beyond our ken

If he goes, he goes. The board can put a contract in front of him but he isn't compelled to sign it and to be honest, if an interested club want him then a few grand more on the compensation wont deter them. Robinson is 50 and will be considering his next move every day.

This one was always going to be hard and in such a run-down area the urge to protest was too strong. Just a shame the party that are prolonging the financial strictures on these towns got the benefit as Labour have no intention of increasing Scottish funding and are using money that could be spent within the devolution settlement to finance city deal style projects that make people think they are Robin Hood. They leave the day-to-day dross of running council & government on inadequate budgets to the local lackeys and come in on a white horse with their limited regeneration projects.

However it is sliced or diced, without legal aid Wardrop will be hit very hard financially. I doubt he is rubbing his hands with glee on this judgement, He is probably just relieved he isn't in the frame for substantial compensation. As for deflection???? That is garbled, i simply stated that the attempt to secure the land and the funding failed and AW had no hand in halting it. They messed it up. They did it on Kibble time though. Finally, what is an ege (sic) and what is is it's recommended daily calorie intake? Should they even be giving it crumbs? Overall, I think that Gillespie & McMillan should have been dissuaded from raising this action and should have been asked to step down as employees of SMFC while it was being pursued. It did no good and could have resulted in serious harm to the club. I really don't know why Kibble decided to fund the action as it is a personal matter. Perhaps they felt the need to show some financial muscle to prevent criticism in the future? Who knows?

In the context of this attempt to secure the land, they did not execute a competent strategy. It all failed regardless of AW's involvement

You certainly did.

Very well said and researched, Absolvitor didn't register with me at all so hats off to digging on that one. The normal status appears to be that around 50%-70% of costs can be passed on to the loser, but if it is not clear cut as to who the loser is and as Kibble covered both the pursuer's bills then maybe the Judge going off to think about how the cost can be divvied up. I don't know the entire history of this case and there is a requirement that cases brought directly to the Court of Session need to be seeking a settlement of more than £100,000, cases that seek lesser values need to start at a lower level before being referred to the HC. Did this one start at the sheriff court? And finally, if it is true that the use of land at Ferguslie was never an option for Gillespie then why did he sign-off on the application for funding that venture in that location and why was it termed "St Mirren Regeneration" when it was being submitted by Kibble? The judgement talks of the "speculative" nature of some of these applications and also mentions the intention of Kibble to sell-back the shares they bought in SMFC (to whom?) at a "low cost" if they "got what they wanted" from the deal. I think that more of this stuff may be looked at

The judge saw fit to mention that but offered no opinion. Maybe the money came from a company owned by Kibble that sits outside the charity regulator's remit? Maybe they have legitimately set aside a fund to support employees in this way?

You're right. That is what i said up front but later I should have said there was no defamation that resulted in lasting damage " In any event, any serious harm that has been caused, or is likely to be caused, to the reputation of the pursuers has been expunged by the evidence provided by the pursuers in the conduct of this proof, about the false application for £2.65m of public funds. There is no evidence that either pursuer’s reputation has suffered as a result of the defender’s statements." More telling, for me at least "[64] In contrast to the defender, the pursuers were not credible witnesses. In general terms, both pursuers repeatedly sought to obfuscate and to avoid answering the questions that were put to them. The first pursuer’s attempts to absolve himself from responsibility for the RCGF bid process in relation to the Wellbeing Centre were not credible. When it was put to him that, if Ferguslie was not by 2022 considered to be a potential location for the Wellbeing Centre then Kibble’s RCGF applications contained lies, the first pursuer sought to pivot his position by suggesting that J29 could have been a potential location had Kibble obtained geotechnical information. The first pursuer nonetheless accepted that the Stage 2 application was false in a number of respect" The judgement also shows that the opinions of Messr's Needham & White that AW did not act in the public interest were wrong. As I said, messy

In the courtroom, yes. My take is that the Judge doesn't see proof that the statements made by Wardrop were grounded entirely in fact but doesn't disagree that some of it may have been accurate and that the defence of speaking in the public interest is a valid argument. He thinks that the two Kibblle-appointed directors were defamed but they have not suffered sufficient harm as to be due compensation. Outside the courtroom, Wardrop loses a lot of money in legal fees, at least for now. McMillan and Gillespie's action was bankrolled by Kibble so they lose nothing (yet) and the judge is yet to decide who pays which fees. i don't know if he will take a dim view of Kibble subbing their employees or not. Given that he has decided that there was no defamation he might have leeway to order Gillespie & McMillan to cover the fees of Wardrop as there was no harm and the public interest was being served by Wardrop's ill-informed comments. This might render the basis for bringing the case as flawed and if you want to bring a case for defamation you better have a watertight one. The fact that the judge stated the level of damages that WOULD have been awarded (I hereby offer this as a precedent that should be known henceforth as the "Bullseye" or Jim Bowen principle-here is what you could have won) if there was an offer to pay them off by Wardrop that exceeded that sum before it all got to the court door then that is not good for them. I

Altogether, messy and unnecessary proceedings funded by Kibble have resulted in no compensation being due to their employees. Hopefully no reputational damage to SMFC. Nobody comes out of this well

Unsurprisingly, a bigot has appeared on the scene at Bothwell Nutter

As I said, when the ticket office released my seat to me i went online via the laptop and my saved details were there already. To be fair, the seat allocated to my e-mail showed up right away when using the phone, it just seemed to default to verification pages referenced by Guinness and a requirement to find September 1958 by clicking back through every other month between then & now. On several occasions in the last year, buying tickets through this platform have resulted in a trip to the ticket office for home games and trying to find a SLO at away games.

Re the first two, not a position we wanted to be in. These have been two of the most problematic positions until these two arrived, maybe easier to get a decent centre-back out of the other position that need filling. At least 5 players to be found means a very busy summer and the hope is that it's less dragged out and less wasteful than last summer

was able to renew online without being asked to go through the last 792 months to find my D.O.B. For some reason my saved detal There is a definite difference between the experiences of using the platform on a phone V a bigger device, maybe it is me as i far prefer using a laptop to a phone for these purchases but i have moved from I-phone to android in recent months so maybe that is the problem.

tried renewing using my phone, the website freaked out while i was scrolling back through the several hundred months between now and my date of birth, so i switched to the laptop. Now i get a message saying my seat has either been held or bought by someone else. Buying tickets on any platform saints have used was always difficult from time to time, but this version is easily the worst yet. Need to phone the office tomorrow as there is no way i will be in Paisley before Thursday.

I know

the first name reminds me of some medication for Asthma. Let's just call him Manny

I feel for the guy, Johnson is a total rocket.

You have to go where the work is. Some on this forum think he would be too inexperienced to take over from SR right now and he might feel there are things he needs to get to grips with that just aren't available to him in the U19s role. Shows ambition and a reluctance to take the safe & easy option.

I think it defers the inevitable, there is some speculative crap that looks very lazy saying he is a runner for the QPR job. The sort of job you take if you want a guaranteed pay-off and a crap time for the duration of your tenure. I think he will move on soon enough before replacing one of Michael O'Neill's inevitable successors in Northern Ireland

https://www.stmirren.com/all-news/5872-stephen-mcginn-departs-craig-mcleish-promoted Off to Falkirk as a first team coach, he will learn a lot from McGlynn Hope to see him back at Saints in some future capacity, he has been a great asset in every phase of his time with us and is obviously considered as an up-and -comer in the coaching world

Sloopy might still be hanging on but sad that Rick isn't any more

Now the tinpot bigshots want to challenge the SPFL rule on plastic pitches A disgrace, they claim they weren't in the Premiership when the rue was made, but they were in the SPFL Not a peep out of them through the season or through the play-off sequence Their director on TV tonight saying that if the SPFL dont look at this rule again then he will look at "other ways" to challenge the rule. I'm sure that if they dont want to play by the rules then the rest of the teams will gladly see a run-off between Thistle and Rossco since Livingston obviously didn't participate in good faith. They always knew they would try to get a rule change, time to add a new rule that in order to qualify for the play-off a club has to sign an undertaking to meet all the criteria. Only clubs willing to meet the rules should get a chance to join.

Don't know why i added the "Thistle" bit Oops

He gets them to fulfill his game plan, which is more akin to wrestling than football. I don't really know if that is exceptional coaching or not. The funding model is the big sticking point for me, i worked in Livingston in the mid 90s and was surprised to learn how few of the factory workers would support them, i worked there again for a couple of years 2001-2003 and there was no change. The locals that like football pay allegiance to Glasgow & Edinburgh clubs and with no real product coming from them in terms of youth, what do they contribute? I don't criticise them for not having many fans, they are just in the wrong place to have a big support, i am more concerned at the dumbing-down effect these teams have on the Scottish Game. We have EK thistle on the block now and the newer Edinburgh clubs all scrambling for a slice of the funding pie, how do we improve the standards when so many clubs lack the resources to contribute a few quality prospects every now & then?