renton

If yes can get Glasgow city and greater glasgow then they have a chance (so long as they avoid an absolute drubbing in Edinburgh and Aberdeen)

Weren't they just sub-samples of the standard 1,000 respondant polls?

To be fair, it's not the first poll to show Glasgow tending yes - a fair few have, but then your into sub-sample territory and large statistical uncertainty (about +/- 7%, I think, at that size) so you really can't take too much from it. There never has been a full poll done on what Glasgow, or Edinburgh would vote. I recall there being a borders only poll - woudl be nice to see some full regional polls.

I suppose we could try 4-3-3: Stick Callachan in the midfield with Fox and Scott, play Stewart up closer to Nade with Elliot in behind? We'd likely get killed down the flanks, and it wouldn't lead to pretty football, but at least we'd impose ourselves in the middle of the park....

Depends on what system he wants to play. Callachan in a midfield two will give you the same problems as having Fox in there. In Fox's case it's a lack of pace to keep up with the guys running through, with Callachan it's poor positional sense - he's got a good physicality to his play, decent pace and good engine on him, but he's never where he's meant to be, he's like Davo in that respect. His best games last year were when he was playing out right or as a free role in a 3 man midfield. Playing him instead of Fox in a two man central midfield won't (for my money at least) solve the problem of our central midfield leaking like a sieve.

I'll try and be absolutely objective here, and not let my natural bias to yes interfere. If you look at the BPC polling data on it's own, it seems unlikely that yes would get itself ahead in the polls by the day of reckoning. Several times now, pollsters have shown yes to within a bawhair of levelling, or drawing ahead - without ever actually managing to do so. It's worth noting that all of the pollsters have various quirks in their methodologies: The online polls can suffer from picking the same folk, over and over, as well as their individual issues -YouGov with it's proper Nat/Passing Nat strategy that just begs for the multiplication of statistical error within the sample, or Panelbase and it's recent shift to partial weighting to the Euro elections who's turnout was low enough to cast doubt on the representative nature of that election on Scotland. Then you have TNS, who's face to face polling method tends to reduce anonymity, and possibly therefore voter honesty (possibly why TNS always record much larger DKs than everyone else?) and Ipsos who's phone polling methods can be skewed by demographics - having to massively upweight certain sections to get the weighting right, and even then not actually weighting to the demographic profile that SSAS/census data recorded. However, they all agree that yes is behind - they can't all be wrong. I do think that numbers are probably in the mid forties (dk excluded) for yes. Even Ipsos are above 40% now for Yes. Thus I believe if you ironed out all the varying polling idosynchracies you'd get to a number of around 45% for yes (DK excluded). DKs are NOT around "a third of the electorate" as some articles have suggested, unless of course TNS are correct. Having said that, the proportional difference between yes and No in TNS is broaldy the same as the online guys with smaller DKs. If DKs split marginally for Yes, as those few polls who've asked indicated, yes might end up fractionally higher - 46% or so. I think this is just the reality of where we are, right now. One thing I don't believe is that yes needs to be considerably ahead on the day to do the job. 50.01% would do it, I don't think in this referendum there is a soft yes, and the general tone and feel of the debate means that going from No/DK to Yes is a bit of a trial and once there folk tend to be Yes voters with some conviction. it's getting to that fabled 50+1 vote that's the issue. In terms of the Canvassing returns. these are generally unreliable. Like TNS, but worse. You could easily see industrial scale lying to the canvassers (admittedly th SNP/Yes graded scale is designed to at least filter some of that out). The RIC as far as i can see don't use that methodology in their mass canvasses, thus are open to being lied to. The other thing is that theirs is not, and isn't intended to be a dmeographic profile of Scotland. It's targeted at the C2D2E communties, the folk who haven't before voted. One thing in their favour is the sheer size fo the canvass, which lends it some weight (quality is great, but quantity has a quality all of it's own) - again, that's not demogrpahically accurate. These guys seem to break massively yes, and if we can doubt the overall margin of of yes to no in these canvasses, we can't really doubt the overall sentiment. The BPC pollsters struggle to cope with first time voters, and I think a lot of Yes hopes are pinned on getting these guys out on referendum day, but how realistic is that. You can canvass them, register them, convince them - but you might well not get them to the booth. How realistic is it to get folk out who are naturally wary of politics, haven't voted in decades and thinks all this stuff happens in another world that has nothing to do with them. I'd be wary on relying on them, even if they are the folk a Yes vote has the most potential to help. So to conclude? Well, it's a bit of a rambling post that no one will have any interest in, mostly I just wanted to waste some bandwidth and put my thoughts in one place. Really, Yes at the moment look like losing while getting a vote in the mid forties on the day. Respectable, but ultimately futile. Unless of course, Reynard's worst nightmare comes true and a previously unnacounted for demographic of "scheme goblins" rise from the concrete towers to smite him mightily. probably not though, and unless there is a shift we'll go down 45/55 in my opinion.

An unsubstanstiated rumour at best. Graham has had a good pre-season at United by all accounts, has, from his comments in the press a desire to establish himself in the first team and only has this year left on his contract - not the best time to be going out on loan to the championship.

You wonder if with the extra central midfielder and the extra centre backs - when fit - that he'll go 3-5-2: Stops the middle getting overun, allows him to push Elliot further up and makes use of the surplus of centre backs. Be nice, if and when we get these guys fit.

Lord of the Dance and no, but there will be a booing section for families and a FUUUUUCKININNGGGBOOOOOOOoooooo section for everyone else.

We booed back in August before the season had begun Cause we drew with Forfar and we lost to Dunfermlun We booed home at stark’s park when we f****d Dumbarton well So bring out the Rovers and we’ll boo them as well Boo boo, wherever you may sit We are don’t like murray and we think his team are sh!t We’ll follow you, and boo you where you go And moan online about the status quo (repeat) Courtesy of Stelios. A far better songwriter than I.

Feeling is, that the contract award was a bit knee jerk on the back of an 18 game unbeaten streak in the first half of last year. That's the weird thing. Murray, largely with mcGlynn's last (quite limited) side in his first year had us playing some decent stuff overall, and then re-jigged the squad and for the first half of last season had us playing really well before the nightmare after christmas from last season. Had our performances been more evenly spread (i.e. not an 18 game unbeaten streak before winning 3 in 20) he might not be under the pressure he is now. As it is, he's managing us on the back of an unrelenting six month shit streak.

yeah, though sometimes they just can't get the numbers and end up upweighting/downweighting dramatically. It's just part of the trade really.

Correct, it's not reliable. Doesn't stop both sides spinning it though.

Regardless of what happens now, the writing is on the wall for Murray ,the criticism is now just about universal across here and fantalk, and if that only counts for a section of the Rover support, it's still a statistically significant portion fo the fanbase, and the south stand reactions of late seem to support the idea that Murray has pretty much no support in the crowd. It seems like even if Rovers did win on Saturday, and the next weekend, and the next.... patience has been worn so thin, that one bad result would have folk baying for his blood again.

So, in terms of polls, what's left. Survation had one at the weekend - expect we won't see them again until middle of august. ICM - still to report for this month YG - still to report for this month. TNS - still to report for this month. Think both ICM and YG are usually middle of the month with TNS a bit later. The fieldwork to date seems to take a week to ten days. TNS is something like two weeks but takes them ages to collate the data so that it's usualyl a couple fo weeks behind in terms of snapshot data. So I'm guessing that any boost to either side would be captured to some extent in the next ICM/YG polls but that the full impact would not be seen until the n+1 poll (which will be so close to the referendum you'd expect the DKs to start really shifting) As for Panelbase and Ipsos - both tend to report every two months or so, so we may have seen the last of them, unless the customers they are serving want to accelerate that timeline.

Really? What are they then.

For me it was always cab Vol on tuesday, Liquid Rooms on friday and Cav on a sunday. Liquid rooms was occasionally substituted for the Hive or even Citrus club if money was tight. That was ten years ago.

Yeah, it's good - but it's not a teaser for any of the upcoming marvel stuff. GOTG is definitely my favourite Marvel movie to date.

(1) yeah and there is plenty of examples on the other side, ranging from death threats against Alex Salmond to the nastier side of twitter. (2) If running a nation were like running a business, the UK would've been in recievership a long time ago. it absolutely is not the case that 'balancing the books' is an essential part of running a country. Even at it's most wildly successful, imperial peak Britain ran a massive debt. Further, the white paper is a framework that shows how the SNP would like to run things, it's a placeholder, aspirational and with an attmept to provide figures where possible. In cases where the UK refuses to pre-negotiate, how could it be detailed? And as I've said previously, the whole thing can be easily overtaken by events. For all we know, the Common Weal's book might end up being the blue print for an iScotland. The idea that an iScotland is a huge risk to living standards is pure hyperbole. Scotland's economy ticks over at 99% of UK average GDP without the geographical share of oil. We aren't going to be significantly richer or poorer in the short term via independence. That's not fundamentally the reason for doing it, but rather for organising a more flexible and responsive democracy. (3) The fact that Scots are over represented and still only account for 59 out of 650 MPs shows how unfit for purpose the Union is. While it may be correct for the English to have the massive majority of representation, it does not mean that the Scots are not ill served by it. (4) No, I'm not championing federalism. I recognise that the SNP have been guilty of centrlasiing functions at Holyrood to create that place as an alternative and credible seat of government to Westminster. I'm also aware that Labour never had much truck with local democracy either. For the record I'm all for devolving much more to local democracies and massively reforming away from the current council structures. What independence offers is legislators much closer to the populace they serve, a government that is automatically dependent on the votes of the Scots people in a way that Westminster barely ever has been. real competition in elections and a strong like between legislator and electorate. We will need to be careful not to over represent the central belt with repsect to the rural communities, of course. That's an issue of detail, thoguh, not of intent. Scotland is a self contained polity, held together by shared experience of history and the land we share. It's only logical that this polity should be in charge of it's own destiny, to choose it's interdependencies with others, not have them imposed on us rigidly. (5) Actually, no government has to provide anything, ever - beyond the absolute basic function of central government: the organsiation of taxation to provide defence of property. Anything beyond that is based on the perogative of the government and the culture it serves to provide additional social preotection for it's citizens. In this case, the SNP has organised policies it feels shows it's social priorities towards more vulnerable parts of society. Disagree with that all you want, but 'frivolous spending policies' accoutn for 99% of all policies in all governments,everywhere - by your definition. (6) the power to raise income tax alone is pretty worthless without having the other levers of fiscal policy. It's like asking for a car, and being given a wheel and a piston head. You have more of a car today than yesterday, but you still can't drive anywhere. Fact is, when it comes ot education, that is the silver bullet. A healthy and educated electorate performs better collectively and individually, and helps drive the economey and individual self sufficiency.# (7) Since the bloc grant is derived partially from Westminster spending, it'd be naive to think that as the Westmisnter government hands over more of the English and Welsh NHS to private consortiums and reduces it's health spending accordingly, that this will not transmit into cuts in the block grant, putting the Scottish NHS under increased pressure. ( IN the year I was born (1984) There were 25,000 shipbuilding jobs in Scotland, now there are 6,000 - Union dividend? Fact is that long standing Westminster policies are not conducive to maintaining the shipbuilding industry, wholly dependent as it is on defence contracts. This proud and famous industry is circling the drain even if you vote no, for a few simple reasons: successive generations of warships are bought in smaller quantities and last longer before needing replaced. Once the T-26 contract is fulfilled there is a huge, gaping hole in the order books that won't be filled. Then what? As for Faslane, for a start, most of the defence contractors stay down south, so any decimation of local communities is unlikely to have a huge effect. secondly, it won't close as it'll be used as the HQ for the Scottish defence forces. as for technology maturing, yes, it does. I work in the Silicon industries and am acutely aware of that. Which goes back to education and university funding. The only way western nations compete is by constantly driving new technology, bringing it to maturity and then moving to the next tehcnology. You need a flexible, well educated and healthy workforce to do that.

The No side is equally, if not more so blighted and plagued by moronic behaviour, the thing is you're the one getting upset about stereotypes and categorisation, when you've already said right there that 'let's not get upset about being stereotyped'. No paper so built on future prediction could ever be accurate, it's a framework, yes - but an achievable one. Beyond that, it could quite easily be overtaken by events (a yes vote in 2014, followed by a Labour victory in 2016 - for example). Ultimately we are not voting on the contents of the white paper, but rather on a more basic concept: Should all decisions apertaining to Scotland be made by the folk who live in Scotland. Beyond that, everything is dependent on who is chosen by the people of Scotland to govern. As to your 'flip' question, well you try to constrain it by eliminating 'give everything away for free' policies, which tries to paint certain things in a perjorative light, while being factually incorrect - Scotland has no choice but to balance it's budget, it can't run deficits independent of westminster so that every penny ScotGov spends from the bloc grant we are given is accounted for. Beyond that, I am a firm believer in maintaining the public ownership character of the NHS, and of maintaining as wide an access to tertiary education as possible. Devolution has further allowed a central Scottish body to promote investment and a long term strategy in things like renewable energies, striving to actually have an industrial strategy being entirely novel amongst the elected bodies in these islands since 1979. In the end, I believe that government at such a remove is simply bad for us. Culture is shaped by history, by geography. There are opportunities and challenges that face Scotland and the people living here that do not fit into Westminster's London centric viewpoint. Locality counts, as you can see from the 80s deindustrialisation (for example) - covered by an oil and financial boom, but still hurting a lot of people. You can further see it in the ignorance and absence of genuine poltiical competition at westminster level in Scotland. We can do better than that. This isn't about individual policies or parties, it's about systems and the cultures of those systems, and I can clearly see how having a seperate Scottish body since 1999 has given us a flexiblity that has helped us massively. I now want to extend that principle to all other domestic and foreign policy spheres.

And this happens, does it? Look, your thre one steaming in here with the original accusations, attempting to stereotype a movement based on one exchange between two folk on the internet - both of whom have been at it for weeks if not months. Maybe check your own biases on this. Can i ask though, and bare in mind that the white paper is nothing more than a rough framework, which bits do you think are bad for the country and why you think Westmisnter does a better job?

yeah, he's also got a whole load of infinitely darker stuff as well, like the "Spoilsbury toast boy" or "A B&W cartoon about..." series. Fantastic imagination and brilliant animation.

So this month's email from headquarters has told you to push the 'it's a distraction' line. For what it's worth, it hasn't lowered these things on the agenda - as if people could only concentrate on one thing at a time. In actual fact I think it's got more people talking about social issues on a much broader and deeper scale than at any point since the destruction of the left 30 odd years ago. It's actually got a lot of people from different backgrounds talking alternative solutions to longstanding social issues - it's got them researching, looking at how others deal with similar problems. Granted it's a wee bit different from the standard Labour approach, which is to take a focus group from the English home counties, ask them what they think and then do what the daily Mail tells them, but in my opinion - this debate has been by far a healthier approach to asking questions about how the coutnry is run and for who's benefit, than waiting for 'Ed' to finish his triangulating.

Weeeellllll......

Loan move for Graham seems pointless from both his point of view as he's on his last year at Dundee United. Even doing well might make it hard for him to get another offer from United. Surely better to stick it out and try and get a run of games at United.