Talking-up Scotland

(c) Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Though second (only) to that in the West Midlands, business confidence in Scotland at 9.9 is well above the UK average of minus 0.2.

Again, from that well-known to me, but not to the BBC, must-be Marxist-Nationalist, throbbing organ, Insider:

‘The latest ICAEW Business Confidence Monitor’s Scots score is one of the highest in the UK and is second only to that of the West Midlands. Business confidence in Scotland remains firmly positive in the third quarter of 2018, according to new research. The latest ICAEW Business Confidence Monitor shows a score of plus 9.9 which is one of the highest in the UK and is second only to that of the West Midlands.’

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/icaew-business-confidence-scotland-monitor-13240600

I wonder, is that the first good news about business we’ve had recently. Let me check my records:

Scottish business confidence stays high…Ah but!..Oh shut up Revoking Scotland!

63% fall in large business insolvencies as Scottish economy reveals strength

See this Douglas? Business investment in Scotland up 250%!

Scottish Business Strength No.77: Small Scottish construction firms’ growth up 17%

Scottish small businesses still more confident than those in non-Scottish parts

Business activity soars to four-year high across manufacturing and service

Business confidence in Scotland soars by 24% while it sinks 29% in non-Scottish parts of UK

Scottish businesses more likely to be stable than those in rest of UK: News from a parallel universe unknown to our mainstream media

Scottish Government supports economy with new business rates unique in UK

Scottish business confidence higher than in any other region of UK

That all?

In Energy Voice yesterday:

‘New figures have been published by the Scottish Government showing a boost in sales for 2017-18, although production has dipped. The sales value is up by from £16.9bn in 2016-17 thanks to higher oil prices. Scotland accounted for 81% of the overall UK total, down from 82% the previous year. The majority of crude oil production took place in Scotland, meaning Scottish production of sales income was higher than the production 81% share, as crude oil is more expensive than gas.’

https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/north-sea/181446/scotlands-oil-and-gas-sales-up-to-20billion-says-scot-gov-report/

As you know from BBC Scotland, this is bad news for Scotland’s economy. Other reports of bad news, reported here, include:

North Sea expected to produce much more oil and revenue than expected

Scottish crude oil value surges to record level in more than 3 years

A fifth prediction of oil rising to $100 per barrel for Scottish oil, suggests pre-tax revenue of around $1 trillion!

As Scottish oil industry booms, Aberdeen contractors more confident but Scottish media pay little attention.

As oil prices soar and exploration increases, employment in Scotland’s oil industry returns to record levels

A wealthy independent Scotland? Nearly $300 billion in new oil revenue to be unlocked in latest offshore licensing round.

According to Bank of America, oil prices could hit $100 a barrel next year but all of Scotland’s ‘business correspondents’ miss the news again and for the fourth time in a year.

Scottish oil surging back toward £100 per barrel and massive Treasury revenue?

Oil prices to rise to $70 per barrel this summer as two new fields are discovered in last two weeks

Another major oil-find in Scottish sector of North Sea

Multi-million-barrel oil discovery in North Sea

 

From Energy Voice yesterday:

‘Brent crude traded near a two-month high as shrinking oil inventories pointed to an increasingly tight global market. Futures in London were up 0.5 percent after surging 2.2 percent on Tuesday. Industry data showed U.S. inventories slid 8.64 million barrels last week. West Texas Intermediate for October delivery rose as much as $1.31 to $70.16 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange and traded at $70.05 a barrel as of 1:44 p.m. London time.’

https://www.energyvoice.com/marketinfo/181483/brent-crude-hits-two-month-high-as-stockpiles-dwindle/

Why are those Norwegians jumping up and down, cheering? Don’t ask me.

Luckily, our good friends in the Treasury will help Scotland out by giving away all of those worrying revenues. See:

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2018/09/03/london-is-giving-away-scotlands-oil-revenues/

In Europe, only Scotland, Norway, Estonia and Russia are net exporters of energy yet none of them are able to run their own affairs. No wait, it’s only Scotland that is too poor to do so unlike Ireland because it has a massive energy deficit. That’s it. Norway is independent despite its huge energy surplus weighing it down. No, wait, that’s wrong. I’m lost. Where are Murdo Fraser or Annie wells when you need them?

And, why is Norway’s surplus around 20 times greater than Scotland’s when we have even more oilfields. What’s going on? Thank goodness we have the UK Treasury looking after our interests.

 

Scale: August 16 to September 14.

I wonder, does BBC Scotland have anything to do with this boom?

So, good news is liked by many, I’m told, but BBCbaaad is the thing!?

 

Since Monday, BBC Scotland, around 06:26 and then for a further five times in the morning, have we seen what may be the beginnings of a sickly roll of scare stories based on single incidents with no evidence of wider issues? Early morning is of course the best time to scare the Scottish Nomedia’s target audience including the sick, young parents and the elderly (see Footnote 2). Readers new to the term ‘Nomedia’ should follow the link in the footnote below.

This morning (13^th) at 06:27, BBC Scotland headlined:

‘A woman who was sexually abused as a child [21 years ago] has criticised police and others for failing to stop a man abusing generations of girls.’

It’s the lead story on the website too. There wasn’t enough evidence at the time, 21 years ago, so who fed BBC Scotland with this story? Which Labour MSP was it?

Then we heard:

‘It’s been claimed that a serious landslip below a section of the A9 trunk road, may have gone undetected by a maintenance company. Highland councillor Mathew Reiss believes Bear Scotland’s safety inspection regime did not pick up the problem.’

Councillor Reiss then gets the opportunity to imagine the possible consequences. Bear Scotland tell us it’s in hand and that it is not dangerous. Councillor Reiss is an Independent councillor and a retired police chief inspector.

Yesterday (12^th), we heard the misuse of the term ‘significantly’ to describe midwife vacancies but on the 11^th, we had another single case, deeply upsetting for the individual concerned, but greedily snapped up by BBC Scotland’s ambulance-chaser team:

‘Calls for an urgent investigation after a highland man who is paralysed form the neck down had his 24hr care package removed.’

The unfortunate gentleman also has MS and depression. There was no opportunity for the health board to explain. Was it really removed? In a clerical mistake? Removed and replaced by a different one? Will we ever know?

Choosing these stories is a deliberate editorial action. We could have had the more informative, for the wider public, reports on the dramatic improvements in MS treatment times or of the actual midwife vacancies numbers falling only slightly and the avoidance of a  crisis like that emerging in NHS England, reported here, but no, we get highly dramatized, personalised but not usefully contextualised, single cases which smell strongly of Unionist political media feed and which the Daily Mail would leap on, drooling. It’s also, simply put, just bad journalism.

Footnote: This report uses Talking-up Scotland’s new editorial policy, approved yesterday by its reader engagement group, on naming media such as BBC Scotland, ‘Nomedia’. See this for further information on Nomedia:

Scotland’s Nomeds, lost souls of the Wilderness of Nomedia

Footnote 2: See this for more on scaring the voters in the early hours:

The Power of Early Morning Nightmares and Expectant Mothers: BBC Scotland callously undermines the morale of midwives, their patients, expectant mothers and their relatives, with highly selective and un-contextualised information

 

 

 

 

 

The proportion of newly diagnosed patients receiving first contact with a specialist nurse within 10 working days of confirmed diagnosis has risen more than 10% in seven years, from 86% to 96.7%. More dramatically, the proportion of those receiving first contact with specialists, ten days after referral, has increased by 50% in the same period.

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Scottish-Healthcare-Audits/Publications/2018-09-11/2018-09-11-SMSR-Summary.pdf?5208986998

These are important figures for Scotland especially in the North. The further north you live in the UK, the higher the incidence of MS, with Orkney having the highest level in the world!

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/dec/10/orkney-islands-multiple-sclerosis-rate

 

Gary Robertson returns to Pacific Quay

(c) Pixelstalk

Out walking my neighbour’s Border Terrier, shouting ‘No Aggie’ every so often, my ‘brain’ had some thoughts [Reader, insert sarcastic thought here], around the word ‘No’ and leading to a solution to something that has troubled me.

What convenient word is there to label those journalists opposed to independence for Scotland? I’ve been using ‘Unionist’ and more recently ‘Loyalist’ partly as a fun way of annoying those of them who might find the implied Orange sympathies a step too far. I could use ‘No-supporting’ or ‘Anti-independence’ or ‘establishment’ or ‘MSM’ for ‘mainstream media’ but I find none of these ideal as a general label.

Half-way along the dog walk, I thought, Archimedes-like, ‘Nomedia’! I chewed it over like a Border terrier might and, the more I did, the better I liked it. It’s kind of inclusive of the idea of those supporting No in a referendum and of the idea that the rest of us really have, in them, no media to represent or to develop our thinking. When they lie about the facts they are Nomedia in the sense of no-use media. When they miss the good news on Scotland or when they neglect to pursue such as Ruth Davidson when she sorely needs to be interrogated, they are Nomedia in the sense of not being there at all.

So, having decided on that, I realised that, Nomedia has added potential in that it can be a place devoid of any media that serve the interests of the people of Nomedia. The self-serving media elites of Nomedia can be called ‘Nomeds’. Nomeds has the added sense of those who have forgotten to request a repeat prescription for their medication, a combined anti-psychotic and anti-depressant designed to make them more able to cope with change. Perhaps, most enjoyable, we can have ‘nomish’ suggesting intellectual smallness of mind. Coincidentally or not, the man from the BBC who reported me to my boss in 2014 was Ian Small. Then, we can term those unable to settle and to identify with nurturing, communitarian and progressive social groups, ‘nomedic’.

It then follows that you can use nomedical, nomedically, nomedialistic and nomedialitarian.

I give you this word. Go forth and…eh…mibbe..something…or whatever…ken?

From ISD, yesterday, we see that, from 1 April to 30 June 2018, there were 5 033 new patients referred to pain clinic. That was a 3.2% increase on the 4 874 seen in the previous quarter. Despite the increase in demand, 71.6% were seen in 18 weeks, compared to 71.5% in the previous quarter. That 0.1% difference is not significant though the BBC Scotland editorial guide tells me that a 0.1% fall in performance can be significant if it makes the Scottish government look bad.

https://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Waiting-Times/Publications/2018-09-11/2018-09-11-ChronicPain-Publication-Summary.pdf?28968447447

Looking for NHS England’s equivalent figures I googled ‘England chronic pain waiting times’. I found no figures for any part of NHS England but, despite the search terms, eight for parts of Scotland! Where have they gone? Are they being collected at all? Were they so bad?

Note: Making a comparison with England is now back in the BBC Scotland editorial guide after it appeared that the Scottish Government was encouraging the export of baby boy calves while England was sending none.

 

 

 

© BBC and Channel 4

Tonight at 6:30pm, Jackie Bird announced proudly:

‘A ferry operator [P&O] is to stop carrying calves to Europe after animal welfare concerns were raised in an investigation by BBC Scotland’s Disclosure team.’

The decision by P&O is a panicked reaction to ‘Disclosure: The Dark Side of Dairy’, a deeply flawed and confused piece of work, already covered here:

Reporting Scotland lie about their own documentary to ‘beef-up’ the bad news for Scotland

Most important, was the BBC team’s failure to provide any concrete evidence of the transport of the very young calves beyond Northern Ireland, after a 2 hour-only journey. Finding that she had followed the same lorry from Larne to France, but now containing much older calves, we were asked to accept as evidence only verbal conversations she claimed to have had. I was not convinced.

BBC Scotland’s team knew that the only alternative to transporting and fattening calves for later slaughter is the shooting of the calves, within days of their birth. Farmer’s representatives made this clear and expressed their disquiet at having to choose the shooting option. It must be a deeply harrowing experience to shoot a virtually new-born baby animal and, from a waste management perspective, the incineration and the burial of ash from thousands of calves, plus the failure to add all of that food into the chain seems utterly indefensible.

In their populist and shoddy reporting, BBC Scotland seems not to have looked at evidence, properly or perhaps at all. See, for example, this, available to them in March:

‘The number of male calves being killed straight after birth is on the rise again, despite efforts by the dairy industry to end the practice known as ‘the dirty secret’. A Guardian analysis shows that it can cost a farmer up to £30 per calf to sell it on for beef or veal, while early disposal costs just £9. A growing number of farmers feel compelled to take the latter option, with 95,000 killed on-farm in the most recent set of figures.’

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/26/dairy-dirty-secret-its-still-cheaper-to-kill-male-calves-than-to-rear-them

BBC Scotland has rushed in here, ill-informed, seeking popular approval and, if they can, harm for the reputation of the Scottish Government. The costs may be considerable, but will they face any?