Talking-up Scotland

Some facts re Cambridge Analytica:

1. An external consultant for the SNP had one meeting concluding they were a bunch of cowboys and rejected them
2. The Conservative party had meetings with them in 2016
3. Several major Conservative party donors have invested in them
4. SCL, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, has been run by a chairman of the Oxford Conservative Association

There’s no story here with regard to the SNP but there’s a real opportunity for investigative journalism if any of the current crop had the balls to pursue the Tories. They haven’t. Instead they’ve gone for their preferred target, the SNP, and in a show of end-of-times churnalism, produced these headlines:

Scotsman: ‘SNP accused of hypocrisy over links to Cambridge Analytica’

Herald: ‘SNP accused of hypocrisy after failing to disclose meeting with Cambridge Analytica’ AND ‘Blunder by SNP HQ adds to tensions with MPs’.

So, an exploratory meeting by an external consultant leading to a quick negative assessment is somehow a blunder and hypocrisy? It’s clear where those words would be better applied.

BBC went with Cambridge Analytica ‘met SNP’ to pitch services – BBC News ‘cleverly’ using speech marks to distance themselves from complaints.

Worst of all, as you might expect, the ‘Scottish’ Daily Mail attacked blindly with ‘SNP must come clean on its data talks.’ AND ‘EXPOSED: SNP’s SECRET LINK TO DATA ROW FIRM.’

Here’s the correct headline:

‘SNP has never worked with Cambridge Analytica.’

Sorry, the ‘editor’ doesn’t like it.

I’m getting the hang of these speech marks.

Off-topic Footnote: The National’s pet right-winger, Michael Fry, supports the missile attacks on Syria. I haven’t bought one for some time, but I won’t be buying one again.

 

(c) UWS

In Insider today:

‘A new imaging system to increase crop yield is led by Glasgow firm Wideblue and brings together top brains from University of the West of Scotland, University of Strathclyde, the James Hutton Institute. The team’s HSI system, manufactured by Wideblue, uses UWS-designed ‘linear variable optical filters’ to disperse light reflecting from plants into specific wavelengths and colours. A new type of imaging system for use in agriculture, designed to be less expensive than existing technology and to increase crop yield, is being developed in a partnership between academics and industry.’

 

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/wideblue-universities-crop-imaging-system-12377510

‘Top brains’ at my old employer? I’m saying nothing.

Seriously though, this is another example of Scotland’s university sector punching above its weight in research which will improve the lives of those in the developed and developing world. See these recent examples:

Scotland’s world-leading expertise to the fore again in India and Bangladesh

Scotland’s tidal energy expertise to help poor communities in South-East Asia

Edinburgh poised to make significant advances in mental health research based upon data science ‘unparalleled in UK’.

Scottish research to be used in $1.2 billion initiative to help poor Indian farmers

Let me know if this makes Reporting Scotland?

(c) BBC

BBC Scotland and the Insider business magazine both reported on the Bank of Scotland’s purchasing managers’ index (PMI), issued two days ago. Here’s what Insider chose to emphasise:

‘Private sector output expands at fastest pace in five months. Scottish private sector companies ended the first quarter of 2018 with a renewed increase in output, according to the Bank of Scotland. The bank’s purchasing managers’ index (PMI) revealed that higher business activity was underpinned by a moderate rise in new orders. Encouraged by the upturn in demand, firms hired additional staff to cope with the greater workload. Finally, an optimistic outlook towards activity over the coming 12 months was retained in March. Positive sentiment was attributed to planned company expansions, new product launches and forecasts of new business wins.’

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/private-sector-output-expands-fastest-12357728

Here’s how BBC Scotland summarised the same report, yesterday morning, six times, during BBC Breakfast:

‘Ouput from Scotland’s private firms rose by a small amount last month combining two years of either mild contraction or very weak growth. The monthly purchasing mangers’ index said growth continued to be (curled lip) weaker than across the UK as a whole. It turned mildly positive in March due to the service sector seeing a rise in orders while on balance, manufacturing firms reported output was down. Confidence in recruitment were (sic) up and firms were found to be putting up prices as costs rose.’

It’s difficult to believe these are reports on the same document. Remember Insider is by no means a pro-independence news agency. The miserable, grudging account by BBC Scotland can only be the product of an agenda aimed at talking down the Scottish economy.

The choice of ‘small’, ‘mild contraction’, ‘very weak growth’, ‘weaker’ and ‘mildly positive’ in the space of only a few seconds, combined with the Graham Stewart’s flat delivery and disappointed facial expressions, reminded strongly of the Reverend I M Jolly.

 

 

http://www.shutterstock.com/

For an introduction to this series of media-monitoring reports, see:

https://thoughtcontrolscotland.com/2018/04/16/the-power-of-early-morning-nightmares-waking-up-to-bbc-scotland-and-learning-to-fear-an-independent-future-16th-april-2018/

There were five reports covered with, typically, four in each insert:

1. Scottish Government funds to tackle domestic abuse
2. UK Government legal challenge to Scottish and Welsh government’s EU continuity bill
3. ADHD treatment limitations
4. Scottish Government’s ‘lack of ambition’ on air pollution
5. Scotrail strike action during Old Firm Game

The first and second reports could be seen as presenting the Scottish Government in a fairly positive light, supporting an important initiative to reduce domestic abuse and appearing to be protecting Scottish devolution against heavy-handed UK government legal action. The third and fourth reports essentially blame NHS Scotland and then the Scottish Government for failures to act. The Friends of the Earth accusation of ‘lack of ambition’ regarding pollution, repeated five times throughout the morning, will have been quite memorable. The Scotrail strike action threat was only to appear once at 6.25am. Neither the Friends of the Earth accusation nor the Scottish ADHD Coalition sources, which were presented uncritically by the BCC, can be considered reliable as both are campaigning movements rather than independent or academic research centres.

Reports from 16/4 to 17/4/18                                                           Total (previous)

Positive news for SNP / Scottish Government                                    2 (0)

Negative news for SNP / Scottish Government                                  2 (1)

Positive news for Scottish economy                                                    0 (0)

Negative news for Scottish economy                                                  1 (0)

Positive news for Scottish health services                                         0 (0)

Negative news for Scottish health services                                       1 (0)

Other positive news for Scotland                                                        0 (0)

Other negative news for Scotland                                                       3 (2)

Use of reliable sources                                                                           1 (1)

Use of unreliable sources                                                                      3 (1)

Reliance on outdated GDP or other productivity figures               1 (1)

 

Early days.

In the opening paragraphs, in Insider magazine today, the Scottish Chambers of Commerce say:

‘As with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s successful recent trip, the primary job of any Scots mission to China, private or public sector-led is simple: To hammer home that Scotland has a distinct and alluring commercial proposition, and move it up from being 14th in Scotland’s list of export destinations.’

https://www.insider.co.uk/special-reports/scottish-chambers-trade-mission-china-12371501

Note their easy recognition of the success of the trip. Remember the SCC has been no friend of the SNP in the past. In the Scotsman of 7^th May 2014:

‘Almost one in five businesses are either intending to or considering leaving Scotland if there is a Yes vote in the independence referendum, a survey has suggested. Research for the Scottish Chambers of Commerce (SCC) found that 8 per cent of firms had definite plans to move away from Scotland if it voted to leave the UK, while a further 10 per cent said they were considering moving away if this was the case.’

https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scottish-independence-18-of-firms-may-leave-1-3394989

So, I think, even BBC Scotland might have to recognise that the SCC assessment of the trip as being successful, was non-partisan.

Most of you will already know that BBC Scotland and much of the mainstream media have been ignoring the trip and concentrating on the cost of refurbishing Nicola’s official pad and her alleged favouring of a Chinese contractor in a planning application for a power station in East Lothian.

Bias by omission is notoriously difficult to prove but to completely ignore the First Minister’s trip to the world’s biggest economy, China, takes some doing when you have no other story of comparable significant to replace it with. See the above screen grab for a look at the competing stories today.

Footnote: I too was locked in a cupboard by a teacher. Art teacher, Victoria Buttberg, locked me and one other in the walk-in Art cupboard in Grangemouth High School (c) 1968/69. She had a visitor and didn’t want the only two boys in the class offending their sensibilities by drawing people getting shot, as we did then. We found the books with nudes and came out confirmed admirers of the Rubenesque.

http://www.shutterstock.com/

I’m returning to reporting on something I last looked at in September 2016 – the powerful propagandising, by the repetition of scare stories, used by BBC Scotland as part of BBC Breakfast from 7 am to 9.15am every week-day. BBC Scotland have six short inserts of around two minutes, in this time, roughly every thirty minutes. Today, 16^th April 2018, the news was all bad, six times. I’ll return to the details and begin the process of gathering and adding up daily evidence of an agenda which may turn out to support the thesis that, over time, they will generate a powerful negative effect on viewers’ perceptions of the case for independence. First, just for today, here’s the explanation I offered back in 2016 of just how, negative early morning news, can more effectively propagandise than the same news offered at later times when we are more ready to deal with life’s challenges:

Dr R Fletcher, ‘Surgeon to the Lunatic Asylum near Gloucester’ 1833 (p.206) wrote this in 1883. I know it’s not a recent and reliable source, as we used to say in Higher Education, but I think it shows that we’ve known about this effect for some time. It was no accident, he wrote, that medieval monks and more recently, private school boarders, got started with their religious indoctrination before dawn so as to catch them anxious, fearful and absorbent of the required sense of superiority and deep racial prejudices necessary for the conquest of lesser peoples.

Making these early hours particularly effective for indoctrination, they often follow on from nightmares:

‘Nightmares tend to occur during the early morning, as opposed to late evening with night terrors, and patients usually have good recall of the events of the dream.’ (Science-based Medicine, 2014)

Moving forward to Scotland in the years after Referendum 2014, as we watch the early news from ‘where you [people] are now’, on BBC Breakfast, does the above matter? Well….

‘I would like to re-emphasise the importance of “bad news” in the genesis of psychopathology, as this does not seem to be generally recognised. Bad news, of deaths and other disasters, is not available to our primate cousins, who are not equipped to exchange gossip, but has been available to our ancestors over the last few million years since language evolved. Since these ancestors lived in groups of about 150 individuals, the amount of bad news they could generate was limited, even if we add in bad news from neighbouring groups. Now, we have available the bad news of many billions of people. Since news of death or other disaster may presage the nearby existence of a predator or of raiding parties from neighbouring tribes, or of disease, it must have been adaptive for bad news to increase anxiety and promote activities to ward off occurrence, such as increased washing, checking of security arrangements, and the advantageous territorial constriction of agoraphobia.’

See that last phrase there? Is that a way of saying ‘Better Together?’ Is Unionism a kind of agoraphobia, a fear of autonomy and wide-open EU spaces?

Back to the present, what stories did BBC Scotland use in its 2 to 3minute inserts, at six intervals between 06:26 and 09;06?

There were four reports at 6.26 but only the first two were repeated throughout the morning:

1. Increase in autism and lack of support
2. Output from private firms lower than across UK
3. Failure to use seatbelts and abuse of mobile phones while driving
4. High incidence of Lyme disease in Uist

Story 2 had six long sentences reporting an 80% increase in the diagnosis of autism over the last 5 years and an increase in schools from over 8 500 to over 15 000. Most important, an ‘expert’ insisted that they are not served by the current systems. The expert is really a charity head and does not offer any empirical, authoritative evidence of the scale of any failure. By implication, the Scottish government has failed.

Story 2 had four long sentences, based on a bank of Scotland report suggesting ‘mild contraction or ‘very weak growth’ in productivity in parts of the Scottish economy. Most important was the suggestion that growth continued to be ‘weaker than across the UK as a whole.’ The BBC report does accurately represent the Bank of Scotland release but does not, of course, mention the now long-standing rejection of GDP or other production figures as a meaningful measure of economic well-being. See this for further explanation:

How BBC’s Douglas Fraser manages to talk down Scotland’s economy using out-of-date facts and past-it thinking

Stories 3 and 4 were short and may simply contribute to the general air of negativity which is conducive conservatism or fear of change.

Reports from 16/4 to 16/4                                                                Total (previous)

1. Positive news for SNP / Scottish Government                                    0
2. Negative news for SNP / Scottish Government                                  1
3. Positive news for Scottish economy                                                      0
4. Negative news for Scottish economy                                                    1
5. Positive news for Scottish health services                                           0
6. Negative news for Scottish health services                                         0
7. Other positive news for Scotland                                                         0
8. Other negative news for Scotland                                                        2
9. Use of reliable sources                                                                           1
10. Use of unreliable sources                                                                      1
11. Reliance on outdated GDP or other productivity figures               1

 

Hopefully back tomorrow.

Footnote: This research methodology avoids any Jackie Bird terror for me.

Under the headline, today, of:

‘The economy: inclusively stalled’

Douglas Fraser, Business/economy editor, Scotland, tells us:

‘Scotland’s been in recession. You may have missed it. It was as shallow a recession as it’s possible to have. But in 2015, we had two quarters of economic output contracting.’

The headline should of course have ‘in 2015’ added. However, this claim is based on the fact that ‘mining and quarrying’ which includes producing oil and gas, contracted by 10% in 2015. Douglas reminds us that actually pumping the oil into tankers or pipelines doesn’t count but that laying or maintaining pipelines does. It seems we just have to accept that daft rule even if it artificially generated a recession in the Scottish economy back in 2015.

So, gleefully, Douglas is able to remind us, in 2018 that:

‘So, for the record, in the second quarter of 2015, there was a 5.2% drop in that “mining and quarrying” sector, followed in the third quarter by a 4.1% drop.  As a result, the economy as a whole contracted by 0.1% in the second quarter of that year, and by the same amount in the third quarter, before picking up. Two consecutive quarters of contraction equals recession.’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-43767372

 Yeah, I’ve found a recession! Is this a news column or a history column Douglas? So, the news for Scottish readers, in April 2018, is that there was a sort of recession, in 2015, which we didn’t notice but, don’t worry, Douglas is there at the BBC to remind us of it.

Wait a minute, what about 2016, 2017 and 2018? Shouldn’t ‘the news’ cover at least the latter part of this period? Shouldn’t it also be based on current thinking about how you measure the strength of an economy?

We’ve had so many objective indicators of a robust economy, in Scotland, I lose track of them. See these, again:

Hard evidence of a robust economy further undermines media doubts based on unreliable and meaningless GDP statistics

Scottish economy is thriving on innovation as patent filing runs at 4 times the UK rate

And more evidence of a strong economy: starting salaries in Scotland increase at quickest rate for more than 3 years

17% increase in number of Scots planning to start a new business as Scottish economy strengthens

Scotland’s economy continues to show signs of good health and growth

Reports of a strong Scottish economy just keep coming. Now debt decrees down 93% in the last three months

More evidence Scottish economy is strong: Demand for office space in Glasgow highest for ten years

Clear signs of a robust economy? 15% increase in Edinburgh office take-up in 2017 and Glasgow set for a ‘stellar 12 months.’

Scottish businesses continue to show signs of health with insolvencies down 23% as the Scottish economy holds strong

The Auditor General strongly, with no qualifications, commends the Scottish Government on its ‘sound’ management of the economy. The lowest under-spend since devolution.

With only 8% of the population, Scotland’s maritime sector accounts for 25% of the UK maritime sector’s (GVA) contribution to the economy and is 17.5% more productive than the UK marine oil and gas sector. Once more, too wee, too poor?

12% increase in the formation of social enterprises in Scotland over only 2 years leads to a £2 billion economic contribution to Scottish economy.

 

And, despite the apparent 2015 recession in oil and gas production, which Douglas reminds us of, why have we had then had this recent boom? See:

‘Boom in Production from Giant [Kraken] Shetland Field Spurs Oil Industry’

Scottish Gas output rises as production begins on a new field that could fuel, by itself, all of post-independence Scotland

Value of Scottish oil continues to climb above $70 per barrel

Scotland’s oil-based prosperity is clear as BP commits to two new developments

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

April 4, 2018johnrobertson8348 Comments

Another major oil-find in Scottish sector of North Sea

Multi-million-barrel oil discovery in North Sea

Writing in April 2018, why didn’t Douglas tell us about the massive finds and the boom in value over more than a year now so that we can put his little recession, more than two years ago, into a bit of historical perspective? Has he been asleep or is he hoping we have been?

Finally, once more, real economists have long since ditched GDP as a satisfactory or meaningful measure of the health of an economy.  For the umpteenth time, see this:

According to the latest GDP figures, Scotland’s economy only grew by 0.8% in 2017 while the UK figure was 1.8%. The Scotsman and the Herald responded with:

‘Scots growth lags behind UK with fears of no U-turn’

‘Scotland’s economy continues to lag behind the rest of the UK, as critics take aim at SNP’

Even if Scotland’s GDP figures were accurate, they’d still tell us very little about the health of our economy and I suspect the critics know this, but GDP remains a convenient stick to beat the SNP with so there’s no way they’re putting it down.

First, even the DAVOS elite have turned against GDP. As far back as 2016 they said:

‘Three leading economists and academics at Davos agree: GDP is a poor way of assessing the health of our economies and we urgently need to find a new measure. Speaking in different sessions, IMF head Christine Lagarde, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, and MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson stressed that as the world changes, so too should the way we measure progress. A country’s GDP is an estimate of the total value of goods and services they produce. But even when the concept was first developed back in the late 1930s, the man behind it, Simon Kuznets, warned it was not a suitable measure of a country’s economic development: “He understood that GDP is not a welfare measure, it is not a measure of how well we are all doing. It counts the things that we’re buying and selling, but it’s quite possible for GDP to go in the opposite direction of welfare.”’

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/gdp/

Secondly, from Manchester University:

‘The official statisticians are not the only people who think the quarterly ritual of City economists and commentators making a song and dance about the headline change in GDP – is it 0.2% or 0.3% – is a nonsense. The figure for the change every three months is the outcome of a very complicated process of collecting data from many different sources, adjusting it for seasonal changes, summing it, adjusting for inflation and so on. The inevitable margin of error is sometimes bigger than the headline number. Revisions occur frequently. With hindsight, recessions can be revised away.’

http://blog.policy.manchester.ac.uk/featured/2015/01/time-to-ditch-gdp-as-a-measure-of-economic-well-being/

Thirdly, from real professor Richard Murphy at City University in London:

‘There will, no doubt, be those saying that low GDP growth (and none in terms of GDP per head) is bad news for Scotland. This, though, assumes that, first of all the GDP data is right, and second that GDP matters. There is no way we can be sure that the GDP data for Scotland is right because the calculation of GDP requires accurate data on imports and exports from Scotland and all experts agree that Scotland does not have that information. In that case whether or not the data is accurate depends upon whether or not a fair proportion of estimates to and from Scotland to the rest of the world, as well as to and from the rest of the UK, are correctly estimated. I have my doubts about this and explained why to the Scottish Parliament last year……We now know that GDP is a poor indication of well-being. In particular, the share of wages in GDP has been falling steadily over time whilst that of profits has been rising…..The Scottish Government would be wise to adopt increases in median pay as its economic goal and stop worrying about the nearly meaningless Scottish GDP measure that is beloved only by those who do not seem to have the best interests of Scottish people at heart.’

http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/about/

The above, only three, from a host of commentaries, debunk the value of GDP.

So, Douglas, why on the BBC Scotland News site, in April 2018, are you writing about a wee slump in one industry in 2015, when you could be updating us on current developments in the Scottish economy using current thinking about how you write sensibly about such a thing?

That might encourage Scots to support independence?

Oh, I see it now. In that case, maybe a piece on the Darrien Scheme next? How about:

‘Scotland’s economy all fucked up, from Darrien to the SNP’

??

 

Regular readers will know there is a steady flow of information suggesting that the Scottish economy is more robust than our media would like us to believe and consequently ignored by that media, despite its easy accessibility on specialist sites such as Insider and the Scottish Financial News. Remember, these are by no means pro-independence sources.

According to the Scottish Financial News, today, Scotland has the lowest rate of risk of insolvency in the UK. Based on research by R3, 39.1% of UK firms are at risk while only 32.5% of Scottish firms are.

http://www.scottishfinancialnews.com/17153/scottish-firms-generally-stable-rest-uk-although-risk-levels-risen-r3/

I know, I’m repeating myself but here is a recent list of links to those reports contradicting the negative view of the Scottish economy so popular with our media, Unionist politicians and their pet economists:

Hard evidence of a robust economy further undermines media doubts based on unreliable and meaningless GDP statistics

Scottish economy is thriving on innovation as patent filing runs at 4 times the UK rate

And more evidence of a strong economy: starting salaries in Scotland increase at quickest rate for more than 3 years

17% increase in number of Scots planning to start a new business as Scottish economy strengthens

Scotland’s economy continues to show signs of good health and growth

Reports of a strong Scottish economy just keep coming. Now debt decrees down 93% in the last three months

More evidence Scottish economy is strong: Demand for office space in Glasgow highest for ten years

Clear signs of a robust economy? 15% increase in Edinburgh office take-up in 2017 and Glasgow set for a ‘stellar 12 months.’

Scottish businesses continue to show signs of health with insolvencies down 23% as the Scottish economy holds strong

The Auditor General strongly, with no qualifications, commends the Scottish Government on its ‘sound’ management of the economy. The lowest under-spend since devolution.

With only 8% of the population, Scotland’s maritime sector accounts for 25% of the UK maritime sector’s (GVA) contribution to the economy and is 17.5% more productive than the UK marine oil and gas sector. Once more, too wee, too poor?

12% increase in the formation of social enterprises in Scotland over only 2 years leads to a £2 billion economic contribution to Scottish economy.

England runs massive trade deficit. Only Scotland has a viable sustainable economy, exporting more than she imports thus requiring no national debt

As for GDP, see:

When will Scotland’s economics correspondents catch up with current thinking on GDP? When they can find something else to attack the SNP with.

(c) Getty

From Property Wire, yesterday:

‘The buy to let market in Scotland is seeing a surge in landlords from other parts of the UK, most notably England, investing in property, new research has found. Since 2012 the number of English landlords registering tenancy deposits on properties in Scotland has risen by over 430%, according to the research by SafeDeposits Scotland, which is warning landlords to make sure they comply with different deposit rules in Scotland. Six years ago, there were 260 landlords living in England registered deposits with them on rental properties in Scotland. That number surged to 1,388 new registrations in 2017 and data for 2018 shows that the trend continues as the number is up 226% on the same period in 2017.’

https://www.propertywire.com/news/uk/surge-english-landlords-operating-scotland-new-research-shows/

The article’s central concern was that many of these landlords might not be familiar with the deposit protection legislation in Scotland and may not be following it to properly protect their tenants’ deposits. I can’t find anything to suggest that the Scottish scheme is better or worse.

Property Wire go on to suggest reasons for this trend in: ‘variations in rates of stamp duty in England and Land and Buildings Transaction Tax in Scotland, may make investing more attractive in the north.’ Lower prices than in England and tax relief on cheaper properties probably also make Scotland an attractive market where it’s easier for these landlords to make a profit.

Not surprisingly, I’d see it as another sign of health in the Scottish economy of the kind I often report here:

Hard evidence of a robust economy further undermines media doubts based on unreliable and meaningless GDP statistics

Scottish Government supports economy with new business rates unique in UK

More evidence of actual strength in Scottish economy ignored by Scottish mainstream media

 

The June settlement is now $72.22 per barrel, the highest for 3 years. The actual amount traded on Wednesday was 52% above the average. Current instability in the Middle-East is one factor.

https://www.oilandgaspeople.com/news/16451/oil-surges-to-three-year-high-as-middle-east-tensions-intensify/

However, growing demand from Asia is a constant factor which seems likely, on its own to push prices even further to around £100 per barrel. See:

Is a third forecast that Scotland’s oil will hit $100 per barrel again, a sure sign?

And, contrary to some ‘experts’, there is still plenty left in the North Sea, with even more to come online west of Shetland:

20 years till peak demand for Scotland’s oil, time to get our share?