Jump to content

 

 

calscot

  • Posts

    11,722
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by calscot

  1. I find it incredibly hard to sympathise with a 22 year old who has been offered 600 grand a year plus bonuses, plus boot deal and and other endorsements... That's about 1500 average punter's hard earned season ticket fees.
  2. In my book, having a good long life, pretty much average life expectancy, punctuated by being a top class footballer in your younger days, is good cause to celebrate. However, a young man dying violently for his country has far more reason to be mourned and remembered solemnly. When it comes to the cenotaph, you don't need to know the men to feel the tragedy. With Bobby Shearer there is no real tragedy to feel unless you know him and will personally miss him. It's all about his footballing days and they weren't cut short by death. I find it hard to believe anyone could relate the two cases and to me it disrespectfully waters down the memory of why the young soldiers died, as it categorises them as just an every day death rather than a very tragic and poignant one.
  3. You're probably right and it's debatable whether the fact it's DA who's buying will increase or decrease the fee. Souness liked to give us top dollar but PLG paid bugger all for Clement... Considering his wages and length of contract, 1M is a bargain but he's a player that it will be relief to get off the books. Now who can we palm off with Buffel. He can be a great player but he's not great at the moment and he's someone we should be able to get some money for - a million anyway.
  4. Anyway my ideal scenario would be to buy an experienced CB and CF AS WELL AS Brown and Thomson.
  5. I have no doubts about their quality as well as others from the Hibs team but one thing about that team is that it's very inconsisant and that is usually put down to inexperience. There is an old wisdom I agree with that you have to get the right blend of youth and experience and I put some of our problems down to not getting that right. Alan Hansen said, "you don't win anything with kids" and then Sir Alex went out and provided the exception that proves that rule...
  6. Good points but you have think back a while to remember the last time we made a good profit on a player - well except Boumsong which was a bit of a strange one that seemed more like Souness doing us a favour. Arteta was supposed to fall into that catagory and he ended up costing us 4M, bet he's worth more now at Everton.
  7. You've also got to wonder who would be choosing those players. Le Guen could have bought them in the summer instead of Sebo, and one from Sionko, Svensson and Papac. Obviously he didn't rate them but after our gubbing by Hibs and our present crisis, he's maybe being forced into a rethink with a bit of leaning from above.
  8. It looks like Ricksen will be fully transferred to Zenit in January. The question is - how big will the fee be? The rule of thumb is usually the players weekly wages multiplied by the number of weeks left on his contract. So if Ricksen is on about 25K a week and his contract expires in June 2009, I make his fee over £3M... I don't think we'll get that but it's a good starting point for the bargaining. A couple of million would be cool... If we could sell Buffel as well for a million odd, add to the couple of million left in the transfer kitty and a couple of million more from the UEFA income, that could give us a war chest of about 6 or 7 million in January! Just dreaming... Edited to correct when his contract expires.
  9. 12 grand a week is more than enough for a young player who hasn't even played a full season yet. If he turns that down then in my opinion he's greedy and disloyal. Rangers have paid his wages while he's been ill or injured and it's a slap in the face to turn down around £600,000 a year. I really doubt he'll get much more than that elsewhere and what kind of club will he be playing for? One thing DM is right about is that there isn't many better places to go after Rangers. He could end up with a relegation dofight in the EPL, if even that. It's a shame in this time of massive player greed that a promising home grown player has to go down that shameful road.
  10. I would be happier if he restated his fiver promise to be, "For every fiver Celtic spend, we'll spend a fiver..." At the moment we spend about 2 quid for every Celtic fiver.
  11. I'd rather know the details about how much he wants and how much he's being offered before discarding him. Vignal wasn't worth more than 9 grand so I was glad to see him go but I thought Numan was worth more than 5 grand and so sorry to see him go.
  12. I'm afraid that maybe Le Guen is more concerned about doing it his way rather than the best way...
  13. The tradition isn't gone as their was a minutes silence for rememberence day. I still don't know what the fuss was about against an applause for Shearer as which of those who complain about the applause really had heart-felt feelings about the death of the former player that they really needed a silence to comtemplate his life and the loss of him? I don't remember him at all, and by all accounts he was a great player. However, if I had a minutes silence for him, I would have trouble keeping my mind from wandering. With an applause I could think about all the great players I have seen play for Rangers. He had a good long life, should than not be celebrated rather than mourned by people who don't know him? To be honest the protests about the applause seem to have more to do with what the complainants want rather than anything to do with Bobby Shearer and in the end you can do a minutes silence of your own any time.
  14. But is he holding us to ransom or is Bain offering him a pittance? 10 grand a week should be enough for him but maybe he's being offered 5. We need to keep the wage bill down but we also have to give players what they are worth or what they can get elsewhere. Using the usual cliché - if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
  15. I thought the precedent for the minutes applause was for George Best...
  16. To be honest, much as I like those players, the last thing we need is more players in their early twenties. I may be breaking the new ageism law here, but I really would like us to bring in a couple of seasoned campaigners. The priority for me is a big dominant centre half and big target man centre forward, both with a never say die attitude. I want us to compete for the ball in both boxes.
  17. And you FIFA coefficient doesn't get flushed down the loo if you lose a few. If only Vogts had prefered B internationals, we would have had an easier group for the Euro qualifiers...
  18. Hey, it's no wonder nobody does much to save the planet when you get slagged off for making a bit of effort... I'm nowhere near perfect, I'm just trying to be half decent person. About the leaves, if you lived next door I might think about it, I already mow my neighbour's front lawn when I do mine, as well as the grass verges...
  19. I thought I did...
  20. There is a time and a place for them as efficient bulbs can't do everything, but more should be done to encourage the use of energy efficient ones such as removing vat and give the manufacturers tax breaks if they reduce prices. Maybe we should put a global warming tax on 100W bulbs... What you accuse me of, I think over 90% of people are guilty of, smokers or not. Switching on a light is a contribution to global warming - although it's getting late and I'm tempted to switch on mine. But like I say, I'm not spouting my rights and I have reasonably valid reasons for the carbon dioxide I create - and I'd like to reduce it. I try to minimise but despite the warnings, tackling the problem is pretty new, and I think I'm getting better all the time. I now switch most of my standby stuff off at the plug (Things with clocks are difficult and so is my sky box as it takes ages to reset - a flaw by Sky or Sony for which there should be new law). I don't leave lights on in empty rooms, and I now compost and recycle my bottles, paper and cans. The difference is that if you attack how bad cars are for the environment, I won't call you a "wank" or threaten to punch you on the nose. I think I'm trying to pollute less but it will take a bit of time due to the practicalities. Maybe you need to brush up on your comparison powers. Smoking is an assault on peoples eyes, nose, smoke and lungs. Saying people have rights to do what they want applies to violence too. Maybe you just find violence icky and single it out... So is it fascism to ban heroine use? If people want to kill themselves doing something stupid, I'd rather they didn't inconvenience me with it. So I also don't agree with people killing themselves by throwing themselves in front of a tube. I would also ban people stupidly messing around with fireworks etc, etc, I don't think it's necessarily fascism. I think you're addressing the wrong person. I don't want to actively punish smokers, I'm just fed up with pandering to them and hate their sanctimonious attitude. You’ll probably say that’s ironic but I think I’ve debated enough for it to be a cheap shot. Like I said, I've had many of my rights infringed for decades by smokers, I think I've earned the right not to be overly sympathetic to them. I think it is smokers who are on their high horse when there is next to no justification for the inconvenience they cause others. I think I've given a reasonable amount of justification for my stance. I wouldn't want to punish those that don't wash but I'd rather they didn't come with in my smelling range. I would definitely lose sympathy for them if they were arrogant and demanded smellies rights... To be honest I can understand an addiction to heroine more than I understand smoking. From what I can gather, the buzz from a cigarette cannot compare to that of hard intravenous drugs. The fact that smoking really doesn't do much, means to me that whoever does it, although they may be generally intelligent, on this occasion they have had an intelligence bypass. You get many highly intelligent people with no common sense, smoking contravenes the most basic common sense. It's like eating poor tasting mushrooms that are addictive, make your breath stink, your teeth yellow and oh yes - they are poisonous. But hey, they give you a tiny wee buzz before a big downer. And how. It depends on your morals. I think it's morally wrong to do something that directly affects the comfort and health of others with little or no benefit to anyone and that causes the person so many health problems. It's not morally wrong to play loud music, but when you're annoying the neighbours every night then it's time to have a look at yourself. I think your trust is obviously misplaced if you consider the obesity rates, and you are missing one of the main culprits. I don't want to eat saturated fat and many other things. But my choice can be very, very limited a lot of the time. The legislation should be aimed at industry, at school dinners, etc, etc. I'm all for alternatives but they have been ignored over the years - eg the smokeless cigarette. I've also mentioned about education and another alternative is cultural change. Make people see that smoking is unhip, stupid and antisocial and you might reduce it. I've always said people should be allowed to do it in their own home, although if it's in front of their kids you sometimes have to question what kind of parents they are. The funny thing is that they aren't going to ban smoking anytime soon, it would make too big a hole in the budget (although the NHS would cost a lot less). However banning it from public places is a great thing to me and I can't wait till England wakes up and follows Ireland's and Scotland's lead.
  21. So you're point is that if we ban smoking because of litter (which is only a secondary consideration after the fact at best it irritates those who are not smokers and at worst kills them), that we should ban eating due to the litter... Now I may be reaching out on a limb here but banning smoking I think may improve society, banning eating, while it would probably benefit the planet enormously would have certain knock on effects on our society. And you say I'm being ridiculous? I think you know this is a more complicated subject and I would suggest that we should perhaps ban people who litter or pollute (and by definition, those that smoke) inside the stadium. There is definitely a lot of education needed in our society about litter and it's something I'd really like to see tackled. But people do have to eat and so I wouldn't ban eating per se due to the waste it causes. However, there is a higher percentage of people who smoke and drop smoking related litter (in my experience, close to 100%) than people who eat and drop eating related litter. In fact I've read that almost one third of litter dropped on roads and streets is smoking related. I think most of the rest is anecdotally sweet and junk-food related and I think the younger generation are responsible for a huge chunk of this which is where education and responsible parenting could help. Not only that smoking related litter can cause fire, injure people and damage property. Wasn't it a cigarette started the Bradford Stadium disaster?, I've been hit by a lit cigarette butt while motorcycling when someone threw it out of a car window, and a friend has his paintwork on his car bonnet damaged by someone tossing away a lit butt. I think it's therefore a particularly nasty kind of litter. You obviously weren't listening, I didn't say they shouldn't have a place, but I was arguing that they didn't have a god given right and that if they cleaned up their act and showed a bit more humility, they may get a lot more sympathy from those that have suffered from their bad habits for decades. Many smokers seem to shout at the top of their damaged lungs about how hard done to they are, without giving much thought to the rest of the population when they light up. I don't know if the law even allows a smoking room in a building open to the public. The practicalities and costs could be prohibative. Like I said it's secondary but if the statistics are true then banning smoking would reduce litter by almost a third. And when you think about it, if you are a smoker and used to systematic littering, who is to say that you are not more likely than a non-smoker to litter with non-smokin related litter? I believe that if you did a study then you would find a correlation. I didn't use it as a reason to ban smoking, it's just something unnecessary that really bugs me and others. How we tackle it is a different debate which I'm happy to talk about in the Bluenose Lounge. I know which I rather clean up. I don't know the prices but I think that I can work out that for 50,000 people there would be significant costs when you include the building space, ventilation, cleaning etc. The money would have to come from somewhere. Perhaps you could compare it to the cost of providing toilets. So you didn't get the point? My argument is that you don't let something go just because it's been around for a while. I thought that using of an extreme example made for less ambiguity. At least it's valid compared to stopping people eating... As devastating as street lighting? Or central heating? Or inefficient bulbs? Or deforestation, or a million other ways we creating carbon dioxide. Our length of knowledge of global warming is where our knowledge of tobacco was about 40 years ago. Cars are undoubtedly very useful, can you say the same for cigarettes? And you say my metaphors are wild! I would take a hydrogen fuel cell car with fuel made using renewable energy in an instant. They invented smokeless cigarettes decades ago. I doubt it's infinitely more as I thought one in four of us die of smoking related diseases. Is heart disease not the biggest killer in Scotland and is it helped on by smoking? However like anything you have to do a cost-benefit analysis, and the benefit of cars DOES infinitely outweigh that of smoking. And again I don't want to ban smoking completely, just when it hurts non smokers. So to go with that analogy, I do agree with banning cars from the pavements... Is this the best you can come up with? Are you going to be consistent and repeal all laws so that people can do whatever they like? I wouldn't mind banning things that are harmful to others and have no intrinsic value. I believe in doing something to minimise nuisances like pollution, noise, litter, violence, abuse, racism etc. Like I said, a car is a small contribution, as is using electricity and heating my home or buying absolutely anything, and even breathing, but one thing I have is humility about owning a car and I try to minimise it but the practical aspects of that make it difficult. There are no practical aspects to giving up smoking, it does not inconvenience you in any way, in fact it benefits everyone. I don't shout loudly about having loads of free parking at Ibrox only a short walk away, and loads more roads nearby that make congestion negligible, or proclaiming my right to rev my engine in an enclosed space or to dump oil everywhere. But maybe you have the answer there. Charge the smokers 7 quid a go to use a smoking room, just like they do for parking... I didn't say you should remove them, but non-smokers rights have been abused for generations which makes it difficult to empathise with those arrogantly claiming how hard done to they are. Not as ultimately expensive and inconvenient as continuing. Can you really defend that statement? I'm happy to talk about it elsewhere... Very subjective, I'm sure a lava lamp could do just as well without killing you or being a nuisance to others... I'm of the school of thought that smoking doesn't calm nerves, the withdrawal of smoking causes them and then smoking fixes the problem that it created.
  22. Maybe, but we used to have five or six "captains" in the team. Now it's Bazza on his own except perhaps Prso. Remember when we had Klos, Ricksen, Amosuso, Moore, Numan, Albertz, Reyna, Barry, all in the same team and all captains for someone at some point.
  23. At 44 there's no chance he'll hack the SPL but I'm sure he could find a level down the divisions. He's got a great football brain, but will his body keep up? He'll do fine against the cloggers but put him against a highly skillful, fast young striker and he'll be left for dead.
  24. Pretty pointless argument yourself. Many people DON'T discard rubbish, I'm one of them. Hell, I go round picking up other peoples rubbish when I have the time, especially in my own neighbourhood. In fact this is another topic that I'm pretty evangelical about. I don't like it when people smoke selfishly and I don't like it when people toss rubbish around selfishly. I've nothing against people smoking in their own home but I don't like it when it has negative effects on others or our environment. The thing is I don't know many smokers who stop their smoke (which is analogous to rubbish) polluting other people's air, nor many who go around with say a jar and take their ash with them, and I don't even know of a few who take their own butts with them. I also see packets everywhere too. So are you all for discarding anything you like? Sorry I'm totally against it. Maybe a fair point but you'd have to wait for the smoke to clear, and wear rubber gloves. Not entirely ridiculous as it's proven that smoke is a health hazzard. Have you thought about the costs and the amount of space that would be needed. To do this you would have to increase EVERYONE's season ticket price. Accommodation, especially when it will obviously be abused, is expensive. People enjoyed the right to have slaves for a long time and it was ended pretty quickly. When you put up with crap for decades there comes a time to make a stand. A car's pollution causes far less illness and deaths than passive smoking. They've pretty much cleaned up their act with catalytic converters, and carbon dioxide is the big threat now. However, they reckon the CO2 produced by cars has less impact than the electricity and gas we use at home and work, so everything we do has a guilty impact. But, I don't defend driving the way smokers defend themselves, in fact I cycle to work every day and even bought a bike trailer to take my clubs to the golf course, five miles away. I'm actually considered a bit of a nutter by a smoking friend who would never dream about cycling to a golf club. The trouble is that a car feels like a necessity as the alternatives are generally either very expensive or incredibly inconvenient. I plan to look for a more fuel efficient car the next time I trade in, and in fact would have a motorbike if they didn't seem so dangerous, especially as I've had a pretty bad accident. The car I'm interested in is a Loremo. You can look it up if you're interested. However although I'm culpable with my car, how many smokers also drive one (and do more than my 7000 annual miles)? It's not a case of EITHER smoking or driving. If smoking cut down driving then maybe you'd have a point. My one defence for driving is that it is very useful for transporting me and my stuff to places quickly and easily. What's useful thing about smoking again? I agree that we should use them and most of my bulbs are of that ilk. They should definitely be encouraged, perhaps by removing VAT and making all government buildings have them, but that's another debate. Don't quite get this one. Most products have a brand name and those that don't have prices so cheap that they are squeezing it somehow or other. This is recent one, planes are actually pretty fuel efficient which is why they are so cheap for travel. The reason they are bad is that they encourage people to travel much farther distances in the name of recreation than they necessarily would. Again Iââ?¬â?¢m guilty, but I also feel guilty and havenââ?¬â?¢t actually flown at all this year. Sorry weââ?¬â?¢ve just been talking about stuff thatââ?¬â?¢s detrimental to the future of the planet and youââ?¬â?¢re saying that itââ?¬â?¢s all ok and we should allow people to do as much damage as they like? Iââ?¬â?¢ve completely lost you. I want to save the planet, not kill it. It appears you think certain dubious liberties are more important. I also donââ?¬â?¢t like violence and so donââ?¬â?¢t care so much about the rights of people to be violent, does that mean Iââ?¬â?¢m not being empathetic. The trouble in my opinion is that itââ?¬â?¢s the smokers who are not being empathetic with non smokers or people who like a cleaner environment. I think you are being naive here, just like many addicted smokers who actually donââ?¬â?¢t think they are addicted, ââ?¬Å?I can stop anytime.ââ?¬Â They think they ENJOY fags when all itââ?¬â?¢s doing is bringing their dopamine up to the normal levels of a non-smoker. If people know smoking is addictive, please, please tell me, why the hell do they start? Maybe it is unhelpful, but the lack of acknowledgement is excruciating. Addiction is bad. Canââ?¬â?¢t you acknowledge that? But it does lessen the effect of their addiction on others. Hmm judging by some of what youââ?¬â?¢ve said maybe your horse is as big as mine, if not bigger. Iââ?¬â?¢ve seen quite a few giant horses from the smokers. What was it you said of being tolerant of intolerance? Sorry but Iââ?¬â?¢m really disappointed in that statement. But maybe Iââ?¬â?¢m a bit pissed off about how incredibly badly Iââ?¬â?¢ve been treated by smokers over the years and then had their ââ?¬Å?rightsââ?¬Â shoved down my throat as well as their poisonous smoke. But they seem to have an intelligence bypass when it comes to realising those benefits. And thatââ?¬â?¢s intelligent? Actually this reminds me of the arguments of the proddy bigots that follow Rangers. ââ?¬Å?I know itââ?¬â?¢s wrong and hurtful to others but Iââ?¬â?¢m going to do it anyway, itââ?¬â?¢s my right to do what I want.ââ?¬Â Possibly but sometimes things feel like they just have to be said. I try not to eat saturated fat as much as possible, I rarely add salt to anything, I donââ?¬â?¢t think driving is a right and Iââ?¬â?¢m starting to get used to the idea that we either need alternative fuels or an alternative transport strategy. Iââ?¬â?¢m am all for smokers rights as long as it affects no-one else. Unfortunately, there are very few times when it doesnââ?¬â?¢t. When someone is harming you and you are powerless to prevent it, itââ?¬â?¢s time for the government to step in and Iââ?¬â?¢m glad they do. Companies have legislation against them for pollution, we have legislation for health and safety standards, legislation to punish violence and killing, fire prevention and escape etc, etc. It may be boring and sometimes bureaucratic, but most of the time itââ?¬â?¢s a pretty good thing. Sounds like you should move to Iraq where there are far less rules and law making.
  25. At last, a smoker with a sense of humour...
×
×
  • 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.