Ten Caat

Our squad is well covered for most positions. The glaring anomaly is at left back. Now I realise that Hayes played there latterly for the Dhims but that was more about them having injuries/finding out the Bolingoli was a complete duffer. Mcinnes said on radio a fortnight ago that he doesn't expect to be making signings for the time being. Probably points to Considine starting at left back initially, but if the board do let him bring someone it then surely it has to be a proper left back. We have shoe-horned Consi in there for too long, or signed loans, who, despite generally being very good, were only short-term fixes. I certainly don't want to shoe-horn a winger who is now firmly in the veteran stages of his career in there now. Who knows where we (and Leigh himself) stand now as to the agreement we had with Breda to sign him for a pre-determined fee this summer if both parties wanted. It might be that they will be happy just to get him off their books to cut costs as many clubs will require to do. I'd hope we take him before we think of signing Hayes

So a quick update on what I'm doing. My temporary registration came through on the 28th March but I've been waiting on my Disclosure Scotland check coming through which it did yesterday. I've chosen to take a placement in a local nursing home, initial 3 month contract, extendable to 6 if necessary. This has freed up a young staff nurse only qualified a year to go and get some acute experience in the front line...she's off to the Nightingale in London. Helps her to progress her career and I don't have to travel so it suits us both. Starting on Monday.

My understanding is that (the intention is to have) those retired less than a year will receive a bit of training specifically to do with Covid 19 and be deployed to acute wards. Those retired between 1 and 3 years will be deployed to less acute areas....care of the elderly/community hospitals etc. I would fall into this group As it stands I don't think theyre looking to have those retired longer than 3 years return at present. England and Wales certainly have sent out their letters asking nurses and doctors to stand by but I don't think the govt has yet passed the legislation to allow unregistered nurses to re-register......and also provide indemnity insurance. Of course some who have very recently retired may still have a valid registration (the remaining period of their last official registration prior to retiring). I cant really see any great obstacle to them returning immediately should they wish to. In all cases reregistering will be free of charge supposedly. EDIT....I just checked the NMC website. They have sent out emails yesterday to all nurses who have retired/left the nursing register within the last 3 years. I found mine in my spam folder. So I have now added my name to list willing to return. It confirms that the legislation allowing us to do so has not yet gone through and also confirms theyre not looking for nurses who have been gone longer than 3 years for now.

I presume your comment further up the page about a poster on here becoming a nurse to "help himself and racked up an extraordinary number of sick days whilst exploiting the system" was aimed at me then? It's fucking libellous and I suggest you edit it and apologise.

I absolutely will do when the letter drops through my letterbox

2 days on from Hearts asking all full time playing and non-playing staff to take a 50% pay cut, still no concrete word on whether anyone has accepted or not. Only one that looks confirmed as rejecting is Dikamona who supposedly wants the pay-off and termination of contract option. The news today that the government will subsidise up to 80% of an employee's wage up to a maximum of £2500/month really won't make a helluva lot of difference to the likes of Naismith and Boyle, even if they were to accept the pay cut. Ironically, however, it will make a helluva difference to their biggest saleable asset in Aaron Hickey, who's one of the lowest paid first team members.....when Levein was still in charge he tried to tie him down to a new improved contract but the loon refused to sign it....likely due to the reported Man City interest. I hope we are keeping a close eye on the situation. Souttar did his achilles a few weeks back and wasn't expected back till the new season. I know we have a full complement of central defenders at present but I honestly don't see Devlin tolerating being 4th choice into whatever transpires beyond the summer. Events have obviously now taken over and Souttar is unlikely to miss too much of whatever the SPFL decide to make of this/next season. As a Scotland international, he is likely to be one of their higher earners. I certainly couldn't envisage him wanting to hang around if Hearts go down to the Championship in whatever fashion. He's a Dons fan and we could certainly afford to a least match what he gets now should he decide to reject the pay cut and take the pay-off. I don't see anyone else up here affording him outwith the arse cheeks (and I really don't think either would be interested in him anyway) and Hibs who again I don't think would want him (for entirely different reasons to the cheeks). I suppose a promoted Yinited could stretch to it in a similar way they've splashed out on Shankland but I suspect he'd choose us over returning there. Of course any English Championship club could match/beat us though. Anyway....

Supposedly Motherwell, St Johnstone and St Mirren are also in real trouble. Opens a whole can of worms if any of them are forced into administration and the SPFL try to finish off this season at all costs. Would they still apply the statutory points deduction despite circumstances being totally unique? If they did it would seem pretty harsh to me, especially if it happened from July onwards when we should really be into the new season. Sevco's financial model predicates on them almost selling out on season tickets and getting the cash in early. If this stretches out for any length of time I wonder how many huns will shell out under blind faith that they can actually attend the amount of games that makes a season book a worthwhile investment? Further down the leagues, Partick and Raith are struggling, asking fans for donations. Both famous old names in Scottish football, would be horrendous if they (or anyone other than sevco tbh) went to the wall.

Voiding the season after close to 80% of the season has been completed is every bit as lacking sporting integrity as crowning a champion and relegating the bottom club. My preference would be to finish this season if at all possible but I'd put a definite time limit on doing so....probably completing by October 31 (I would push the Scottish Cup Final as late as December to let it complete if necessary, but semis and all league matches to be finished by 31/10). The issue of possibly having new players signed in the summer with others having left is insurmountable and just too bad. If it became apparent that this couldn't be achieved...and at the absolute latest a resumption would need to be underway by September 20th give or take a couple of days......then I'd reluctantly settle for taking average points per game achieved to settle final positions. Which would obviously confirm Celtic as champions and send Hearts down the gurgler. And have sevco crying for years. Fuck 'em…. Obviously it follows that next season would also have be foreshortened given that there would be no wriggle room at the end of the season with the Euros having been moved to next June. No League Cup and no January break should be announced, with a league programme of 22 matches followed by the split with every team facing each other home and away post split giving a 32 match league. Guarantees an even split of home and away matches.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus

Viruses are absolutely animal in nature. They can infect plants. They consist of DNA or RNA inside a protein wall. There is indeed some debate in the scientific community if viruses are truly a lifeform at all. They can only survive for any length of time and certainly only reproduce themselves by invading a host. Bacteria are absolutely vegetable in nature. They can infect animals. They have a cell wall with cytotoplasm and can exist independently and reproduce without the necessity to infect a living host. Would you agree that fungi are vegetable in nature? You are bound to agree that animals get fungal infections? Your missus has probably had thrush at some point in life. A vegetable infecting a human...who knew it? And no I'm not a virologist. And I'll tell you my source for saying this. We had a lecture from Dr G. Petrie ex consultant chest physician in my 3rd year of General nurse trainng, 1987.....prior to placement in Chest Unit Cameron Hospital Windygates. If you dont like what Ive posted...block me you boring irritating little cunt.

Not entirely true about the known coronaviruses RS. The common cold and influenza are both coronaviruses for example. Taking them individually...influenza is the more "serious". But there are relatively few strains of influenza, tending to keep themselves to fairly specific areas of the globe that don't spread in epidemic numbers to other areas ; compared to the common cold...which really are thousands of different viruses that all produce roughly the same symptoms if infecting us. And all viruses have to mutate to survive. They'd die off if they didn't....once we have had one we have our antibodies that would prevent further infection. Now in the case of influenza....it takes around 8-12 years on average to fully mutate into a totally new strain. Until it does so...if you have had influenza you have the inherent resistance to it that means you cant get it again until its fully mutated. Flu vaccinations are made up of 3 strains of deactivated virus ....they always contain last years main infective strain plus a couple of others that virologists "best guess" that they think might take hold. There's no common cold vaccine purely because there are just far too many viruses that cause it to make one both clinically and cost effective. Nevertheless..the common cold can and does claim lives every year. Just pretty much all within the elderly or people with serious co morbidities. We can certainy get 3 or 4 colds in a year...each one caused by a different strain of virus Now we think that covid-19 is a similar acting virus to that which caused SARS back in the early 2000s (was it 2001 off the top of my head?) Still too early in the progression to tell....but if it is then the immunity will be much the same as it is for influenza. So years rather than months, possibly permanent,

But the more you think about extending into summer the more problems you encounter. Contracts generally run out at some point between the end of May and the end of June. There will already be players who have signed pre-contracts with other clubs. If we took the league into June....their contract might already have run out. I'm sure the SPFL/SFA would find a way of extending their registrations if necessary. But the player himself might not be so keen....what if he picked up an injury (especially a Durrant or the like) prior to his new teams contract kicking in? He could be left high and dry so therefore won't be all that keen to play at all in an extended season. Summer football I think will happen eventually. But it becomes a mess if some countries move over but others retain the status quo....it would horrendously affect European football. So it'll only happen when the majority, if not all countries decide to do so. It works fine stand-alone in Ireland at present purely because their clubs only are of the qualifying rounds standard, played at a time when their league is in full swing.

Yep but it's why the government now actually want us to catch it in very large numbers....just spread out over months rather than weeks. The general idea being that once we've had it and recovered, we can get back to normal life sharpish. If 60% of us got it then for sure herd immunity hasn't been achieved per se...but at those levels any future spread will start to wane naturally and pretty rapidly to manageable levels until the vaccine is available. There are reports of some sufferers being reinfected and whilst this is concerning, it's in relatively small numbers and I actually think what will be proven eventually is that these aren't re-infections at all, rather that the person was acutely ill, seemed to improve as their body fought the infection off but actually didn't clear it fully and the virus re-established itself. This happens in a small number of any infective disease. Actually happens very commonly in elderly females who get bladder infections (although these are almost 100% bacterial infections) and no amount of antibiotics seems to shift the residual infection. Btw for the uninitiated....some people ask why don't antibiotics work against covid-19. The answer lies in the nature of what a virus is. Viruses are animal in nature. Bacteria are vegetable. Antibiotics only work for bacterial infections. Now we do have a limited number of anti-viral medications...the AIDS crisis in the 80s brought about their development fairly rapidly. But unlike most antibiotics which are effective against a number of different bacterial infections (theyre called broad spectrum antibiotics...the penicillin group being the most famous) , anti-virals on the whole seem to act more specifically. And theyre also a lot more expensive than antibiotics. Vaccination is therefore the best route to go down to eventually eliminate this rather than developing a new anti-viral which could take years.

I absolutely wasn't saying I'm agreeing with anything, but to put any blame on Boris for what is happening is also pretty ridiculous. He's a journalist turned politician. He's taking his instructions from the Chief Medical Officers of the various constituent countries of the UK.....with no professional insight into it what else can he do but just trust it and hope for the best. When I said "some form of herd immunity"....as I stated before....true herd immunity requires about 90-95% (preferably the upper) to be inoculated or have some acquired prior immunity (can be gained by suffering an infection and recovering) to a communicable disease to guarantee that mass outbreaks cannot happen. Computerised projections cast the worst case scenario in the UK that 80% of the population could catch this thing. Why? because it's a totally new disease to humans. There is no current inoculation available to prevent it (although various labs have created one, its being tested on animals right now). As with the last world infection crisis...the AIDS epidemic of the mid 80s...there will be a derogation from normal testing regimes which generally take 3 years or so to bring a new medicine to the market in order to get this vaccination out there asap. ^ months minimum, more likely nearer 12 though. Now I don't believe for a minute that 80% of us will catch this. But right now with nothing to treat it effectively it will for sure infect swathes of us. Those who require hospitalisation right now are purely treated on a symptomatic support regime....to make that simple, all we can do at present is attend to the symptoms and hope that it keeps a person alive long enough until the person's own immune system creates enough antibodies by itself to fight the disease off. And RS....I'm a fairly recently retired nurse manager by profession. I have more insight into it than Joe Public for sure but don't claim to be an expert. I am standing by to be recalled to the front-line as this will put mahoosive pressure on the NHS as your wife will know. The Italian Health service (which btw is far better resourced than ours) it at breaking point. All leave has been cancelled there, in the north where the concentration of infections have taken place medical and paramedical staff are starting to drop like flies through sheer exhaustion. How the gvt deals with bring back retired nurses isn't quite as simple as it sounds. We have to re-register evry 3 years, self certifying that we have completed at least the minimum required professional updates/training. Ive retired so let my registration lapse at its last renewal. I obviously cannot meet the updates stipulation...and I certainly aint paying to do a refresher course (nor my registration fees) even if they could organise such courses for people like me at short notice. If the worst comes to the worst they'll have to derogate from this and just bring us back regardless. Im sure most of us retirees would be happy to help but not to pay through the nose for the privelige….

If extending the season into June turns out not to be viable then I'd propose finishing this season off in July (if poss)/August/Sept. Scrap the League Cup for 1 season. European places for next season to be given to the sides in the qualifying positions on the final cut off date, should the season not have been completed.

True herd immunity needs about 90-95% of the population inoculated (or naturally immune) to guarantee a communicable disease threat is contained. The numbers being bandied about are suggesting that if 60% of catch covid-19 and recover then we should have some sort of herd immunity. At those levels, the disease will still spread but should be manageable for some semblance of normality to return until the vaccine becomes generally available....as ive said before...its at least 6 months down the line, more likely nearer 12.

Tbf no one knows how this is going to pan out. The herd immunity theory is reasonable and yes there have been reports of sufferers becoming re-infected. However I suspect the actual truth might be that they hadn't really been recovered at all, just that their condition had improved somewhat and felt ok but the virus hadn't fully been eliminated from their body and as a result suffered a relapse. It's way too late to stop this now anyway. By the time a sufferer starts to feel unwell, they've already been infectious for between 24-72 hours already and have probably infected 5 others minimum. A vaccine is being rushed through...several labs have one and it's in the animal testing stage but don't expect it to be available for at least 6 months, more likely nearer 12. Still a remarkably fast time to get a new product out on the market. Deaths are inevitable in fairly large numbers but will mainly be in the elderly/physically infirm demographic. A few younger, utterly unexpected deaths will also occur but not in any significant numbers. Influenza claims a few "healthy" people every year. For most of us it will just be like a bad cold but there will be significant numbers of folk with pre-existing conditions that will require hospitalisation....respiratory tract diseases mainly but also diabetics, heart disease sufferers etc. What the NHS should be doing now is cancelling all elective surgery, except for those that are for life threatening conditions (cancer and certain heart ops mainly)....your hip replacements, varicose veins etc can all wait 6 months. Get the patients that are in hospital discharged the instant they are fit. Bed blockers should be discharged to the first available nursing home bed.....tough luck if it isn't close at hand to relatives. They can be moved into a closer home at a later date. Stock up on cheap paracetamol and cough linctus. Don't waste your cash on expensive branded shit like lemsip. The biggest effects this pandemic will cause are economic. This is what governments are truly concerned about. The longer it lasts, more and more businesses will go bust. It will actually be quite "entertaining" watching holiday companies and airline go tits up fairly rapidly because of this. Strap yourselves in. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Agree with Panda. I could probably live with it being 17k initially to test the waters......no one really knows how much the move to Kingsford will affect our support. Some hardliners are saying they'll never go ever. On the other hand, supporters in the west end and in much of the Shire will find it much more convenient. I'd imagine the first season, crowds will be artificially high due to the novelty of a new stadium. Once it settles down we will know more in seasons 2,3 and 4 as to how it's really affected things, if at all. Of course putting a successful side on the park would surely be the best way to get your average crowds up. As long as the ground is built in such a way that we could simply (and economically) add an extension to raise the capacity to 20k, maybe even 22k, then I'd be comfortable starting with 17k.

There will surely be a shutdown of football after this weekend. Gives him a chance to reach "peak" fitness by the time it resumes which I presume will be early April at the earliest. However there aren't many players around who have snapped both cruciates never mind tried to return from them. A deal till the end of the season is sensible for both parties. He'll need a few reserve games on the resumption of football to both test his knee(s) out in a less pressured environment and also to build up his match fitness. I doubt under normal circumstances that we would be intending to play him much, if at all in the remaining league games, we would likely be into the split by the time he's achieved match fitness and unless another central defender cops an injury in the interim, he will likely only be on the bench at best.....certainly until European qualification is settled. If we can get that done reasonably quickly then it would be good to see him at least one start before the season ends to let him see if he can stand up to the rigours of first team football. Longer term.....as has been said, his wife is due to drop their second sprog fairly imminently. I'm not convinced after what has happened that his first choice would be to relocate his family 600 miles north. With him being at Watford, although he certainly wouldn't have been in their top earners on £50k+ per week, I'd imagine the kind of wages that we pay even our very top earners is likely to be a bit of a drop as to what he was getting down there. And with his injury history, I'm not certain the club should/would be offering terms that put him amongst our top earners anyway. I do have a feeling that Devlin might be looking to engineer a move out the club in summer given that he's now firmly established as 4th choice centre back. If he were allowed to go, I'd probably say that Hoban would be worth signing for a couple of years on the same money that Devlin was getting. But at that level, he could certainly have that at least matched by pretty much every EFL1 club and a good few EFL2 clubs as well. He might find that he could pick up a club at that level where he doesn't have to move house at all (Leyton Orient supposedly interested and a non-league club Barnet???). Whatever happens down the line, with the loon nothing but the best. He was absolutely strolling it up here prior to the injury and hopefully he can get himself back playing to the same level with no further traumas. He deserves a bit of luck after what he's been through

St Mirren take the lead against Hearts

The way I read it is that for the majority of games the top tier will be closed but should there be evidence of enough demand for certain games they will open it on an individual case basis? ( presumably if we get off to a half decent start it will open for the arse cheeks matches and possibly if we get through to ELQ3/4 and draw a relatively big name)

I'm not at all convinced that many...if any...second leg games will actually take place. The situation is rapidly evolving and we already know that 2 first round games are not going ahead in Milan and Sevilla. UEFA have an absolute nightmare to sort this out. I also have a feeling that our game against 'Well on Friday along with the rest of the weekend games will be the last we see of football taking place in Scotland till early April at the earliest. The only sensible decision I can see is for UEFA to postpone the Euro Championships until summer 2021. This might allow a bit of breathing space for the Champions and Europa Leagues to complete and allow domestic competitions to extend into June if necessary. Perhaps with a stipulation that once a team are mathematically champions and also team(s) at the bottom are mathematically relegated that the competition stops at that point. Of course it could well conspire that the full programme might need to be played to reach one or both of these ( the relegation battle in the SPL here does look like it might go all the way to the last day even if Hearts lose tonight and start looking a bit isolated)

Turgid first half, only Joe and Ferguson getting pass marks for me. The 3 at the back didn't look comfortable, Logan being the worst offender and no one could have grudged Hibs their one goal lead at half time. In hindsight, maybe having the wind at their backs was more of an advantage than I realised at the time. Second half we continued to toil initially, when suddenly Whittaker got himself needlessly sent off. Instantly we got a huge lift from this. The elements were in our favour and by Christ did we take full advantage. The equaliser was a comedy own goal, Jackson?? leaving his poor keeper no chance. Then Consi once again became the hero finishing off a wicked corner that the wind caught. Main again worked his socks off and although a lot didn't come off for him, he got the goal that his effort deserved that killed Hibs off finally. Has to be said that Ojo and especially McGeouch came on to excellent games in the second half. Kennedy continued his decent form 2nd half also. Results elsewhere all went our way so a good day all round. Would be nice if we could maybe take the lead in a league game though. We can't keep going behind and expect to fight back each time. Motherwell next week will be pivotal to our chances of finishing third. Right now I'd settle for just not losing....by all accounts they were very unlucky not to win at Tynecastle today. Speaking of which.....Hamilton.....hahaha. If St Mirren can win midweek against Hearts the Jambo's will be isolated at the bottom. Get down Hun-lite!

It's already too late to stop this becoming a pandemic. What's more...it's a bloody godsend to the world. Nature always finds a way of reducing the earth's population when it soars to unmanageable levels. The 2 world wars killed off many millions.. and just over 100 years ago Spanish flu wiped out 50 million Modern medicine ( particularly better control of coronary heart disease/ hypertension and effective treatments for most cancers) has allowed the average life expectancy to rise rapidly in the past 40 years. In the UK it's went up from roughly 72 to about 80 for men and frm about 74 to 84 for women. But in doing so has caused a dementia crisis and there just isn't the infrastructure to properly care for all these extra frail people. Covid-19 could prove the answer to a headache that successive governments have failed to address.