bmck

I HATTEEEE CRAIG BURLEYY!!!!!! The guy's an utter nightmare. I'm so shocked anyone likes him! I mind against Hamilton he was just moaning about everything - workies not working, the state of the stand, how rubbish the commentary box was. Even Ian Crocker said "Well you're getting paid for watching the game" or something similar. Can't stand the guy, he's a thorough dullard!

I don't think many people who worry about these things are all that interested in their respective faiths, tbh. If you sing Hello Hello or whatever the Timmy comparison is you're probably equally in transgression of God's Law, the principal difference being whether you say sorry directly or via a priest. The question is really political, as it always is, and about whether the nominal protestants or the nominal catholics get positions of power. Historically speaking, to be complacent about increasing RCC political power/influence is extremely unwise. However, that's not really a question of the Protestant faith but rather an expression of the political right to religious freedom won by the Reformers. In truth, the protestant Christian position'd be to pray for the salvation of the Catholics, and convert them away from popes and priests and rosary beads through genuine compassion, service and humility, by offering them salvation not through a man or a church but through the resurrected and living christ, rather than hate them personally. Any challening them must be motivated by love for it to be truly a matter of protestant faith. The difference between what we're seeing now and Reformation times was that Christians were denied the right even to preach this gospel of love and obedience to God through christ alone, and so the political reconfiguration followed this conviction as religiously essential. What 'protestants' now want is not the right to preach this gospel, but rather to protect all the political and freedoms from the RC church that came from the desire to preach it. Whatever we're discussing here, it's not the protestant faith, which is supposed to be Christlike, but rather the ability not to be reigned over by the influence of the RCC. This isn't a matter of the protestant faith, but it is bloody important. That's at least how I see as someone who was formerly entirely and thoroughly Calvinistic Reformed Protestant Christian.

Sad thing is he may well have just been having a laugh with his mates. I certainly would and not think twice. The problem is that it's been the Timmy's incessant desire to politicise and play the victim with any part of life they think they can take advantage of that's created this nonsense situation. Now people want parity, and it's coming round to bite them back.

It's reporting like that makes me glad I pay no license fee.

Now lapses into the metaphysical is French indeed. And it makes me wonder: if one speaks out of Timmy earshot, and it isn't contorted into a proddy conspiracy, would one even have spoken at all?

Or they may be entirely different because they haven't yet met you

I even like the Parisians. They have that irrational big-city vanity you get with London etc. Most French people I know don't like Parisians tho.

The French are immense. That is all.

Given that you're altogether quite picky about which questions you answer it probably seemed like too much of a gamble

No-one likes us, we don't care!

Yes and no. Following like sheep seems quite insulting, but on any site there's going to be a grain - whether it's here, VB, FF, whatever - because people tend to post where they find comfortable and with people who they broadly think are like minded. The key thing is what happens when people do go against the grain - or don't follow the consensus - do they get shouted down? banned? Wherever there's a group there's consensus, but it's how people deal with it when consensus changes that's important. I think it did too. Not because they follow like sheep, but because they, 'knowing' the people involved, follow the events and change their mind accordingly. I think those sorts of dealings - what they symbolised - showed that the RST was down a wrong path. I don't think the people that left were flawless, though - they perhaps should have stayed and fought to keep it out of self-serving hands, rather than resign and give in. Others have thought the RST was ineffective from its conception. Other think its fine. People from all spectrums post here, but I think you're right that Frankie stepping down had an impact on the line of thinking - partly because it's Frankie, and we know him, but moreso because of the circumstances involved.

Gribz, Continental Hangover is a recognised thing, though. There's no excuse for not winning an away game before a European night. Before and after is a bit much, but before is definitely better than after. A trip to Pittodrie, other than how thoroughly depressing it is to be there in amongst the even toed ungulate 'umpers, is not going to tire you out in the same way a European night is. On the day after an Aberdeen game you're only try to shake off the depression of having been there, not the actual bodily exhaustion and drain of a big European game.

3:10 onwards is outstanding!

I'll give you a fiver if you make that your signature

Thanks for keeping us uptodate elfideldo!

Well said. Everyone'll hijack your words to their own ends, for and against, but what you've said is decorous and true. On yersel.

It makes perfect sense. That you can't make sense of it is just unfortunate but no a product of my perilous and clearly life threatening flu I'll concede your second point tho.

It would be perfectly sensible to say, as the analogy properly is, I'm a Tory, but I don't like the cabinet. I am a member of the Trust. I don't think I have the capacity or, for that matter, time to lead it. Being a responsible member involves things like having an opinion on the board.

Can we please stop saying "mistakes were made" as if they caused themselves, or sprang up, fully formed, from the void without any human agency? Damn politician speak.

By employing the same rationality they'd need to employ if there were 3 valid criticisms and the Trust said, as they are now, that all 3 were hyperbolic. If they can't do that now, they won't in the future.

Wabash, I had to edit out some of your little smileys as they'd made the site go skee wiff and I'm still to sober to be able to read sqwinty.

God, I can't help myself and I'm going to slip into flu induced coma and it's going to be your fault. Again, I did understand your point from the off, it's just that I don't agree. My complaints are already and necesarily legitimate. Neutrals can read them here in a free and open debate and agree or disagree. If people are simple minded enough, when reading valid criticism here or on FF, like ascender's say, and are unable to seperate it from hyperbolic criticism then it's no more difficult for the trust to undermine it in the future as it is now. You are counting on neutrals to be smart enough to distinguish sensible from non-sensible criticism; the surrounding noise is irrelevant. If people aren't smart enough to distinguish it now, then there's nothing to say that the purely reasonable criticism can't just be cast as the latest incarnation of the unreasonable criticism. In your commendable desire for progress you've turned things entirely the wrong way round. It's not the responsibility of RST members with reasonable criticism to silence, by whatever means, the unreasonable criticism - even if such a thing were possible. If their criticism is being called unreasonable now, by being lumped in with unreasonable criticism, it will be called unreasonable in the future, by being lumped in as a new incarnation of the old unreasonable criticism. If the neutrals can't determine reasonable criticism now because of misidirection, they won't see it in the future. You want what can't happen. You think, which is to your credit, that it's our responsibility to do everything to narrow the wriggle room. You're right. And you can use your voice to do so in a free and open manner here. We've done everything possible for a long long time, short of censorship, to engage the Trust in the most reasonable way. We'll continue to do it. Even if you're not naive enough to think that the Trust will answer legitimate complaints if they come in a more reasonable package, you're naive enough to think that those neutrals who can be persuaded to ignore them now can't, by some other means, be persuaded to do so in the future. You should argue against the hyperbolic criticism - everyone who thinks like you should. You can actually do that here, and in other places, where there's free and open discussion. You can do it in the knowledge that it won't make any difference to the RST but with a view to converting the neutrals. But they don't exist. That you view us as 'peddling' obviously rubbish points, as if we're responsible for directing what people say, rather than allowing free and open debate from which people can make their own minds, is telling. We don't peddle these views; in this thread itself there have been plenty of people arguing precisely the most reasonable stance as we would perhaps agree to see it. Nonetheless, we can't criticise the RST for stifling debate and then do it ourselves. Not only would it gain nothing with the neutrals you imagine, or with the RST board as you acknowledge, it would essentially mean that we had become some sort of closed propoganda machine, allowing only to be said what we deem useful. That's the very thing we don't like about FF and the RST being so closely intwined. Again, I understand your point, and have understood it from the beginning, I just don't think your way forward is right other than through people like you arguing your point in a free and open manner. I'd prefer a unity of only reasonable criticism - but it wouldn't be any more effective with the board, or with neutrals. It'd be nonetheless good, and it's why I'll continue to go forward saying what I think is reasonable, argue against what I don't, and afford everyone else the same right. If you truly knew, as you say you do, that the RST are sufficiently motivated not to accept any criticism, no matter the surrounding contexts, you'd know there's nothing to be gained by garnering more reasonable criticism from the unreasonable or your imagined neutral. It's a sickness that can only be cured by the people who have the power to do it - the RST themselves, who are as able now as they ever were to engage reasonable criticism. I'm away to get sufficiently MWI that I don't feel ill. Really this time.

I'm getting slightly lost in the pronouns here, but just to be 100% clear. Even if the people with the harshest criticism wanted to maintain the status quo, it isn't within their power. They could stop their criticisms, they could hop on one leg with pleading faces saying "Please please pretty please" and nothing will have changed. Their actions might give the Trust one way out, but the status quo is maintained because the people with the power to maintain it want to maintain it. That's not the pathological detractors. You think that by narrowing down the ways out, you give them less wriggle room. This is true, as far as it goes, but doesn't change anything. It doesn't make progress more or less possible because even within that less wriggle room there's still a gulf of space with which to out maneuver the reasonable criticism that's left after the sifting, because of the way power's balanced. Just now the trust won't answer criticism not because of the extreme criticism, but because the extreme criticism gives them one way to do it. It's an important distinction and not one I think you've fully considered. They have other strategies - the ones they've used between controversies from decent people looking to engage them - for just reasonable questioning on its own. When you add that the costs involved in censoring extreme criticism in any other method than free and open debate of the sort the RST won't allow, you're no further forward and a pale shadow of what you criticise with even less moral right to criticise. At the next owngoal, the disunity involved in censoring will let the Trust say "You're accusing us of silencing debate, yet you can't even begin to criticise us without silencing those who are supposed to agree with you" or something similar. While they have the will, and the power, to deflect, it almost doesn't matter what anyone else does. I think you're right to argue against the extreme criticism, and that a more unified reasonable response would be better, but it wouldn't be more effective - especially not if it were artificially manufactured through censorship. I'm not sure you understand yet what I'm calling wrong. This is honestly the last I can say at the moment, I'm no well. Please do feel free to respond though.

Who's deedle? Agreed. Agreed. They're not wrong in the moral sense - the moral sense in which it's wrong to ignore reasonable criticisms from those to whom you're accountable as in your second point there. But they're wrong if they think it'll get them further forward, I agree fully and have done from the start. The important point is, though, that they'd also be wrong if they think that's what's holding change back and that change would come if they changed their ways.

Please refrain from the personal stuff. In our small pond if you can't make your point without resorting to personal insults you get warned