The Scottish Office has confirmed that a sizeable chunk of their 3000 or so respondents used a Labour website portal.

And, in Edinburgh, Cabinet Secretary Bruce Crawford revealed  that not only did the Scottish Government’s referendum consultation allow anonymous submissions, but that – shock! – they had received quite a few of them ahead of Friday's deadline.

From both sides of the independence divide have come claims and counter-claims of an affront to democracy, a scandal, and cries for parliament to be recalled to right this terrible wrong.

Pardon my French...but what a load of baloney.

There are two strands here, which I need to separate out  – the anonymity issue and the nature of consultations.

Firstly, there are good reasons to allow for anonymous submissions to consultations.  An individual may feel strongly about an issue, but their professional position may disallow them from declaring so publicly.

Think, for example, of a liberal Catholic priest, who perhaps feels strongly about the issue of equal marriage.  The body to which he answers would not take kindly to his making a favourable submission to the Scottish Government's consultation on marriage.  Disallowing anonymous submissions takes away from his opportunity to contribute (what, based on his position and experience) might well be an important insight to the consultation.

Secondly, consultations are not referendums. The magnitude of submissions for or against a particular position are not directly relevant to the policy outcome.

Look again at the example of equal marriage.  The Scottish Government received something in the region of 50,000 submissions in that case (roughly 22,000 in favour of allowing gay marriage, with 28,000 broadly against).

Is the Scottish Government likely to decide on that basis not to legislate for gay marriage? No. The reason for this? A consultation isn't intended as a full measure of public opinion.

Were this the case, nothing would ever get through the planning phase as scores of Nimby-style protests used their might of numbers to block any projects to which they objected.

Governments run an exceptional number of consultations every year, on every issue from the constitution to the Charter of Patients Rights and Responsibilities, and everything in between.  Indeed, the Scottish Government has no fewer than 29 consultations currently open for submissions.

That on the constitution is merely one more.

That is not to diminish the importance of consultation submissions. They play a key role in assisting governments with evidence from key stakeholders and experts in their field of interest, and yes, do allow for assessment of a small section of public opinion – but the latter is not their primary objective.

We will have a referendum on the issue of independence – it is at that point that the numbers will matter. As, indeed, will the quality of debate and the information on what each of the constitutional options on offer actually means.

Until that point, it really doesn't matter how many people provide an opinion either way.  The only numbers which will count are those which vote on the day itself.