The Independent headline needs no modification. Have a look at the others for a different view of the same stuff. In the Indy report:
“Scotland continues to lead the UK in reducing its emissions and has ambitious targets which aim to go further,” said Lord Deben, chair of the committee. “Decarbonisation of Scotland’s electricity sector, and reductions in emissions from waste, have seen Scotland outperform the UK overall as emissions continue to fall year-on-year to nearly half of 1990 levels.”
Here’s how to twist things to weaken Project Scotland:
Finally, from BBC TV News (is on website), the Scotsman, the Herald:
Hmmm..think we’ll say we didn’t see it?
Talking-up Scotland 
GMS reported it and headlined with some praiseworthy aspects, but very quickly added a big ‘BUT’ and then devoted most of the rime to the ‘downsides’.
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Oh really, well, they used ‘HOWEVER’ in a big long drawn out way before giggling incoherently, not ‘but’, by the time I was awake enough to listen to them. Maybe they have decided they need variety.
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They love their buts.
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Just so long as they don’t covet their neighbour’s ass.
However, OUR neighbour doesn’t covet our ass, more our oil and gas—and our good name. Sadly, there are politicians/Nomedians/comedians in Scotland only too keen to give it all to them.
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I wonder if anyone realises that during, and for at least a day after the recent Storm Ali, wind power was the single largest source of electrical energy for the whole of the UK. About 25% more than either gas or nuclear.
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No I didn’t realise, and wow! That’s impressive power production.
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Official Reports such as this one (which has been ‘mined’, by the Guardian to select ‘bad’ bits) are charged with giving an evaluation of progress to date – which seems to be pretty good – and, since it is a progress report, has a duty to indicate what remains to be done. What remains to be done is often already part of the scheduled programme, but, it might also contain recommendations about things which have emerged from the evaluation or have appeared as possible alternatives based on experiences elsewhere or on new technology.
These reports are an essential and constructive part of the programme and, amongst the people who actually implement the programme are useful in reassuring them about what they have done and in pointing them to the way forward.
Of course, what most of the media and the cavilling politicians want is to be able to shout failure, without any constructive response.
I recall, about 20 years ago, a local primary school had been inspected by Her Majesty’s Inspectors, who gave it possibly the most outstanding report any school had received up to that time. The report had to contain three ‘strengths’ and three ‘points for action’. For this school, the three strengths were huge and, had it been allowed could have extended to a dozen or more. The three ‘points for action’ were pretty insignificant, but, since the inspectors had to write three, they managed to put something in place. The news papers reported this in a five paragraph piece: the headline was, unimaginatively, “Could do better”. The first paragraph said “HMI warned X Primary school that it needed to pulll its socks up.”. The second to fourth paragraphs paraphrased each of the three trivial points for action into insinuations of serious issues. The final paragraph stated “Otherwise, the school was performing satisfactorily”. There were no mentions of HMI’s ‘excellents’, ‘outstandings’, ‘praiseworthys’ or ‘notable achievements.’ The Parent’s Council wrote a complaint, but it received neither publication, nor reply.
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beep Scotland report on the (very encouraging) Sepa figures published today regarding recycling/landfill of domestic waste seemed fairly neutral. Within the report they do mention (if one is alert enough to notice) that this represents a widespread improved performance among 19 Scottish local authorities – that sort of improvement is indicative of good co-ordination and info sharing from the lead Scottish Dept. Also to be found by the dedicated reader is the info that this represents the 6th consecutive annual decrease in landfill totals. Another example of SNP Scottish Govt doing the Day Job really rather well (year after year) – but you’d never guess it from the beeb report: snippet below:
The Sepa figures show the amount of household waste generated in Scotland was 2.46 million tonnes in 2017 – a decrease of 38,153 tonnes from 2016.
The amount of household waste sent to landfill was also down by 24,848 tonnes.
In total 45.6% of waste generated in Scotland was recycled – an increase of 0.6% on the previous year.
It is the sixth consecutive decrease in household waste landfilled since 2011 with more recycled (1.12 million tonnes) than sent to landfill sites (1.11 million tonnes).
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