Talking-up Scotland

What are Unionists to do? The country they live in is outperforming the UK they’d hate to leave and they don’t like it one little bit. They want us to suffer so they can blame the SNP they despise viscerally, for our suffering. It’s clear on numerous indicators that Scotland is doing better than the rest of the UK and presumably some credit for this goes to the government in Edinburgh.

The Scottish unemployment rate is down again for the third time in a row and the gap with the rest of UK is getting wider at 3.8% as opposed to 4.5%. In May the Scottish rate was 4.4% compared to the UK rate of 4.6%. In June, it was 4.0% while the UK rate was still 4.6%.

The employment rate is up 0.7% to 74.1% making it second only to England but remember this really means second only to the south and London.

Youth unemployment at 8.4% is amongst the lowest in Europe down from 14% in 2007.

We already know that the Scottish economy grew by four times as much as the UK as-a-whole in the last quarter and an earlier survey reported Scottish businesses to be more confident than those in England. See these:

Another leap in confidence for Scotland’s economy

Most North Sea oil and gas firms no longer planning job cuts and reporting growing confidence in recruitment according to Bank of Scotland report.

 Jobs are returning to the oil and gas industry too. See:

‘Wave of new jobs hits the North Sea’

Perhaps most amazing, our stillbirth and early death statistics are now close to the lowest in the world and lower than in the rest of the UK. I know our life expectancy remains shorter than almost anywhere else but I wonder to what extent that is due to the lifestyle ‘choices’ and the working environments suffered by our older generations. The stillbirth figures reinforce a strong feeling I have that, partly due to our superior NHS, our younger generations are as healthy as those throughout Europe. We’ll see. Well, I probably won’t.

https://news.gov.scot/news/unemployment-at-record-low