Didn’t Brian Monteith implement a no comparison policy in the Scotsman to stop the SNP saying NHS Scotland was much better than NHS England? Here’s the policy statement:
Here’s what they wrote in the Scotsman today, Brian:
‘Scotland’s economy is continuing to expand but growth remains at half the wider UK rate, official figures today showed. It emerged that GDP north of the border grew by 0.2% in the third quarter of 2017 after an improvement in manufacturing. This is below the UK level of 0.4% over the same period, but an increase on the 0.1% hike in GDP which Scotland saw in the previous quarter.’
https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scottish-economy-grows-but-still-trails-uk-1-4663531
So, the UK’s economy, including the City of London’s subsidised and mostly making money for bonuses and for shareholders, economy, grew by a measly 0.4% in the third quarter of 2017 but never mind that Scotland’s only grew by 0.2% let’s focus on that. To paraphrase Brian:
‘This tactic of deflection has now worn thin and the evidence that the UK’s economy is in really serious trouble is growing.’
The whole report by Scott McNab is actually quite fair if he hadn’t made the cardinal error of ‘whitabootery.’
Finally, though, how useful is GDP as measure of economic health? See this:
‘Gross domestic product (GDP) is increasingly a poor measure of prosperity. It is not even a reliable gauge of production.’
Even more finally, might balance of trade be worth mentioning? Only Scotland and Northern Ireland* have a positive balance of trade and parts of the UK including London cost the UK a bloody fortune in necessary debt to pay for their imports. See:
* for the first time
Talking-up Scotland 
I may be wrong but I think that Blockchain is about to cut a swathe through the Financial Services Industry very soon as world trade uses it to cut out all middlemen like bankers, accounts lawyers and insurers dealing peer to peer.
Not a good time to have well over half your economy dependent on service industries.
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Very interesting. Got a good reference for me on this?
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Hi John – rapid visit as grabbing coffee. Whitabootery indeed! Just asking that you check one detail from the piece “Even more finally, might balance of trade be worth mentioning? Only Scotland has a positive balance of trade and parts of the UK including London cost the UK a bloody fortune in necessary debt to pay for their imports.” – My reading of the bar chart gives Northern ireland a (small) positive trade balance for 2016 – 2017 along with Scotland’s (much larger) positive balance. (Unlike the MSM the Citizen’s Media try to maintain accuracy all round!) – cheers, ludo
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Ooops. Well spotted. I’ll modify.
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Bit of good news from Catalunya (from beeb World page): see below:
Catalan MPs in Barcelona have elected a pro-independence speaker at their first meeting since Madrid dissolved the region’s parliament.
“Separatist (sic) lawmakers secured control of parliament on Wednesday with the election of Roger TORRENT, a member of the left-wing separatist ERC party.
He beat an anti-independence candidate by 65 votes to 56.
The session was broadcast to a flag-waving crowd outside.
ERC’s leader, Oriol Junqueras, is among three Catalan MPs in prison awaiting trial over the independence push. But they were ALLOWED (sic) to vote to select a parliamentary speaker via proxies”.
This excellent news has moved me to try some poetry (as Burns’ Night approaches):
God Save Catalunya and Speaker Torrent! Each bless’t with wit and snap!
God Help The Scotsman and Creeper Torrance – Each stuff’t with…. (searching for a rhyme here – but can’t quite find it yet)
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Brilliant news.
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You may have seen this, but worth all reading. Richard Murphy take on the figures:
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2018/01/18/beware-gdp-it-can-be-seriously-misleading/
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Thanks Brian. I follow him. Very useful.
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After reading the post and comments I was left with two questions, what is Blockchain? and what are the economic figures for London? The Blockchain was expained, in part, here,
Looked for London economics, came across a PwC report, in summary not looking so rosy for London post brexit, confirming what we knew. I am not competent/clever enough to juggle with the figures in order to extract them from the rest of UK. As usual with these quests more questions arise, vis what is the breakdown of London centric costs? What percentage of these costs are tied to economic production? And more ??? similar.
I add this from PwC site,
https://www.pwc.co.uk/industries/government-public-sector/good-growth.html
Lots of digital buttons, to give comparisons. Sadly only three Scottish cities included, Dundee and Inverness not included.
Thanks for the work you put in John and thanks to the comment posters also. Shit, now starting to sound like the oscars.
It is thought provoking, question raising and spirit raising though.
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Cheers Alan. I’ll use these to get me up to date.
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