scottsdad

For me it's simple - Alloa. I grew up in Alloa, and have been to see quite a few of their games over the years. Saw them knock Kilmarnock out of the cup years ago. The only reason I didn't grow up as an Alloa fan was that my old man took me to Brockville as a kid, as he was a Falkirk fan.

8 for Thursday

I really don't know. Years of austerity have taken their toll on the unis themselves, and in principal I agree that it should be free. Don't know what the answer is.

First offence, resit the module. After that it gets very steep! Up tonexpulsion.

Simple scenario. Your club has vanished overnight. Done a Third Lanark. There is no Airdrie-style coming back from the dead. There is no new team taking on your clubs heritage like Livi/Meadowbank. The club is gone, dead, buried. The council have bulldozed the stadium. You're still a football fan...so who would you go and watch/support instead? First day of the new season - what stand are you in?

The answer is, of course, yes. Assuming you're either a woman or under the age of 13.

Plagiarism is a wee bit different and miles easier to detect. With AI systems the trouble is that you can ask the same question a dozen times and it'll give you a dozen similar (but not identical) answers. Hard to detect (hence why I'm quite chuffed to have cracked this one) As much as the tools are good (eg turnitin) there's no substitute for experience and a complete and utter mindset of suspicion.

I'm 44 and like pints and kebabs. I'm a better option than Jacob Brown.

4 AI cases now. I think I've cracked it. A few students had a very strange way of formatting their answers. I put the exam question with a little specificity into ChatGPT - exactly the same format comes out. But I'm being nice. I'm storing the paperwork until January. In years gone by I'd have sent the "You're caught, boyo" email out before Christmas. I'm going soft. they can receive it on January 9th. ETA - the answers are mince. The same item listed as an advantage and a disadvantage. No detail whatsoever.

And from today Scottish ministers cut spending on free university places

That you, Joey?

Usually Johnson does his vanishing act when the lady informs him that she's up the duff.

Interesting discussion on student finance in Scotland. A good explanation is given here. For my perspective, each uni has a cap on numbers and it isn't always easy to predict what the "market" will be. We launched a new programme 2 years ago in our uni expecting 20-30 students to apply initially. Over 500 applications came in. Far more popular than anticipated. Other programmes recruited fewer than expected so the new programme mopped up some of that availability. But ultimately it is no longer an absolute that if you meet the requirements of a programme you get in. And unis don't really want to go into clearing except for the students that bring extra cash (RUK, international or SIMD20). The Scottish Government has pulled £100 million out of the Scottish HE sector this year and that is baked into future projections. The central money coming to unis for undergraduates has been declining in real terms for ages. Colleges also badly hit. Then there are things like graduate apprenticeships. Launched a few years ago this was a stream of "extra" money for unis. Unis got paid x amount per graduate apprentice, and they hired staff to manage these....then the Scottish Government changed it. Pulled all the funding and said that a) the GA's were now part of the cap and b) unis who had GAs had to keep them or the cap gets reduced. So for every GA student we have that's one less place on a mainstream programme. The uni I work in gets 9% of its total budget from the Scottish Government, to put it in perspective. But this keeps declining, and the insanity of the home office visa restrictions means our international recruitment is tanking also. University finances are under huge pressures at the moment.

Joey Barton and Piers Morgan are getting unnaturally wound up about this. Pleasing.

The last works night out I went to was in the late 90s with Somerfield in Alloa. The store manager had booked the function hall at the Claremont Lodge hotel. Loads of folk went, all dressed up looking forward to a night out together. Me and a mate showed up ~10 minutes late. We entered the bar that leads to the function hall, and noticed there was no music or anything. So we put our heads round the door to see what was going on, and in the middle of the dance floor was the store manager with a flip chart giving a talk. Everyone else was sat at tables, all dressed up, glaring at him. This was when Safeway (now Morrisons) was opening up and he was trying to rally the troops (his words). My mate and I retreated back to the bar, and sat for about half an hour sinking pints. When the music next door started we went through. But the lesson was learned - a works night out managed by the boss can go badly.

Always wondered what Santa's compo face would look like.

Couple spent years saving to remove 'dangerous' tree only for neighbour to report them Does it really cost 3 grand to chop down a tree?

Got some puff pastry mince pies from Tesco yesterday for £1.50 - glorious. This is the image from the website - look even better in real life

On the gluten thing, over time my missus has become more and more intolerant of various foods. In particular bread and pasta - if she eats too much it gives her really bad stomach cramps. Also most types of juice and wine, if she drinks them give her serious bad guts. She can only really drink Irn Bru and one type of wine. This has developed over the years.

How furious? Compo face furious?

Yeah, it would take ages for a lecturer to count your words and then subtract the in-text citations. Truth be told, for me if it looks in the right ballpark then I'm happy. If the dissertation is 12,000 words plus references and the whole document is, say, 13,000 words I'm not checking a thing.

Sweet potato fries done in the air fryer, nice and crispy - magic.

I just came on here to post about these - but the opposite opinion. I couldn't stand these.

8 for Wednesday