AlfieMoon

Funnily enough - I was told by someone last night that Labour figures were saying that Tories had infiltrated them to select Corbyn. The New Labour Blairites in the party must be frantically scurrying around at the moment unable to understand what's happening or who to blame.

Hi Derek, I'm visiting in September and one of the grand sumo tournaments is on so we're hoping to get tickets for it at the Ryogoku Kokugikan. I've read that there's agencies that can book tickets but not sure how reliable or expensive these are in terms of guaranteeing tickets. I have the details for the sale dates on the official website but have also read that this may need some Japanese to navigate through the order process (even although there is English on the website) so this may be problematic. Have you ever been or have any advice? Also, cheers for the info on the fitba above! I was maybe going to consider a baseball match rather than football. Is that worth doing and which would have the better atmosphere and evening out?

The 2 most divisive issues are likely to be the currency and the EU. IMO we (or the SNP as they are leading the charge) need to change currency position to a Scots £ and start talking about this well in advance of even considering any referendum. Otherwise we just find ourselves in the same position as last time around and it's not in our control. In terms of having the systems in place - we already have Scottish banks and can therefore have a Scottish central bank. The good thing of the devolved powers is that we are starting to set up other Scottish systems and institutions - such as Revenue Scotland so we are building our capabilities, experience and infrastructure. On the issue of the EU - we need to offer the public an EU referendum vote upon winning an Indyref #2 before we choose our path.

Absolutely agree with the above. We popped in to the 2 most famous Hemingway places - El Bodeguito Del Medio and La Floridita ('My mojito in La Bodeguita, My daiquiri in El Floridita' - as he said) and it's just a tourist revolving door and even those signature drinks were crap compared to getting them in normal bars. Also experienced the baby milk powder scam and as others have said - there's a lot of hustlers in the streets, particularly in Old Havana. Everyone wants to chat so it can be difficult to adjust and start dismissing people from the off but there's a lot of people trying to punt cigars, or get a few quid one way or another. They'll often try and just engage in chat or ask where you're from and it leads on from there but you'll quickly learn how to deal with it or else just completely ignore it if you wish. Worth saying that I didn't at any point feel in danger. Also, you'll have taxis and bicitaxis, tuk tuks all touting for your business as you walk anywhere near Old Havana. With the crap bits above out of the way now - the vast majority of the place is great and people are lovely. We stayed in Vedado on the west of the city which was nice colonial houses, close to the university and the big hotels of The Nacional (worth checking out for a drink) and the Habana Libre (former Havana Hilton which was taken over as an initial residence of Castro et al at the revolution). There were a few nice restaurants and bars/clubs dotted around that area. We walked each day from Vedado through the much poorer areas of Central Havana where you just see people living day to day life and crammed into tiny homes. The dividing line between Central Havana and Old Havana is at El Capitolio / Gran Teatro (Theatre) and Parque Central and here you'll get your classic cars all lined up and gleaming waiting for hire to do city tours. We didn't get much from the car tour other than the photo opps as we had pretty much walked all over the place. If you were to consider getting the open-top, hop-on hop-off bus tour - I wouldn't recommend it. It doesn't have commentary in the way that the equivalent tours would normally have whether it be in Edinburgh, Madrid or Berlin - so it's only really worthwhile for getting from point to point, but even then, it's better to just walk or get taxis. There are state taxis (normally yellow & black) and then there are 'Taxi Particulars' which are communal taxis. If you can get using them then you'll save a fortune by sharing. We went to a cigar factory for a tour (which we had apparently missed the time or needed tickets from a hotel which we didn't have but the security got some guy to take us round and I imagine everyone got a bung from that). As mentioned previously - lots of people will try to sell you cigars. A lot of what you read will say these will be fake and not to touch them. I think the reality is that some are real (ones which make it out of factories one way or another) and others will be fake. The street sellers also have elaborate stories to draw you in - the factory staff are apparently allowed 2 cigars a day or something like that which they can accumulate to sell. They'll also say that it happens to be the 1 or 2 days a month that they're allowed to sell this stock that they've accumulated for themselves and use the term Cooperativa (Cooperative) to say that this is permitted - when in all reality there is no such thing and it's effectively stolen or fake. They'll be selling box loads rather than singles. My friend spent about £300 from one of the Cooperativa people and spent the rest of the trip stressing as to whether they were real or not. The boxes, labels, holograms and everything look legit but no way of knowing for sure - but it is over 50% cheaper. We didn't get checked at customs at all (Cuba or EU). Other things we did were to pop into one of the boxing gyms (Rafael something or other I think it was called) but they were just training and I had the impression that it was more looking to appeal to tourists rather than being more genuine. They were also looking for donations for taking photos and stuff like that. We get the ferry across to Casablanca and went up the hill to their equivalent of Rio's Cristo Redentor statue but it's not much in comparison. There's a Che residence there as well which isn't really worth the few dollars that it costs as you'll be in and out in less than 5 minutes. From Casablanca we got the electric train to Hershey (which was the halfway point on the way to Matanzas but we just came back). Everyone seemed to know each other on the train and we got chatting to the engineer and ended up front with the driver for the majority of it. There's a wee Havana Club tour in Old Havana which isn't a distillery but worth 30 mins of your day I would say. Parque Central Hotel has a nice roof terrace for food/drinks if you're into that sort of thing at somewhere a bit swankier. A lot of the bigger hotels have nice lobbies and bars and probably a lot of the tourists don't venture out of there at night as Old Havana does seem quieter as the night goes on. La Terraza was another roof-terrace restaurant in that vicinity which was good. Lots of salsa clubs around the city and Casa de la Musica is the main name that pops up. They have early evening shows and a later one as well. We went somewhere different and was cool to see them all going for it. A fair amount of hookers in these places as well so you might get pestered a wee bit unless you're there with a missus. A lot of the cooler bars and clubs, as well as some nice eateries are over in Miramar which is further west and maybe about 20 mins drive from Old Havana. It's the embassy district and we went to a few nice places there. One last thing - go to to the Colon Cemetery if you would appreciate that sort of thing. It's huge and the memorials there are quite spectacular.

Even if they didn't introduce it - they've had 8 years in government to review and tighten it.

From what I read today, it is 2 dogs maximum in England/Wales and 2 dogs minimum in Scotland which opens it up to using a pack of hounds. Both of those scenarios stipulate that the dogs are only to flush out the fox but I imagine it's easier to control 2 dogs than a pack of dogs so it would seem that Eng/Wales were ahead of us with their legislation on this but they were then looking to deconstruct this to allow full-blown fox hunting again. As others have said - even if we were to take the moral high ground in this vote (putting the politics of EVEL to the side), then we should have been doing it from a position of having a tighter ban than we do currently.

There's so many news updates flying about that I keep seeming to lose track. Was Tsipiras not hailing this as a better deal as he wasn't having to give in to the whole host of privatisation measures that were proposed to see Greek assets moving to foreign ownership?

Fox hunting soon to be on the Tory agenda. I hadn't realised that it still happens in Scotland apparently but the intention is to flush the fox out (to presumably be shot) rather than let the dogs tear the poor thing apart. Also, it needs to be done by more than 2 dogs in Scotland from what I've read. Why is that?

It doesn't seem to work. If you put in 1 parent working FT, with 15 kids then it only shows £1k per year worse off so I don't see how that can be taking account of the reduction of support to max, 2 kids and/or the household benefits cap of £20k/£23k. I'm not sure what that says about the rest of the calculations but at a glance I think it underestimates the amount of additional income that is being presented by the raising of the tax threshold and 40% rate.

Can't say I've read any of it so will need to have a look. What are the alternatives that are supposed to work better?

So the Tories are not cutting as quickly as they had intended (£12bn reduction in 3 years, rather than 2), we won't move into surplus until 2019/20 (rather than a year earlier as per their manifesto), and they're tinkering around with the non-doms (which they slated Labour for pledging and said that this would lead to tax loss as people left). I'm sure that overall they are still being as Tory as you would expect them to be but the above shows unsurprising signs that: A) They're already breaking their commitments They're absolutely hypocritical in their criticism of Labour/SNP et al C) Even they are not committed to the pace of austerity which they claim is required. I'm sure that enough of the rest of the tinkering around will allow their hardened/wealthier supporters to ignore these facts rather than have any concerns that they're not quite living up to their pre-election headline promises on the deficit. It just shows up the austerity headlines for the sham that they are as they allow the carve up the country (and classes) exactly as they desire.

But the implication from Beeb is that it's not dead? I'm assuming this isn't the main vote and they're expecting to push it through anyway?

What happens next? The beeb says that the vote carries no weight? So it doesn't matter that it was voted down??

Yep. Celtic branding above the tunnel and on seat covers for the dugout seats as well. Seems a bit excessive for the sake of them wanting to do all that for the sake of playing 3 friendlies at the ground but I suppose they want it to look that way for Celtic TV and any news/highlights/etc.

It's a bit crap but I suppose money talks. The St.Mirren club shop is a joke and JD Sports don't even allow us to sell our strips from there anyway so I don't imagine it's doing us too much harm - apart from the embarrassment.

Absolutely - they'll have thought that Sturgeon has opened pandora's box by having the decency of being critical of the actions of some people on twitter. They'll expect that their dossier would force her hand to start banning party members and this would snowball and end-up with in-fighting in the SNP as disgruntled people who have been banned then turn on the party. It's absolute cheap shots and immature politics.

Not looked at this yet but it's on my 'to do' list. Are there 'Follow my team/country' options as there were for previous tournaments?

BBC does a decent job of summarising here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-scotland-32154462 In short ..... we would have our part of the current UK deficit (our share of about £70bn), but on top of that - the fact that we get higher public spending along with a combination of collapse of oil price and a English economy growing faster than Scotland's - this all adds up to a much higher deficit for Scotland under FFA.

How on earth do they get down to estimates of only making £2bn over a 20-year period? Can only assume that it is a combination of lower $ per barrel, lower production and any profits balanced against investment tax breaks and decommissioning costs which leads them to an estimate averaging at only £100m a year?!!!

What is it?

What would be the likely borrowing arrangements under FFA? Every time FFA is mentioned, it is highlighted that there would be a £7.6bn black hole but there is little or no mention that there is a UK-wide 'black-hole' of £70-80bn (?) which seems to go unnoticed.

Interesting to read but will also be much more detail and a strong case to be put up for the 'No' side as this debate evolves. A socialist and trade union viewpoint like that provided (while valuable) is only one perspective. We should all recognise that we're engineered into the default position of us being led to believe that we need the EU so it's important to now question that with a quality of debate that brings the pro's and con's to the surface. If big business and the Westminster establishment tell us that we should be part of Europe then that also is reason enough to question it. Equally (even as an SNP voter) we should not accept the default position of SNP as gospel on this matter. It's interesting to see the parallels in arguments with the Indyref and the way that the debate is being played out in a similar manner. For people who weren't overly engaged in the Indyref I found it unbelievable that people complained of not having enough information when there was such a wealth of info out there but for the EUref, I can genuinely say that I now find myself in that same position. It would also be interesting to understand more about how successful Norway (for example) is in interacting with the EU and wider world as an EEC member with access to EU benefits of trade and Shengen as far as I'm aware. What areas of our economy would be the winners and losers of BRexit? I've seen suggestions of what's left of manufacturing (such as cars) leaving if we exited. I've also seen suggestions that we could further strengthen as a finance base/economy. I'd be very worried about us putting more of an emphasis on the finance sector and losing out on areas such as manufacturing which go in some small way to providing some degree of balance to our economy. Any word on who will lead up the 'No' campaign?

So they need to have a seat as MSP or MP to run?

Someone like Douglas Alexander could be a very competent pair of hands. I don't know if he'd want to lower himself to the Scottish branch though.

Yes. But the precedent has been set that they allowed this when the Scottish electorate democratically voted the SNP into Holyrood on a majority on the manifesto of holding a referendum. It would be a brave move to reject such a referendum if the same circumstances were to be replicated.