Fearchar

Aye, it's tough getting to your middle-age crisis, right enough.

However, "elsewhere" is a small and diminishing part of the globe - probably only North America, the odd outpost of US sporting culture and Australasia by now. Most of the Americas, almost the whole of Europe, Africa and Asia use "football" or variants of it to describe association football. The various forms of egg-chaser just don't get it, but that's their problem.

Surely we can worry about that problem when it arises. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" was what the Apostle Paul said when he was pondering the problem of true believers surrounded by, er, heathens.

The video picture is shown in 16:9 on a widescreen monitor, although it's obviously supposed to be shown in 4:3. Presumably someone assumed that Scottish footballers are all so fat.

If you buy a ticket for a leading German football side, local transport is included in the price. Obviously, with the mess that is transport in the UK, that's not possible, but it still baffles me that every club doesn't put up clear indications on its website of how to reach the ground, with links to timetables, etc. In Thistle's case, there isn't a nearby car park either: so there really should be directions for the Subway and the buses (if anyone has figured them out yet, of course), with the likely costs. (Otherwise, visitors risk being defenestrated for not having used their psychic powers to predict that week's exact payment for bus tickets.) I know that there's the useful Scottish Football Ground Guide, but this is a voluntary service serving the interests of professional football clubs. The Thistle version is here - safely concealed in the second tier of a generically-titled menu (fans -> Getting to Firhill), but it only invites the visitor to try links to external transport information sites and offers a generic map of part of Glasgow. Perhaps, just perhaps, some potential visitors give up at this point. Yes, the main train stations are described, and it says that two Subway stations are 15 minutes' walk away (bad advice: always give strangers one route to a venue), but frequency and hours of service, guides to walking the right way, indications of costs or advice on where to park a car are absent. The appropriate page could be linked to in the details of matches, but this isn't done either. Who knows if any tweaking would raise visitors' numbers? However, it might help to look as if you're inviting paying customers.

Why not raise your sites and go a bit upmarket? http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/steaks-are-high-as-dining-adventure-at-100ft-comes-to-edinburgh-festival-1.1031819

Brassed Off was fun.

With a bit of luck, and a following wind, we might just be capable of winning promotion this season - from the Third Division, that is. The scores don't lie: 2-1 against Clyde and 1-0 against Annan Athletic are desperately poor results. (McBeth did alright, although he did make a few slips; presumably Cairney was brought on to put more experience into midfield and to protect a young player - a reasonable substitution, I'd say.)

If they get confidence from that disgraceful performance, we're in for a season of drubbings in the First Division. The tactical ineptitude reminded me of Uncle Dick's time. Sending high balls to the smallest strikers we can find, who are marked by giant centre backs looks some kind of training-ground ploy to sharpen players up. Does nobody in the dugout actually watch what's going on? Add to that giving away possession repeatedly (and being caught in possession from time to time), not backtracking quickly enough and, of course, displaying the severe one-footedness that seems to spread like a dose of the runs among this group of players ("team" might be overdoing it), and you would imagine that they'd come back from a month-long Christmas holiday during which they'd been eating and drinking to excess. A few players were up to the mark: Buchanan, Donnelly, Rowson, Flannigan, Robertson and Halliwell. That this team could make it count in the end (in the final 6 or 7 minutes!) is due to luck, when the ball is given away constantly and high balls are being papped in as if our only tall striker were on the park. No surprise that the goal came from working the ball through the centre, cutting open the Annan Athletic defence. Dear, oh dear!

I'd prefer the thought: I hope that everyone despises this mumbo-jumbo so much that you end up on the dole.

That has been the goal of UK governments (of both major parties) since the late 1970s. From their point of view, the Almighty was prepared to dig them out of any hole by giving them black gold. They used it to buy off social unrest with dole money while they got on with the serious business of destroying industry and trade unions. In the end, they will be consumed by their own fallacious beliefs: monetarism, reducing the public sector, or any other belief system won't work, because each one of them flies in the face of the evidence. Unfortunately, those of us not among the seriously rich will be the ones who pay for it.

Use a proxy server.

Not to mention that newcomer to broadcasting "Hugh Dan McLellan". He couldn't be any relation of Hugh Dan MacLennan, could he?

Yes, Norton is a pig to get rid of. You have to delve into the registry and delete (or disable) the entries there. I can't remember how I did it, but you should be able to get help on t'interweb thingy.

The first book in the trilogy is quite entertaining, but the second book is filler with inbelievable coincidences and it loses sight of the main protagonist for most of the plot, while the third makes you despair of what publishers accept as worthy of printing nowadays. Is that possibly related to the Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner? I quite like the idea of a justified sneer, though, especially from such an inventive writer as Hogg. I've almost finished "An Illustrated Short History of Progress" by Ronald Wright, a Canadian who makes you think about how grim the prospects for contemporary society really are, based on the experience of societies in history. Well worth reading. Recently I finished "Infidel" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, which I finished in two or three days because, although it's an autobiography, it reads like a novel. She was brought up initially in Somalia and eventually came to condemn the abuse of women's rights in particular among Muslims in the Netherlands. Her life has been threatened on numerous occasions, and she worked with Theo van Gogh, who was assassinated by an extremist Muslim for his part in the film that they made together. My wife started reading what's known in English as "Alone in Berlin" by Hans Fallada, and recommended it to me. I've started reading it (in German, under its title of "Jeder stirbt für sich allein"), and I'm enjoying it too. It's based on ordinary people opposing the Nazis.

Boyle was exposed repeatedly by Hodge failing to support him: so Boyle did well, as some people have recognised. It's obvious what Hodge didn't do in his summer holidays (which he should have done) - kicked a ball repeatedly against a wall with his right foot, until he became comfortable with it. Ditto Paton, only the other foot, of course.

"Lent?" Did you get it back, or did he do a runner?

IIRC Donnelly has only played very infrequently in that formation. He has usually been played as a striker/targetman alongside another striker, although the return from that in goals hasn't been great. The problem with playing him behind two other strikers is that pretty well the whole team formation would have to be changed. Maybe that would be the opportunity for Halliwell to show his midfield genius, of course.......

You must be too young to remember Nobby Stiles - horrible name; horror for any footballer; a disgrace to the game. Still agree with your sentiments, though.

What a disgraceful action by the A*****e board! He just needed more time.......

If the report is accurate (and who knows if that is the case, with the standard of journalism in this country) Bryn Halliwell isn't so much negotiating as pleading for a contract with the Jags. He really should get advice or an agent before speaking to journalists like that.

The trouible with poetic justice is that it can't be half-hearted: it would also involve someone rich from, say, Falkirk, buying out the new 'Clydebank United' to move it there to strengthen East Stirlingshire.

I hate them. If I want to see cars birling round, I'll go out on the street, thank you. They must be distracting to some players, at least.

Özil was born in Germany to Turkish parents. Certain players born and brought up in Scotland are frequently castigated or ridiculed by Jags fans for playing for another country. Maybe he decided to avoid that fate by playing for Germany. Podolski was born in present-day Poland (in Silesia, to Polish parents) but his father's family were ethnic Germans and he has lived in Germany since he was 2: not really very foreign, especially since Poland and Germany are neighbouring countries, with many people entitled to dual nationality (which Podolski has). Klose's father is also an ethnic German (from Silesia, like Podolski) and he and Klose are German citizens. Klose retains links with Poland but moved to Germany with his mother in 1985. It's important to remember that a country like Germany has had shifting borders since they were drawn (including being split in two) and it has been a major draw to economic and other migrants in Europe for centuries, partly due to its position at the heart of Europe. Claiming that players like these are somehow not really German is as ill-advised as claiming that Glasgow 'Irish' aren't really Scots, or Ulster 'Scots' aren't really Irish, or, for that matter, that the people of Lewis are really Norwegians.

I agree. I just wonder if the German side coasted to save themselves for later games in the tournament. Anyway, they'll have greater challenges to overcome after the initial round is over.