LongTimeLurker

Play games to a finish on one fixture date with penalties, have an element of seeding with tier 5 and 6 clubs coming in later and completely avoid December to Februray and it's feasible.

Mutton, neaps and kale also likely to feature heavily. Can't see how a hard Brexit can be avoided now. Irrational nationalist lunatics have clearly taken over the asylum in an almost breakup of Yugoslavia sort of way. Hopefully this is just one last spasm of post-imperial delusion and it won't drag on for a few decades.

Not necessarily poppy related. Aiden McGeady and James McCarthy would get similar stick from the Scotland support over not playing for the national team that represents where they grew up. Unlike those two who always steered clear of playing for Scotlsnd teams, James McLean represented NI at the youth level before switching allegiances.

Unionism could be toast within a generation if they deliberately engineer a hard border. Think the key is that the NI backstop component has to be seen as something that is highly unlikely to ever happen. That means talking up the longevity of the all UK customs union angle, so getting the DUP firmly on board might come at the expense of having more rebel Tories.

Think it was the Puma brother that did that but fair enough point.

Of course Remain is the best option but Leave won the referendum, so some sort of Brexit has to happen. An EEA style Brexit would have been no big deal and would have been easy to achieve if Labour wasn't led by a tankie nutter like Corbyn and Theresa May hadn't called her vanity general election that left her short of a parliamentary majority giving fringe nutters like Rees-Mogg more leverage than they otherwise would have had.

Even Montenegro had a Yes with that sort of split.

Not true. The Norway EEA approach would have made very little difference beyond not having a direct say on EU policy. A UK wide customs union as the backstop until a free trade deal can be agreed is way better than a hard Brexit under WTO rules. Politicians who are willing to contemplate the latter for petty party political reasons or because they think it brings Scottish independence or UI closer are playing with fire.

The answer will no doubt be that the CU is only temporary until a Canada style free trade deal is agreed. A lot depends on what Jeremy Corbyn does now. The DUP (who may be on side according to some reports) and pro-hard Brexit Tories like Rees-Mogg only really have any leverage if he is firmly in the no camp and it might be difficult for him to find credible grounds to reject an all-UK CU deal if it means he gets blamed later for a hard Brexit.

May's 'secret' Brexit deal avoids Irish backstop - report It would seem that the real crunch date for #brexit is Nov 6th; can ⁦@theresa_may⁩ get her own party to agree to a soft Brino for now as a step towards a #brexit some time in the future? https://t.co/coBTIKP6cD Looks like there could be a deal, but I have a sinking feeling that it's just a way to avoid being blamed when it all unravels.

Probably not keen due to the NATO bombing of Serbia during the war in Kosovo and would probably have had all kinds of nutters giving him a hard time for wearing one. People should turn a blind eye and not make a fuss in situations like that.

If LL2 involves east and west sections then problem solved basically as that takes the top clubs in both the east and the west away from the SJFA once and for all and it's a lot more reasonable to feed from four at tier 7 into two at tier 6 then one at tier 5.

Ultimately it's up to the SFA how things proceed and everybody but the EoS agreeing to something can still be described as a consensus. A consensus does not imply unanimity.

Have been reading your posts on this subject off and on for around twenty years now. Hope you are enjoying going from being the sane voice of reason out in the wilderness on this subject (as opposed to the guy from Saltcoats) to being less than a year from it finally happening.

Don't think the letter can be dismissed quite so easily as that given it comes from the SFA chief exec and is dated October 25th. It shows what the professional game board want and if that includes a shift of the LL:HL boundary from the Tay to the North Esk and agreement in principle to all three junior regions joining at tier 6 it is very significant even if the PWG still has to straighten out the details.

Should have remembered the old adage that if it seems too good to be true it probably is.

Seriously doubt the HL want Lochee United or Carnoustie Panmure on board and the Angus SPFL clubs would probably prefer to be relegated to the LL, so this is probably easy to fix at an SFA AGM.

Was the embargo not supposed to be in place until the entry of the juniors was negotiated? Think that's a sign that it's pretty much all been sorted out. Ultimately it's up to the SFA what happens on the pyramid rather than the PWG, so if there's consensus emerging amongst everybody other than the EoS, I doubt the EoS have a veto.

It's implicit from the existing east region being one of the feeders to the LL, and only the north region starting discussions with the HL. Time to turn the page and move onto the next chapter. In time, the feeders will no doubt get tidied up geographically but this was always the easiest starting point that was in the documents circulating before the LL was launched. The path of least resistance usually helps to get the job done. Too bad it took a few years to get there.

A lot of Leave voters thought they were getting a soft Brexit. Can remember being treated as a crank by some posters on here at the time for raising the RoI border issue. That wasn't even on the radar for most people when the vote took place

Michael Ignatieff is running a university for George Soros in Hungary apparently after failing to become prime minister. His Blood and Belonging series about nationalism on the BBC was really good, so suspect he is very strong as an academic but he didn't quite cut it as a politician from what I saw sometimes on Canadian TV as he lacked any kind of rapport with the average voter.

They moved from Maryhill due to there being too many postponements due to the pitch always being waterlogged from what I remember. The problem with Ashfield is that the pitch is too narrow due to the speedway. Beyond that with the seated stand and fully enclosed ground it would be a natural for licensing.

Their amateur team appear to be playing at Petershill now: https://twitter.com/BSCSaturday suspect it's only a matter of time until their first team are back in the north side of Glasgow.

Think a lot of people would see this appointment as a probable career ender right now, which was probably a big part of why they wound up with John Brogan (no disrespect to his many impressive achievements in the game) who is well into his 60s and probably a lot less concerned about giving it a whirl than somebody who is only recently retired from playing. Barry Ferguson seems to have preferred a Lowland League option that's difficult to mess up badly as the way back in even with the Albion Rovers job all too obviously about to become available pretty much on his doorstep in travel terms.

After beating Kelty it looked like you had maybe finally turned things around and were about to go on another roll of good results similar to last season's. Can understand why people would see that as a tempting one in betting terms as your league position probably still looks like a misleading one to a lot of people and may still turn out to be.