Make cuts - but not just yet
While at university in Fife, I dallied briefly with the study of theology: an option made available by the estimable Faculty of Divinity to arts students, like me.
Odd memories recur from time to time - and so, when I contemplated the findings of our 91Èȱ¬ Scotland poll on attitudes to public spending, my thoughts turned to St Augustine of Hippo and his famous modulated appeal.
Lord, he prayed, make me chaste - but not just yet. (For the scholar, the full Latin version is: Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo.)
Folk, it seems from our poll, back the concept of spending cuts. Sed noli modo.
The poll suggests that a remarkable 81% feel cuts should proceed more slowly.
Such a finding, if replicated in other polls, helps explain the occasional bursts of uncertainty from within the UK coalition camp re the timing, scope and presentation of the coming cuts package.
It also helps explain why the Chancellor has been so adamant that only sustaining the pace of spending cuts will placate global markets.
He is retaliating in advance, aware that the rival case may be appealing when folk are understandably fretting.
Aren't those intriguing findings too re the potential political impact? We opted, quite deliberately, to exclude other options such as blaming the bankers.
Banks may do many things but they do not, commonly, stand for election.
Asked who was most responsible for pending cuts, Scots tended to choose the former UK Labour government over the present UK coalition, with a small proportion pinning the blame on the SNP Scottish Government.
Polls, of course, are a snapshot, not a predictor - and those proportions may change when the cuts are announced and implemented.
But they provide, at the very least, an interesting backdrop to the sundry attempts by political parties to blame various combinations of their rivals.
I'm 
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