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Who won Manager of the Season?

I've nae idea. Depends on what happens during the rotting of the global civilisational corpse. I think it should be mandatory discussion in schools though.... We're clearly on, or about to be on, a downward slope in terms of energy and resources. Civilisation as it stands is about to hit several bumps in the road, unlikely to be existential individually, but over time it'll die off. Maybe a couple of hundred years for civilisation, assuming the AMOC doesn't do anything drastic? I think it's important to accept that our entire global illusion is built on a one off bonanza of fossil fuels that took hundreds of millions of years to form and will never be available again. This is it for technological humanity. The first step in any addiction is admitting that there's a problem, and it's clear that collectively we're not there yet, although the cracks are certainly beginning to show. Hopefully we'll find a way to "hospice modernity" (not read the book, but a good title) in a compassionate manner. Environmentalists talking about green growth, electric cars, fifteen minute cities and so on are in a form of denial worse than climate denial (as are socialists for different reasons!). They're not admitting the problem.

I am taking a punt on this masel. Think Robinson might have went there to have a closer look at Jeremiah Chilokoa - Mullen. Nae a scooby if he is any use but he was a noticable absentee from the Pars line-up and a regular starter for Scotland U21's

Wow. If I’d known we were going to lunge into existential metaphysics I would have brushed up on my reading. Excellent post Rico, I’ll gloss over the ‘not criticism’ part and acknowledge agreement with everything you’re saying about the political system and how it serves societal need.

More likely that you're under-thinking it.

For balance, I think (hope) that the squad have been bonding over the last two weeks and now play better together, and that they now have the stomach for the fight.

I guess that stupidity is not really a good identifier. He's likely got a degree more than me, for instance. Intelligence, cleverness, or the ability to discuss the inanities of a ridiculous system aren't really the markers that should be merited. He strikes me as having little wisdom, which is of course entirely missing from UK parliaments, by design. It'd be unwise to think that there was a mechanism within those bodies that allowed for meaningful change, or even the slightest attempt to solve any of the crises that the system hurtles us towards. Look at @Ajja's list of "achievements" for labour for example (not criticising here). Have you ever seen such a bunch of lame, temporary, can kicking talking points? What's that? The sixth mass extinction of all life on earth? Well, that maybe so, but have you seen that A&E waiting times are down to an average of 18 hours? Representative democracy cannot deal with anything beyond the current. It's a terrible system. Someone suggested that social media etc meant that everyone wanted everything immediately and no attention span. That may be true, but it has nothing to do with the way the political system works. There has never been long term planning for any conceivably difficult obstruction, there has never been the chance to discuss what politics is for and what we want our communities or nations to be. You can discuss "the deficit", or "national debt", but never what money is and what it's for. You can talk endlessly about how we get economic growth, but never why. You absolutely don't get the opportunity to discuss civilisational collapse (and why ours should miraculously be different). Nor do you get the space to discuss all the issues and how they might interact with one another in a system - each issue is siloed off into its own discussion, so you can discuss climate change but not climate change with biodiversity or plastic pollution, and so you end up with the ridiculous solution of electric cars. Because you can't discuss cars, and you can't discuss what a city is and why. Fergus Ewing is probably stupid, or not, but it really doesn't matter. Because Fergus Ewing is stunted by a system that dictates that he can talk about the effects of particular abstractions, but not about the abstractions themselves. Any wisdom that he might have is neutered by the environment in which he stands. This applies to him, and the likes of Luxon or Ardern in New Zealand too, for the avoidance doubt. It's universal. Edit: and I expect everyone knows what I've written above is true. But you/we will all get drawn back into discussing the political minutae as if it's "the thing", rather than face having to face the enormity of the actual thing. Keir Starmer being a useless dick is not "the thing".

A Reform candidate for Aberdeenshire. James Wyllie wants to see coal mining brought back. If he means the North East of Scotland, there could be the issue that we have never really mined up here. There are also no coal fired power plants left in Scotland. He also called people campaigning for Net Zero, communists. Haven't heard that one for a while and I wonder if he is our very own Jupiter, who classes anyone not on the right as a 'commie'. Going to be an interesting few weeks ahead.

I’ve got horrible post Livi vibes. Last time we had a good solid home victory was against Livi and we played Killie next game. There was optimism in the air and we felt like a huge weight had finally been lifted. Corner turned, top 6 awaits. Pumped 3-0

I'm feeling good about it. Killie are much improved under McCann but 2 weeks more on the training ground will hopefully have improved team cohesion and the team will have a spring in their step after hibs. An early goal and I think we could get a really solid win here. 3-0 dons Nisbet, Armstrong and Lazetic

I get my away tickets from Jute in the pub. FOC. Although there is often a human cost to us collectively moaning for 3 hours while drinking lager.

I can’t post a picture and don’t know what he looks like, but if it’s possible to want to punch a voice, I’m nominating Gavin “J” Baxter of the ABZ podcast. Insufferable. I’d pay good money to listen to a version of that with him edited out. The other two seem fine enough.

Being just slightly too young to see Rougvie in the flesh for us, I was delighted to see him play against the huns in the Masters Tournament several years ago at Braehead Arena. Hateley was lording it there, lapping up the spastics appreciation everytime he touched the ball. He rather stupidly went wide towards the hoardings and big Doug followed, Hateley got the ball and tried to turn him, Doug just stood there and Hateley clattered into the boards before falling on his face. He stood up, looking to square up, Rougvie just stood there laughing at him. No Dons player went up. Several huns went up to pull Hateley away. And the vision of big Rougvie pointing at hateley and saying "I'll fucking have you" will stay with me for a long time. Hateley gave a matey laugh to Rougvie.. about ten seconds later the ball came to Hateley and big Doug cemented him. We celebrated as if we'd just won the league. Small pleasures, eh?

Reading that hasn't helped my confidence about tomorrow.