PREMATURE EJACULATIONS

There are two signs manifesting themselves at the moment that say that The Peeppul believe that all is well. The first is that league reconstruction is no longer an issue; in fact, from the comments in the Daily Record, they're dead against it now. Of course, they're getting carried away with themselves a bit here, considering Sevco is only three points ahead of Hibs and there's a long way to go yet. But, then, when did that ever stop The Peeppul? They live in a wee world all of their own. Surely, though, a bigger top tier might help them to stay there, assuming, of course, that they get there in the first place? That, however, is away down the list of priorities. The important thing now is to make sure that Dundee Utd. get relegated at the end of this season.

Again, they're jumping the gun a bit here. As I've already pointed out, there's a long way to go and DU might yet pull themselves back up the table. Even if they don't, the worse-case scenario is that they'll be in the play-offs. And, as I think I've mentioned, there's a long way to go, so Sevco could still end up in the play-offs as well. We all know, and cherish, the memory of what happened in the play-offs last season and no amount of Action Man's heids can help Sevco against a Premiership team. Expect a lot of changing of tiny minds between now and May.

As to why The Peeppul are so desperate to see Dundee Utd relegated brings me to the second sign of false contentment among the Huns. So happy are they at the situation they believe is 'coming down the road' that they think it's time to 'Examine Ze List'. DU is one of the clubs they blame for 'relegating' them to the Third Division and they reckon it's payback time. In fact, they're shouting for heads to roll at the very top of Scottish football and demanding compensation and the like. There's a minority shouting at present but, trust me, these calls are going to get louder and louder. So what makes them think that their moment has come? Believe it or not, it's the trial of the Magnificent Sevco Seven (or Six if you exclude Ahmad).

The trial hasn't even started in earnest yet but The Peeppul are already getting excited about the charges. With Green, Whyte etc. facing charges of deliberately putting Rangers into administration and liquidation as part of a fraud involving millions of quid, The Peeppul are now crowing about their club being a victim. (Strangely, they always express the entirely opposite view when it comes to the Kellys and Whites allegedly creaming off profits from Celtic.) To their minds their club was 'relegated' unfairly and the SFA is at serious fault for letting Whyte take over in the first place. Oh, what short memories they have!

When Whyte first came along the internet was full of warnings about how this guy was a notorious asset-stripper and, worse, little more than a crook. The Peeppul, however, were having none of it. We were all jealous because they had a billionaire in charge. The SFA actually has no 'fit and proper person' test of its own and relies purely on the clubs to rubber stamp their owners and board members. Rangers duly swore that Whyte was...well...whiter than white...despite the warnings from Murray's own board members. At any rate, the SFA wouldn't be looking too closely at anything that went on at Rangers; they'd been turning a blind eye to Murray's financial shenanigans for years!

When the truth about Whyte finally started to dawn on our media, how did The Peeppul react? They marched on the BBC, marched on Hampden and sent the customary death threats to all and sundry. 'In Whyte we trust' was their mantra and any bad word against him was put down to an imagined 'Raynjurz-hating' agenda. That worked out well for them, didn't it? They even put their trust in Chateau Charlie, with Jabba summing up in the Daily Record all the bile that was eating away at them as they queued up to be fleeced with a cup of tea in their hands.

The fact that they can't seem to get their heads round is that this court case will only make things worse for them. If the charges are upheld, then there's going to be one, almighty, fucking mess to sort out. If Sevco was set up fraudulently, then where does that leave King and Ashley? And what about the money that was handed over to Lloyds TSB; will that be confiscated? That means the bank would still be owed millions by somebody, and then there's HMRC to contend with. There won't be time for vengeance over imagined slights; the court cases could go on for years and years. My books on the Sevco shambles will end up rivalling the Encyclopaedia Britannica at this rate!

Now, I'm an SNP supporter but that doesn't mean that I'll fall into line with everything that the Scottish Government does. A three-year investigation has shown what any teacher could have told them: your social background makes a massive difference to how you do academically. There's apparently a fourteen-month development gap between children from different areas. And what's the Scottish Government's fix? National tests. I mean...come on! The plan is that these tests will flag up the need for children to have extra input. As the DR puts it, 'Parents will also be able to access information about their child’s progress to know if further support may be required at home and in school.' And there's a major, fundamental flaw right there.

From the 1980s onwards, whole chunks of the population have been left by the wayside. Education is something that goes on round about these folk and never penetrates. And why should it? Their parents never benefitted from education and neither did their grandparents. As any teacher knows, you can send home letters, reports and call parents in until you're blue in the face; they're not interested. School is just something you have to get through and, ultimately, is a complete waste of time. It's easy to point the finger and say, "Don't you want the best for your children?" but the truth is that they have no idea what's best for their children! They've been sifted down to the bottom of society with no discernible way out and it's hardly surprising that their children see nothing at all to aspire to in life.

The fourteen-month developmental gap is something that should have been looked at more closely. From my own experience, I know for a fact that some children are starting school before they're anywhere near ready, just because they've reached the correct age. Such a child can't cope with what they're being taught in Primary 1 and so is doomed to lag behind his peers throughout his school life. By the time he gets to P7, while others in the class are making graphs and writing stories, he is still struggling with subtraction within twenty and constructing basic sentences. It's little wonder that many children like this rebel long before this stage and refuse, often violently, to do any work at all; it's their only defence against feeling stupid.

If the powers-that-be are really serious about bridging the academic gap between the haves and have-nots, then a more radical solution will need to be found. A good start would be to raise the starting age for school to 7, as it is in some other European countries. This, at least, would mean that many more children would actually be ready developmentally to begin the education process.

The Daily Record has two stories about robots on its site today. One is all about the advances being made in sex dolls in Japan, (where else?) meaning that lonely men need no longer require a bicycle pump and a puncture-repair kit on standby. These new dolls are fast becoming intelligent and there have been claims that sex with one is better than the real thing. Seeing some of the horrors marching round our streets every July, punching the skies with huge bingo-wings flapping about certainly makes robo-sex seem appealing. But what'll happen if they make these things too intelligent? Just imagine one of them being switched on by remote control, climbing out of its box to find that it's to be the sexual partner of a XXXXXL-sized Hun! The fucking thing will run a mile. Either that or rip the cunt's head off!

Which brings me to the second robotics story. Some bam, an AI expert apparently, is saying that there will be a war between man and machine round about 2040. He's short on details, but I don't imagine he envisages us having a square-go with the microwave. More likely, he's thinking along the line of the Terminator films. This immediately begs the question of why anyone would want to build a robot that's capable, and willing, to rip your spine out in the first place? Unless it's more of a Robocop scenario, where they use human brains in the robots. They might end up using the wrong kind of brain, one that's not quite human. Now there's a thought: Robo-Hun! Be afraid. Be very afraid!

Trying to sort out the Rangers/Sevco mess.