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Fom the school of "We're too small and too poor" this week came the suggestion from a financial whiz kid that Scotland might lose its triple A credit rating if Scots voted to rip their country out of the Union (I'm adopting the tenor of the article). That may of course be entirely true but as the author himself said - it will depend on conditions prevailing at the time. And as he conceded, his numbers were done on the back of an envelope and didn't take account of Scotland's share of the banking bail-out. This fact alone should set alarm bells ringing for regular Newsweek listeners.

This type of newspaper article demonstrates two things. One, that more Scots are engaging with the impending possibility of independence rather than laughing it off as too unlikely, and we do need proper debate; and two, that we really don't have definitive answers to many of the questions that would arise. So much of it is little more than conjecture. Then you have to consider that Britain's credit rating is already threatened, as is France's, and the US has already lost its 'triple A', according to some agencies.
However, what interested us was that this appeared at the same time as hard facts, not conjecture, confirmed that some parts of the UK were truly impoverished compared to others. And that the preponderance of those with the largest benefits bills were located in west central Scotland while the leafy south east of England had the lowest numbers on benefits. Why should that be, I wonder? Why is it that under our current arrangements, there are such disparities in income and lifestyle? Isn't one of the reasons for pooling sovereignty - as in the EU and the UK - to level out such differences and bring everybody up to a similar level? We will ask why that hasn't happened.

We consider implications for Scots from the Stephen Lawrence case and hear how someone who describes himself as a "progressive black nationalist and socialist" has been working with Strathclyde Police.

We hear from the next wee country to join the EU - Croatia - and ask why they want to go in and if they want the currency - and also from Hungary where an ultra nationlaist government is turning Eurosceptic and refusing to play by the rules - the cheek of it. Anyway I'm off to ask the bank if I've still got MY triple A credit rating.

Join me tomorrow at 8.