What’s Going Wrong With Scottish Football?
Reading all of the stories last night about Scottish football, it appears to be digging itself a big hole.
Apparently, the Scottish Premier League is set up that all changes need an 11-1 majority, to protect the interests of Celtic and Rangers. The other clubs want this changed to a 9-3 vote. The manifestations of this are well set out in this reasoned article from the Herald.
The article ends with this statement.
The Old Firm, and the rest of the SPL clubs, have a responsibility to do what is right for the game. Where is the consensus? Who is prepared to act radically, instead of just talking about it?
If Scotland wants to have a viable football competition, the powers that be must act decisively, radically and quick. One solution, that I would not countenance at any price is Rangers and Celtic playing in the English leagues. They must keep their sectarianism north of the border.
To make matter worse for Scottish football, the driver of the Motherwell team coach managed to get it stuck under a bridge, as is reported here.
I do also wonder whether the rise of Scottish rugby teams like Edinburgh are turning fans against football and its never ending troubles. Fanslike nothing better than a winner.
Basques Want to Join an Independent Scotland
I can’t work out if this was a Spanish joke or not, but it is reported in today’s Times. The leader of one of their political parties has said it and has also waxed lyrical about kilts and said that Edinbrgh should replace Madrid as their capital.
Probably it’s just another way of stating the old adage – You don’t have to be mad to be the leader of a political party, but it helps.
I actually think on a day of such miserable foreign news, the story lightens everything up.
On the other hand it could be a large publicity stunt on behalf of Bilbao-based company CAF, who are building the trams for Edinburgh’s tram system and they want to get it finished and of course get paid. When it does get finished, I suspect that a mixture of Scots, Basques, paella and Scotch will be a good recipe for a party.
Nuclear Dilemmas
The Times today reports that an independent Scotland under the SNP would want no part of the Trident nuclear missiles based at Faslane. So this would mean we’d need to build new facilities in England. The extra cost would mean that those arguing against Trident replacement be helped greatly.
I actually think that we should scrap Trident and if we needed to keep a nuclear deterrent, we should use cruise missiles fired from a vessel like an Astute class submarine.
But the bigger nuclear diemma is over nuclear power. It is being reported that today, David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy will sign a wide ranging treaty which among other things enables new nuclear power stations in the UK.
But Francois Hollande has said, that if he wins the French Presidency, he’ll scrap nuclear power in France. Remember that Scotland will need nuclear power, when the wind doesn’t blow.
Let’s have some engineers in politics.
Rangers in a Pickle
Glasgow Rangers went into administration yesterday and it looks more than your average mess, if you read this article on the BBC.
If you read the comments in the BBC article, they are blaming everybody.
I suppose that as it’s the HMRC that has caused the club to go into aministration, then the UK government will get the blame.
Scotland on Sir Fred
Whilst searching for Scotland’s reaction to Sir Fred’s fall from grace, I found this page in the Glasgow Herald.
There are some funny bits, including one, about how you toast a haggis if you’re teetotal.
But this bit on Sir Fred’s Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh is priceless.
After The Herald revealed that disgraced banker Sir Fred Goodwin may have his Fellowship from the august Royal Society of Edinburgh removed, reader John Duffy in Edinburgh suggests: “Could they not just downgrade him to an Associate, just for the pleasure of seeing a more appropriate set of letters after his name.”
I’m not sure if he’s actually lost his Fellowship.
Hester’s Bonus
A lot of people are outraged about the size of Stephen Hester’s bonus at the Royal Bank of United Kingdom Taxpayers. I’m not because although he got £963,000 it’s all in shares, which means it’s in his interest to raise the share price as much as possible by running the bank to the best of his ability. After all, there are still quite a few small shareholders in the bank and they would be glad to see their worthless investment be worth something. And of course, there’s the big shareholding in the hands of UK Taxpayers. So if Hester looks after himself with these shares, we’ll all benefit.
But if he fails, we’ll have a worthless bank on our hands, which will probably be closed with the loss of many jobs.
I actually think that it should have been liquidated, but that would have been a disaster for all the small shareholders out there. Gordon Brown couldn’t afford all those lost votes in Scotland. Or in England too!
Aurora Borealis
This year seems to be the best in my life for the aurora borealis or northern lights in the media.
I’ve only seen it once and that was from a British Airways jumbo, crossing the Atlantic. The pilot spent a long time making sure that everyone who wanted was able to see the wonderful display as we passed down towards San Francisco over northern Canada. I suppose it keeps the passengers busy on a long flight.
I have been though to one of the best places to see the aurora in the UK. And that is in the cab of a train going from Edinburgh to Inverness in the evening. The night I did the journey, the time was wrong and anyway it was cloudy. But the driver had seen them many times, as they climbed over the Drumochter Pass, which at 1450 ft high is the highest railway line in the UK.
Is Sir Fred Going to be an Unfellow
This comes from an article in the Scotsman.
The Royal Society of Edinburgh may now strip Goodwin of his fellowship. Amid the baying mob there are those prepared to take a more conciliatory view. Lord McConnell rightly says that what happened at the banks was a result of more than one man’s failings. The failure of RBS was systemic.
So will he be de kilted or whatever they do north of the border?
I Thought Germans Obeyed Orders
This German trucker, obviously didn’t, as the signs said he shouldn’t cross the Forth Road road bridge.
The Anonymous Widower 