Jump to content

 

 

Thinker

 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    1,735

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    4

 Content Type 

Everything posted by Thinker

  1. Thinker
    ... and in Germany a colinstein is a large, half-litre glass of gin and lemonade.
  2. Thinker
    Not really the way I imagine it - it wouldn't change the Champions league. This is utterly hypothetical and the figures can be played with, but Imagine 5 interested national leagues decided to opt in. I'll say Scotland, Holland, Belgium, Denmark and Switzerland, - but it doesn't matter. Each restructures their national top flight to 6 (for example) teams. Each season, each country is drawn against 2 (for example) others and this is rotated so you get different foreign opposition each year. With some clever fixture scheduling it shouldn't matter how many nations are involved. For example in one season: Scottish teams could play against Swiss and Dutch. Dutch teams against Scottish and Belgian. Belgian teams against Dutch and Danish. Danish teams against Belgian and Swiss. Swiss teams against Danish and Scottish. and this would rotate the next year. In this example, each team would play 10 (5 home, 5 away) games against teams from their own nation plus 24 (12 home, 12 away) against teams from 2 foreign nations. The winner of each national 6-team national "conference" is the one with the highest points total over all 34 games - the top however-many qualify for UEFA competition. The loser of each 6-team conference is relegated and replaced by the winner of that nation's second flight. That's pretty much it. Like I say just and example - the figures can be played with to get a higher proportion of intra-national games if that seems more sensible, or a higher/lower number of games per season. More nations can opt in at any season, and (even) more complexity could be added by organising the conferences into tiers. With a tiered system, it's even possible that some nations could enter more than one conference with each playing in a different tier. P.S. It's entirely possible that I'm not the only person who has ever come up with this idea, and equally possible that I've made a glaring logical error that renders the whole thing unworkable.
  3. Thinker
    Amalgamation seems a cruel way to solve the problem - IMO a better way would be to create a proper Scottish football pyramid incorporating the juniors, so that some of the less well supported clubs can fall away to a more appropriate, lower level. e.g. 2 or 3 out of the 4 clubs you mention (Forfar, Brechin, Arbroath & Montrose) would, over time, inevitably fall down the divisions to a 6th or 7th tier regional division (some form of East of Scotland league). They'd probably prosper with more derbies to play and lower travel expenses - more like the Ayrshire Juniors. I also think there are more realistic options for the top flight - I once wrote up an idea for American style conferences for the less populous nations. Basically it involved clubs playing for their own Scottish / Belgian / Swiss etc. title whilst also playing a set number of matches against teams from other associations. It seems complicated at first, and is a bit alien to football fans, but each team in each conference has the same set of fixtures and can still logically be seen as the best team in their national association. It's hard to summarise - I could dig out the document and post it if anyone's interested.
  4. Thinker
    Don't be ridiculous - you must know that's not what I think. I'm pro devolution, and in favour of the dispersal of decision-making power around the UK - not just to Scotland BTW. But we're talking about museums here - tourist attractions that you'd probably only visit a handful of times in your lifetime even if they were right on your doorstep. And whether you like it or not, London is the capital. Where's the National Museum of Norway? Oslo, funnily enough. Where's the National Museum of Denmark? Take a guess. And don't ever go to Washington - you'd be fizzing! Like I said, I'm sure there are examples of London-centricity that you could be righteously indignant about and that I would agree need to be fixed, but this is argument is just silly. It seems like your pissed off with the concept of capital cities.
  5. Thinker
    There's far more to the conclusion they draw than that. You don't accept their verdict - fair enough. A couple of batshit right wing MPs may have called Scots scroungers - it's not a prevalent view. And it makes sense to have national exhibitions whereever they get the highest footfall. What would the alternative be? Splitting the collections up regionally by proportional value? Having them constantly on tour? I'm not saying their aren't examples of London unreasonably hogging resources that could be cited, but that's not one of them - it's completely trivial.
  6. Thinker
    It's actually the north of England that's getting the rough deal when it comes to unemployment (which is no less tragic than if it was Scotland IMO and needs to be addressed). http://www.itv.com/news/update/2014-01-22/unemployment-figures-highlight-regional-differences/
  7. Thinker
    Clearly the figures on tax raised and expenditure can be analysed in a number of ways, but our relative loss or gain always seems to come down to oil. I'll stick in another link (although I'm sure it's old news to you) in the hope that you consider Channel 4 a more neutral source of information than the BBC. http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-oil-debt-decide-scotlands-future/15852 With regards to non-identifiable expenditure, it seems legitimate to me to claim that money can be spent for Scotland's benefit without it being spent in Scotland. I daresay I enjoyed the BBCs coverage of Wimbledon at the weekend as much as any other license payer. And I thoroughly enjoyed my visits to the Science Museum, the British Museum and the Natural History Museum in London a few months ago. I certainly feel I got my tax money's worth out of them all and I don't feel particularly aggrieved that many of these type of national resources are situated where the maximum number of people can access them.
  8. Thinker
    My point is this. if the usage of oil as fuel were to fall (and we must all hope that it does), there would be less immediate demand for it. And since there are many places in the world were oil can be more efficiently extracted, the supply to demand ratio would shift. Consequently, oil production would become less profitable. IMHO, It's every bit as plausible to dream of a positive future for the UK as it is to dream of a positive future for Scotland. I didn't say we'd be more vulnerable than Sweden or Switzerland. Only that, like them, we'd be dependent on other nations for nuclear defence. The world has to move from the current situation of fossil fuel use and carbon emissions, to one of nuclear power and carbon capture. Without a shadow of a doubt the technology will spread and it is eminently weaponizable. How many nations in the developing world do you think will obtain nuclear technology in the next 35 years? Quite conceivably most of them. And in many ways that's a less worrying prospect than a rapidly increasing world population all relying on oil or coal-fired power stations. To be fair, the links you provided were fairly pro-Independence. The link I provided also shows that Scotland has a greater expenditure per head. If oil revenue fails to provide the difference, we'd be worse off.
  9. Thinker
    Well over 80% of oil is used as fuel. I'd rather the see the UK government invest in the positive things you mention, but I'm not comfortable with the idea of neglecting our national security in the hope that friendly, powerful nations will maintain world peace. The number of nations with nuclear technology continues to increase, and not all foreign wars are unnecessary. I notice that the nice even pie-chart is for the onshore economy. UP to 20% of out national tax income could be from oil. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-24866266 It's a critical part of the pro-Independence economic plan. If the price goes up, we're quids in. If, on the other hand, it drops, we'll lose out.
  10. Thinker
    Great, as long as we have somebody to sell our generated electricity surplus to. Renewable energy like wind, wave and solar (sadly) cannot meet the energy needs of the planet - the only viable alternative to carbon producing fuels for much of the world is nuclear fission, which despite its dangers is more than capable of producing an ample amount of energy. That's the near future of energy generation. Beyond that, a single scientific breakthrough in say, fusion power, could transform the picture completely. That may sound like science fiction but it was predicted within our lifetime. I have no doubt that there are children alive today who'll see it happen.
  11. Thinker
    I anticipate the value of fossil fuels will fall - and hopefully long before it becomes scarce, as the world moves to alternative means of power production. Well, that depends on the proportional amounts raised from each doesn't it? I agree that this thread should be moved, but I'm pathologically unable to leave a point un-counter-pointed. It's a serious problem I've got and I apologise.
  12. Thinker
    What I meant by the section you highlighted is that if a nation relies heavily on a particular source for a big chunk of its revenue (e.g. financial services or fossil fuel production) then any disruption to that industry will have a massive negative effect on that nation. Yes, the EU's economy is diverse, but an independent Scotland's (like many small nations) wouldn't be. The EU doesn't provide us with alternative sources of revenue to see us through a crisis. The right wing is gathering strength in certain parts of England (or, to put it another way, certain parts of the wider UK) and it's not so strong in others. A nation of this size is diverse politically as well as economically.
  13. Thinker
    Well, as you rightly say, we can only speculate on the alternative history of RBS - but sooner or later, in any nation's history, either through poor leadership decisions or sometimes sheer bad fortune, economic crises occur. Being part of a large, diverse economy dampens the effect, whilst smaller ones are more like to boom and bust. Whether the levers are in Westminster or Hollyrood, inevitably, eventually the wrong one gets pulled.
  14. Thinker
    Would RBS have acted any differently had Scotland been independent? You and I certainly wouldn't have had any say in what they were allowed to do. How would we have dealt with the bailout? Our situation may well have been more like that of Ireland ( i.e. borrowing from the UK to cover the cost, and austerity measures introduced to claw back the debt). As Scott7 said above though we've veered off-topic for the football forum here.
  15. Thinker
    Well, I suppose the critical part of the decision in the referendum is that we're voting for the system of government, not the government itself. During their histories, all the major political parties have had successes and failures, strong leaders and weak leaders etc. and any political party that may be elected should there be a Yes vote will be no different. IMO, It's a question which is far bigger than Milliband, Cameron and Salmond (or even Thatcher and Blair). I think the referendum will be a very close-run thing, and I'm by no means certain who'll win.
  16. Thinker
    I agree with you on all those points except I'm voting No, which, I suppose, strengthens the point you're making. It's a decision which certainly shouldn't be influenced by what football club you support, but I strongly suspect a lot of people in both camps are heavily influenced by their peers.
  17. Thinker
    The logical extension of your theory on this would be something like the scenario which Andy has suggested a few times (with tongue in cheek, I think). i.e. It's been a massive Timmy stitch-up from that day one. LBG forced the sale to Whyte, who chose Duff & Phelps, who accepted Green's bid, who made sure certain anonymous consortia had a controlling stake in the club, who proxied their votes to Easdale....
  18. Thinker
    That was posted on here too: http://www.gersnetonline.co.uk/vb/showthread.php?63652-£70-7m-where-has-it-gone Obviously we haven't squandered the whole of the £70 million as that would have involved spending nothing for the last 2 years. I'd have understood it if we'd eaten into the IPO money to make up for the shortfall in income from not being in the top flight, but a £10million per year overspend? Add to that the fact that you had CG proudly boasting of our bank balance, whilst simultaneously signing horrible, detrimental deals without lawyers present, for God only knows what shady reason. It smacks of people filling their boots to me. I don't see how anyone can seriously defend the running of the club over the last two years.
  19. Thinker
    It worked with the Laxey loan - Find out the terms and conditions of whatever deal they intend to strike and then undercut it in a way that is clearly better for the club. See if they dare to refuse it.
  20. Thinker
    I agree with you and I desperately want to buy a ST. But (along with many other fans) I need some real reassurance that the money will be spent on the right things. I've said since before the 120 day review came out that what we need to know is: 1) who signed off on the bad decisions of the last two years? (and why were no lawyers present?) 2) who benefitted? 3) do any of the above parties have any influence over the club anymore?
  21. Thinker
    In your opinion. Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong.
  22. Thinker
    King would have to make an offer that is the most profitable for them. They'll take the most profitable course of action, regardless of the impact on the club's future so, sadly, someone is going to spend a great deal of money to make sure the most profitable course of action is in the best interests of the club.
  23. Thinker
    Will this be allowed to happen though? It's beginning to feel like the club is being held at knife-point. "Pay up Dave, or we'll slice off Auchenhowie. Then maybe Ibrox..." They're in a position where they can make decisions that could cripple the club for decades to come. I hate to say it but Dave is going to have to offer the current coalition of shareholders more money than they'd be able to siphon off the club, and he needs to do it before they sign-off on any more onerous contracts.
  24. Thinker
    It's the lack of transparency and communication that creates the doubt though. I don't normally overthink these things - but I've never been entirely comfortable with anonymous corporate investors. When we search for an explanation for the extremely dodgy goings-on at the club, it's only natural to look at the suspiciously obfuscated ownership and think "What are they trying to hide?"
  25. Thinker
    All we can do is surmise. Call me paranoid if you want, but the first time I ever heard the company name "Blue Pitch Holding" I was filled with a deep sense of foreboding.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.