LongTimeLurker

A link that's worth reading if people don't understand where the western Ukrainians being portrayed as Nazis stuff comes from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera Whether the Red Army are viewed as liberators or occupiers in a WWII context is one of the things that divides the different parts of Ukraine.

The shale bubble has burst so it's more likely to be Qatar on LNG shipments at the moment. The real reason Vlad is in Syria and the west backed militant head choppers against Assad was Qatar to Europe gas pipeline related. Never happened so Europe and Russia still need each other. Takes time to build pipelines so that won't happen overnight. Easy for the cable news media in the UK and US to cheerlead a war from a distance when they are not the ones who are going to freeze in the absence of Russian gas or have their economy collapse in the absence of the associated revenues.

The lingering question mark is how much they actually want to move up to the LL and in all likelihood lose SJC access in the process but the word has consistently been that they are in it to win it so they are not behaving like Brora did.

The first step was a so called Union State formed 25 years ago after Lukashenko took power. He initially was popular because he was one of the few politicians in Belarus who actively opposed the dissolution of the USSR. Since then the Belarus elite seem happy enough to have their own state to lord it over rather than turning into a Russian oblast.

The Russian State Duma recognises DNR and LNR and Russian Army drops the pretence of not being stationed there is about as far as this is likely to go unless Kiev completely loses the plot. What destabilised the situation was that Ukraine has been strengthening economically and militarily in recent years and now cooperates closely with Turkey on military drones so could now credibly attempt to do to the DNR and LNR what Azerbaijan just did to Nagorno-Karabakh. The western media often portrays Vladimir Putin as some kind of strategic genuis but after he invaded and annexed Crimea he managed to move from having a Ukraine that was wary of NATO and often tended to tilt east at the ballot box towards one that now has a solidly pro-western electorate. Without the invasion by the little green men there's a fair to middling chance Ukraine would have eventually elected another Viktor Yanukovych type candidate like they did in the second set of elections after the Orange Revolution.

Sasha is usually a male name in that part of the world so maybe somebody was at the windup.

Think that's Brechin City punted out into longshot territory on the title. Hopefully there will be no more shenanigans on trying to move to the LL and the pyramid can bed in with the format that's in place now.

Begs the question why Murray Carstairs is not starting games these days? Was a defensive partnership between him and Greg Skinner not supposed to be the answer moving forward?

Think most of them have no problem accepting that the Uniate (i.e. basically Roman Catholic but with an Orthodox type church service) part of western Ukraine around Lviv isn't Russian and can more or less accept that the former Cossack areas around Kiev that were under Polish rule up to the 18th century are Ukrainian if they want to be. The more heavily Russian speaking areas that were former Tatar lands which were populated by Slavs over the last 250 years or so further east and along the Black Sea coast not so much though. Suspect Putin was very surprised that more of those areas such as Kharkov and Odessa didn't rebel in 2014. He tends to drone on a lot about Lenin causing problems by handing them over to the Ukrainian SSR.

Famous last words possibly but think the full scale invasion scenario is being way overhyped by the western media. The buildup is probably more about Russia warning the Ukrainian government that attempting to use newly acquired Turkish drone technology to retake the Donbas militarily would have dire consequences for them.

Aberdeen fans would maybe be the most likely to have been there in DDR times on here given they played Dynamo Berlin in that era and seem to have developed some weird fan friendship thing with them subsequently.

Armadale vs Whitburn is a local derby and involves clubs at the top end of the table so I'd do that one.

The Grangemouth athletics stadium was being talked about as far back as the 80s. The consensus among the few regular supporters at the time was that they wouldn't go at one game I was at in that era where it was a major talking point. If priority on booking dates could ever be sorted, I think that's the only possibility of it ever happening.

The Canadian content rules for songs played on Canadian oldies radio stations must have made them an absolute fortune over the years along with Gordon Lightfoot and Anne Murray.

The relegated club gets to choose. That apparently happened at the start of the season but nothing has been announced so far about who would go where.

There's a good chance 5 clubs will have to go down if the WoS champion wins the playoff and Vale of Leithen rather than Gretna are relegated so safety could wind up being something like 40 points.

Extremely may be pushing it a bit but I'd be surprised if BoD, Lochee United, Tayport, Carnoustie Panmure and Broughty Athletic are not in the HL ten years from now. After that the ML champion might start to struggle in the playoff as the low hanging fruit will be gone. Think the big question mark is how quickly other top north region clubs in and around Aberdeen other than BoD go for licensing.

That was a complete joke of a decision but Falkirk having their Scottish Cup tie against Inverness Thistle postponed 29 times later on that decade would be the more acceptable sort of reason for central belt clubs being wary. Was there not a feeling that it was the wrong applicant in Inverness terms and that a Caley application might have been viewed more favourably?

Weather conditions being a leveller might be a good thing given recent form. Beith's ground is infamous for its slope.

Probably not on the last bit but the top couple of Tayside clubs (usually Lochee United, Carnoustie Panmure or Tayport going further back and more recently Broughty Athletic) were always solid east superleague quality and well ahead of the north region in terms of SJC performance so a few HL clubs may be in for a rude awakening over the next few years where the playoff is concerned. Dundee area junior clubs pioneered floodlight use and tend to have properly enclosed grounds so licensing is easier to do for them than their counterparts in and around Aberdeen. East Craigie are having an unusually good season and may struggle to keep their team together as they have historically been one of the smaller clubs.

Are you sure about that? There are 14 teams so there are 26 games overall and Culter can still reach 61 point while BoD currently have 49 unless I am missing something.