Roman Catholic church. It's unfortunate that UK Labour didn't provide a genuine left wing alternative at Westminster elections in NI, but a significant portion of their activist base have tended to be from an Irish RC background in areas like the west of Scotland or Merseyside over the years, so influential people with strong Irish nationalist sympathies within their membership have been able to steer things away from any Labour involvement in NI.

It will never get that far. There's zero chance the EU accepts this so it's all empty posturing on the path to a hard Brexit, or perhaps more importantly for Boris the path to an extension forced by the other parties and an early election in which lots of seething leave voters give him an outright majority so he can try to sort something out without needing DUP support.

Who exactly were pro-Union socialists in NI supposed to vote for during the Troubles when Labour was refusing to stand candidates or even let people from NI join? The advice from Westminster was vote SDLP who are so socialist that they are now in cahoots with Fianna Fail.

Not sure that's true. The Northern Ireland Labour Party was left leaning and pro Union. It was often able to beat the UUP FPTP in working class parts of Belfast during the Stormont era. Since 1972 the DUP has been left leaning in economic terms as well as being socially conservative so there is a bit of a class politics angle to the DUP vs UUP split.

Culprits got convicted back in the 1980s. Compare and contrast with the BBC and Jimmy Saville.

Ulster Unionism deals with this stuff head on and doesn't sweep things under the carpet. Kincora got dealt with through the full force of the legal system at the height of The Troubles, for example.

...so back up your shit or shut the f**k up. I have already added the links above just to show the scientifically illiterate on here that it's possible to do so. There is nothing controversial about stating that rising CO2 levels are currently helping plant growth or stating that mankind will probably not be able to ramp up fossil fuels use through to the end of the century even if we wanted to because the easily exploited reserves are finite and fast running out.

Not buying it. Anyone who has a reasonable knowledge of science should know that nothing I was referring to was fringe or controversial and wouldn't need to ask in the first place.

No, it's the duty of the poster to back up their bullshit. That's an ancient convention as old as the internet that you are either unaware of or trying to avoid because you're talking shite. You are seriously so brainwashed that you think the following are in any way controversial in terms of the scientific literature? (i) CO2 fertilisation effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CO2_fertilization_effect https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/11/10/if-youre-looking-for-good-news-about-climate-change-this-is-about-the-best-there-is-right-now/ (ii) Himalayas weathering https://www.briangwilliams.us/carbon-cycle-2/mountain-uplift-physical-erosion-and-weathering.html and that there is any controversy over the way that fossil fuel discoveries are not keeping pace with reserve depletion? https://dieselnet.com/news/2018/07oil.php https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

On a football board? Get a grip and do your own research.

Well aware that the old pre-2002 east region never wanted Tayside back when the superleagues came in and understand that helped to drive the mass defection to the EoS as well. Thing is the HL catchment has never been south of Aberdeen, so you have to take that into account. What I'm suggesting is that the HL should only cover its traditional catchment. Fraserburgh to Fort William or Wick is a very long drive that makes Carnoustie to Camelon look like a stroll in the park by comparison. A lot of people in the central belt don't grasp the distances involved in an area where there are no motorways.

Personally think if the EoS can handle having Jeanfield and Kinnoull then all of Perthshire and all of Angus can easily be on the LL side of things along with Argyll and Bute. Anything north of that is HL. Montrose Roselea can be grandfathered in where they are.

When lines have to be drawn somewhere, it is better to use local authority boundaries than something as arbitrary as a line of latitude. As things stand if there was a club in Invergowrie they would be in the LL catchment and unable to play against Dundee clubs. That's bonkers and easily avoided by using a different approach.

You got to have a choice over it as a Stirlingshire club is the obvious difference.

As things stand they could play against Tayport eventually in that sort of context, which would be much the same travel distance. Drawing the line where it is made sense when there were no nonleague senior clubs involved between Cove and Burntisland, but once present and former junior clubs are on board it's more than a wee bit bizarre to have Scone on one side of the divide and Luncarty on the other to name just one example. The natural break point where there are no close neighbours to disrupt is a wee bit further north where the Grampian mountains start.