LongTimeLurker

Having spent a week in a hotel run by the Russian military in Moscow about 15 years ago (long story how that happened and definitely an interesting experience with don't choose the lowest priced by quite some distance option being the life lesson learned) with breakfast catering carried out by some very miserable looking conscripts being marched about by an old guy who looked like he had probably been a guard in the gulag at some point part 9 was credible:

...and having Brendan Parkinson from your club on the LL board probably helped as well given it may have been the board that brought the issue to the clubs. Vaguely remember reading that Civil Service Strollers tried to get an absurd motion passed that the board were not to do this again unless the SPFL opens up promotion at the other end of the table. Hopefully Cowdenbeath would be in the good guys camp on this issue if they beat Gretna and Edinburgh Uni OK. Have to echo what Deanburn Dave is saying that being in the EoS premier isn't something to be dreaded if you are a club with a significant core support that has the ability to bounce back after pro/rel has been opened up properly.

Think the Ukrainians and by extension the West and its media outlets are happy to keep Vlad guessing on this. Problems with the sabotage angle are that Crimea's Slavic population is largely pro-Russian by all accounts and the northern portion of the peninsula is flat as a pancake with lots of large open fields so not easy to do something like this. Crimean Tatars are the prime suspects for being the portion of the population motivated enough to do something very risky even after eight years. Deported by Stalin during WWII and only able to finally get back in the Gorbachev era with the Ukrainian state having favourable policies towards them while local ethnic Russians would have preferred that they stayed in Central Asia.

Similarly clueless but inquiring minds like to know. I think if this info is accurate they would need GPS to be the guidance rather than some guy in a hedge with a laser pointer:

There is some speculation that the Ukrainians have developed their own system with funding from the Saudis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hrim-2

Think two targets in Crimea have probably had a visit from ballistic missiles this morning although this guy favours the partisan sabotage theory and may turn out to be right: My understanding is bridges have been taken out prior to this on the two railways out of Crimea into the rest of occupied southern Ukraine and there's no way to send trains west from Donetsk because the frontlines are too close in Donetsk oblast so the Ukrainians appear to be systematically taking out Russian logistics.

That was the conventional wisdom before the season started but they need to be able to beat Dalbeattie, Edinburgh Uni and Gretna more often than not for it to be a given in a Berwick in 2019-20 sort of way. Their next two league fixtures are the latter two so we will soon have a clearer picture.

Think you are about two or three months behind the times with that line of argument. The capacity of the Russian armed forces to keep fighting this war isn't infinite and HIMARS arriving has blunted their ability to bring massively superior artillery to bear in key portions of the front. NATO's ability to resupply Ukraine at this point and off into the future is greater than Russia's ability to replenish its arms stocks, if countries like China don't help them as has been the case so far. That means Ukraine can win if NATO decides to go for it. The only problem for Ukraine is that NATO almost certainly didn't expect to reach this state of affairs so it remains to be seen if they actually will because something something red line something something tactical nuclear device.

Anbody who claims Putin wasn't after this initially needs to explain what Russian VDV troops were doing at Hostomel airport on day one if it wasn't about rapidly forcing Kyiv to capitulate and replacing Zelensky with a pro-Moscow puppet. Waltzing into Lviv only looks farfetched now because the Russians were not able to surround Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa in the first week and block off the bulk of Ukrainian armed forces from resupply in the Donbas and because thanks to that Lukashenko got cold feet where Belarus participating was concerned. The reason all that didn't happen and we are where we are now is because Ukrainian territorial reservists fought much harder and more effectively even in what had been pro-Yanukovych mainly Russian speaking parts of the country than Western military experts thought they would.

So far only Lochee United and Tayport have entry level licences. Carnoustie Panmure are moving in that direction but don't expect to be able to do it until next season. North End, Broughty and Kirriemuir all have grounds that tick some of the key boxes on licensing but not clear if they are going for it this season. Have only seen the first two of those three mentioned in that sort of context previously.

The Ukrainians appear to be saying otherwise. Think you'll find the Russians have captured some other settlements in the Donbas over the last few weeks particularly close to Bakhmut after a power plant they had been going after for months finally fell to them. Meanwhile in Kherson the Russian commanders are reported to have moved to the east bank of the Dniepr now that all the bridges are down. We'll soon find out if makeshift ferries are enough to keep a large number of troops supplied to the west of the Dniepr:

Think a case could still be made for some kind of playoff involving the loser of an HL vs LL champions game to replace an automatic slot for 10th in League Two, 2nd placed clubs in both leagues and 9th placed club in League Two.

Do you actually need to worry about having local derbies with Hill of Beath Hawthorn, Crossgates Primrose and Dundonald Bluebell next season now? Surprised by how poor the starts have been for both your team and the Shire. Some of the usual suspects for relegation like Edinburgh Uni and Gretna appear to be showing some signs of life.

Elsewhere:

Those official numbers are surprisingly low because every SFL game had around 150 complimentary tickets associated with it in that era that could be used to make sure nothing under 200 ever had to appear in the papers. Lowest through the gate number for the Shire I am aware of in the 80s was 37 for a midweek game because a journalist highlighted it in one of Sunday papers from what I remember. 50 or so was nothing out of the ordinary in my direct experience. .

Definitely not ever in terms of number actually going through the gates having been at plenty of your games at the old Shire park in the early 1980s.

Think the Ukrainians are happy for now to keep the Russians guessing about how they did this but people who appear to know what they are talking about on twitter seem to be coming around to the idea that it was missiles that were the culprit based mainly on the size of the craters that are visible:

Meanwhile this is what the Ukrainians are saying: Worth bearing in mind that the Russians are exporting some of what last year would have counted as Ukraine's grain harvest so the situation in terms of global food supply is a lot less dire than it could have been. Looks like the bridge over the Dniepr isn't quite fully out of commission yet but probably only a matter of time:

Because after losing over 400 warplanes and helicopters, 1800 tanks and 4000 APCs largely to NATO weaponry, what's going to really drive him over the edge is Ukraine moving into Crimea, which is still de jure part of their country. Interesting theory but still some way to go until it gets tested out in practice. The Ukrainians haven't even liberated Kherson yet, but this is a major development if accurate: because it means the Russians can't drive over the Dniepr any more and are completely reliant on makeshift ferries.

Think fracking of shale gas is more likely than coal and that should have been developed in the UK by now along with a new generation of nuclear plants but politicians appeased a shrill irrational minority by not doing so. Green hydrogen and other solutions to provide energy storage for renewables is the long term solution but the technology isn't where it needs to be yet. The combination of wind turbines and solar panels backed up by Russian natural gas with both coal and nuclear being deliberately sidelined to keep the Green lobby happy before there were viable solutions implemented to the storage issue with renewables was the recipe for the current crisis. What's happening now in decisively steering away from that recipe for blackmail by Vlad has some pain to it but it's a bit like ripping off an elastoplast. Something that needs to be done before the issue at hand becomes the Suwalki Gap triggering NATO's Article 5 rather than a proxy conflict waged through backing Ukraine.

Meanwhile oil and gas prices have been coming down in recent weeks because production capacity is slowly being ramped up elsewhere along with the capacity of western Europe (mainly Germany) to import the LNG that will be exported from the US after the LNG export terminal that mysteriously blew up is operational again from October. Thanks to taking back Snake Island after HIMARS arrived Ukraine is also exporting grain again. Those two factors will take the edge off inflation in the months ahead. The level of dependence on Vlad was always mainly a political choice to appease the Green lobby. If Germany keeps its remaining nuclear power plants open and reopens the ones it recently mothballed, the Dutch ramp up production of their Groningen gas field, and the rest of Europe starts using coal for electricity generation to the extent they still have the ability to, the coming winter doesn't have to be anything like as challenging as it otherwise would be.

Only thing that really matters right now is that the Ukrainians have shown they have the capability to strike accurately in the 80-250 km range. That means the Russians can't assume that they are safe if they keep their ammunition depots out of HIMARS range. In addition to the Neptune system Ukraine apparently had a cruise missile called Hrim-2 with a range of 280 km that was almost ready to go into production for export to the Saudis when the war started. There's some speculation that the Poles might be helping Ukraine to keep its weapons industry functional in that sort of context.