TRVMP

The strength of average Lager in the UK started off very low in the 70s and 80s then peaked in the late 90s - Stella was 5.2% and has been decreasing ever since. Tennents is 4% and I want to say Carling is 4.2%. In the US light beers are generally 4.2% and normal lager is 5%. In Germany it tends not to go lower than 4.8% and even session beers can be north of 5.1%. In Poland you just can't find lager under 5. It's worth noting the same beers can be different by country. Stella is 5% in the USA.

That song is an absolute banger. Amazing what you can do with a I, vi, ii, V progression. Put a beat under it and something catchy on top, Holly's your confirmed bachelor uncle.

I draw the line at clip-on ties. It elevates the occasion if people put the effort in. It makes it feel more special. It is also, counterintuitively, egalitarian: nobody can really upstage anyone else if there's a dress code because it means the expectations are clear and people won't feel under- or over-dressed. Black tie is obviously an exception but people also mistake dressing smartly for dressing expensively. I generally wear slacks/chinos and a button-down collared shirt each day and these cost me significantly less than a graphic t-shirt, for example.

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.

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.

Fair point. I'd completely forgotten that, in fact. That should be black tie imvho.

Honestly I don't think black tie was unreasonable for the club's 150th anniversay.

And it's fine to join in!

GMFC AGM postponed til April 18th. Unforeseen circumstances.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

In case you missed it, Hearts are third in the Premiership, beat the champions last weekend, have in their possession the country's top goalscorer (whom we managed very well), and while we did indeed have a positive spell at the start of the second period, that was game management on their part, knowing they had reinforcements for the closing stages when we would - without any bench options - inevitably tire. Their goal was a counterattack and if you go all-out after that there's only going to be one ending: they throw people forward to catch the out-balls and you're screwed. It's just nasty to say Imrie doesn't trust the guys he's signed or whom he chooses to put on the bench. Again, this is the third-best team in the country. He's set our guys - who are a mix of good Championship players, former top flight players at the end of their careers, and youths - out with a plan, and throwing warm bodies at a plan for the sake of doing so is bad for all concerned. With no forwards on the bench, whom would you have put on with five minutes to go to hold the ball up against Sibbick and whoever the other one was at center-back? Was it: Jack Bearne, a winger Lewis McGrattan, a winger and midfielder Michael Garrity, a midfielder (and a diminutive one at that) or Sam Murdoch, a goalkeeper? Remember, everyone was saying Broadfoot was done since he was playing at LL level, and Imrie has - with some admitted road bumps along the way - got both him and Power playing well. Shankland was left in no doubt whom he was up against tonight and said as much in his post-match interview. Will Broadfoot get any recognition for that - again, Shankland is the best striker in the country right now, and will probably go to the Euros? Or will he just get slated for not scoring a last-minute equalizer? In a game where we'd been on the back foot for the majority, except early in the second half, Broadfoot did an admirable job keeping them to relatively few open chances. He deserves credit for this - and so does Imrie for signing and playing him! Long story short: if Imrie didn't trust Bearne he wouldn't be here, and if he didn't trust McGrattan and Garrity they wouldn't be getting minutes at all. Instead Bearne was signed and the latter two have played plenty, considering their ages. McGrattan has appeared in the vast majority of games this season, and Garrity (two years younger) is being carefully bedded in. They're getting an appropriate amount of football for the time in their careers and this is particularly true when you're up against, again, the third-best team in the country and a legendary Scottish goalkeeper who despite his age deserves to go to the Euros this summer. Leaving aside certain attention-seeking fuds (I do not count you as one of these) there really does seem to be this idea that Imrie's somehow throwing away wins by refusing to "trust" young players. It's absolutely idiotic. What Imrie knows, as a guy who came relatively late to the senior game, is that sometimes experience is what's needed. Just look at Queen's Park: they thought they could play a bunch of youngsters and have them play it out from the back, and that ended up with relegation form. Now they have a couple of old heads and they look fine, and the young players they have will be better for the experience. It's just not the case that you can go up against Hearts and throw the kids at them and come away with a better outcome than we had tonight, and people need to stop acting as though Imrie's sandbagging us by refusing to make Logan O'Boy captain. tl;dr: Scottish fans' fetish for putting the kids on is stupid. It's not borne out by the stats or simply by facing the right way at games. Imrie did nothing wrong. We held out own against a team that will send at the very least two players to the Euros in summer and will play in Europe next year, and we did it without our most vital player. There is absolutely zero scope to criticize Imrie for this game and everyone who does so should be hanged in real life.

Strapp was indeed immense and that's despite them throwing the kitchen sink at him. Fair play, he's made some comeback from being without a club. A bottom-six top flight team could do worse than take a chance on him.

It's been a gallant effort but can't see us coming back from that.

I'm not jinxing it, I'm pointing it out because of our thin bench: there are no replays anymore in the Scottish Cup so it needs to be kept in mind before making any subs that there are 30 minutes of ET to contend with if it's 0-0 at the end.

Not impressed by Hearts at all and Lewis Strapp is bearing the brunt of it. That's four or five times now they've hacked or shoved him.

5-4-1 it looks like.

Fair point, I was just guessing that the "people in the ground" was the justification.