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TRVMP

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Posts posted by TRVMP

  1. On 3/21/2024 at 10:20 AM, TRVMP said:

    Just ordered a sack full of tat. International shipping is a flat rate of 20 quid so I loaded in more stuff to make it 'worth it'. Had I not seen this I wouldn't have done it. I have personally funded the George Oakley extension.

    A mere six days later everything is here.

    I will say the polo shirt is acceptable but not the best quality. The badge is reverse-sewn and the FC bit looks slightly dodgy as others have pointed out. It's thin material and feels very artificial. However, if you want to support the club, there's nothing wrong with it. Just don't expect bespoke craftsmanship.

    The rest of the tat is fine, if clearly high-margin (for example the actual magnet on the fridge magnet is tiny and I reckon a stiff breeze would knock if off the fridge) and again if your aim is to support the club I recommend it, but if you're looking for top-quality items to last a lifetime, this isn't it.

  2. 4 hours ago, capitanus said:

     

    The average Morton supporter would normally only wear a black tie for a funeral though.

    Smart dress should be sufficient for these kind of things.

    It's 150 years, rent one if you have to or nip to Tesco, I'm sure they do them for well under a hundred.

  3. Just ordered a sack full of tat. International shipping is a flat rate of 20 quid so I loaded in more stuff to make it 'worth it'. Had I not seen this I wouldn't have done it. I have personally funded the George Oakley extension.

    • Upvote 1
  4. 17 minutes ago, Cet Homme Charmant said:

    I've probably asked you this before, but how do you reconcile that belief with the fact that you yourself are an immigrant? 

    Three ways, in ascending order of importance:

    1) I've been a net taxpayer the whole time

    2) I didn't immediately petition to bring over my entire family the second I got citizenship, as so many do

    3) Above all, I reject the hyphen. If there was such a thing as a Scottish-American lobbying organization - to get us special treatment in government contracts or visas or whatever else - I would not only refuse to join it but I'd oppose it. Most immigrant groups to the US (and this is quite rational of them, to be clear) instead organize and create ethnic networks that serve their communities. Very rational, very ambitious. But I oppose it. America's best times have come after it's bullied (for example) The Irish and the Germans into becoming Americans, and the current style of fetishizing diversity does the opposite of this. It precludes assimilation. So while I think the recent immigrants who make a virtue of their difference are not doing anything evil, I oppose it, and I oppose their presence as they do it. 

    I'll add one more minor one. I can't lie and say my heart exactly bleeds here - this isn't what gets me out of bed in the morning. But it's a fact that the Central American migration routes are horrendous. And a lot of the people who make it across are not well-served by being here. There are children here from Mexico and Guatemala who don't speak *Spanish*, much less English. They're at the mercy of uncles and "uncles" and God knows who else. And the US permits this not out of love for people but love of cheap labor. I give the Biden economy credit where it's due - it's increased wages for the lowest earners. Yet the country responds by importing an alien servant class to depress wages. It's wrong on all sides and while I oppose it from a place of scarcity rather than love, I think my opposition still counts. These kids should be in their villages and not our kitchens. 

    • Like 1
  5. What I'd further add, regarding the SNP's corrupt implosion, is that this seems to be a well-trodden path for small, homogenous countries with a dominant party. Machiavelli wasn't wrong; corruption is a property of an embedded oligarchy, and to excise it requires a return to first principles. This played out in Ireland, Mexico, all kinds of third world countries like that, and Scotland is no exception to the pattern. But I don't regret my SNP support. It was a necessary condition of ending Labour's own corrupt one-party state regime - and the SNP managed it with an overwhelming mandate, one that defied the proportional representation deliberately put in place to stop it from governing. I'm glad the SNP had its time in the sun and despite this ignominious ending I think they did far more good than harm. What happens next is the greater question and it's one that I won't be paying much attention to answering.

    • Upvote 2
  6. For me the bleakness isn't in the architecture or the climate - I'd take a Scottish summer over a Texan one - and nor is it even really with governance. I do think an independent Scotland within the EU would be better - economically, socially - than it is now, absolutely. But I think that would be marginal. Overall I think that living in a place with greater individual freedom just suits me better and even those positive aspects of Scotland's relative social harmony and homogeneity just hit different now.

    What I will say - and it gives me absolutely no pleasure (in fact it gives me some pause, given my largely anti-immigrant politics in the US) to say it - is that I feel more comfortable when I go to London than I do when I go to a Morton away game. I don't feel I belong in Kirkcaldy or Govan (the last two away games I was at) and I feel alien to the place. To be clear, this is my hangup and not a failing on their part. But outside of Greenock - and that's entirely and totally due to the family and Morton connection - Scotland just doesn't feel like a place I belong anymore, and that would arguably be even more true if it was in an independent Scotland.

    I've gone native. I pledge allegiance to the US flag and I honor the Texas flag*. And although I'll be right behind Scotland at the Euros this summer, if in some incredible, alternate universe event, I was asked to pick up arms for Texas against the UK, I'd almost certainly do it.

    *Texas has its own off-brand pledge of allegiance and it is adhered to at old-fashioned public events. "Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible." As you can see, it's a bit rubbish, but I say it and mean it.

    • Upvote 1
  7. On 3/16/2024 at 3:31 PM, HamCam said:

    I really don't get how you cannot feel 'Scottish' anymore.

    It's easier than you'd think. I still jump off the couch when Scotland score - far moreso than I do when the USA score. And Scotland, being home, is always the place I'll have in the back of my mind for comparisons. But I'm an American now, I am integrated into this society, and every time I go back to visit everything feels a little different. This is natural: I spend maybe 10-14 days a year in Scotland and of course it's going to change. But I'm growing apart from it at the same time I grow into my life here in the US.

    I don't think I'll ever stop supporting the national team, and in that sense I fail the cricket test, but in all other senses I regard myself as American first and Scottish second.

  8. 1 minute ago, Chesh said:

    So we are placing our entire season on 1 guy?  What happens if he get injured again what's the plan b?

    Because the last 5 games including today is relegation form with Dougie placing such little faith in his attacking options that he would prefer to play arguablly our worst defender in terms of ball distribution and general control in French in CM so that Crawford can play higher up the park. 

     

     

     

     

    Plan B is we bring COVID back and get the season curtailed.

  9. 3 hours ago, ChampTon said:

    Good to see he has grown up and definitely doesn't have a chip on his shoulder..

    I actually have some sympathy with this. It can't be easy being that age, having trained part time and in youth football, and then one day being judged in the exact same way as experienced pros. Not all youngsters could handle that. 

    However, he could perhaps recall his own attitude and demeanor at the time. He wasn't exactly a paragon of Corinthian sport himself. 

  10. On 2/27/2024 at 11:21 AM, Jamie_M said:

    * for the third time.

    Two wins, two draws and six losses for Sir Gav so far as The Swins (sub: check nickname) struggle in League Two but look safe from the drop. Sutton United are adrift in 24th and it's a battle between Colchester and failed clublet "Forest Green Rovers" to avoid 23rd.

  11. Gordon Ritchie has stood down from the GMFC board. After a bit of a rocky start I think he was integral to our recent successes as a club. Best wishes to him going forward.

    His replacement:

    "In view of Gordon's resignation and as the MCT Articles of Association state there should be a majority of MCT representatives on the club board, the board of MCT have  unanimously voted to put forward existing GMFC Director, Michael Harkins, as their new representative, with Graham Barr and Sam Robinson already in place as MCT representatives. Michael has been an MCT member since the beginning and was involved in the leadership team in the build up to community ownership. Although he was appointed by the club board for his financal knowledge, he is a very suitable, and welcome, candidate to be proposed as an MCT representative."

    Harkins was appointed as Finance Director and didn't come on the board via MCT, but as this says, he was a member from the start.

  12. 13 hours ago, TAFKAC said:

    I can't quite get my head around what rules are actually being followed here.  I have a slightly more pragmatic example from Charlton, although it is slightly dated.  My lad used to train on a Tuesday night.  If there was a midweek game, we would not be able to get to the Valley until just before half time.  When the barriers became automatic, it was easy to keep one turnstile open for each area of the ground with a steward on the door.  Before that, that steward would check the ticket and then radio through that they were letting someone with a ticket into the ground.  And that was into a ground with 16,000 other people already in place.

    I'm guessing. I believe it to be a combination of 'ealf 'n' safety gone mad and probably politically correctness gone mad as well.

  13. If I ran a stewarding company I would also insist on an "all or nothing" approach - either my company is given full latitude to interpret the rules in real-time as we see fit, or we don't do the job. In this sense, the stewards having final say without having to radio in to the directors' box for approval is the correct thing to do.

    I would also ensure, however, that the line manager on duty that day didn't so disgust the regular customers - many of whom either have a direct line to that directors' box or are indeed by equity a part of that same directors' box - that they would give a second's thought to us, much less want us replaced. I would instead decline to shit on my own doorstep, something seemingly above the people under contract this season.

    Regarding getting in late, however, I believe their hands are largely tied: as absurd as it may be, if you report a certain percentage of capacity at a certain time it's not wise to go above it, even if it's one person in an ocean of free terracing (hence on all-ticket days the fact you can't move between Sinclair Street and the Cowshed.) But even if that's an unavoidable circumstance, there are ways and means of communicating that to the fans. A single person or family showing up late is hardly going to cause any trouble; there's no reason to be anything other than sympathetic to them. Coming out all guns blazing against peaceful, regular fans while ignoring actual disorder is exactly how you get people not to take you seriously; for that reason, if no other, if I was on the GMFC board I would be giving serious scrutiny to the stewardship contract ahead of the 2024-25 season. It's one thing to say "OK, there's some arseholes on staff, but the fans will get over it and come back" - it's quite another to say "OK, the stewards are sending mixed messages and going after easy targets, and fans are noticing they're nowhere to be seen when there's some actual rule breaches going on - it would just take one dodgy incident in a Renfrewshire derby for this to go south very quickly."

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