DMCs

You can tell they are fuming about it as well Hopefully we see some resignations soon

I'd be extremely sceptical of that as well!

Sure that's fine if the Scottish Government isn't spending taxpayers money on trying to save Clydeside jobs and pick winners in the market.

It's already been announced that it will be reinstated next financial year. Unfortunate in my view as it was a good opportunity to scrap it but pensioners are a big voting block. There is no guarantee that the triple lock will exist in 40-50 years and in fact there is no guarantee that the state pension will exist at all. With the way the demographic pyramid is looking and with the birth rates what they are it's just not sustainable in any way. The Edinburgh metro area has the lowest birth rates of any metro area of over 800k people in Europe. I'm certainly not including any assumed state pension in my retirement planning and neither would I advise anyone else in my age cohort does as well. I'd rather that working people had more money in their own pockets now so that they can raise a family. Not just some. The vast, vast majority have more assets than not only what we might consider young people but working age people in general. Not only that but they genuinely have more post housing cost income than working age people at the 20th percentile, the median and the 80th percentile. They don't need a large % increase to their benefits in the main. Sure some are struggling which is why the best policy would be the elimination of the universal state pension system entirely and simply move to a means tested system. Inflation is the highest it's been since I was born, we're in a global energy crisis that is only going to get worse with the Russian situation, now we are in a global commodity price crisis and we just went £400bn into debt to deal with COVID. The only way we are going to see rising wages is with economic growth and we just raised taxes by £15bn then immediately blew half of that revenue on giving pensioners money that most of them don't really need so that the Tories don't get voted out. It's absurd.

Our green and grey friends providing ample entertainment during this international break:

Ultimately it comes down to deep rooted psychological issues. Your hardened Scottish nationalist has a vicious envy of the English that is hard for them to forget emotionally. It's an inferiority complex at it's base.

Rumbled by who? Certainly not by you anyway as you're as thick as pig shit let's be honest

I'd bet a lot of money on it. Pensioners are a huge part of the Tory voting bloc. Ultimately I think we should have scrapped the triple lock years ago. The state pension should be linked to the CPI alone.

Tavernier for me. Genuinely a brilliant player that works so hard for the team in all phases. His performance at home to Dortmund was truly outstanding and he hasn't dipped in and out of form like many have.

Was it? I mean either those dumb democracy indexes that Freedom House and the like produce have it down as a "flawed democracy" which let's be honest it ultimately is.

Suspended for now. They will bring it back in a year or two.

The state pension is linked to inflation, in fact more than that as it's triple locked, it's just been paused for a couple years as the pandemic caused some weird distortions. Ultimately pensioners have more disposable income than those actually working and it's National Insurance that's rising to pay for the £400bn pandemic debt so it seems to me that pensioners have it good.

All VAT on energy bills should have been postponed. Insane to pay 20% on that which isn't the norm in most countries.

Must win if we want to have any chance of lifting the league title. Simple as that.

Ridiculous statement. As far as I'm aware it's all about the critical email from Club1872 and doesn't have anything to with the fan protests. Club1872 were spot on really as the board have just been embarrassing recently.

He got his starting line up far wrong today. Doesn't really deserve praise for some tactical knowledge. Maybe some for being brave in chucking a lot of attacking players but even that should be limited.

A truly toilet performance. I need a beverage that has amnesiac properties after watching that rubbish.

Brian Porteous

What on earth are you talking about? We're one of the top scoring teams in the competition and there can't be any doubt that we deserved to get through our group and past Dortmund.

That's the perfect draw for progression to the semis really. All about getting the job done now.

Pot 1 isn't decided by club coefficients any longer. It's the CL winners, EL winners and champions of top 6 leagues by coefficient. So England, Spain, Italy, Germany, France and Portugal.

Confirmed dump. Total sh*thole. There are about two streets that are worth going to and they aren't anything that can beat Ljubljana. Every local I've met has been friendly though.

Belgrade is a dump. That's my impression so far anyway. I haven't been to the hipster part of the city near the old fortress yet so hopefully it improves up there.

That looked painful. But didn't seem to anything that would prevent him from playing in upcoming games though.

More of these sheep tears please. There was plenty enough in our European thread on Thursday night.