LongTimeLurker

West region clubs are affiliated SFA members even if they are not full SFA members, so if you are trying to launch a new league under the SFA you would normally be expected to notify all potentially interested parties as happened with the Lowland League. Beyond that it's more a case of them not actually needing lots of junior clubs to be involved to potentially be able to do this than not wanting them.

If EK and Cumbernauld Colts do the same, and you throw in Glasgow Uni and Bonnyton Thistle and a few colt teams, this could easily be launched with little or no junior involvement. When the Lowland League was formed junior clubs were contacted as a courtesy but there was no huge expectation that any of them would actually join as the EoS premier clubs (mainly Spartans) were setting the agenda and were pushing their own selfish self-interest rather than some grand vision of building a genuine pyramid. There have been media reports about the Old Firm colt teams joining the senior grade pyramid as soon as next season and this is probably the only way they are going to get their foot in the door, because the lower division SPFL clubs are not going to agree to having them parachuted into League Two.

Suspect it would all quickly be headed off at the pass by a posse of irate pensioners on moblity scooters where the vast majority of junior clubs are concerned. The way it might happen is with a mix of colt teams and ambitious amateur/youth clubs with only the four recent additions to juniorfootball (i.e. Clydebank, Girvan, Rossvale and Gartcairn) being likely candidates from the juniors. Time will tell.

It probably ties into providing a viable starting point for colt teams to enter the senior grade's pyramid as I doubt the powers that be at the SFA would care about the issue otherwise.

Thought the film was OK (if far from a classic) apart from the Leia flying scene (although I guess it was a useful improvised plot device to sideline Carrie Fisher until they needed to trundle her out again for one last reunion with Luke, as a character was all too obviously added in out of nowhere to take what were originally going to be her lines if her acting had still been up to snuff). But apart from any nitpicking over the laws of physics, getting Mark Hamill to play a bitter old hasbeen was probably the best way to deal with his limited acting abilities as he really just needed to be himself for that and I liked how they handled Rey's parentage. Tempted to trawl through old posts to revisit that issue with the posters who thought they knew for sure she was Luke's daughter and were waiting for a plot that revolved around Mara Jade or whatever she was called.

Lots of Gaelic names got anglicised over the centuries. McDaids appear to have changed into Davidsons in my family tree a few miles over the partition line from the failed gerrymandered and demographically doomed Orange statelet or whatever the prevailing terminology on here is at the moment. I suspect that a DUP politician like Jeffrey Donaldson could easily be descended from McDonnells if you went far enough back. The idea that one side in Ulster are usurping planters and the other indigenous dispossessed natives doesnt really stand up too well to close inspection, because converts have always been accepted in both directions and there has always been a percentage of mixed marriages taking place.

Farage and co are not going to go away obviously, but a huge chunk of Leave voters never wanted a Hard Brexit so now that Theresa May has finally been forced to follow what rationality dictates rather than pandering any further to the crazier portion of Leave opinion I think it will be difficult to reverse the momentum towards a soft Brexit revolving around a Canada style free trade deal with a transition period extended until it can be fully implemented.

Great article on what has happened from Dublin, although think he's wrong about the DUP at the end not getting what they want: https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-ireland-has-just-saved-the-uk-from-the-madness-of-a-hard-brexit-1.3320096?mode=amp The last thing an Irish nationalist is ever going to be able to state is that the DUP have come out on top as a zero sum game mentality still very much applies that precludes the possibility of both FG and the DUP being justifiably happy with what has just unfolded. It will no doubt be much the same from a Unionist perspective in the News Letter on how the RoI has to have lost in some way. Overall though the RoI-NI border has been the issue on which the Hard Brexit of the "swivel-eyed loons" and their "great blue yonder of Empire 2.0" has foundered and thank fork for that.

Not a lot changes from how things are now in many ways, beyond the probable eventual ability to apply a work visa regime onto newcomers from the EU as Canada is still able to do under its free trade deal. For the more moderate soft Brexit type leavers that was important as it means no future huge influx from the continent similar to the wave of Polish workers after eastward expansion. That's why there isn't a huge backlash coming from Tories so far, only from Ukipers.

They need to have a no customs tariff environment to make this fly through a Canada style free trade deal and the text would help keep policies aligned in an EEA type arrangement loose enough to keep all but the most extreme UKIP nutters happy in optics terms. Checks at Rosslare tie into the Common Travel Area and not being in Schengen, so no change there.

I'll take that as a yes. More cerebral SNP supporters already grasp that what is happening is very good news for them and that the prospects of the Yes side winning a future referendum have been significantly enhanced. I suggest you find what they are writing: https://wingsoverscotland.com/the-lesson/

Disappointed there was a solution that you can't turn into a turgid Nationalist vs Unionist thing? All that's changed is that May caved in and now is agreeing to what is effectively a soft Brexit because the policies that would have applied to NI to keep the border soft now apply across the UK, so the Irish Sea boundary is also soft as well now.

He has well and truly spat the dummy. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/08/brexit-deal-nigel-farage-says-deal-not-acceptable-business-leaders/

Basically that's what Norway already does and it's what people meant by a soft Brexit, but it probably all has to be dressed up as a Canada style free trade deal rather than the EEA to stop Nigel and co gaining too much political traction again. Given the UK was largely disengaged from the EU and had opt out after opt out, hopefully not a lot changes once the dust settles at least if you are not taking advantage of freedom of movement on a regular basis.

It's the EU that have got what they wanted given they negotiate collectively and it was only their willingness to give the RoI a veto that gave Varadkar the negotiating power. Biggest losers in the short to medium terms if this sticks will be Sinn Fein if there is no special status for NI and an ongoing soft border. That kills the border question which is their raison d'etre as an issue for most people and punts UI off into the distant future in political career terms and makes a failure to agree to a resumption of power sharing difficult to justify. Only fly in the ointment for Ulster Unionism at that point is Scotland because paradoxically what Arlene Foster has been able to engineer courtesy of the numbers balance after Theresa May's bungled snap election really helps the SNP to achieve its goals.

If they can negotiate an EEA style free trade over the next few months, which should be relatively easy as the UK already complies as an existing EU member, and dress it up in language that makes it look like the UK is out in some way when it is really effectively in but now with no say whatsoever in EU institutions the problems get fixed and the NI-RoI border can be like Norway-Sweden with the Common Travel Area used to claim there is effective immigration control. Interesting person to watch over the next few days is Nigel Farage and how mental he gets. Tories defecting to UKIP to insist on a real Brexit is what can most quickly scuttle this.

If I understand what just happened this is slowly turning into a soft Brexit in all but name, because Westminster politicians have finally faced reality of how much power and influence they really have nowadays. Looks like the DUP did something good for the rest of the UK when they insisted that anything that applied to NI had to happen elsewhere as well. Eliminating the east-west barrier keeps the Union more secure where NI is concerned, but not with Scotland because it puts independence for Scotland in the EU back on the agenda again as a viable alternative for the referendum swinging pragmatists, if hard borders are no longer in play, so I suspect Nicola Sturgeon is doing cartwheels around her office in metaphorical terms right now.

Almost certainly made up as the number of votes they would get would be comically low and they will be well aware of that, but somebody responded seriously again after welshbairn, so thought it was worth posing the question again.

When I put "DUP stand in Scotland" into a websearch, what I get back as the second link is this thread. Can anyone provide a link for what this is based on?

source?

Not arguing it would be ideal, far from it. Staying in the EU single market is by far the best option, but in logistical terms that's manageable if you have enough lanes to channel traffic through checks and you can funnel commercial traffic through a very limited number of crossings without creating huge disruption. That sort of scenario happens all the time on the busier crossing along the Canada-US border like Detroit-Windsor or Buffalo-Niagara Falls, for example with passport checks included that wouldn't be necessary in a Scotland-England context if different customs regimes were applied in an internal UK context. Looks like sanity is prevailing and top Tories now appear to grasp that anything that is done with NI to keep the NI-RoI border open should apply right across the UK and that should mean a significantly softer Brexit, which was probably the EU's end game.

She's reminding Theresa May what it should mean to be the leader of the Conservative & Unionist Party.

He quoted an online poll on the Belfast Telegraph website and made it look like it was the results of a scientifically conducted opinion poll survey. The numbers are basically meaningless as participation was self-selecting and easily manipulated by sending out a few messages urging contacts to participated to skew the results. There is some evidence that Unionist opinion isn't as uniformly hardline as the DUP's posture, but that's nothing new.

It obviously opens the door to Scotland doing something similar in the years ahead, and there are so few viable border crossings thanks to lots of high hills and the river Tweed getting in the way between Scotland and England that it wouldn't be anything like as great a logistical nightmare as the RoI-NI border is to police in customs and excise terms. If you are Unionist in your outlook like Ruth Davidson this is something that the Tories shouldn't be pandering to in any way shape or form. It's seismic stuff politically that a Conservative and Unionist prime minister would even think about signing the deal that was about to be made with the RoI and EU yesterday. Since EVEL was brought as the response to the West Lothan Question, it has not been so obvious as it used to be that the Tories are still the party of traditional Unionism as Ruth and co like to think rather than the party of Little Englander nationalism.

Looks to me like Theresa May thought the DUP would bottle it and meekly acquiesce if she just ignored them and ploughed on regardless. The problem that Westminster politicians of her generation have at the moment is that they don't seem to grasp that Britannia no long rules the waves and that they have no Empire on which the sun never sets to fall back on in all of this. With Article 50 invoked prior to agreeing the future arrangements they have almost no leverage and are finally finding out just how important the European dimension that they never took seriously and largely tuned out always way to the UK's economy.