Woodstock Jag

Bizarre argument. It's pretty likely that we would be able to lease excess bases back to the rump of the UK (if they really needed it) or that some sort of shared defence would persist. I also find the idea that people will end up on the dole just because we stop spending millions on tanks, aircraft carriers and guns very odd. Spending less on the military means we can invest that money in local enterprise that actually makes stuff that's useful and has value across the world. Hell, we could even cut the taxes of the lowest paid with the money we save by not spending money on nuclear weapons we'll never use.

Keeping on the fundraising track but looking beyond "innovations" to fundraising events... Asides the POTY dance (if that counts), the Trust has only really held one or two events in two years that you could call fundraisers. Given the financial support extended for two loan deals in the same period was notably greater than the revenue brought in by those fundraisers, one wonders what strategy, if any, they have with a view to involving fans and generating funds for the Club in the next 2 years or so.

I took the conventional route with my dad and a couple of family friends when I was about 10. It took us about 6-7 hours all in and the weather was rotten, but it's not especially difficult.

At ground level there's no chance of that as there's a train line and a stand in the way, but certainly my block of flats lets you see about 3/4 of the pitch (only a wee bit of the near touchline is obscured by the stand from the top floor here). I'd imagine the even taller flats on Southbrae Gardens behind would be able to see the whole pitch and from a view that's really not much further away than you'd expect from a massive stadium like the Nou Camp. That lot have sun-terraces too.

I wouldn't mind but only because I have an executive box.

This is the big question. The answer for me, if he'd be willing to do it, is Charles Kennedy.

^^^ Trying too hard. Jaggybunnet and I almost entirely disagree on this issue. He thinks Scotland is too poor and too wee to do it's own thing. I think it's more than capable of looking after its own affairs. Indeed I subscribe to the "it makes **** all difference" principle, rooted in an internationalist perspective rather than one of nationhood and therefore completely counter to "Empire-loyalism". But of course, you're shit stirring

You should try it more often. I'm usually right.

I'd point out at this stage that a "nation" has no real meaning in law, thus all nations are de facto nations. If you mean a de facto state or nation-state, which certainly could be indicated by an autonomous legal system and system of governance, then you only partly have a point. Technically though, the idea of a de facto state or nation-state is also meaningless, since the practical effect of statehood is incumbent on de jure principles of recognition. States are creatures of international law, recognised by, among other things, the capacity to sign international treaties. The pre-Union Scotland was certainly such a state, having entered into the Treaty of Union, in so doing dissolving itself to allow for a new state to be formed. The extent to which statehood and independence has any real meaning in an increasingly globalising world is up in the air for legitimate debate. This isn't an issue about being "Churchill's bairns" but rather what, if any, meaning statehood has in today's world and whether the concept of self-reference really holds when such significant parts of our lives are determined by transnational behaviour. We live in a world where major military activity is carried out by international alliances; where trade and economic activity transcends ever less tariffed borders; where freedom of movement (at least in the West) is greater than it has been for centuries; where transnational bodies like the EU arrogate many of the "sovereign" powers that makes a state a state. For me at least, we've reached the stage where what I call my state or my nation-state has no meaning. We are citizens of the world. What ultimately matters now is not notions of geographical self-identification, but of the effective and accountable distribution of power. There is no question that the existing distribution is unsatisfactory in both effectiveness and accountability. The idea of federalising power: distributing it at different territorial levels according to those two guiding principles, is what makes the decisions people take on our behalf matter. Asymmetrical devolution of power from the UK into a quasi-federal system (including upwards to the EU as well as downwards into devolved parliaments/assemblies) was a hugely inelegant attempt to make good that ideal. Equally though, independence in and of itself doesn't answer the question asked. It just shoves that problem of power distribution one more link down the chain. Devolution shouldn't just have been about giving "Scotland" more control over its affairs. It was meant to be about Glaswegians, Teuchters, Fifers and Dundonians having a more tangible influence on issues very real and local and relevant to them previously controlled by elected representatives who largely represented different localities, different systems and different demands. It's no use vesting all power in Westminster when the needs and desires of the population in Basingstoke is so widly different from those in Ballater. Equally however, it's no use vesting all the power in Holyrood if the needs and desires of those in Easterhouses bear no relation to the needs and desires of those in Elgin. Indeed it's possible that particular demands continue to transcend borders, with certain Scottish communities' interests having more in common with some English communities than other Scottish ones. Purely for example, the towns whose economies rely almost entirely on the placement of British Armed Forces bases, be they in Scotland or England, have a common interest which Leuchars and Kirkcaldy don't even really share. This is why we've come to realise that crude divisions along national lines aren't necessarily addressing the fundamental problem. That's why I said earlier that we should be putting more of our time and energies into breaking down national barriers the world over rather than quibbling over where to put them. The meat of the real debate is one of how we separate powers. Devolution of virtually all power (taxes, drug laws, all bar defence issues, really) can ultimately achieve the same economic and social ends as "independence". Indeed most suggested models of independence seem to imply some sort of common defence agreement with the rump of the UK. The only substantive difference is autonomous international identity. The truth is "independence" in any international context is increasingly meaningless. The world is an interdependent beast, and if we spend too much time trying to distinguish ourselves along relatively arbitrary lines of nationhood, we risk missing the bigger picture.

Here's a good starting point for a refresher on share allocations. Edit: see also the link in that article to a quote about the basis on which free shares given.

I really just wish someone would put them all in a room and lock them up until they come back with something that's good for the football club. Fed up of all the misdirection and games that get in the way of running our football club.

The Scottish people are more than capable of running their own affairs. We don't "need" the Union. What I would say though, is that I'd rather we sought to break-down national barriers the world over rather than quibble over how many to have and where to put them.

We'd do absolutely fine. Proper tax and immigration powers in a devolved set-up would be capable of producing the same governing outcome as independence. Anything else is relatively cosmetic as I suspect an arrangement to keep the armed forces in some shape or form would continue.

Ditto, good sir. It's not so much hit a nerve as just one of the most bemusing things I come across an awful lot when people dare to argue against something advocated by socialists or social democrats. Nah wasn't suggesting that. Was suggesting it was odd that I should be called out for being patronising when yokels like you were every bit as guilty. Too much information, Comrade. I wouldn't consider JB an attack dog so much as a begrudging ally. If in your wee imaginary world I resemble Thatcher, JB's an anyonymous Chilean General who was a bit of a bastard. :lol: Nixon visits the Red Star and Garter!

Yes, but the English system will start repayments from a higher threshold and the government writes off anything outstanding after 30 years unlike in Scotland. It's totally bogus to call it a loan because it's a tax with an upper contributions limit. The whole point I've been making is that when people "look at the final figure and go geezo" they're completely missing the point. Because for all but the super-rich graduates (i.e. those that earn on average £50k a year EVERY year for 30 years) they're never going to pay it off. And after the 30 years it gets written off so you've never really "owed" anything. You've signed up to a graduate tax of 9% of earnings over £21k for 30 years. If you earn nothing, you pay nothing. If you earn lots, you pay lots. It's the single most progressive form of funding you could get. No one, if they actually think it through, could possibly be "priced out" because of the fees going up. Ah but here's the thing. Most of what you say here is correct. But you ignore the glaring difference under the new scheme. The government writes off EVERY PENNY owed after 30 years. This apparently subtle act completely changes the nature of the agreement students enter into when they receive this financial assistance. It becomes something which isn't a loan, but a tax in all but name. Next you'll be telling me that people decide not to get better jobs that have a larger salary because they'll be made to pay more income tax. 1. Not quite. The argument is it doesn't matter what you "owe" because you'll no longer have to pay anything 30 years later regardless of whether you owe nothing or still the full whack. I.e. it's not really a loan at all, but a graduate tax funded finance package. 2. The NUS wilfully misrepresented the truth and spread nonsense scare stories about the truth of the situation. People looked at the fees and not what was getting repaid. Hundreds of thousands of parents and children all over England don't understand the very basic facts about University funding. Their specific graduate tax proposal was going to hit the poorer harder! 3. Equality issues. There's a clear difference between being made to make a graduate contribution and not being made to. 4. They were idiots to do so and Vince Cable admitted as much because they played to the conceptual misunderstanding of the system and played on it with a meaningless and unsustainable pledge. Well yes and no. You are obliged pay back PROPORTIONALLY over a salary of X amount. That means that the amount you're paying back in principle should never be more than you can afford. This is why it's not really a debt. It's a tax with an upper-contributions limit. Of course the money owed level will be lower in Scotland. But if English students come up here, it frees up spaces down south. And because the system down south is so fair, lots of Scottish students could take advantage of it and never have to pay back a penny if it doesn't work out. Nah, fundamentally disagree. A quota is a quota is a quota. It's not for the Scottish Government to socially engineer the composition of Scottish Universities. Edit: oh and I should point out I never said you didn't understand what a quota is. I simply said you couldn't twist its logical impact to make it look like something else. I'll let you have a wee think about that If you go to an English University, you will not pay off your loan in the 30 year period if your starting salary is below £35k and rises in line with inflation. It will thus function as a tax. The Scottish system doesn't write-off debt after an indeterminate period so whilst you're more likely to pay it all back, if you don't it will linger. Hence if anything it's more like a loan than the English system. I have no idea what you're trying to say there, but I think you're asking why the fee is higher? I'll use hypothetical numbers here to explain. In Scotland the cost of educating a student is X=100. The amount the government assumes the cost of is X (i.e. 100). In England the cost of educating a student is X=100. The amount the government assumes the cost for is Y=20 and the amount that is funded from graduate loans is Z=80. In England, some of Z will end up being added to Y as some people will never get close to paying the full amount back. In Scotland (ignoring living cost loan for a moment) all the cost is borne out of taxation. The thing is, people keep saying "how come Scotland can afford to make students pay little/less than England?". The answer is they can't. Because they haven't raised more taxes to pay for this extra expense, the Universities in Scotland are actually losing £200million a year and it's getting bigger. Does that answer your question? But the amazing thing is that it doesn't do that! People only pay back their loans in line with their ability to pay! It seems you still don't grasp that! Well that's obviously true, but you're forgetting that not everyone who didn't get to go to University is poor. You are asking people who left school at 16, grafted and ended up running a company making lots of money, already paying lots of tax, to further subsidise the education of the kids of other millionaires. It's not an insignificant point, but a fundamental ideological one. Well actually they're not fair, no. There's a clear distinction to be drawn between primary/secondary and tertiary education in that the first two are made compulsory by the state whilst the latter is entirely voluntary. No. The English system's 30-year write-off clause completely changes the nature of the beast. These aren't soft loans. These aren't even loans. They are graduate taxes with a maximum contribution limit that is set according to how much financial assistance you're given and which rises over time at 3% above inflation. I've said that I don't like the "3% above" bit but it only actually affects those who are remotely likely to pay their loan back, which are those who graduate, immediately earning over £35kpa and earning circa £150k by 2045. Always happy to assist

Semper argumentum ad hominem. Logica semper ignoratur.

Well first up you did misunderstand the system. That you get that people make a contribution based on graduate earnings is going completely in the face of your questions about why the English fee level was so much higher. The fee level doesn't mean anything. I'd been saying that several times before that. If you'd understood that properly you'd know that it's completely meaningless that the Scottish fee level is £1820 whilst the English fee cap is at £9000. What matters is what people actually pay back. In Scotland they decided that for every type of student except English and non-EU students, the Scottish taxpayer would foot the bill in its entirety for undergraduates. Down south, they decided that graduates would foot most of the bill. You said earlier that these changes in England would make it more difficult for those from less-well-off backgrounds to go to University. This is wrong! It doesn't matter if you're the child of a millionaire or the child of a binman: you only pay in proportion to your own subsequent success! In England under the new scheme people will only start paying anything when they're earning over £21k. Before it was £15k. That means that the poorest often won't pay much if anything back, and if they do, they'll be paying back much smaller amounts in any given month, making it easier to build up savings in the early years after graduation. In other words, the new system makes it EASIER for people from poor backgrounds to get to Uni. The increase in means tested grants down south as part of the big package and also extending the student loans facility to part time students is a massive step forward for young people who for whatever reason would not otherwise be able to go to university for other financial reasons. If you really understand the system, I'd ask why you made such a simple error? As for the quotas, I didn't take you out of context. A quota is a quota is a quota. Quotas by definition serve to exclude people who would be more deserving on a case by case basis in favour of those who get in for no other reason than to meet the quota. Quotas are definitionally unfair. They mask rather than tackle the inequalities that get you there in the first place. But nothing I've said is inaccurate. The reason the response is long is because having tried to state things really simply early on, people keep perpetuating misconceptions. I therefore feel the need to spell it out sentence by sentence in the vain hope they might actually follow it and work out where they're going wrong. By patronising, you mean right. There are a number of things that are important in all of this. First of all, yes, the student fee affects the "notional" amount that you owe. However because of the actual rate at which the government are asking people to repay it, almost no one will actually pay the full amount back, because after 30 years the government down south will write it off. Secondly, it behaves exactly like a graduate income tax. The more you earn the more you pay back. If you earn over £21k you pay 9 pence in every pound over that back to the student loans company. Unless someone earns over £35k every year for 30 years (adjusted for inflation) there is absolutely no chance that these contributions will mean they pay it all back. In other words, only those that subsequently go on to become very rich will pay more than they do under the current system. The payments are spread over a longer time, made over a higher initial threshold (under the old English system they had to start paying back after they were on £15kpa) so according to the calculations made by the IFS, the lowest 25% of graduates will pay less through the loans system for their education than they did in the past. This is why I didn't understand why you were saying that the Scottish system was good but the English system was excluding the poor. Under both systems the poor don't pay anything, or pay very little. The only difference is under the English system, the rich graduates pay a LOT while the rest of the bill in Scotland is picked up by the ordinary taxpayer instead, which includes over half the country which never went to University. If I come across as patronising, it's because I really care about these issues and I really hate it when people form views based on misinformation and misconceptions about how these systems work in practice. If someone turns around to me and says "I think it's fair that people who don't get a University education pay for those who do" then I can respect that. Fundamentally disagree with it; but respect it nonetheless. When people tell me that the English system saddles graduates with debt, excludes the poor from University education and that the changes will "treble" the cost of education for English students it makes me really angry, because these assertions simply aren't true.

Neo-liberal? Of course I am. How that is supposed to impair knowledge or understanding of how this magical "real world" works is bemusing. Public schoolboy? Again, certainly, I attended an independent school for secondary education, but I was actually state educated throughout primary. I was extremely lucky. I was also only able to go to an independent school because of a bursary funded by philanthropists. You know, those socially minded products of the success of the free market. It's thanks to them that I got a first class education when I'd have otherwise gone to the local comprehensive which wouldn't even have allowed me to take all of the subjects I wanted to. How this supposedly impairs my ability to tell how this magical "real world" operates as well is bemusing. Newsflash Meister. They're part of the real world. Now kindly stick your inverted snobbery up your arse. And the award for misrepresenting what is said the most goes too.... Meister Jag. I resent that. It's not that I "enjoy debating on this platform" and I'm certainly not intentionally patronising people (I get enough of that in reverse with the million and one ad hominems about my background and the completely false rubbish about me glorifying money and loving tax cheats). What I resent is that people don't understand very basic facts of policy and the way governments fund things like University and then have the audacity to make false moral assertions at people like me when we do. But also because of their basic human faults by suppressing innovation, enterprise and freedom. Oh look guys, the unemployment rate is really low and the literacy rate is quite high. Never mind the thousands of people being marched across Siberia to their deaths. Go socialism! The global free market did not implode. It's still very much in tact. It did exactly what it said it would do. Boom and bust. That's how it rolls. No one ever claimed it would do anything to the contrary. What politicians thought they could do was use government intervention to manipulate it: be it through interest rates, the supply of money, sovereign debt, PFI spending etc, to make people feel richer by giving them stuff without taxing them. What they were really doing is borrowing against the future generations. That's not free market capitalism. That's the very croneyism that I hate every bit as much as you do. The liberal's response to your world-view is that yes, of course society need to change. But you want it to punish success to create absolute equality of outcome as an end in itself. We see the role of society as something much more subtle: to make sure that as few as possible suffer so that the best rise to the top. Suddenly society is an enabler. A means to a much more nuanced end. Socialism is driven by envy, revenge and homogenisation. Liberalism is driven by justice, rights and responsibilities. Globalisation is a good thing. The amazing thing about socialists is that they bleat on about wealth distribution, but they ignore the fact that if developed countries don't participate in globalisation, all you're doing is distributing ever less wealth among the richest nations. Free trade has brought millions out of chronic poverty in India. Their absolute gain has not even been to the expense of others. By increasing their actual purchasing power through the removal of trade barriers, the cost of food has fallen, the value of their labour has increased and their lot has improved whilst also making companies here in Britain a lot of money that has then benefited the UK economy after countless bits of taxation and redistribution has taken place. Globalisation has made stuff cheaper for the lowest earners in the UK. It has improved the lot of those Meister Jag claims to represent. The simple truth is that for all its faults, the free market system is the best system we've got. It makes more stuff and more efficiently and everyone gets more cake; just not necessarily as big a proportion of the slices. You're right here, to a point. We did stop making stuff. And you know what that turned us into? A global parasite. Embracing the free market does not mean abandoning the responsibility of having something real by means of economic output. But equally, selling off state-owned industry doesn't mean you stop making something. It just means a private company starts making it instead. And if they can do it more cheaply somewhere else, good for them. That means the product gets sold more cheaply to UK consumers. In the mean time, it means that people here have to learn to take responsibility for themselves. They have no inherent right to a job. They need to be enterprising. They need to come up with something better than what people in other countries can offer. But instead people sat on their arses complaining about the decline of industries that were losing money in a society where the government were taxing 95% of some people's incomes. Is it any wonder they ran for the hills? Again with the word-choice. Tax AVOIDERS are not crooks. Tax EVADERS are. Oh our recovery will be more difficult. Because our government manipulated our markets more than others and put all their eggs in the basket case of the financial sector. As Nick Clegg often describes it, we need to fundamentally rewire our economy so that it's self-sustainable. Instead of relying on London's financial service hub to create all the wealth and redistribute it to basket-cases across the country, we need to make it cheap for companies to set up shop and make stuff in other parts of the country, in so doing creating jobs and export markets. That means doing things like cutting business taxes, simplifying regulations that they waste money complying with, and getting government to make interest rates reflect the real cost of borrowing so we don't get another housing boom and bust. None of it requires state socialism. Nonsense. Absolute nonsense.

Sure, it's usually happens when they have a disagreeable worm but cannae puke it.

The point being that socialism is so unstable that it inevitably tends to state croneyism. It's never not happened. The motive doesn't matter. The less the state artificially constricts economic output, the more readily and less expensively end-consumers reap the fruits. Free markets don't operate in your zero-sum-gain environment. Until you grasp that, you get nowhere.

Oh, how very dare a country enter into a quid-pro-quo arrangement with another to gain access to cheaper resources! Welcome to the market my friend. Increased supply of oil and lower prices are what one might call... good. The whole point is a communistic system is uncompetitive. Artificially suppressing supply when demand for a particular good is relatively constant is tantamount to protectionism, which leads to inflationary pressures, inefficient application of resources and ultimately sews the seeds for its own destruction. What you've gone and admitted is exactly the criticism we levy against collectivist systems, be they communist or socialist. They don't respond well to natural human efficiency.

As far as ideologies go, Marxism is one of the least receptive to coexistence of other ideas. It seeks to purge any notion of an alternative society to its own that could possibly be acceptable or a source of contentment. It is proscriptive. It reduces humanity to a rule-book. See Meister Jag's cut and paste of the Communist Manifesto's analysis of society that simply hasn't borne out in reality. In truth, humanity is a far more complex, far more raw and instinctive: far more individualistic. Virtually all non-socialist theories accept that this degree of individual self-awareness is what makes us so profoundly unique as a species. Broad minded persons accept that whilst some sectors of society may seek to mutualise resources, others don't. Because we are directed by different emotions and to different degrees. Humanity ultimately exists to serve the ends its constituent members appropriate to itself. The first rule is that there are no rules. Human progress is not by how much we can homologise it. Therein lies the closed-mindedness of Marxism.

I suspect said legal implications are that it would be treated as a partnership rather than a plain subsidiary operation of either PTFC Ltd or the PTSA IPS.

Fix!

Fox was a total fecking bombscare. Bailed out about 2-3 times today. We played without any real shape and Queens were better in midfield most of the game. The defence was really shoogly peg and I think Archie was lucky not to concede a penalty and get sent off for it. Thought the Erskine penalty shout was soft. Good to see Elliot put pressure on to force the mistake from the keeper but a fortunate deflection and Doolan very nearly missed the open net... Elliot caused more problems second half and should have probably had a goal before he eventually got one. Rowson's build-up work was good. Doolan had a chance to shoot midway through second half that he laid off instead and he should have wellied it. Erskine looked a lot better than the rest of the season when he came on and Stewart looked interested which was good. Robertson did quite a good job at the back when Balatoni went off. Wouldn't have given MOTM to Cairney. Probably say Elliot or Rowson more deserving. We'll play a lot better and lose this season; we already have done. 3 points, no complaints. In Christie Elliot I think we have a striker. Not just a centre-forward, but a striker. Me likey.