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The other interesting question on this is "who gets to vote?". Should this be a decision purely taken by Scots?

What sort of upgrades are going on, Steve? Any new functionality to look forward to from our point of view?

Well, probably to make sure they were sure. And possibly to make some money from You've Been Framed. "Keep your eye on the fat celebrity chef by the tills".

Well, I don't think you can lay all the blame at the feet of the unions for the decline of manufacturing in this country, or even most of it. Globalisation has had a much bigger part to play. When a company realises it's cheaper to fabricate stuff in the Far East and ship it to the West than just making it in the West, they'll do it. That's more tied to the cost of living than anything else. The recent How the West Went Bust series went into some detail on the relative differences in salary. They're staggering.

According to this article on the Channel 4 website, celebrity chef Anthony Worrall-Thompson has been arrested for repeatedly blagging cheese and wine at a branch of TESCO. Worrall-Thompson's preferred mechanism for pilfering was the cunning ploy of "not scanning items on a self-service checkout". He joins the likes of Richard Madeley and Winona Ryder in the celebrity shop-lifters club. What drives this behaviour? Celebrity status not all it's cracked up to be? Do these people think they are untouchable, or is it just the thrill of the illicit? I imagine that all of them could shop in the conventional manner if they so desired. It is quite amusing though. Let's hope that Worrall-Thompson has to do a few cringing interviews before he puts his orange jump suit on!

It was Nicola Sturgeon on the Today programme, btw. I mentioned her on Twitter and was immediately followed by @NTSI_VoteNo, a twitter account representing 'No to Scottish Independence'. Some interesting stuff on their website, which I haven't fact-checked. However, a particularly juicy claim is that Salmond is using UK tax-payer money to convince Scots to leave the UK. Brilliant!

Being serious. The interview started out with the presenter floating the idea that the SNP had been given exactly what it wanted, a legally binding referendum on the independence of Scotland. The woman from the SNP wasn't interested in the fact that Scottish people are getting to decide, and focused entirely on the Westminster government angle. She was even pulled up about the SNP's manifesto commitment to have a referendum 'as soon as possible', which she repeatedly failed to address. I invite any argument to the contrary, but my view is that SNP get votes because Scots feel that there is more chance of them standing up for Scottish issues within the union. I don't think it follows that everyone who voted for SNP would vote yes in a referendum. The SNP knows this, which is precisely why their representative seemed to be talking in the manner of someone who had soiled her metaphorical undergarments.

Oh aye, I was listening to the Today programme on the way back from the school run. The SNP representative was fking bricking it.

But you can understand why the SNP are doing it? By depicting the time limit as a diktat from the "Westminster government" ( another deliberate choice from them ), they're attempting to turn Scottish public opinion away from the perpetuation of the Union. Possibly. We'll only know in a referendum. The real shame of all of this is that it is completely gratuitous. Salmond and his SNP pals can try and differentiate Scotland all they like, but the uncomfortable truth for them is that there isn't a fag-paper's worth of difference between the English and the Scots, save the fact that the Scots don't like us much for historical reasons.

From the Ugly Inside :- Pretty much sums up my feelings on the abuse that SuperMikey and SaintAndy666 get. (No, I didn't write it)

Yes, go and read the views of 10 people a month instead of 1,276

If this matter is about self-determination, then it follows that the in/out referendum is the only way to go? Why? Because any devolution-max solution isn't just about the Scots - it involves the English too. I can understand the SNP being miffed about the timing being forced upon them, but Cameron is right to whittle the choices down to two.

I've had that experience myself, even with people who know a lot more about football than I do (almost everyone). That said, much of what is on this site could be termed "educated speculation", so perhaps its better that they haven't heard about our 17th placed finish this year

Uncharacteristically terse for you, sir. What happened? Did your bookcase fall over? Are you trapped under it now, only able to make snide remarks with one hand?

Plenty of them out there that have no clue about this site.

That's not necessarily a bad thing though. It would provide more incentive to purchase early, and its not like other types of entertainment don't manage. Concerts are a prime example. Book early, get decent seats - book late, get row Z. As long as there was no chance for over-subscription to the same game, I think it'd work nicely.

I'd quite like a scheme where I could buy a number of games up-front. I can't really commit to a ST, given the high cost involved in making repeated trips down south, but I could commit for say, ten games, and wouldn't mind paying that up-front - especially if I had a chance of picking the games I wanted to go to. I'd then see the priority for other games as being STHs, people who'd bought a package of games, then general sale. Everyone's a winner. Club get additional revenue up-front, supporters like myself get to sort out their season early, plus benefit from being bumped up the priority list on the big occasions. The only problem with this idea is that it would need to be under-pinned by new software on Saints site, which seems to be ruled out at the time being for contractual reasons.

The Diane Abbott debacle looms large on this week's Any Questions. Many of the same points that are made on here. Constance Briscoe is perhaps most up-front about the issue, highlighting Abbott's past hypocrisy and stating that the only reason that Diane Abbott is still in her job is because she is black.

Most of the Saints fans I know are completely unaware of this site when I mention it in passing, so in that sense, you could argue that it's not representative.

Hmm, interesting video. If she'd made good on her repeated claim that she has "nothing more to say", she might not be in the hot water she has found herself in.

Banned for one week.

They've actually changed it from "beyond reasonable doubt" to "satisfied so that you are sure". Did jury service last year.

Has been banned. Discussions, floral tributes, etc.

Yeah, that's something you should probably address. I can understand if you've been a victim of violent crime, but there's little point to paranoia by proxy. Well, I'm possibly guilty of not having a wider perspective. Pretty much every experience I've had as a victim of crime has been p*ss-poor. Memories of plod barreling into the miners in the 1980s, the Hillsborough cover up, getting photographed for going on demos, plus all the bad press from the Met have added up. But you're right. I'm pretty sure that their hands are tied on a lot of the crap they have to do, so I'm willing to concede that I'm possibly projecting my own experiences as a wider whole.

The term 'appears' is interesting. In 2010, the British Crime Survey reported that violent crime has actually dropped in this country [1]. I take your point that these stories loom large in the headlines. They are shocking, so of course they are going to make an impression on you. They're also not very representative, because our news tends to focus on the exceptional horrors. There's no balance. No-one reports that a couple of million kids got home safely after school, or had a decent evening with their parents, or woke up in safe surroundings in a loving environment. If anything, the rolling news culture and the Internet has provided us with access to even more of the world's horrors. But it's vastly disproportionate, reflects a freak-show of reality and we should think very carefully about applying things like the death penalty to the whole population because of the aberrations of a tiny fraction. You know the downsides as well as I do. Get it wrong, and there is no going back. As for the diminishing respect for the police? Well, there are probably a number of factors for that. They've brought a lot of it on themselves through betraying the public's trust, either through trying to protect themselves from bad headlines, corruption, or turning on the people they are supposed to serve.