There is some truth in that but the judges have always seen the rehearsals so they would not change that now. I remember Nicky saying in Rays series when Ruthie asked why Nicky had only given Ray .5 more than Colleen Nolan that he "knew I would mark you top". So to a large extent unless there is some major problem they know what the order is likely to be.

A celebs performance will very rarely be flawless if ever so I personally have no problem with a mark of ten for an exceptional performance. I feel they should use a full range of marks and as long as the leaderboard is more or less accurate I don't really see any reason to be concerned

Sure, the rehearsals generally determine order unless something unexpected occurs.
I guess they were expecting Ray to be flawless or pretty much,. I can see that that's a relative thing in itself.

Hindsight is always a great thing, and perhaps if the judges had the chance to sit down and analyse things like we do, they might come to a slightly different conclusion. I agree with you, as long as the final leaderboard positions are fair (which is what counts) I'm not that upset about who gets a ten or not.

I agree, but I think that this can sometimes work against Ray too..as they judge on what they expect to see from him, knowing how good he is (Jason giving him a 9.5 and explaining it was 'because he knew HE could do better') whereas others could get higher results because the judges were pleasantly surprised and not expecting such a high level from that particular celeb, so its all swings and roundabouts.

That's not quite right. The Olympics abandoned the 6.0 system (which btw used 'ordinals' in a way that made it more complicated and strange than many realised) because of a judging scandal. And the 6.0 system did allow for difficulty (though only in an impressionistic and informal way).

But the old system was more an "overall impression" system, and the new one is more "add points for everything they do" (with points based on difficulty and then adjusted for the quality of how the elements were performed). So I think your point about difficulty is fundamentally correct and accounts for some of the times when many people are surprised by (or doubt) the results.

I agree, I thought that was the case and was surprised when a few of the judges commented on seeing rehearsals of the various skating routines.

This has been the case from Series one though and they have never hidden the fact that the judges watched rehearsals. In fact often the judges have commented on things being better than in rehearsal or vice versa. It is the same on Strictly. They have always been quite open about this. The judges even tweet that they are watching rehearsals.