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Either way it's a fait accompli now. That vote is going ahead, regardless, in a few days time! That's why, when you start a hare running you had better be pretty certain that that hare will cross the finishing line ahead of the rabbits, foxes, racoons and cockroaches. No offence intended ..just hyperbole.

If they get far enough, I'd love ICT to get Edinburgh City away in the cup. A trip to Meadowbank would be a bizarre away day!

Oddquine's lengthy post is testement to her passion for the subject and the time she puts into these things but it contains much that is factually wrong, much that is irrelevant and nothing which seriously addresses the major point I was making. I will just pick up on a few points here. Lets start with the NHS as it now is in Scotland and the reality that much of it is provided by the private sector. Oddquine satates ""Privatisation" and the rules underpinning it, re non-clinical dentistry, non-clinical opticians and pharmacies, and the PFI hospitals which cost us a heckuva lot of money in payments annually and will for years yet, but involve no clinical input, predate the current Scottish Government starting with Thatcher, and employs about 12000 employees out of 160,000 NHS staff. However, only the PFI hospitals are under fixed long term immovable contracts, the others are paid on a more piece work basis according to how much and what work they do for the NHS..... and they do not bid against other dentists, opticians and pharmacies for contracts. England is now privatising clinical interventions." This is just packed with errors! She refers to "non-clinical dentistry" etc, but these helathcare professionals all provide clinical interventions. She choses to omit the biggest group of private sector employees off the list (the GPs) presumably because she realises that even she simply couldn't get away with pretending that GPs' work was "non-clinical". She goes on to say that the arrangements for these private contractor health professionals started with Thatcher. Wrong. The arrangements started with the inception of the NHS over 60 years ago. In order to scare us all she says "England is now privatising clinical interventions" . But the NHS in Scotland has had privatised clinical interventions since day one! She then refers to the "piece work" contracts these clinicians have as though that is fine because they are not bidding against each other. These contracts are very complex and GPs in particular can pick and choose what non core service they provide. This means that some elements of care deemed necessary by the commissioning Health Board don't get done by these contractors. The nature of the "contract for life" also means that if a contractor is just not very good, there is little the Health Board can do about it. At least if there was a tendering process, clinicians unwilling to do all that was required or who weren't performing as well wouldn't get the contract. Better would be to have the professional staff employed by the Boards so poor perfomance could be addressed, but despite several years of Labour and SNP Governments in Scotland, these private contractors are still at liberty to some extent to pick and choose the services they wish to provide. She is also wrong to say that clinical care is not subject to tendering processes. Tendering takes place in relation to an increasing range of home care interventions for example. So don't kid yourself that there is no privatisation of clinical care in the NHS in Scotland, it's always been a part of the NHS - and it is growing in Scotland under left of centre Labour and SNP Governments despite Health being a wholly devolved function. Of course, a greater range of things is going into the private sector in England. As I have said before, I am pretty horrified by some of the initiatives and trust that Scotland learns from the mistakes the English are making. England has got itself into a mess for a number of reasons including debts from the PFI fiasco (Thatcher's legacy again) and because the UK Government does not fund public services in England as well as it funds public services in Scotland. This means the NHS in England has reached crisis point where despite increases in funding in real terms, the NHS cannot meet the demands. Radical measures have been taken and many of these involve the private sector. But don't think this is all the doing of rabid right wing Tories. Much of it is to do with the power of the medical profession. Allow me to quote from Beven when he was asked how the medical profession agreed to join into the NHS and he said "by stuffing their mouths with gold". They are still exerting that power and England has GP led commisioning groups because that is what the medical profession wanted. The funding issue is largely a red herring. Without going into any detail, if the block grant is reduced in the future it will be as a consequence of a poitical decision to cut public spending. Increasing public spending means higher taxes. Higher UK public spending and a higher block grant means higher UK taxes. A lower level of UK public spending and a lower block grant mean lower taxes. If a devolved Scottish Government feels the block grant is insufficient to address the pressures on the NHS or elsewhere then it has the power to raise taxes. In a devolved Scotland, the Scots have the freedom to raise taxes if they want to increase public spending. So whilst I absolutely agree with you that I don't like the way the problems in the NHS in England are being dealt with, that is simply not the issue. The issue is, how is the Government of an independent Scotland going to deal with the inevitable ongoing pressures on the Health Service? There is a spectacular silence on this and instead we get meaningless soundbites such as "the NHS will be protected in our Constitution." Just what is that supposed to mean? Do you really think that some constitutional gimmick is going to make all the problems and pressures go away? Or do you simply protect the NHS by limiting what it provides and expect everyone to go private for the rest?

So you want absolute power for the Scottish government, but that is not quite on offer, so your decision is to vote for the option that gives us the least amount of power and the distinct possibility that any power we have will be considerably diminished by a Westminster government desperate to shut down for good the issue of Scottish sovereignty? Bizarre.

If we took in Michael N'goo I would want Hughes sacked immediately! Imagine supporting a club where your 3 strikers are Michael N'goo, josh magennis and lee miller. I think instead of wasting our money on a panic buy we should offer better contracts to billy McKay and Graeme shinnie, there are players in our side who are more than capable of doing a job up front, for example Marley Watkins! I'd rather him up front instead of the garbage strikers that are being suggested on this, and why not give Calum ferguson a go, how else do you get experience? He scored the most out of all the players in pre season, and then some people on this are saying he is too similar to billy McKay and actually portraying it as a bad thing! You are nuts if you are saying you wouldn't take two billy mckay's!