The Missing Pound

Three friends go for a bar meal.

The bill comes to £25.

Each friend chips in a £10 note.

The waiter brings their change in the form of 5 one pound coins.

Each diner takes a pound back leaving a £2 tip for the waiter.

How much did each pay?

Remember each handed over a tenner and each got a pound back.

So that’s £9 each eh?

That equals £27.

The waiter got £2.

Where is the missing pound?

No Caption Needed

Seventies Cheese – The Word

I posted this track on my old Vox blog and despite the fact that only three men and a dog ever visited there, I have had more private messages and emails about it than anything else that I ever posted on Vox. Many of those requested a copy of the mp3.

It is a 1979 rendition of the Lord Buckley’s biblical inspired  jazz monologue “The Nazz” by John Sinclair aka The Word.

It was so clever and innovative I thought it’d be a huge hit.

It sank without trace.

Here is the mp3 made from my rather battered copy of the 7″ single.

The Naz by The Word

Bill Wilson – What a Tumshie!

He wants supermarkets to label fruit and veg in the Scots language.

The West of Scotland MSP, a long-time campaigner for Scots to be given equal status as a recognised language, raised the issue with Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury’s.

I’ve written before about people who feel the need to talk as if they were acting out a Broons cartoon strip.

It’s all perfectly harmless of course, until they start campaigning for things like parliamentary business and  signs to be spoken and written in Scots.

Imagine parlimentary questions:

“Is yon first minister no’ causing a bit o a stushie amangst the loons and quines on this issue?”

Or a trip to the library where the  sign urging silence read “Haud yer wheesht!”

Where’s a cringe meter when you need one?

Bill Wilson wants blackberries labeled as brambles in supermarkets – fair enough.

Spring onions should be described as syboes he says. Aye well Bill maybes but I’ll bet you more Scots folk know them as the former rather than the latter.

Potatoes? – require to be labeled tatties according to Bill

Here’s where he gets silly. He wants Tesco et al to label turnips as tumshies.

Please Bill, away and do something worthwhile instead.

Ya neep.

Seventies Cheese – Bob Seger

This is at the suggestion of my regular correspondent Fern Cake.

I remember seeing Seger in concert at the Apollo in Glasgow in the seventies. What an incredible show it was with some selection of hair on stage. The sax player in the gold lame suit dancing on the speaker stacks was quite something.

Here is Bob Seger with the Frankie Miller song “Ain’t Got no Money”

Who’s This Then?

Doctored Livingston I Presume?

Apart from the SPL clubs and the Setanta situation, there are several football clubs in the SFL with one foot in the grave and another on a banana skin.

Foremost amongst these are two clubs, Clyde and Livingston. Both clubs inhabit stadiums built for them and owned by their local councils. Both clubs moved to their current home towns in relatively recent times,  Clyde from Shawfield in Rutherglen just outside Glasgow and Livingston from Ediburgh where as Meadowbank Thistle they played at the former Commonwealth stadium in Edinburgh bearing that name.

Cumbernauld and Livingston did much to attract senior football to their towns but both clubs have had a chequered history since making the moves.

Clyde had an association at one time with current Hamilton Accies owner Ronnie McDonald which saw them flirt with the SPL. They also famously knocked Celtic out of the Scottish cup a few years ago, but the Cumbernauld public never seemed to respond in the required numbers to push the club higher.

Livingston did play in the SPL and they actually won a trophy (The CIS Cup) under the stewardship of Dominic Keane. Unfortunately Keane’s bankers were less than impressed with the balance sheet and called in their debt leaving Keane a broken man and forced out of the club.

Enter Pearse Flynn an aggressive Irish businessman whose mission seemed to be complaining through the media that first division clubs needed to have a bigger slice of the financial cake. He was one of the main architects behind SP Hell 2.

Unfortunately his business which was run from Ireland and cold called people in the UK with debt advice, ie how to pay Paul by robbing Peter, hit problems when staff who hadn’t been paid for seven weeks were laid off in early 2008.

At that stage Flynn needed out of Livi quick and he sold out to an Italian consortium led by Angelo Massone.The club has lurched from crisis to crisis in the intervening period. Various episodes including wages not being paid to Flynn suing the new owners (successfully) for £300k, culminated on Friday with Scottish Power cutting off the electricity at Alamondvale.

Romanov pinpoints the source of Hearts problems.

Bates. Many consider him to be Master.

What is it about owners of  Scottish football clubs who come from outwith Scotland? From Canadian Ron Dixon at Dundee who thought that greyhound racing was the way forward, to Englishman Ken Bates at Partick Thistle who talked of challenging the dominance of the Old Firm through Gretna’s Brookes Mileson, Flynn mentioned above and Lithuanian Vladimir Romanov at Hearts who spoke of winning the Champions League (!).

They have all provided plenty column inches for the papers but one wonders whether the highland air affected them all in some way?

Some may say they were/are all barmy, I couldn’t possibly comment.

Anyway, getting back to Livingston’s immediate problems, a potential saviour has appeared on the horizon. He has promised to work with Massone to resurect Livi and continue senior football in West Lothian.

(At this stage I’d advise any Dumbarton FC supporters to sit down)

He’s Neil Rankine.

Several contributors here know Neil well from his twenty year spell as major shareholder at Dumbarton.

I knew him pretty well.

Hmmm, Nice stadium - on land too!

On the plus side Neil got Dumbarton a new stadium of a manageable size and kept them clear of the kind of debt that other clubs are struggling with. It was a strategy that ensured the future of the club.

On the negative side one never quite knew what Neil was up to. In the twenty years prior to his stewardship the Sons were consistently in the first division. Under Neil’s guidance we became permanent fixtures in the second division. This situation was only remedied by the introduction of a third division.

His reputation became such locally that one newspaper editor (perhaps unfairly) Christened him “Rankbadyin”.

Neil seems attracted to small football clubs. As well as his now relinquished interest in Dumbarton, he owns by proxy, the major shareholding at East Fife and also attempted to take over Airdrieonians a few years ago when they were in a Livi type situation.

Neil has an unerring knack of spotting opportunities connected to potential land value. It may be that this could be turned to Livi’s advantage in dealings with the owners of Almondvale and major creditors, ie the local council. In that respect look for a proposed deal this week if Neil does become involved.

However much it would be to Livi’s short term advantage to have Neil on board, I suspect the long term advantage will accrue to Neil himself.

Knowing Neil that’ll certainly be the plan!

Edit: I almost forgot, the reason for the title of the post apart from the play on words was that Neil glories in the name he gave himself while at Dumbarton -  “Doctor No”

Weekend News Round Up

With a hat tip to Viz and Private Eye.

Setanta – The Ba’s on the Slates

Setanta today missed the deadline for their payment to the Premiership in England. The clubs there have simply torn up the deal and put the TV rights for the games up for auction to the highest bidder.

Meanwhile in Scotland the SPL clubs are shitting themselves unconscious “locked deep in talks” with the company whose rescue deal has also fallen through.

EU Leaders Criticise Iran

The EU has spoken

About the democratic will of voters in Iran.

Don’t these Iranians get it?

You don’t allow a vote and then pochle the results.

You either don’t allow a vote in the first place or have a vote and ignore the result.