mrD

What are you referring to there?

The risk of not getting a return on an investment is the nature of the beast that is capitalism. At least getting the costs covered - adjusted for inflation, means no real loss.

I have, in the past, made great cases for that. I guess its because i don't take much stock of being scottish as some kinda identity in the way that those who support the national team may do at times. for me, in the independance question is about having a poltical arrangement that gives the ordinary punter a wee bit more power; if we don't get it then there is no nationalist sentiment in me wanting to preserve a football arrangement which has been designed around the hegemony of the old firm, with outcomes of years of having 5 fixtures against livingston per season OR if we are really lucky managing to get 5 against Kilmarnock (as we have currently!).. Nah, give me possibilities of league 1, league 2, who knows maybe the championship playing against a whole plethora of great historic teams as well as the scottish ones under an amalgamation arrangment. Not to mention playing against liverpool in the FA cup. Who knows we might be in a position to compete with the likes of scunthope united over lyle taylor as being part of a british football league!!!

It's not really forced, The old rhetoric has always been "it's scotlands oil" - does this only have meaning in terms of a question of nationalism - ie between england and scotland - as it has been framed in the past by the snp - ? or is it a question of whether a natural resource which is part of scotland's territories should be for the benefit of the scottish people? A deal between the soverign state of the UK and private companies regarding resources that are part of the scottish territories should surely be looked at if soverignty became organised according to scottish line instead - this is no different to the question of renegotiating the fishing waters with the EU which has been a long term part of SNP policy, where it has been argued that the UK's negotiationoary outcomes has been to the detriment of the scottish fishing industry. If full nationalisation of the oil was somethign that perhaps benefited the people of scotland, then it would surely be daft to not look at that as a possible strategy for getting revenue to implament a social-democractic programme. To see that as a possible option is not, despite the hyperbole, going down 1917 grounds, its an outgrowth of what it means for the proposition of the scottish people being sovereign over the territories of scotland, in outcome. The property rights given to private companies agreed between the UK and the oil companies is not some kind of confirmation of basic lockean natural right, as if it was something inalienable granted down from God Himself - it is simply an agreement between one polity and a private companys stewardship of the polities resources. If a new polity came into being, it is not bound to the agreements made by the old polity, and for it to look at matters again for its members interest does not thus result in usurping some kinda sacred inalienable right granted by God. Obviously private companies have invested time and resources in developing the oil fields, hence why it would probably be understandable and perhaps moral to go about negotiating some kind of settlement to cover investment costs in contemporary oil fields and oil fields they have done survey work on etc. But as for covering the costs of their historic investments, i don't see a case for recompensing them for something that they have already profited from.

Louis Althusser on ideology; Marx and Engels the german ideology sounds wanky i know, but for the (wanky) dissertation

geto boys.

Dead Prez

Being honest, i don't know much about what the impacts would be if we were to undertake such a thing. But surely there would be some conciliatory ways to do such a thing (e.g. - offering 100% compensation for the investment made by oil companies in current oil fields).. If after reasonable measures like that were taken, aggressive trade embargos were still going to happen then i think this in a nutshell exposes what is so problematic of capitalism in how it encloses common resources for private profit to flourish to the detriment of the commonweal.. but that is another debate!!!

I would like to believe we are not, by nature, selfish and greedy and ready to get one over the next person. But having just come back from a group job interview where there is this horrible thing were people in competition for the jobs need to co-operate to complete the tasks demanded in the interview, with people breaking from the social rules of co-operation to get a better chance at getting the job, one does tend to think that this is the state of affairs for humanity! (obviously the marxist in me would say that this is just how we are under the capitalist mode of production where the iron laws of competition hold sway!) But yeah, grim stuff nevertheless! One thing that i would like to see post independance would be nationalising of oil production. In numbers this would surely mean 100% of the oil revenues (obviously taking away production costs and further investment costs) which might be able to offset the more bleak predictions about how much oil revenue is predicted to reside in the north sea (i.e- the figures advanced by unionists). I don't think one needs to be like chavez to see the utility in such a decision - and i don't think, apart from shareholders in the oil companies, that it would alienate many people in scotland regardless of what their politics are. Interesting to see thats not on the agenda of Salmond and so on. But to be fair to salmond its a pretty tough gig, trying to sell independance to the hayek fans (lower cooperation taxes!) and to the social democrats (better welfare!). If independance happens it will be good to see political parties emerge that dont have to hold rather contradictorary notions together... ETA Also - if we don't get independance then (ala my signature) i want to start a campaign about amalgamating scottish football with english football - on the basis of being part of the same nation state - that i have banged on here many a times on this forum!!

To be honest Norgethistle, the nitty gritty of how economic policy is not one of my strong points so im not going to debate the figures - important though they are to any realisation of any vision. What i was getting at more than anything else is that at the moment is that all the ideas that circulate about how we go about social policy and its relationship to economic policy has for the last 30 years or so constrained by a purported realism (i.e - there is no alternative) that places massive limits upon the imagination about what direction we want to take our society in. And this realism is been predicated by an economic orthodoxy that has only been in place in the last 30 years, whereas in the post war period there was another orthodoxy (keynsianism) that had a different set of possibilities in terms of social policy. The fact that there has been 2 competing narratives about how we go about doing things in the interelationship between economics, politics, and social policy surely in the wake of 2008 should allow us at this juncture to start thinking of going back to the drawing board, or at the very least, not being committed to a particular approach to doing things, since a sober look at past events shows that there are problems with both. And i think thats why this independance debate has got people so engaged, as it does to some extent allow us to imagine new possibilities outside of the same-piss-different-bottle stuff on offer in the westminster elections. I mean, for every social democrat who wants independence, there is probably a corresponding fan of hayek that wants to go down making scotland into a low tax, free capital, and inward investment haven, post independance! (as if the UK doesnt already fulfil that function..) But more than just that, i think it allows us to think of things that are just not politically acceptable in the middle england - westminster mileu - that instead of being simply ill thought out ideological stuff, can actually have good pragmatic import. Take for instance quantitative easing as a response to the freezing of interbank loaning that was having an impact on accessing credit in the real economy and thus impacting on spending and so on. One of the criticisms of it at the time was that, instead of it being able to circulate down into the real economy by virtue of freeing up borrowing constraints, banks instead went about hoarding these new stashes of money in their reserves. Now any neoclassical economics 101 textbook will tell you that people on low incomes have a far greater marginal propensity to consume, that is poor people, by virtue of being poor, don't save - they spend. So based on that insight, a good way to have stimulated the economy would have been to disperse such money to the lowest earners, say as a one off, have a good time giro and what was intended by quantitative easing but failed to have happened would have happened. But in the context of middle england having an impact on the range of political choices such a policy would be politically unacceptable. Now im not saying scotland would pick such a policy- im sure there would be good reasons to not pick a policy like that, but i think by virtue of the new-ness of independance; the slightly more to the left policy climate we already have here, then we might be able to entertain ideas that would be untenable in westminster by virtue of the mantra of there is no alternative.

Not really a non-sequitor if the underlying premises are around the political and economic direction that westminster has taken since thatcher has led to the kind of rising inequality that leads to the phenomena of more foodbanks. When one looks at whats on offer between the parties there is no divergence from the neoliberal consensus and thus corresponding prospects of an increasing immiseration amongst those of us who haven't done well out of the post thatcher years. I think what motivates a lot of people to vote yes is the possibility of shifting policies in a different direction and the powers that exist within develotion are probably not suitable for going in that direction. (for example welfare policy is a reserved matter). Going towards a beveridge style welfare state including full employment is most definately not possible under devolution. Now whether such choices are also constrained by wider 'structural' matters is another question, but even if one accepts that there are constraints from the way the global economy is structured, this does not negate the idea that national soverignty should be used in a fashion that at least amilierates the social ramifications of such policies or indeed challenges such a state of affair (albeit as a small nation with limited clout in the international arena). For those of us who are motivated by such concerns there are absolutly no prospects of such policy directions being undertaken in the UK. As for all the chat on this forum about the overarching need to 'balance the books' as the only worthy imperative of consideration for economic policy - all i can say is no thanks! If keynsianism is totally unsustainable, fair dos but id much rather start looking for alternative ways of going about how we produce and distrubute our goods and service rather than the ideas we have in circulation at the moment in westminster.

Surely having a policy where a free season ticket is invalidated if not claimed after a period of time would be a simple mechanism to stop this problem arising? Kids for free is a great flagship marketing strategy but it loses its force once it becomes burdened with all sorts of provisios. Also 25 quid puts it not far off the Celtic kids season ticket offer in price. This compromises the ability to achieve the purpose of the policy - to grow our fanbase - by diluting our competitive pricing advantage.

So that's a bit like singin the flower of Scotland in Scotland then. Total non story. Even then be interesting to know if the songs sung were problematic by Scottish legal standards.

Joking aside it would be interesting to know exactly if an offense took place in terms of an infringement of the recent antisectarian legislation (himo very poorly defined legislation )or if it's just reactive populist nonsense rom the daily record.

What Ira songs were they?

dunno who im going to support. i think i might go for the dolphins as my dad is a gloria estafan fan and she has shares in the dolphins i think...

cheers for that info, and sorry for the long time to have a response. been snowed down with family and university matters and have been avoiding this forum to stem my propensity to procrastinate. Thats pretty mental that they couldn't sustain a franchise with a crowd of 20,000 at the claymores. i mean thats bigger crowds than most spfl teams and on a par with CFL crowds. Wonder if they had kept it going they might have started to break even.... Yeah, i probably will end up contacting the tigers or the pirates and maybe go along to one of their tryouts if i cant get this 7 a side thing organised. Been reluctant to contact them for tryouts as im thinking that 35 is probably too old to start a new sport, and i was shit at sports anyway even in my younger years...

it would be such a luvvie thing to do to have partick thistle phd studentships lol!

One possible criticism of the seemingly uniqueness of the origins of celtic football clubs as a unique welfare orientated organisation would be around the fact that a singificant amount of what became english professional football clubs were started as part of the 'muscular christianity' movement which provided a lot of welfare for unfortunates in the 19th century. I think Everton were one team that came from such origins....Not to mention that celtic were just one of many clubs in scotland that was set up as a charitable organisation of the irish poor, i mean apart from the obvious Hibs, there were tons others such as dumbarton harp. Once one takes a survey of the origins of football then its pretty standard fare that clubs were intertwined with social welfare issues. Just about to finish my degree, im open to offers from partick thistle to fund me for a phd to undertake such a project on challenging such romantisied bullshit narratives - if they so wish!!

Absolutly, PTFC have definately been way ahead in terms of doing stuff like that, and much harder for a club with such little revenue to absorb the costs of such policies. It would be really good if someone was to write a book debunking the celtic narrative, fed up hearing about that shit and setting celtic fans i know straight about 'their history' wish someone would just write it down man!!

There is not really any place for politics in modern football support really anyway. At best a seemingly poltical slant amongst a fan base can only serve as a nice piece of authenticity towards a branding of a football club imo. Its a good way of extending markets through 'grassroots' linkages of signfying chains eg. a customer that likes the brand of rangers, might like the brands of chelsea, real madrid, and so on, and on the 'other side' we have celtic, barca, etc.... The interesting discussion to have would be about how sucessfull celtic football club have managed to do that over the years, which imo the green brigade have been active agents in the development of such a brand.

Don't think your post would be particularly controversial amongst such groupings of celtic fans. I think what they would say is that groupings like themselves are custodians of the 'true' values of celtic football club which are at odds with the club since it became the uber-professionalised outfit they have become today. They'd also probably point to the fact that they held some protests when John Reid became the chairman as an articulation of their 'celtic minded' values. The fact that they are a group of a couple of hundred at most probably doesn't lend credibility to them being representatives of the generality of the celtic support mind you. Nevertheless i'm interested in your conflation with celtic as a buisness with the values of their fans. Would you be as little nuanced in your discussions around issues around PTFC and its support?

I would imagine the thinking behind that would be that Griffiths utterances were of a racist and antirefugee nature which would be at odds with their 'left-wing' values and at odds with their reading of Celtics origins as an immigrant welfare organisation.

only reason why i was thinking 3 downs was because, lets face it, we aint gonna be like pros in defense so id imagine getting yardage shouldnt be as much of a problem. in which case could end up like basketball where each alternates a drive with a score! 3 downs might make that more difficult... guess we'll just have to tweak it if and when we get this up and running!

Yeah i would much rather seeing the game being developed from grassroots to above to support a few pro teams that have mainly european players in the future. would probably take 20 years plus probably. better starting with the grassroots rather than something like nfl europe. if i was in CFL id be looking to expand the markets for that sport by getting involved in european gridiron at grassroots level...