DoofersDad

If Kilmarnock and Dundee Utd go through the rest of the season winning the same number of points per game as they have till now, then we could lose all our remaining games and still stay up. I'm sure at least one of them will do better than that, but even with pretty poor form we should pick up enough points to stay ahead of the two of them. It's next season I'm worried about.

This is a really important point and those inclined to vote for the Nationalists would do well to think about this. The SNP have set up the Tories as the people to despise and Sturgeon misses no opportunity to direct her vitriol at them. But the interesting thing is that when you analyse specific key issues, you will find that the Tories are usually delivering better on those areas of policy than the SNP. In particular, it is "Tory austerity" that Sturgeon targets. For instance, she condemns the Labour and Lib Dem proposals for income tax rises by saying that she will not have the low paid paying for "Tory Austerity". But actually, that is precisely what she is doing and, to make matters worse, she adds in some SNP austerity (and blames it on the Tories of course). Let's look at a few examples. Going back to the referendum campaign, the SNP claimed that we needed independence to protect the NHS from Tory cuts and privatisation. The reality was that despite a bigger sum per head of population being available to spend on public services in Scotland, the Tories had increased funding for the NHS in England in the previous few years by more than the SNP had in Scotland. Meanwhile, the SNP was continuing to contract significant aspects of the NHS in Scotland to the private sector. Margaret Lamont, the then Scottish Labour leader referred to that as the most disgraceful bit of electioneering she had ever come across. Think on it - A Labour leading calling an attack on the Tory record on the NHS the most disgraceful bit of electioneering she had ever come across! That's quite extraordinary and shows how bad it was! Before the devolving of powers on Tax rates the SNP could do nothing on those - but they could influence Council Tax. So they froze the Tax for 9 years. The argument was that the poor are struggling enough already due to Tory austerity - but who suffers most from Council cuts? - the most vulnerable in our society of course. And who would pay the most from increasing Council Tax? - in general, the better off. This was SNP austerity pure and simple. Now that they have the power to increase taxes, the SNP refuses to use those powers. Who suffers most from their refusal to ask the better off to pay more tax? - Those reliant on public services which will continue to be underfunded. But as I said before, now that others are prepared to increase taxes the SNP know they have to raise more money from somewhere - so they pass the buck to the Councils and lift the freeze. What this means is that instead of asking those with more money to pay more, they expect those with bigger houses to pay more. But whilst those in bigger houses in general are better off, it is often not the case. Many pensioners worked and saved hard for a nice house for retirement and are now asset rich but cash poor. In many cases, pensioners only have their own pension following bereavement. Many are not in the best of health and the same goes for others who have yet to reach pensionable age but are not earning what they once did. Many folk living in their relatively large family home no longer have enough income to pay any tax. The reduction scheme for those on low incomes helps a bit but only to an extent. Like the SNP, the Tories don't want to tax the rich, but they are proposing to introduce a graduate tax and to reintroduce prescription charges. Predictably the Scottish Nasty Party weighs in and condemns these as an attack on students and the sick. Again the truth is different. While the SNP have slashed the number of bursaries for working class students, the Tory graduate tax would only be paid by graduates once they were in employment and earning a decent wage. And unlike the SNP proposal for Council Tax hikes, prescription charges would not be paid by pensioners and others on low incomes, nor would they be paid by folk with certain chronic illness or other exempt groups. Whilst a tax rise for higher income groups would be my preferred way of raising more revenue, the Tory option at least impacts less on the low paid, the elderly and other vulnerable groups than the SNP's passing the buck strategy does. A final point is the SNP's pathetic policy relating to the personal allowance. They say what the Tories are doing is not enough and have pledged to increase it to £12,750 by the end of their term in office in 2021. In fact, that is just £250 more than Osborne has pledged for the end of the Tories' term in office in 2020. In other words, what the SNP are proposing is to reduce the level of increase in the personal allowance to less than any of the annual increases being proposed by the Tories. Credit where credit is due, the Tories have taken huge numbers of low income earners out of paying any tax at all. The case for independence requires the people to feel aggrieved, to be put upon, to be made to feel poor and for vital public services to be under threat. Above all, the case requires someone to blame for these ills. So it is the Tories that are targeted. But for all the anti-Tory vitriol, it can be seen that the Tories are actually doing more for the poor and the most vulnerable in Scotland than the SNP are. The SNP choose to impose austerity on public services by restricting the amount of revenue they raise, and then when they do raise money, they choose not to raise it from that section of society who can best afford it. If the Scottish people feel poor and put upon, and if they feel their public services are under threat then it is the SNP they should blame. It really is time that those who have voted for the SNP woke up to the fact that the SNP is manipulating the people in order to achieve a political goal. They only care about that goal and not the people.

Well said. After two games you can see what the problems are, but Yogi's been around all season and still doesn't seem to have a scooby. "Frustrating" certainly sums it up although having watched rather more games than you, I would put another word in front.

We weren't good today but I thought we were unlucky to lose. Motherwell surprised me both by how poor they were and how negative they were. It looked like they were playing for a draw and wasting time from the start, although to be fair to them, that was probably good tactics as a key outcome for them was not to lose against a team challenging them for a top six spot. We wanted the result more than them but we just didn't have the rub of the green. We should have beaten Motherwell today although it was not a top six team performance. I thought both Fon Williams and Storey had their poorest games that I've seen. Meekings is not a right back and seemed reluctant to get beyond the halfway line. Draper is effective when he surges forward - Yogi needs to tell him to get forward a lot more. Mutombo does a lot that is good and positive but far too often he then chooses the wrong option and undoes all the good work. I didn't see Liam Hughes at County but I thought he put in a good shift today. I have no idea why Hughes took him off when we were chasing the game and needed height in the box. My MOTM was Tremarco. Always gives 100%, put in some decent crosses and also got into great positions at the back post, Whilst were generally a bit more positive than sometimes, our problem remains that we do not get forward enough with pace and as a result we allow the opposition to get lots of bodies behind the ball. We then simply do not have the quality to open them up.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/35940884 This doesn't help either. Also it looks as though Hughes is resigned to losing Storey at the end of the season.

I'm surprised nobody else has commented on this. I agree it is not the greatest survey, but it is an attempt by the SPFL to get the views of supporters on a range of issues. Results will be broken down to club level so it is a good opportunity to show that supporters of ICT care about the future of the game. If supporters across Scotland don't give their views, how are the SPFL supposed to know what we think? If there aren't thousands of replies saying we support safe standing areas, for example, then the SPFL will assume that we are all happy with the way things are. As the OP says, it only takes 10 minutes so it is a great opportunity to give your views on a range of issues facing the game today.

HT 0-1 FT 1-1 ICT Storey Opp Moult Time 39 mins

So the 2nd TV debate has been and gone. In line with the first debate, Sturgeon has demonstrated that she is head and shoulders up the other leaders in her ability as a politician. Whilst others allowed themselves to be tied up with responding to points where they might have some policy difficulty, Sturgeon brushes it aside and launches into what she wants to say in the policy area. She knows her policy inside out and speaks with great assurance. She is a superb performer in these situations. Superb performer she may be, but she looks vulnerable on the major issue of tax. And so she should because her policy is looking decidedly shaky. As I said in my previous post, the SNP are promising increased funding across a range of policy areas and are claiming this will be paid for by the £2bn they propose to raise in additional taxes. So given that they are not going to use the new powers to raise taxes at all, just where is the £2bn coming from? Firstly they claim £1.2bn will come from not implementing Osborne's £45k threshold for the 40% tax rate. But Osborne is cutting tax for that group and therefore not implementing it does not raise more money, it simply keeps the revenue the same. Secondly, they are ending the SNP's austerity squeeze on Councils and allowing them to raise Council taxes by up to 3%. In addition, revenue will be raised by re-jigging council tax bands and increasing non domestic business rates. It really is typical of the Scottish Nasty Party. When they had no power to raise income tax they squeezed local councils and blamed the Tories for any pain. Now they have the power to raise income tax, they duck the responsibility and release the squeeze on the Councils so that they can blame the Councils when local services fail to deliver or folk complain about the Council tax rises. Of course, people in bigger houses will be hit with the double whammy of re-banding and rate rises, but people in bigger houses are not always the better off. Many pensioners have worked hard all their lives to have a nice home for their retirement and will be badly hit by this. It seems the SNP would rather have the Councils hit pensioners with a massive rates rise than increase the tax burden of the top earners by a single penny. One final point. The stated reason for not increasing tax for the rich is that if the rate was increased to 45%, up to 7% of them might leave. So why not go softly, softly and increase the rate to 41% this year, to 42% next and so on and review the impact on an annual basis? I'll tell you why not. What the SNP "research" actually tells them is that any tax rises will cost them votes.

I can assure you that my motivation is not tribalism. I'll leave that to the SNP whilst I will continue to argue for a a greater level of working together for the common good. Neither am I gung ho for tax rises; it is just that I feel we have reached a point that we need to put more money into public services and there is no other sensible way of doing this. Let's go back a few years to when Blair first got elected. He inherited one of those rare things in British politics - a budget surplus. At that time Gordon Brown was renowned for his prudence, and whilst we moved into deficit in the next few years, it was nothing serious. Then 2 things happened. Firstly, Brown, having become PM decided he wanted to be popular rather than prudent and, with the help of Alistair Darling, significantly increased public spending. No sooner had they done that than the recession arrived. This caused expenditure to rise further with people losing jobs and needing welfare and bank bail outs etc. Meanwhile income from taxes of all sorts dropped and the deficit (the difference between the government's spending and its income) rocketed from just under £10bn at end of March 2008 to £103bn in 2010. In May of that year the Tories came into power in coalition with the Lib Dems and clearly faced a very serious crisis. If deficit is funded by borrowing this in turn increases the level of the national debt. In turn, higher levels of debt increase the interest payments and further squeezes what you can do with the income you get. They had to contain the level of public spending whilst taking measures to encourage business to grow in order to create jobs and get the economy growing again. Whilst there is much I don't like about the Tories, the fact is that, with some reservations, they handled the crisis pretty well. We are now one of the fastest growing economies in the world, employment levels have never been higher and they have halved the level of the deficit with it forecast to move into surplus (in the UK) in around 2020. The SNP, of course, have railed against the austerity measures and claimed we should have borrowed more to invest in public services and created jobs there. They know fine that all that would have achieved would be to increase the deficit and the debt even more because we need jobs which earn the country money. But it was easy to say because there was no chance they would be in a position to address the problems. In this way the SNP have been able to sit back and let the Tories get the economy back on track again whilst at the same time blaming them for any perceived hardship and getting a nation to hate them . That's pretty cynical, but what makes it worse is that in all this time the SNP have had it in their power to ease the pressure on public services by increasing Council Tax - even if only in line with inflation - and they have chosen not to do so. Not surprisingly, Education and Social Services amongst others have been squeezed and people have suffered as a result. They blame the Tories but that is SNP austerity pure and simple. Looking at the debate yesterday I cringe every time I see Sturgeon spit out those 2 words "Tory austerity". She spits the words out as though all Tories were child molesters, and yet it is the Tory policies which have, albeit with some pain, got the country's economy back on a sounder footing. The irony is that should Scotland vote to become independent in the next few years, thanks to the Tories, the Scottish economy is in a far better shape to go it alone than had we attempted to borrow our way out of recession as the SNP and the loony left of the Labour party wanted. But make no mistake, whilst the UK economy is steadily eroding it's deficit, the Scottish Budget deficit is growing. The Scottish economy may be much better off than had we tried to borrow our way out of recession, but according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies the deficit per head in Scotland is 3 times the level it is in the UK as a whole. In other words, the budget deficit in Scotland per head of population is currently higher than it was in the UK as a whole at the height of the recession. It is expected to rise to over £12bn when the UK as a whole moves into surplus. There is a huge black hole in the Scottish economy and it is about time the SNP Government took some responsibility for it rather than blaming the Tories all the time. This is why there is a need to put up taxes. It is either that or cutting public spending. With the new devolved powers it's becoming harder for the SNP to avoid taking responsibility, Yesterday's debate was interesting in that Sturgeon's tactic was a continuation of saying what is most popular on every issue. So she will increase welfare payments, invest more in education, the NHS and alternative energy but yet won't increase income tax. Interestingly, her policy of not increasing income tax is going to raise an additional £2bn! It just doesn't add up and I would expect the other parties to become increasingly effective at showing the public what frauds the SNP are. Unfortunately, the SNP's failure to act is in keeping with their usual cynical manipulative strategy. The excuses are being trotted out already. They say that if the better off are taxed more then they'll put their money elsewhere or leave the country - well, if that's the case and they are not going to use the powers, why didn't they think of that before they asked for them? They will now expect the UK Government to bale them out and when they don't, they will bleat on about it all being the Tories fault. They will point to the fact that we only have one Tory MP and Scotland doesn't get the Government it votes for. And they will use this to fan the flames of independence again. What's best for the Scottish people does not come into it.

Well said! I may have been born in England but have spent my entire working life in Scotland and have lived in Scotland for more years than many of the SNPs recent intake to Westminster. I think that should give me some sort of right. But don't forget all those Scots born people who embrace the reality of the Union every day by living in other parts of the UK and who did not get a vote. Some Scots voted yes. some voted no and some weren't allowed to vote.

Good to hear he is well on the way to recovery. Hope he gets signed up soon as he has been a big miss this season.

I'm sure they do know the budget requirements for the early part of a new parliament, it's just that these requirements are not featuring in their manifesto proposals. If anyone is in any doubt about the sorry state of the Scottish budget this Guardian article will help to clarify. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/24/ifs-scotland-debts-three-times-greater-uk With a budget deficit per head 3 times that of the UK as a whole, the need to raise more income through taxation in order to protect public services could not be clearer.The SNP are frightened to increase the basic rate because they think the Scottish people are too selfish to vote for that, and they are frightened to increase higher rates in case the better off flee the sinking ship SS Scotland in their droves. Instead they do nothing, presumably in the hope that the voters will believe them when they say that all the problems their inept government causes are actually the UK Tories' fault.

First I would say to Caley Stan that if Sturgeon wants to increase departmental spending she is free to do so. All she has to do is to use the new powers devolved to her Government and raise taxes. She is choosing, for cynical political reasons, to continue to impose austerity on the Scottish public. To Alex I say that he is wrong in saying top rate tax payers would face tax rises in line with inflation (other than, of course, the increased tax they pay as a result of pay rises in line with inflation). Sturgeon says it would be "daft" to increase the tax rates of the better off. What she has said is that the level at which the higher rates would be levied would be increased in line with inflation - this is quite a different thing! What that does, is to stop more and more people in jobs such as nursing and teaching getting sucked into the higher tax brackets. This is effectively the same as increasing the level to £45k as Osborne proposes, but on an ongoing basis. The effect of this is that the better off will pay less tax and not more! This is because the level at which they start to pay the higher rate will be increased in line with inflation each year. I too live off an occupational pension and pay tax at the basic rate. My personal view is there is a need to reduce Government debt. But at the same time, the current squeeze on public services is causing real problems and I feel spending on public services needs to increase. To increase spending you first need to raise the money. To do that you can either borrow or increase taxes. Borrowing has the huge problem of how you later pay back the increased level of debt and risks going down the route of Spain or Greece. Increasing taxes is therefore the sensible option. And whilst I would be in favour of the greater burden falling on those best able to pay, I would happily pay more in order to preserve and develop essential public services. It seems the SNP take the position that the majority of people would rather let public services go to the wall rather pay a penny more in tax. They may be right, but if so, what an awful reflection of the Scottish people that is! I'm not going to vote for my own selfish interests, I'm going to vote for the future of Scotland and will vote for one of the parties which is prepared to use our newly devolved powers to invest in the future of Scotland. Clearly, therefore, I will not be voting SNP. And in the interest of balance, the Record has also published this hhttp://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/ex-no-campaign-adviser-project-7615966#VxIIboM5VwxqGXVw.97is.

SP, I doubt there's anything any of us could say that would add much to detail to the housing market sites. Try these. http://www.hspc.co.uk/ http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/property/inverness/ http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/Inverness.html

Is Fon Williams in the Welsh squad for the game against Northern Ireland tonight? On the BBC website I see that the Liverpool keeper Danny Ward is expected to make his debut for Wales. Fon Williams has had a pretty decent season, so I wonder whether he will feel that being away from the English leagues is impacting on his chances of progress within the Welsh team, particularly in the lead up to Wales have reached a major finals for the first time in ages and with World Cup qualifiers looming. This might be a significant factor in deciding whether to accept a contact.

I agree. We simply don't know all the detail behind the scenes and so it is just conjecture about who should be offered what and when, although it surely must be correct to aim to get key players signed up sooner rather than later. We also know that finances are a major factor in our ability to recruit new players to the club. We have to accept that many good players will choose to leave the club in order to further their careers whilst some who chose to stay reach a stage where they can no longer get into the side. That's life. Since the club was formed and through a succession of managers and chairmen, the club, has been successful in retaining a lot of the better players and replacing those players who do leave with players who are or who develop into better players. This is why the club has moved up through the leagues over the years and managed to reach 3rd place last year as well as lifting the Scottish Cup. But now, for the first time, I feel we are really struggling to retain players and the new players coming in show little prospect of being as good as those they are replacing. We urgently need to get some contacts signed and find some quality from somewhere else.

It's the first of the 2 Scottish leaders debates on BBC Scotland tonight at 21.00. This should maybe give a few pointers to what the main issues are going to be. It will make a change for Sturgeon to be on the defensive. Having told us these last few years that we just have to oppose Tory austerity, I'll be interested to hear why Sturgeon feels Tory austerity is so bad but yet SNP austerity is so good. Should make for interesting viewing.

I would like to know too, especially after the SNP's position on taxation has become even more absurd after Sturgeon's attempted defence of it. Our First Minister has defended her decision not to use the new powers she has been bleating on about for long enough by saying it would be "daft" to increase the tax rates of those on the higher tax bands!!! Her stated reasoning is that "research" shows that if 7% of the top tax payers left Scotland then Scotland would lose £30m in tax revenue! So, she gets elected on a manifesto of greater equality, campaigns for the powers to deliver that, then when she gets those powers she doesn't use them because to do so would have the top earners in Scotland fleeing the country in droves! Now that really is daft. But does she really think 7% would leave if they were taxed more? An increase in the 40% tax rate would reduce incomes of higher earners but would not represent a significant drop in income until someone was earning around £100,000 (an extra 1% on £60,000 is only £600 so even a 5% hike in rates would only be £3,000 - not really a major problem if you are earning £100,000). But were you to move, you (and probably your partner too) would have to first find a job down South which paid at least as much as your current one, then sell your house (in a market where potential buyers are also coping with the tax hike) buy one down South for no more than you sold your one in Scotland, and pay all the legal and other costs of moving. You would then have all the upheaval of leaving friends and family and all the social aspects of your life up here. Let's get real, are people really going to leave in these circumstances? I think not! I suspect that the SNP's "research" has told them that people are less likely to vote for them if they raise taxes. Once they are happily returned to Government, then next year's "research" will tell them that the 7% won't bugger off down south after all so it would now be "daft" not to fleece the better off. Meanwhile, the most vulnerable in our society will suffer because of SNP austerity. When oh when are the public going to wake up to what a bunch of chancers this lot are?

The team needs good vocal support and I don't think there is anybody who doesn't think the increased vocal support from the youngsters recently is great. But there is a world of difference between supporting your club by making a lot of noise, and harming your club by behaving in a way which might involve the police and which might result in the SFA taking sanctions against the club. You're smart enough to know what the difference is, so please continue to support the team by making a lot of noise - but just leave it at that.

We've been waiting quite a while now to learn to learn what progressive plans the SNP have for using the newly devolved tax powers. And now we know. There aren't any. They aren't going to adjust the bands or the rates and there is a pledge that no taxpayer in Scotland will pay a penny more of income tax. Nothing remotely progressive in that. Instead it is a cynical appeal to the selfishness of voters to put their own pockets ahead of the interests of the nation. Put simply, the SNP are scared that by raising any income taxes they will lose votes. Where they differ slightly from the Tory Chancellor is that they will not increase the threshold for 40% tax payers to £45,000. Nothing wrong with that, but what is wrong is Sturgeons assertion that by not making this change "we could generate more than £1bn of additional revenues, enabling us to protect the public services we all rely on." What nonsense! Surely even the SNP can understand that by making absolutely no change you are not going to get any more revenues. The point here is that if the Tories go ahead with the proposed tax break for the better off elsewhere, they will generate less revenue. To generate more revenue from income tax, people have to pay more tax. This is why both labour and the Lib Dems actually want to use the new powers so that they can pump a bit of money into public services which have been underfunded during the SNP's tenure of office. The Greens' Partrick Harvey summed up the situation very well when he said "In the independence referendum, and in the Smith Commission, the Scottish Greens argued alongside Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney that Scotland needed the power to build a fairer, more equal society and an economy that protects our vital public services and invests in our young people's future. To finally win these powers and then not use them is extraordinary."

It looks to me that media attention is going to be focussed on the Tories down south tearing themselves apart over both the EU and the budget. Given that they are the party of Government in the UK, this is bound to play straight into the hands of the SNP who will argue (and with some justification) that such a divided and divisive government is not good for Scotland. The Tories in Scotland have been picking up quite well in the polls and it will be interesting to see whether they are able to maintain their push north of the border in the light of what's happening elsewhere. Much of the debate up here on the election will probably be on the extent to which the Conservative and Labour parties here distance themselves from their shambolic parties down South. It will give the SNP the opportunity to gloat when what should be happening is that their record in office be debated. I have received a first pamphlet from Kate Forbes, the SNP candidate for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch (in which my bit of the Black Isle apparently sits). It's pathetic. There's little about what the SNP have achieved in their lengthy period in office but full of the kind of wish lists things which we would all like to have (better healthcare, education, rail links, roads, broadband etc) and which she will campaign for. But she fails to state that these are things that the party she is a candidate for has failed on over a number of years. She states she is "utterly committed to increasing investment in our education, transport and health care". In that case, I wonder why she doesn't join either the Labour party or the Lib Dems. They at least have the guts to propose a tax increase to pay for these essential services whilst the party she is standing for follows the Tories austerity policy and then whinges about not receiving enough money from the UK Government. Hopefully these are some of the issues which can be aired a bit more fully in the coming weeks.

It's just semantics. The SNP has been involved in an initiative to build support for independence since the day it came into being. What you know and I know and the large audience she addressed the remarks to know, is that what is planned is to build a case for a second referendum as soon as possible. I rather doubt she will have all the answers to all the questions seeing as they had no answers to most of the questions last time. However, if she can get answers to questions such as what currency an independent Scotland would use or on what terms an independent Scotland might enter the EU, then that would be useful as it would allow people to make an informed choice. As for the dead men voting paper, you are surely not seriously suggesting that massive fraud by MI5 affected the referendum result? The paper is far too long to address all the incorrect assumptions and conclusions but let me make a few points. Firstly, why on earth would they feel the need to take such massive risks when up until late in the campaign it always looked as though there would be a comfortable "no" vote? If there was a underhand operation in place, why then did the establishment go along with the panicked vow nonsense at the end? Just think, if such a fraud was uncovered it would be the biggest scandal in British political history - it would have destroyed the UK establishment and the backlash would have handed Scotland independence on a plate. There are, however some interesting debating points. The author goes on and on about the high postal vote turnout and high proportion of No votes in the postal ballot. He sees this as sinister but common sense tells us it is to be expected. Let's face it, if someone has bothered to obtain and then complete an application form for postal voting, then you would expect them to vote. You can apply to be permanently on the postal vote register but remember that this is updated annually and requires the voter to have been recorded as eligble to vote on the annual return. Councils will also have processes to remove from the register people who die or move in the meantime. Add to this the fact that a lot of people applied specifically to vote by post in the referendum then you would expect a significantly higher postal vote % turnout than polling station turnout. When you then consider that the overall turnout was a staggering 84.6% it is clear that the figures of 90% plus for postal vote turnout, far from being sinister, should have been expected. Also, those who needed to have a postal vote will tend towards the demographic groups which were more strongly No voters. But the whole suggested process of large scale fraud is laughable. Assuming MI5 did have access to computer files of who was on the postal vote register and who had actually returned their ballots, how would they decide which voters to fraudulently "vote" for? I like the thought of dozens of MI5 officers being despatched into hostile territory north of the border to put forged ballot papers into post boxes the length and breadth of Scotland! The paper then simply ignores the many ways such a fraud would likely be detected. I won't bore you with examples but I will finish by picking up the point the author makes that such a fraud would have been sanctioned by the Prime Minister. Frankly, if he was to have been so stupid to approve such a mad scheme, I would have thought he would be urging the fraudsters to put a cross in the "Yes" box. After all, he's spent the last few years behaving as though he would be delighted if the Scots went their own way and left him with a comfortable majority down South.

It always promised to be an explosive occasion, but the crowd is hushed when Liam Polworth realises he has just stepped on a land mine.

On your first point I would argue that if society is becoming more divided it is a result of an abandonment of the political centre ground and a shift to the divisive politics of left and right. As has been said before, the SNP needs to foster a sense of injustice otherwise why would people choose to break away from a union that has delivered such positive change in recent years. In relation to looking for jobs and property it is clear we have made very considerable progress. In the early years of my working life unemployment was running at around double what it is now and job vacancy rates were very much lower, power crazed union bosses of the loony left were holding the country to ransom through restrictive practices, secondary picketting etc and benefits for those out of work were meagre. It was a very unsettling time. Now we have far better rights for workers thanks to much of the EU legislation. Vastly improved childcare and family friendly legislation has allowed women far more access to the workplace and millions of the lowest paid workers no longer pay any income tax as a result of successive increases in the level of the tax free allowance. People are hugely better off than they were 35 years ago. As for mortgages, I'm really not sure what your point is. Sure, if you had a job back then it was easier to get a mortgage, but the issue is what standard of housing you have, not whether or not you own it. Interestingly in the EU there seems to be an inverse relationship between home ownership and national prosperity. Home ownership is highest in Romania, followed by Lithuania and Slovakia. It is lowest in Germany, Austria and Denmark. Non EU but very prosperous Switzerland has an even lower level of home ownership than Germany. It really is self evident that the general quality of accommodation available now, whether rented or owner occupied, is vastly superior to what it was 35 years ago.

Sadly I couldn't get to the game today, but what a great result! Particularly pleased to see a big swing in goal difference and for Storey to finally get on the scoresheet again. Wins like this should give the team a real lift but the fact is that our 2 previous wins against County this season have been followed by defeats against Kilmarnock in the next league match. It seems to me that the tactics for a match against County are usually different. If we adopt the attitude that it's a derby game so lefts just get in amongst them, then we seem to do so much better than when we play the patient tippy tappy build up stuff. Make no mistake about it, County are where they are in the league and they won the league cup because they are a pretty decent side this season. Had they won all 3 games against us they would be comfortably in 4th place and we would be 11th. Despite that, we have dominated them in this league season. The lesson here has to be that we are better when we play a more direct style of football. If we learn that lesson then not only should we make the top six, we should also finish the season above County.