pap

The end of the year is almost in sight. Most of the big games have now been released, as have two new prime real estate consoles. That all being the case, what are your games of 2013? Personally, I've spent a lot of time on my 3DS. Fire Emblem Awakening would be my starter for ten. Over to the gaming collective...

Echellente, Spudders. Pilfered.

This is of course, the perfect counter-point to anyone mindlessly peddling the "if you've got nothing to hide" argument.

Nope, but he's a winner either way. If they stay, he's saved the Union. If they leave, he's saved the future electoral fortunes of the Conservative Party.

Possibly, for weddings and suchlike. Glasgow was excellent. Has its crap bits, but the city centre is beautiful. Good humour too.

In this case, it's pure self-interest. Keeping Scotland in the Union is one of the few things David Cameron and I agree on.

My point was that Cahill is saying the complete opposite to you, and has written three books that focus on land ownership. How are you sourcing your assertion?

Aye. I was up in Glasgow a while ago. No real traffic to speak of when I left at rush hour, by English standards anyway.

Have any of the "let them go" / "krankies" crowd ever looked at a map of Great Britain? Scotland is pretty big, y'know.

Cahill did 13 years of research to arrive at that point of view.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Cahill_(author)#Who_Owns_the_World

It's all rather murky. I do know that the Crown owns nearly every piece of land under your feet. If oil is discovered in the aintforever acres, it's the Crown's - not yours. Legally, the Crown owns all of this country (apart from Cornwall) and many of the former colonies, including Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Scotland want to keep the Queen as head of state, yet presumably don't want the British Crown owning the land and sea. Otherwise their oil claim is a bit borked.

Two mothers are also on trial for offering him their babies. Madness. Still, at least they have caught him now while he is alive.

They're licensed to extract it. Not the same thing as ownership. I think you'll find that right now, the Crown owns it.

You're forgetting the per capita amount of oil that those 5.3 million have.

Salmond won't have many of the commitments of UK PLC. For instance, he could decide not to get involved in imperialistic wars or pay for a nuclear weapons program. Scotland doesn't intend to be a big country operating on a small country's landmass. Your assertion that Scotland's wealth is contingent on their population doesn't really have too much merit. Every country has to support itself using a combination of natural resources and taxation raised from its populace. If what you say is true, it'd basically be impossible for countries of less than 5.3 million to exist. Scale it up and your argument still looks dodgy. If Scotland can't support a population of 5.3 million with the tax-payers working there, then how are we managing to support a population of 70 million odd? With many more spending commitments associated with our status and defence? The volume argument is moot. Every country has to support itself using its population. Time will tell as to whether Salmond is fantasising or has thought anything through. He'll be asked all the questions you've raised and if he's found wanting, that may be something that feeds into the result of the referendum. He may have to do a deal to retain a major currency. He may have to re-apply for EU membership. Can you see him being denied either? "No, f**k off Scotland - you've upset our English friends".

He's played a blinder because he is offering all the things that English politicians have said that UK citizens can't have. Free tuition, care for the elderly, no bedroom tax, etc. Pretty much the opposite of the "pay or go f**k yourselves" attitude of the UK. He cannot deliver on anything bilateral without the assent of the other party, but the rest is fair game provided the Scots have enough money to finance it. 5.3 million is not a lot of people, so I think it feasible. Whether they can pay for it all when all the left-wingers move North is another matter Oh, and before you scoff at that suggestion, loads of people near retirement age, especially near the border, bugger off to Scotland to make the most of their retirement funds.

It remains to be seen. Let's not pretend Scotland doesn't have other options when it comes to currency, or that sterling will be as strong if Scotland aren't using it. UK politicians denying the use of sterling to Scots could actually push more people into Salmond's camp.

Heh. Did you do any research on this? http://www.examiner.com/article/call-of-duty-ghosts-ps4-frame-rate-issues-and-1080-patch-details-clarified The problem on the PS4 isn't that it's not generating enough frames. It's generating too many.

Well, the dismissive and condescending attitude shared by some of my fellow posters is at least giving me an inkling into why the Scots might fancy leaving! After looking at the post-independence pledges, I reckon Salmond has played a blinder. I still think he'll have a hard time securing the vote, but he's deliberately pitched a different sort of country to the wider UK. Of course, that doesn't mean all of those pledges will be honoured, but if they are, could give Scots a big advantage over their English neighbours. Guess it all comes down to whether they have the cash.

Selective quoting is top-class, trousers!

Not the argument I'm making. Like for like, on two very popular games, the XBox One is chucking out a sub-HD resolution in 2013. The PS4 goes full HD. Personal preference on style of video game is a whole other thread.

He does seem to have other interests apart from economics.

Since the consoles were first announced, I've had my eye on the PS4 first, largely based on the initial tech specs and at the time, Microsoft's insane intended policies. The latter is no longer a factor, but the XBox One is being had off in performance terms right now. Two major multi-platform games, Call of Duty : Ghosts and Battlefield 4 - which play at full HD on PS4, are being squirted out in 720p on the XBox One. That is simply not acceptable for a console marketed as leading edge in 2013. The 360 was pumping out that resolution in 2005. I've read numerous reports online that state that Kinect is a big overhead, with a healthy percentage of resources devoted to that one feature all the time. Friends in the games industry tell me that Microsoft have been releasing new SDKs ( software development kits ) on an almost weekly basis. That tells me that Microsoft are trying to optimise the sh!t out of their middleware right now. That's actually a hopeful sign - XBox One may be able to offer consistent 1080p performance in the future - but until it does, I won't be touching it.

The benefits that Scots get are a consequence of devolution, not an inevitability. There's a school of thought that suggests that Salmond is deliberately lavishing his people with generous public spending to p!ss the rest of the country off. I wonder if that'll go away if and when Scotland leave the Union. The thing you hear time and time again "Westminster doesn't care about us". That ain't unique to Scotland. Anyone outside the South East probably feels an element of that, and even there, attitudes are changing. Another attitude I find quite common is the depiction of the English as posh boys just looking after their own. Given the composition of the present government, you can see why that impression is formed. Speaking from my own experience, I've been all around this Union. Apart from accent and fascination with odd local pastimes, people from Britain and Ireland are broadly very similar in outlook. If we want to keep the Scots (and I do), we need to show a major charm offensive and couple that with a lasting legacy. It's a shame that Cameron took devo plus off the menu, leaving people with a straight in/out choice. Given the experience with the AV referendum, I've every expectation that this will be a dirty political battle which will be used to the same ends. Largely, "you voted, you said no - now shut the f**k up". I do quite like KRG's electoral imbalance theory too.