With a lot of coverage of the latest dramatic Scottish poll results, it's time to remind everyone that predicting results in individual seats or seat totals (and overall majorities or lack thereof) is MUCH harder than predicting national shares of the vote. This is REALLY IMPORTANT when people will be holding forth on the supposed certainty or otherwise of a single-party majority, or of a single-party whitewash in a particular region, and perhaps encouraging people to change their votes in light of this supposed certainty.

Scottish Labour are stuck. They are a centre-left party that opposes independence. In Scotland most centre-left voters however back independence and consequently vote for the centre-left party that is in favour (the SNP). So as I see it Labour have a difficult set of options. 1) The status quo. Well, that's not been going so well, has it? Realistically it means holding on *at best* to their new and unexpected electoral strongholds of Helensburgh and Morningside. Do they have the temperament to be content as a 10-20% party like the Lib Dems used to be?

A Universal Basic Income in Scotland set at the level of the state pension (which campaigners for years have argued is too little to live on) and paid to all citizens would require £38bn per year. This would be the same as the cost of 3 Scottish NHSes. To pay for this a range of existing payments could be rolled in. All current social security spending in Scotland adds up to c.£19bn per year (and this includes disability and housing schemes that would be *very* problematic to roll in to a UBI). £19bn more to find.