LongTimeLurker

There is an obvious issue with having what is effectively a D&G amateur league at tier 6. Keeping them there is about expediency nothing else. If expediency can apply in the west on feeders, why does idealism have to be the name of the day in the east? There is also an issue with how Tayside is being handled in all of this. The best Tayside junior teams have a strong record in the junior cup in recent decades and it's reasonable to expect a club like Lochee United to be able to progress to the LL and do well. Suggesting they hook up with a north region that is not keen on pushing forward on being an active tier 6 and has a pathetic record in junior cup context, and having them possibly wind up with away games in Brora and Wick eventually in tier 5 because clubs in the Edinburgh area, West Lothian and Stirlingshire didn't fancy the drive involved and were able to use the Tay bridge boundary as an excuse to jettison them looks more than a wee bit selfish at this point.

So tell them that from an EoS standpoint the defection of most of the east superleague two seasons ago means they can realistically only be accepted at tier 7 in the east where having parallel geographically overlapping conferences doesn't seem to be an issue. Problem solved? Not if the agenda is more about ending the SJFA once and for all than it is about getting the pyramid kick started.

...meaning there would effectively be two west feeders one from the juniors and one always senior, but for some reason we can't have that happening in the east, because that would just be silly unlike having what is mainly a D&G amateur league on board at tier 6. Confused? You will be after this week's episode of Soap.

...and all without any fuss. Good luck with that. That may well be the broad outlines of the eventual outcome, but it is unlikely to happen smoothly and was very much covered by the "mass exodus of clubs from at least one of the leagues involved" part of my post.

The standard kneejerk retort of the Green activist. At no point in any of that did I question that the greenhouse effect is real and that business as usual on ever increasing fossil fuel use over the next few decades would be a very bad thing to do, if it were possible. The info about the effect of the emergence of the Himalayas on the composition of the Earth's atmosphere and by extension on the efficiency of photosynthesis over the last 15 million years or so, on CO2 fertilisation in greenhouses and on concern over imminent peak fossil fuels due to the rate of reserve depletion outpacing the rate of new discoveries sits within the mainstream of the scientific fields that are involved.

Most of the Lib Dem target seats are currently held by the Conservatives in rural England, which makes their key target demographic Remainers who view Corbyn as a dangerous Bolshevik.

They have been making preparations to boost ferry capacity direct to the continent so point 1 isn't insurmountable, 5-1. Agree that point 2 is something that could have been explored in technical terms but it is about as palatable to Irish nationalists as checks at Larne have been for the DUP.

If CO2 levels were declining rather than increasing from pre-industrial levels for the last two centuries we would have had a much bigger problem. There's a balance on what's too high and what's too low with CO2 in the atmosphere. No photosynthesis = no food crops and fodder for livestock = mass starvation. Nature isn't a benign force that helps make the planet habitable for us. When viewed on a geological timescale, CO2 levels were arguably dangerously low from a photosynthesis standpoint because of the effect of weathering the emerging rocks of the Himalayas due to India colliding with Asia in plate tectonic terms. Pre-industrial CO2 levels were significantly lower than the levels most plants originally evolved for, which is why greenhouses work so well. As things stand the increased CO2 levels and slightly higher temperatures have been increasing crop yields and boosting plant growth in general over most of the planet. There's a reason why you hear less about the problems of feeding the growing world population and desertification of the Sahel than you used to. That doesn't fit the preferred dumbed down for an IQ of 90 narrative on climate change so this is almost never highlighted in the mainstream media. In order to reach CO2 levels that lead to a spectacularly damaging outcome on the greenhouse effect the models need growth in fossil fuel use to continue unabated through to the latter half of the century. The other angle that is left out of the dumbed down narrative is the skepticism that most geologists have over whether that is actually even possible. Green politics like a doomsday cult latches onto the worst case scenario and turns it into an apocalyptic vision of the future that only they can save us from. The main problem I have with that is the effect it has on the psyches of the people who think the dumbed down narrative is factual and don't grasp that the future is still very much in our hands and that there are actually many reasons for optimism over what lies ahead.

Probably not a bad way to go about it but to paraphrase a line in Goodfellas, it's amongst the Scots real mince and tatties stuff. What it all boils down to is league and association officeholders keeping hold of as much power as possible, so anything that emerges is likely to be a compromise that keeps all the blazers reasonably happy on that score or there will have to be a mass exodus of clubs from at least one of the leagues involved.

The SFA doesn't seem to think so. Right now all that is in writing is where team 42 gets relegated to and that can still be adjusted.

Green politics revolves around talking up highly alarming explanations of complex problems and offering overly simplistic solutions for them that are dumbed to a level people with an IQ of 90 can understand (e.g. talk up CO2 being a dangerous gas but don't bother mentioning we need it for photosynthesis, etc). Because almost all of the target audience do not understand the science involved it all becomes a matter of faith rather than reason and hence a form of secular new age religion emerges in which people who try to point out that the issue is a wee bit more complex and the solutions might not be sensible or realistic become evil heretics to be denounced and shunned. Being hypocrites on a breathtaking scale never did traditional organised religion any harm, so doubt the Greens need to worry too much about a few frequent flyer cards having too much long term harm.

It's also three down in the west region, which could become a feeder soon all going well with blazer related politics.

...and the best way for the LL to push for that is to show they are willing to do it themselves.

In most respects they are. They just couldn't go all the way on it because of flag waving nutters. Being in the EEA rather than the EU might have prevented the current mess.

EoS champion vs SoS runner-up EoS runner-up vs SoS champion Would solve that issue for now.

All the grade basically does in reality is run a national cup competition. Issues like player registration and referee appointments are already handled by the SFA so junior football is nothing like as separate from the seniors as some people like to think. I don't see a compromise scenario having some clubs in parallel conferences at tier 7 in the east playing in the junior cup and some in the south challenge cup as an insirmountable barrier to progress. It would sort itself out over time. Finding a bizarre but workable formula like that and proposing it at a PWG meeting would be a good way for the SFA to smoke out people's true motivations including Tom Johnston's, who is probably all too happy right now to push something he doesn't really want because he knows the EoS is going to block it.

The league constitution is online so it should be easy to check. Issues like these really should be in the hands of the SFA board, so selfish self-interest agendas are not allowed to interfere with how the pyramid operates.

All fine and good, but bear in mind that the SFA officeholders involved seemed to have no issue with the SJFA getting pretty much what they wanted in the PWG minutes, so this is mainly about the EoS at this point rather than the SFA, SoS or HL. I suggested a page or two back that a possible compromise would be that the two superleague divisions of the ERSJFA could enter as what would effectively be tier 7 conferences (rather than being at tier 6 like the WRSJFA would be) and would then feed into the EoS premier rather than the LL. Would you see that as being a problem? Can you envisage any way that the ERSJFA can enter the pyramid and remain part of the SJFA, if that is their wish?

...was suggesting a way that could happen a page or two back.

They don't have to, if the existing leagues are simply slotted in alongside them whether that be at tier 6 or 7 as the case may be and the LL adds an extra relegation spot.

Three from memory. Think two automatic and one a playoff

Don't think the EoS format for 2020-21 has been determined yet, so it's not clear that the two tier 7 conferences are playing for anything other than promotion to tier 6.

Tier 7 entry for ERSJFA (with the north and south superleague divisions as feeders to the EoS premier rather than the LL) and NRSJFA (predicated on application being used until the Highland League reaches 20 teams and splits to provide the north tier 6), but tier 6 entry for the WRSJFA would also make for an interesting if bizarre compromise proposal that keeps the SJFA intact.

Highland as things stand at the moment.

People on the committees of lots of clubs saw all your posts about this earlier this year, but nobody appears to have questioned what was going on with the negotiation posture at the SJFA and west region AGMs. It's not just about Tom Johnston. A lot of people still appear to believe that the SFA can force it through, so it's all probably in a holding pattern until it becomes crystal clear to all whether they can or not.