A few years ago, Frankie Boyle suggested that Scotland should become an Islamic Republic but that it would mean we’d have to treat our women better. I know, it was a joke but it played to a negative stereotype of the Scots which is increasingly under attack by facts on the ground.

Stereotypes take a long time to change. Comedians and, sometimes, TV drama writers, continue to characterise Scots as violent, drunken and mean. Similarly, the Welsh, are regularly portrayed in negative ways. In sharp contrast, ethnic and religious minorities are treated with care and, after some time, the Irish are rarely stereotyped in the ways they were in earlier times. Is it because we, the Scots and the Welsh, is not independent?

Reports that domestic abuse in Scotland have dropped from those of 2016 by 6.1% may suggest another example. The figures are still horrible though. Between December 10^th 2017 and January 7^th 2018, there were 4 799 reported incidents, down from 5 111 over the same period the previous year.

https://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/news/scotland/fall-in-number-of-reports-of-domestic-abuse-over-the-festive-period/

Not only are reports of domestic violence falling in Scotland but they are falling well below those of England. See this diagram from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2017:

From: ‘UK Poverty 2017 A comprehensive analysis of poverty trends and figures’ Report by the JRF Analysis Unit

Domestic violence is, for all age and deprivation-level groups, lower in Scotland than in England. It would be really interesting to have a precise gender breakdown for the Scottish figures to compare with the shocking level in one of the groups above – 10%!

I’ve already reported on other changes which challenge the negative Scottish stereotype. See these:

Racial hate crimes increase by 33% in England & Wales while falling by 10% in Scotland: Who says we’re not different?

Scotsman headline is untrue: hate offences against Jews in Scotland are extremely rare by contrast with the rest of the UK?

Scotland’s homicide rate falls by 47%, is lower than the rate for England and Wales and has fallen faster than many other countries in the ten years of SNP government

Extracting the positives for Scottish Government from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report on Poverty which you are unlikely to hear of elsewhere: Lower poverty, better qualified workers, lower domestic violence, smaller educational gaps and eating just as much fruit!

Scotland takes nearly 26% of Syrian refugees settled in UK with only 8% of the UK population

UN condemns UK Government’s ‘human catastrophe’ on disability rights but praises Scottish Government’s actions

Footnote: I’ll do a separate report on how safe Scottish university cities are by contrast with those elsewhere in the UK. It’s shocking.

(c) conservativehome.com

I’m a bit late getting to this second of Monteith’s appearances as the Scotsman’s NHS Scotland and by association, SNP, critic. Here are his main points that the Scottish Government is ‘being disrespectful to voters when they resort to “whitabootery” (comparing with NHS England) and that there are ‘official statistics and credible anecdotal evidence that demonstrates a growing crisis in Scotland’s NHS.’

There are two things to say about comparing one system with another. First, it’s a very common and, if done properly, fairly objective way of measuring how effective a system is. It’s the method used by the Commonwealth Foundation of New York to compare the US health system with 10 others in 2015. Its findings were used to make recommendations for improvement in the US system and much liked by Tories such as Mrs May and the Hunt. To take another example, the PISA comparative research of educational standards also seems an acceptable form of ‘whitabootery’ to the Scottish Conservatives. See:

‘Ms Davidson has previously warned her party could withdraw its support of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) after schools recorded their worst ever performance in a global study.The latest Programme for International Students Assessments (PISA) found Scottish pupils not only trailing behind their English counterparts but those in former Soviet bloc nations Slovenia and Estonia.’

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/774722/ruth-davidson-scotland-conservative-conference-failing-snp-curriculum-education

There are of course problems in PISA but that’s for another place. One more example to make the point, are the GERS figures regularly used to undermine Scotland’s economic case for independence. Here’s Tory Murdo Fraser on them:

‘Scotland’s notional deficit therefore stands at a staggering £13.3bn or 8.3% of GDP. The UK-wide deficit, meanwhile, stands at 2.4%. The gap between the two deficits is the highest it has been since GERS started being compiled in 1998/99’

http://www.scottishconservatives.com/2017/08/gers-day/

I know, the GERs figures are almost all based on estimates and of little value but, again, that’s for another place and time.

So, it seems comparisons with England or the UK are just fine when they damage the case for independence but not when we seem to be doing better. Notably, of course, the NHS comparisons, so disliked by Monteith, come from the reliable sources, Nuffield and BBC Scotland (😉) and are not subject to any undermining critique. See, for example:

‘Scotland has a unique system of improving the quality of health care’ says the Nuffield Trust: Looking at the full report and not the Labour/BBC Scotland extracts in July

Putting the A&E figures in perspective: NHS England patients were more than twice as likely to wait over four hours throughout 2017.

By comparison, both PISA and GERS have attracted widespread criticism. See these summaries:

Scotland’s school’s PISA results ‘lean’ toward nothing meaningful. Finland’s success is not real. South Korea and China’s educational programmes amount to child abuse

25 of the 26 GERS income figures are estimates and not the real figures!

The Scottish Sun’s grammatically incorrect but politically correct and helpfully blunt assessment of GERS

Monteith’s other main point is that there are: ‘official statistics and credible anecdotal evidence that demonstrates a growing crisis in Scotland’s NHS.’ Let’s deal with the anecdotal first. His Wikipedia page doesn’t say what degree he has or if has one in the Education section. In the Career bit it reads: ‘Following university Monteith initially worked as a researcher for Thatcherite London-based think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies.’ Is he another of the ‘Murphy school’ who didn’t graduate in anything or pass the Research Methods module? Anyhow, he should still know that an anecdote is an anecdote even if it’s true. You can’t use them to make generalisations, at all! As for the official statistics, he offers these:

‘Conservatives demonstrated that even though the SNP promised to end the practice, more than 10,000 ambulances have been dispatched with one crew member on board in the last four years. Last year, the SNHS sickness rate was 7.6 per cent, a third above the target of five per cent and well beyond the private sector average of 1.9 per cent. Hospital beds continue to decline (down from 21,340 hospital beds in 2016/17 against more than 23,000 in 2012/13) but are not replaced by more social care places for the elderly, as these too have declined (down from 38,465 in 2012/13, to 37,746 in 2016/17).’

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/opinion/brian-monteith-time-the-snp-stopped-dodging-nhs-responsibilty-1-4661303

I’ve already dealt with his and other misunderstanding of the ambulance and hospital beds stories here:

‘Ambulance-chasers’* BBC Scotland digs up fake news as Scotland’s ambulance services disappoint them by coping well with the winter surge in demand

Scotsman’s reputation in tatters as they parrot Labour report on bed-blocking which is, of course falling

As for the sickness rate in SNHS being higher than in the private sector, well of course it is. They work with sick people. They’re exposed to infected bodies and clothing. They’re exposed to people suffering. I’d like to see Monteith’s attendance record after a year in A&E or a ward for extreme mental health cases. As for the private sector having a lower rate, well of course it has. Leaving aside the point just made, many private sector workers have no union protection and, in some cases, absolutely no rights at all and are thus afraid to go off sick. If he’d like an anecdote, I was served recently in a filling station by a young man who seemed to be suffering from the flu. His colleague told him to go home but he said he couldn’t because he’d been off ill in the previous month!

This is Monteith’s second rant in the Scotsman in seven days. I know he’ll be cheap, but the Scotsman needs to recover more than a little pride in itself.

This isn’t the first time that many of us have noticed differences between the BBC Scotland news reported on the website and that reported on Reporting Scotland or Good Morning Scotland. While the latter two remain horribly imbalanced and often utterly dishonest in their creation of a climate hostile to independence, the website is often pretty-fair, balanced, and even prepared to report on good news for Scotland with no ifs or buts.

I’m not the only one to put this down to a strategy whereby a captive older audience, getting nearly all of its news from the TV, radio and the press, can be scared off independence while a younger audience, getting most of its news online from diverse sources, cannot. However, many of my online friends and supporters are, I know, ‘silver surfers’ like me, who are perfectly capable of accessing those more diverse sources. That they both voted Yes and are confident internet users suggests, I suspect, that it is a personality unafraid of change rather than age which counts in their cases. However, are they, perhaps, exceptions to a pattern which might be revealed in statistics?

The BBC website reported today:

‘Hundreds of jobs are set to be created during the construction of a vessel which will be used to redevelop a North Sea oil and gas field. Shell said between 300 and 400 jobs, mostly in Scotland, would be needed to support construction of the floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel for the Penguins field. Once operational, the vessel is expected to support about 70 jobs.’

They even allowed SNP Energy Minister, Paul Wheelhouse, to make a statement without inviting the Unionist parties or Douglas Fraser, to remind us a range of ‘ah buts’ so that we didn’t get too carried away with optimism. He said:

‘This significant investment is further evidence of rising confidence in the future of the region and it will offer a significant boost to communities across the north east of Scotland, along with boosting the wider Scottish economy.’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-42688721

The report finished there on this high note in manner unheard of in broadcasts.

So, back to the opening question of why the website is clearly not part of the No campaign. Have a look at the statistics represented in these two figures:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/itandinternetindustry/bulletins/internetusers/2016#main-points

YES                                                                            NO

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/20/scottish-independence-lord-ashcroft-poll

There’s a fairly strong correlation between age and voting Yes or No for independence and there’s an equally strong one between age and internet-use. Silver surfers over 75 are not really that numerous and BBC propaganda is geared quite accurately to its audience. Allowing the website to be less biased also means that they can pretend to an overall balance of reporting, across their whole output. It’s what Karl Marx called ‘repressive tolerance.’ As long as views contrary to the establishment view are relatively rare and with a small audience, freedom of expression and thought can be claimed.

(c) oilandgaspeople.com

In Oil and Gas People today, Takayuki Nogami, a chief economist of the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation, predicted growing demand and the possibility of prices rising to $100 per barrel. This follows, the July 2017 comments from the Aramco chief describing the outlook for oil supplies as ‘increasingly worrying’, argued that the transition to alternative fuels will be ‘long and complex’ and that this will result in huge shortages. Discoveries are down 50% in the last four years.

Luckily for Scotland, there have been massive finds west of Shetland in the last few months. See:

Estimates of Scotland’s oil reserves West of Shetland now massively increased to around 8 billion barrels! ‘A super-resource now on the cards.’

Speaking about alternatives to oil, the Aramco chief said:

‘Looking at today’s energy mix, the expectations for alternatives are through the roof,” Nasser said. While acknowledging that electric vehicles are gaining in popularity, he said they currently make up less than two-tenths of one percent of the world’s 1.2 billion vehicles and were unlikely to account for more than 10 percent of the global fleet by 2030.’

As for shale oil, the chief echoed my earlier expressed confidence that:

‘Investments in smaller increments such as shale oil will just not cut it.’

Even these small increments from shale are far from secure with a world shortage of the essential fracking sand already with us. See:

The Scottish Third Wave of Oil Productivity is built on solid foundations but those of the Shale Oil Industry are built on sand and on sand that is disappearing fast

Returning to Nogami, we see similar thoughts to those expressed by the Aramco chief:

‘Global demand for crude oil is likely to grow for at least the next 10 years. This is because economic growth in emerging economies including China and India will spur demand in sectors such as transportation and chemicals. Although some believe that the demand for oil will decrease due to the spread of electric vehicles, it will take a considerable amount of time to be fully implemented. One of the major challenges is the high costs of setting up necessary infrastructure such as charging stations.’

https://www.oilandgaspeople.com/news/15881/crude-oil-demand-will-grow-for-next-10-years/

As Scottish crude bursts through the $70pb figure, just over one year after the 2016 slump, to $27.67 (up 154%), it seems there is much revenue to be gathered from the oil producers and that it will last well into the period of independence.

BBC Salford headlined their report yesterday with:

‘The British Dental Association said England had a “second-class” dental service compared to Wales and Scotland.’

Before going on to note that:

‘The BDA said England was receiving a “second-class service” because, unlike Wales and Scotland, it has no dedicated national child oral health programme. It said the government’s centrepiece policy Starting Well – aimed at improving oral health outcomes for “high-risk” children – had received no new funding and was operating in parts of just 13 local authorities in England.’

In incisor-sharp contrast, government initiatives in Scotland and Wales seem to have more bite and are resulting in falling rates of tooth decay in young children. Scotland’s ‘Childsmile’ programme has cut £5 million off treatment costs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42662425

Loyally following the advice from Tory health spokesperson, Miles Briggs, that making comparisons with NHS England is a diversionary tactic which is wearing thin for Scots, Reporting Scotland have ignored the above story for this

‘SNP fail Scottish children’s teeth by excluding Irn Bru from minimum-pricing policy’

A Freedom of Information request by the Scottish Conservative Party, nicely written-up, even spell-checked, for BBC Scotland, has revealed the SNP’s shocking incompetence in excluding the high-sugar content Irn Bru from their new minimum pricing policy yet imposing it on the low-sugar content English bitters popular with many Scottish children. Some have suggested that the exclusion of Irn Bru and the inclusion of English beer is a clear sign that the SNP is pursuing anti-English policies.

(c) News Group Newspapers Ltd

On 30^th December, STV uncritically allowed the ill-informed views of Tory shadow health secretary, Miles Briggs (above), to completely misrepresent the scale and the effects of a small reduction in the number of beds available in Scottish hospitals. See:

STV falls for Tory misrepresentation of scale and effects of hospital bed reductions as NHS Scotland exceeds NHS England provision by 50%

Today, the Scotsman lazily takes its turn to act as the uncritical friend, for any Unionist party with another free story, from Briggs, of how ‘Scotland should look to Norway to help our ailing NHS.’

He wrote:

‘On a recent trip to Norway, I saw first-hand how the country has been able to eradicate delayed discharge – they have a fully integrated patient information system so that doctors and carers are able to see live information on people to deliver the best care and perhaps most importantly take into account what care and support patients want.’

https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/miles-briggs-scotland-should-look-to-norway-to-help-our-ailing-nhs-1-4660226

Now, neither Miles nor the Scotsman offer any hard research evidence. We just have to take his word based on a wee trip and being shown, presumably, a few good examples. However, when I saw the Norwegian link, I immediately remembered a 2015 research study from the US Commonwealth Foundation which did not rate their service as highly as the NHS (all of it). I’ll return to that below. However, I thought I should find something more recent too. See this on delayed discharge in Norway, from 2016. Titled ‘Using fees to reduce bed-blocking: A game between hospitals and care providers’ by Snorre Kverndokk (it is quite a sleep-inducing read) and Hans Olav Melberg, the research is very critical of the system being used in Norway to achieve the results Miles Briggs was so enamoured with. There’s a strong hint in the title. Here are two short extracts from the conclusions:

‘To reduce bed-blocking, a fee was introduced (NOK 4000) that the municipalities have to pay the hospitals for patients who are ready to be discharged to municipal care services, but unable to leave because the municipalities do not provide the necessary services. To be eligible to receive the fee, the hospitals have to notify the municipalities in advance of patients who need municipal services. In this case, the fee applies from the first day the patient is considered ready to be discharged.’ (p27)

So, using Scottish terminology, our local authorities would have to pay a fee to our hospitals if they could not accommodate the patients being discharged. Reading on, we see:

‘The increase in municipal activity was almost the double of what is indicated by the net effect. One interpretation of the results may be that the financial incentives count more than the health incentives.’ (p28)

So, the hospital management is incentivised to discharge as many patients as possible and as early as possible to get as much income from the local authorities as they can. That’s just what happened in Norway.

https://www.med.uio.no/helsam/forskning/nettverk/hero/publikasjoner/skriftserie/2016/2016-2.pdf

Imagine the Unionist media reaction to such a scandal in Scotland?

There’s more. A 2015 study of primary care in ten countries carried out by the Commonwealth Foundation in New York found the NHS across the UK to be better than most and, notably, better than that in Norway on most indicators. See these few examples especially relevant to this topic of discharges and care in the community:

1. Primary Care Doctors’ Communication with Emergency Department and Hospital: Percent who report they always receive notification when a patient is seen in the ED and when a patient is discharged from the hospital: UK 32%, Norway 25%
2. Practice Uses Nurses or Case Managers to Monitor and Manage Care for Patients with Chronic Conditions: UK 96%, Norway 65%
3. Practice Staff Frequently Make Home Visits: UK 84%, Norway 20%
4. Doctor Routinely Receives Computerized Reminder for Guideline-Based Intervention or Screening Test: UK 77%, Norway 10%

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/in-the-literature/2015/dec/primary-care-physicians-in-ten-countries

Footnote: I was able to get a breakdown of the UK data to reveal that NHS Scotland was the best-performing of the four UK areas. To read more on this see:

Scottish GPs: Most satisfied and least stressed in the UK and possibly the world

I rest my case.

From CNBC today:

‘Brent crude oil hit a more than three-year high on Thursday, breaking through the psychologically important $70 a barrel level for the first time since December 2014. Brent, the international benchmark for oil prices, was last up 6 cents at $69.26 a barrel. It earlier spiked to $70.05 in morning trade, touching its highest level since Dec. 4, 2014, when the contract hit $70.60. Oil prices have been supported by stronger-than-expected demand fuelled by worldwide economic growth, ongoing output limits by OPEC and Russia and a series of global events that have stoked geopolitical tension.’

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/11/brent-crude-rockets-to-3-year-high-above-70.html

The report doesn’t explain why $70pb is ‘psychologically important but it is a whopping increase from around $24pb in 2016. My psyche got a wee boost. With production costs falling to $12pb the UK treasury must surely be raking in billions.

As I can’t watch Reporting Scotland or listen to Good Morning Scotland, I’ve no idea if this news is being hailed there. I have my doubts though.

I know that there’s much more to the Independence cause than oil and that high prices can damage other parts of the economy not to mention our own driving costs but the alleged end to oil revenues was used as a stick to beat us with in 2014 and must be countered this time. Remember also, experts have changed their views on how long we could be earning from this. See:

Is Peak Oil still 20 or 30 years in the future and so, would an independent Scotland be rich?

‘Quick, the Curriculum for Excellence advisors are right behind us!’

(c) http://messianicapologetics.net

Under the headline:

‘Workload, stress and pay blamed for exodus of teachers at Scottish schools.’

we read:

‘A significant proportion of more experienced teachers have left the profession in Scotland since 2010. Schools have faced an exodus of their most experienced teachers over the past seven years at a time of unprecedented upheaval in the sector. Analysis of statistics from the Scottish Government show there has been a 21 per cent reduction in the number of teachers aged 45 and over since 2010 – accounting for some 5000 members of school staff.’

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15825894.Scottish_schools_facing_exodus_of_experienced_staff/

Once more, a deliberately (?) misleading headline and deliberate or confused use of statistics to try to construct a crisis out of nothing.

First, 21% of teachers over 45, leaving in 7 years is equivalent to around 3% per year – natural turnover or an exodus? The former I think. There are 51 500 teachers in Scottish schools. If we didn’t have that kind of retirement rate, what would be the point in training new teachers? Second, ‘exodus of teachers’ is used in the headline to imply teachers of all ages and experience when in fact we are only talking about older teachers. Third, to talk of ‘unprecedented upheaval’ is to reveal a lack of knowledge of the history of education in Scotland over the last 50 years. I remember well the very same melodramatic reaction to curriculum change in the 80s and 90s. Fourth, are younger teachers commonly less effective than older ones? I spent 30 years in teacher-training and, in visits to schools, met many highly-skilled, energetic and enthusiastic younger teachers who, also, were up-to-date with curriculum change and approved of it. I also met a few older teachers who had become negative, unenthusiastic and who were resistant to change, any change.

Finally, ‘workload and stress’ – Scottish schools are far better-staffed than those in England. The teacher-pupil ratio in Secondary schools is particularly generous.

There are now 543 more teachers in Scottish schools. In 2017, only 631 P1 pupils were taught in classes of more than 26 compared to 16 845 in 2006 at the end of the Lab/Lib Dem coalition.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/620825/SFR25_2017_MainText.pdf

There are 51 500 teachers in Scottish schools and the pupil/teacher ratio is now 13.6 pupils per teacher, down from (better than) 13.7 in 2016. This ratio is an important indicator of the time teachers have to engage with pupils and is likely to have played a major part in narrowing attainment gaps.

http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0052/00528868.pdf

In England, there were 457 300 teachers in 2016, up by 400 from 2015. The pupil/teacher ratio in 2016 was 17.6 pupils per teacher. England’s population is almost exactly ten times that of Scotland, so you might have expected there to be around 515 000 teachers there. The increase of 400 teachers, in England, from 2015 to 2016, is small when compared with the Scottish Government’s increase of 543 between 2016 and 2017 in a country with a tenth of the population.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/620825/SFR25_2017_MainText.pdf

So, the pupil/teacher ratio in Scotland is significantly better than that in England. That must translate into more manageable workloads and reduced stress. I don’t deny the possibility that some are feeling over-worked and stressed but given the many positive factors in the job compared to many others in the economy, I seriously doubt an exodus. Have a word with nurses, cleaners, GPs, social workers and ask how many would like better conditions and get the same answers, or even more negative ones, as you would from teachers.

(c) morrisonconstruction.co.uk

As the USA begins to face decades of neglect of its infrastructure, the World Economic Forum has identified Scotland’s new Queensferry Crossing project as a model example of good practice. I don’t seem to remember BBC Scotland, Kezia or Ruth saying that.

In quite an extended and detailed piece, the WEF open with:

‘The UK’s new Queensferry Crossing bridge, connecting Edinburgh to Fife in Scotland, offers an example on how to do it. Three good practices contributed to the high-quality process and outcomes: the UK planners diagnosed the problem early; took their time with careful design upfront; and built and sustained an inclusive coalition of stakeholders. The evidence speaks for itself. The Queensferry Crossing – a three-tower cable-stayed bridge with a length of 1.7 miles – opened in early September, well within budget and with a manageable 8-month time delay. This is a rare occurrence among bridges. According to research at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, nine out of 10 fixed links (bridges and tunnels) suffer an average cost overrun of 34% and a time delay of roughly 2 years.’

The authors then contrast the Queensferry Crossing project will the ill-fated Bay Bridge in California

‘The American bridge – a self-anchored single tower suspension bridge with a length of 2.2 miles – blew its budget, costing US$6.5 billion, and took roughly 24 years to complete, nearly a decade past its initial projected completion date. Conversely, the Queensferry, comparable in scope to the Bay Bridge, took roughly 11 years to plan and build at almost a quarter of the price. The Bay Bridge cost estimate drifted upwards through its life: it started at $1 billion (in 1996) and was revised upwards several times: to $1.3b (1997); $2.6b (2001); $5.5b (2005); and finally, to the actual cost of $6.5b (actual outturn cost in 2015). The pain has not gone away since the opening of the bridge: costly litigation and quality disputes continue. Meanwhile, San Francisco commuters pay the price at the tolls every day.’

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/11/what-america-can-learn-from-a-bridge-in-scotland/?utm_content=bufferbeb72&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

I really wish I’d had this report earlier to smack down the ill-informed and petty Unionist criticism of the Queensferry Crossing project. If you know anyone connected with the project or in the SNP government, they might be pleased to read this.

(c) bam.co.uk and vandadundee.org

From the STV News website:

‘As part of its annual travel list, the publication [New York Times] has compiled a rundown of 52 must-visit cities in 2018. Glasgow was in tenth place and the only city in the UK to make the list.’

‘The CNN article celebrated the Dundee Waterfront scheme, which is set to hit crucial landmarks in 2018 including the opening of the new £80m V&A Museum of Design.’

https://stv.tv/news/west-central/1406039-glasgow-named-one-of-the-top-places-to-visit-in-2018/

Glasgow’s two new distilleries and the Riverside Museum were factors in its placing while the £80 million V&A Museum played a big part in Dundee’s entry.

It’s especially good to see Scotland’s two ‘Yes cities’ doing so well. These awards come in the wake of others such as:

Rough Guide readers have just voted Scotland to be the most beautiful country in the world!

Scotland wins two Rough Guide Readers’ Awards – Favourite destination and most welcoming country.

‘Edinburgh ranked second in the world for quality of life’

Just good news with no buts.