Dibbles old paperboy

... saw Celtic fans replying on facebook asking why Motherwell fans were complaining... after all as a diddy club without as many fans as the Old Firm clubs its not like Motherwell really need the seats anyway.

I've heard that we are keeping all our games against Celtic in the SPFL pre-split until after the window opens so that we can bring Isma back and take all 9 points off them to give our title push a shot in the arm!

You could argue we had our bad run at the best time of the season (August / September) as we had plenty games left before the split to make up the lost ground. Far better having 27 games left to catch up on the pack after an awful first 6 games than be on the verge of top 6 and then have a honking run of results in March. At least one top 6 team will have a bad run before the split, last year Aberdeen and Hibs both got off to flying starts and looked good for finishing 2nd and 3rd based on where they were in October / November before plummeting out the top 6 by the time of the split. I think this season Motherwell are a bit weaker than previous years, St Johnstone aren't great but do have good strikers who are in form, ICT have lost Butcher and Malpas. Its looking like Dundee United havethe makings of a great young and exciting squad. I wouldn't be massively surprised if Aberdeen, ICT or St Johnstone all had bad runs and the gap narrowed between ourselves and them... and I don't expect our good run to last indefinitely. If Butcher sorts out Hibs they may break into top 6 by the time of the split... but i don't see Hearts, Ross County, or Kilmarnock making a challenge for the top 6 this season, and I think Partick Thistle will be happy to play well and finish well away from the relegation fight without breaking into the top 6.

If you were Derek Adams and had seen your team comprehensively pumped you would probably elect to spend your press conference after the game talking about a ghost instead of how poor your own team was and managing to dismiss Sproule's red card with a quick one liner. Not that long ago scores of posters reckoned Adams would make a better St Mirren manager than DL... after all he stands trackside and yells at his players.

When Lex starts predicting points totals from forthcoming fixtures it never ends well. The run has been good while it lasted.

well done to DL and TC and the team again.

So how many UKIP and BNP MSPs do we have in the Scottish Parliament. PR lets the wee parties who get about 10-15% of the votes everywhere but would hardly win any 1st past the post contents be represented - eg the Conservatives and Lib Dems One of the big issues with 1st past the post is the feeling that your vote doesn't count unless you are in a marginal constituency as opposed to a safe seat. With PR you might still elect a list MSP / party even if they don't win outright if enough other people think they are worth voting for.

Remember your track record of St Mirren related predictions Lex

At least with PR there is an attempt for the parliament to reflect how the country and regions have actually voted. Whatever the strengths of first past the post, one of its weaknesses is that the party that wins a majority of seats isn't always the party which gets the biggest share of the vote... in theory they could win 200 of their seats by 1 vote per seat while losing heavily elsewhere... and within the UK you can have a government which has no MPs elected in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales but wins heavily in 1 country out of the 4 countries making up the union.

Maybe you should ask if Paisley should be governed by the parties who came 3rd and 4th at the ballot box in Paisley and get just enough votes to get their deposit back? At least with the Scottish Parliament Paisley is fairly represented with its combination of first past the post MSPs and MSPs for Paisley elected via proportional representation.

When, in the last 3 decades, were England treated to Labour governments purely because of Scottish voters? When Blair got in his first two election wins were landslides in England, and post-devolution the number of Scottish consituencies was reduced. In the same timeframe Scotland has never once voted for a Tory government and sometimes there has been just 1 Tory MP elected out of a possible 69 Scottish MPs. The notion that things balance out with how Scotland votes and who becomes the UK government is a fallacy. When Labour gets elected it is because England stops voting Tory and switches allegiance.

And the flip-side, if you want to infer a Yes vote is a vote for Salmond / the SNP is that if you vote No you are potentially voting for a Conservative / UKIP coalition with Cameron and Farage running the country... or Ed Milliband and Labour... or Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems!

This from the man who revealed Danny Lennon was about to be sacked by a fizzing mad SG 12 months ago.

I think MacWhirter's point is that after the cost of building the 2 new aircraft carriers doubling under the Conservatives and Lib Dems that Hammond will not want to get in to a situation where Portsmouth is closed as a shipbuilding yard, people are laid off, the area gets regeneration money, the Clyde yards get the work and investment and then that decision gets reversed if Scotland votes Yes and instead the Clyde yards and Rosyth are closed, Portsmouth gets re-opened but the work is delayed as they need to invest in the yard and re-employee the workforce. It could be they are supremely confident there will be a No vote and no need to contemplate reversing the decision.

"In fact, the answer came from UK Defence Secretary Philip Hammond himself when he announced the closure of Portsmouth's shipbuilding facilities. He could not have given the go-ahead for Govan had he not accepted the possibility that Scotland might become independent. He was asked repeatedly if he would consider cancelling the Type 26 orders after a Yes vote in next year's referendum and repeatedly he refused even to contemplate it. There is a very obvious reason why. If BAE Systems, a private firm, was in any serious doubt about the contracts, it would not be pouring money into Govan and Scotstoun, and nor would the Government. BAE has run down its shipbuilding at Portsmouth and consolidated activities in Scotland not for political reasons, but for commercial ones: Scotland builds better and cheaper. It is almost impossible to see circumstances in which the orders would be now be cancelled, whatever the outcome of the referendum. A Yes vote, remember, will not make Scotland independent overnight. There will be an 18-month transition period before Scotland becomes legally independent of the UK in 2016. The contracts will therefore be signed while Scotland is still part of the UK, which also means EU procurement rules do not come into play. Somehow this important fact got lost in last week's media storm. Scottish voters have been left with the impression that if they vote Yes, they lose the Clyde - which is unfortunate to say the least. Certainly, Sturgeon has a right to be annoyed with Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrat Scottish Secretary, who came close to saying what Hammond would not: that the orders would be cancelled if Scotland votes Yes in September 2014. The Labour MP Ian Davidson went further and actually called for a wrecking clause to be placed in the Type 26 frigate orders such that they would automatically be cancelled if Scotland opts for independence. With friends like that … Fortunately, the UK Government wasn't having any of it. Hammond does not want another procurement scandal on his hands so soon after the disaster of the current aircraft carrier contracts, now costing twice the original estimates. Imagine if next year he told BAE that, after all, he wanted them to dismantle Govan and Scotstoun and transport the skills and technology to redundant Portsmouth? The cost would be immense. It would be like moving the second Forth Road Bridge two miles up river after the foundations have been laid." From Iain McWhirter, Sunday Herald, 10th November 2013

Philip Hammond the UK defence secretary has been asked directly a few times if Portsmouth would be re-opened and awarded future work earmarked for the Clyde if there is a Yes vote next year and he hasn't said that it would happen. What does this tell us? It is only Scottish Labour, Tory and Lib Dem MPs and MSPs who are peddling the line that a Yes vote will close down shipbuilding in Scotland while a No vote secures the yards for futures. What does that tell us? If Scotland votes Yes in 2014 there will be an 18 month period where it is still part of the UK before it becomes independent in 2016. When the UK govt awards the contracts for the Type 26 vessels Scotland will still be in the UK even if we are by then on the road to independence, meaning, all the stuff about EU rules and defence contracts exemptions will have the same weight as they do now. The Scottish yards will also be run by a UK company.

On the upside Butcher's move to Hibs would seem to rule out him being the next St Mirren manager after the imminent firing of Danny Lennon ;-)

I'm not sure we should let the number of postponed games pile up too much... we want to get points on the board, climb the table and stay in contention for top 6, rather than have to squeeze in re-arranged matches at the point in the season when the battle to make top 6 intensifies.

So our first game of the season against them will take place in January, with 2 other games against them squeezed in before the split? If we end up in the top 6 and get them in the cup we could have had 9 months with no games against them followed by 5 games in as many months!

Well done DL and TC and the team. See what happens when there is no Lex prediction thread running for a few games!

Did Stewart Gilmour tell you this after the Hearts game where he was going to sack Danny before the next game? Ian Davidson hasn't played any part in any contracts with BAE over which yard stays open or not. He has called for a clause to be inserted into the contract... he hasn't secured any jobs for Govan and Scotstoun but if he had his way and his clause was inserted and then Scotland voted Yes he would be responsible for closing the biggest employer in his own constituency. Portsmouth was closed because the yard wasn't as well equipped, and their workforce was supposedly more militant than the Clyde yards and less productive. If the decision really is political then maybe the Better Together campaign aren't as confident in private that the referendum vote will go their way next year. It has already been decided that Govan will finish work on the aircraft carriers which Portsmouth was due to carry out, and Govan and Scotstoun will do 3 vessels before the Type 26 work begins.Are you really saying BAE will re-open a closed yard, re-employ redundant workers and then close 3 yards and announce fresh redundancies all based on the referendum result?

In which case the UK government will be glad to announce now how many shipbuilding jobs will be saved by voting No, and also how many regiments will be kept, what airbases and submarine bases will be kept and how many defence and service jobs will be guaranteed if we vote No. Ian Davidson, MP for Govan, and the local MP with Fairfields in his constituency has, unbelievably, called for a 'get out' clause to be put into the contract with BAE for the Type 26 vessels, meaning that if Scotland votes Yes then the Govan and Scotstoun yards would close and the Portsmouth yard would re-open and take on the work instead. How a unionist Labour MP can try and engineer a situation where workers in his own constituency lose their jobs, and his constituency loses its biggest employer, if people dare to vote differently to him is breathtaking! It is like Ineos and Grangemouth all over again except it is the local unionist Labour MP saying vote-my-way-or-you-won't-have-a-job!

They look great!

We rarely have big wins in our favour because we usually play with just 1 striker. St Johnstone have scored 4 goals in a game twice this season and scored 3 away against us partly because they have 3 in form strikers: May, MacLean and Hasselbaink.

Well done to DL and TC and the players