Talking-up Scotland

(c) Sky News

Fake news/ – it is surely all in the framing? From beeb ‘home news’ site this evening comes this headline and tag –

‘Remarkable show of solidarity’

By Jonathan Marcus, BBC diplomatic correspondent

The collective expulsions from the US and EU member states is a remarkable show of solidarity with Britain, even more so because it comes at a time when UK-EU relations are strained due to the Brexit negotiations.’

But when one looks at the figures (included within the article – but not discussed) the EU states’ ‘remarkable show of solidarity’ seems not so very much in reality:

‘Who is expelling diplomats?

The UK announced it was expelling 23 Russian diplomats earlier this month.

EU countries: France (4); Germany (4); Poland (4); Czech Republic (3); Lithuania (3); Denmark (2); Netherlands (2); Italy (2); Spain (2); Estonia (1); Croatia (1); Finland (1); Hungary (1); Latvia (1); Romania (1); Sweden (1).

EU countries that have said they have no intention of expelling diplomats include Austria, Greece and Portugal, although all have said they support the UK and condemn the poisoning.’

I seem to recall there are currently 28 EU member states. Including the UK I make it 17 member states announcing diplomatic expulsions. With the beeb identifying by name only 3 states who are choosing not to expel Russian diplomats. Even my awful arithmetic tells me that the beeb seems to have neglected to mention the positions taken by a further 8 member states (including the Republic of Ireland). Now, it may be these further 8 EU member states are currently considering their positions (In which case surely that could have been identified in the article?)

Surely there couldn’t have been any attempt by the beeb correspondent to boost the idea of a ‘..remarkable show of solidarity..’ being shown by deliberately minimising the list of those EU member states who haven’t yet rushed to join in with the diplomatic expulsions when comparing it with the list of those member states which have? The beeb surely couldn’t do such a thing could it? That wouldn’t be cricket – would it?

Notice also that of the 16 EU member states allegedly showing ‘..remarkable show of solidarity..’ with the UK the largest number (7 states) are expelling a SINGLE Russian diplomat each – with a further 4 EU states expelling only 2 Russian diplomats – and no EU state (other than UK) expelling more than 4 Russian diplomats.

I’m no expert in diplomacy/diplomatic history but – it would strike me – that the beeb headline claiming a ‘REMARKABLE show of solidarity’ perhaps needs to be run past the new Fake News editorial suite?

Here’s the STV headline:

‘Politicians tackle Islamophobia after increase in attacks’

The report goes on to say:

‘Politicians will consider further action to tackle an “abhorrent” anti-Muslim campaign as a community representative said it has already triggered Islamophobic incidents in Scotland.   Police Scotland representatives will tell MSPs of action taken so for against social media and letter campaign urging people to “punish” a Muslim. A statement on behalf of Mr Sarwar said Glasgow’s ethnic minority communities have been alerted to give allegations of five serious hate crimes in the past 10 days. These are said to include an allegation that a schoolboy asked a young girl if he could pull her hijab off and film it to earn “points” for the campaign – which assigns these for crimes against Muslims.’

Is that a ‘serious’ hate crime? Is this hard evidence of any increase? Toward the end of the STV and the BBC reports we read:

‘No-one in Scotland is known to have received a copy, but Labour MSP Anas Sarwar said there has been a “spike” in racist and Islamophobic crimes in Glasgow.’

So, the headline is a lie.

https://stv.tv/news/scotland/1411167-politicians-consider-more-action-against-anti-muslim-campaign/

BBC Scotland’s headline is at least not an outright fib:

‘MSPs to discuss concerns over ‘vile’ Islamophobic letters’

but it does go on to add unsourced rumours to the bonfire and to conflate the situation in Scotland with that in England:

‘There are fears the campaign may have led to physical attacks in Scotland. Concerns have also been raised about them in the House of Commons, with MPs describing the “abhorrent” letters as a “really urgent situation”.’

Is the above saying that concerns at Westminster are justifying fears in Scotland?

Again, there are one or two anecdotal reports of abuse but none of any arrests and almost at the end of the report:

‘Although there are no known recipients in Scotland, they have nonetheless caused considerable alarm and the community needs reassurance, especially since the letters have already triggered Islamophobic incidents here.’

If no one has received one of them, how could they have been alarmed?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-43544155

OK, how about some real evidence of the kind a decent journalist might have reported:

‘There were 3,349 [hate crime] charges reported in 2016-17, 10 percent fewer than in 2015-16, and the lowest number reported since 2003-04.’

http://www.copfs.gov.uk/media-site-news-from-copfs/1559-hate-crime-in-scotland-2016-17-report-released

Remember these figures include anti-semitism (17), racism, Anglophobia, EastEuropeanphobia, Catholicphobia, and Proddyphobia.

Also, for context:

‘Hate crimes have rocketed by almost a third in the UK in the past year, with unprecedented spikes around the EU referendum and terror attacks recorded by police. New figures released by the Home Office confirm victims’ reports of a dramatic increase in incidents motivated by attackers’ hostility towards their race, nationality, religion or other factors. Data from police forces across England and Wales showed there were almost 80,400 hate crimes recorded in the 2016/17 financial year.’

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/hate-crimes-eu-referendum-spike-brexit-terror-attacks-police-home-office-europeans-xenophobia-a8004716.html

I’m part-time, getting-on and have no research assistant. How can I offer context, clarity and accuracy when STV and BBC, with their resources, cannot?

(c) http://www.jpost.com

In July 2017, the Scotsman wrote:

 ‘Hate offences against Jews in Scotland reach worst level on record’

Reading the article in full and you saw that ‘Hate offences against Jews in the UK reach worst level on record’ would’ve been accurate but there was absolutely no evidence of such a spike in Scotland presented anywhere in the piece. The headline was a lie. First-of-all, for the UK as-a-whole, see this:

‘Anti-Semitic crimes recorded by police forces around the UK increased by 14.9 per cent in 2016, according to data provided following Freedom of Information requests. The total of 1,078 offences registered last year compared to 938 in 2015 and 746 in 2014.’

Now, for Scotland:

‘Scotland recorded 26 anti-Semitic incidents [only 15 led to charges] in 2016, with new figures revealing that suspected hate offences targeting Jewish victims UK-wide surged for the third consecutive year to reach the worst level on record.’

So, the surge was UK-wide and no evidence that it was present in Scotland was offered. Indeed, with a little simple arithmetic we saw that the opposite was true.

Scotland’s population was 5.295 million [in mid-2017]. The UK population was 65.14 million. Scotland’s population was therefore 8.13% of the total. So, if the surge to 1 078 cases across the UK was present in Scotland too there would’ve been more than 87 cases in Scotland yet there were only 26 recorded and only 15 charged. So, the Scotsman headline, if honest, should have read something like:

‘Hate offences against Jews in Scotland much less common than in other parts of the UK’

Why didn’t it?

http://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/hate-offences-against-jews-in-scotland-reach-worst-level-on-record-1-4505157

Then, in February 2018, in an anonymous piece, the Herald headlined:

‘Alarm as anti-Semitic incidents surge across the UK’

and wrote:

‘Anti-Semitic hate incidents have reached a new record high in the UK, new figures show. A report indicates that the Jewish community was targeted at a rate of nearly four times a day last year. The Community Security Trust (CST), a charity which monitors anti-Semitism, recorded 1,382 anti-Semitic incidents nationwide in 2017.’

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15911154.Anti_semitic_hate_crimes_soar_to_record_high_in_UK/

Clearly with more time on my hands than the reporter, I had a look at the actual report, as opposed to their press release. On page 34, I found that there had been 1 382 incidents in the UK in 2017 up 3% from 1 346 in 2016. So, not much of a surge overall but there had been a 34% increase in physical assaults from 108 in 2016 to 145 in 2017.

On the same page of the report, I found a breakdown revealing that of the 1 382 incidents, only 16 had occurred in Scotland, up 1 from 15 in 2016. With 8% of the population, only 1.15% of all anti-Semitic incidents took place in Scotland.

‘Incidents’ included tweets and shouts from passing cars. In the report, no cases of physical assault in Scotland were reported. Only two examples were offered, one was a tweet and the other was an insult from a shopkeeper angered by Israeli attacks in Gaza. So, there almost certainly had been no physical assaults at all in Scotland

https://cst.org.uk/public/data/file/a/b/IR17.pdf

Now, today, the Scotsman reports:

‘Jewish leaders tell Jeremy Corbyn ‘enough is enough’ in anti-semitism row…..The statement said Jews faced “fundamental anti-Semitic slurs” in Labour meetings or online forums on a daily basis and “rightly or wrongly, those who push this offensive material regard Jeremy Corbyn as their figurehead”.’

https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/jewish-leaders-tell-jeremy-corbyn-enough-is-enough-in-anti-semitism-row-1-4712723

The report makes no attempt to refer to the kind of data, reported above, which might inform readers as to the applicability of this problem to Scotland or for that matter to the Labour Party in Scotland which is currently struggling with accusations of Islamophobia.

Bias by incompetence is probably the best way to describe this but it remains scandalous that Scottish readers cannot rely on these two ‘serious’ newspapers to properly inform them.

 

Both the Independent and the Irish Times had the same headline. Several other news outlets had very similar headlines. None seemed to see just how funny this would be to many Scottish readers.

Looking first at ‘fake news’, most Yes supporters would see BBC Scotland to be better equipped to generate fake news than to identify it elsewhere. Their endless propagandising with a view to undermining the SNP and the wider independence movement is well documented in Indyref2, Wings over Scotland and in my own research.

In 2015, I reported on a survey into their coverage of Scottish politics in the four months before the UK General Election. I concluded:

‘BBC Reporting Scotland’s performance has been similar to that in the approaches to the Scottish Referendum – biased, irresponsible and, in the end, counter-productive judging by the opinion polls. The repetitive use of exaggeration, the frequent adoption of tabloid headlines to unsettle older voters, the use of either flawed or misunderstood research reports to misinform voters and, worst of all, the potential exacerbation of ethnic tensions via taxpayer funded research aimed at promoting unionism, suggest an organisation beyond simple dysfunctionality and, at certain levels, mephitic.’

The full 30-page report is at:

Propaganda or Professionalism on Pacific Quay?

One year later, in 2016, a BBC Trust report was described in the Guardian as:

‘BBC audience study shows Scottish viewers are most critical of all’

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/scotland-blog/2016/may/20/bbc-audience-study-shows-scottish-viewers-are-most-critical-of-all

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/news/press_releases/2016/nations_services_scotland

So, we know that because of the fake news they produce themselves, they’re not trusted, and their viewing figures are probably falling fast, especially as they won’t release them.

As for ‘bringing the nation together’, just what ‘nation’ are we talking of here? I guess they mean ‘Great Britain’. Also, isn’t that just what they’ve been trying to do, since at least 2012, as they began their disgraceful campaign of lies and distortions aimed at scaring their viewers into believing we’re ‘better together’?

(c) transitionblackisle.org

A survey by HSBC, in Insider today, has revealed that Scotland has one electric vehicle charge-point for every 7 127 people while in heavily-polluted London, they only have one for every 17 682 people and in Wales it is one for every 98 806 people! Only NE England is better served with one for every 3 931 people.

From Insider:

‘HSBC has warned that further private investment is needed in infrastructure for electric cars. It said that nearly three quarters of the UK population have limited access to publicly-funded charge-points. It said that despite rising demand for electric vehicles and increasing awareness of the health issues caused by poor air quality, there are nearly 17,000 people in the UK for every publicly-available electric vehicle charge-point. While around 47,000 plug-in cars were registered last year, only 173 new, publicly-funded charge-points became available.’

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/electric-car-scotland-charging-infrastructure-12241215

In the Scotsman/SoS today:

‘One million Scots ‘waiting too long’ for brain treatment. An estimated one million Scots living with brain conditions should be getting better support – with many waiting too long for treatment and a shortage of specialists in the NHS, MSPs have been warned.’

One million! No, really? I live in a street of mainly retired folk. There are 23 of us and one is currently in hospital at the age of 98. All of us are still driving, gardening and arguing about politics. By the law of averages, 4 or 5 of us should need brain treatment. Am I one of those? Don’t answer that.

I quickly read through the piece to find out which expert had warned the MSPs but couldn’t find them. IT-savvy for my age, I did a search for the word ‘million’ and found the 2 in the headline and opening paragraph, above. There’s no source there. It’s also in the url too but again that’s not evidence.

So, none of the experts in the Scotsman report seem to actually say: ‘One million Scots ‘waiting too long’ for brain treatment.’ Interesting that the author put the speech marks around ‘waiting too long’ and not ‘One million.’

Maybe someone did say it to the MSPs but why are they not quoted as having done so? It would be the easy and obvious thing to do if it were in anyway credible. Looks like a big fib to me.

The report also goes on to suggest:

‘Consultants and GPs may also be opting against referring patients for neurological appointments and follow-ups if they think it will only have “moderate benefits” because staffing shortages could result in a system logjam.’

https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/one-million-scots-waiting-too-long-for-brain-treatment-1-4712446

Once more, no reliable evidence that this is true is offered.

It ‘may’ also be the case that some consultants and GPs know that, in some cases, lifestyle changes can be a better strategy than medical intervention. See these examples from a quick search:

A Better Treatment for Alzheimer’s: Exercise – NBC News

Exercise may be best medicine to treat post-concussion syndrome …

Parkinson’s disease: Exercise could STOP condition from getting …

Can exercise help with traumatic brain injury treatment? | UT …

A Simple Treatment for Parkinson’s Disease: Exercise

Brain Scans Often Unnecessary – Live Science

$10 million suit over ‘useless’ brain surgeries – NY Daily News

I could be completely wrong here and will admit it if any reader can show me the evidence that 1 million Scots really do need some kind of medical intervention with regard to their brains.

(c) Amulf Husmo | Getty Images

Hot on the heels of BBC Scotland’s gloomy warning headlined:

‘North Sea oil and gas exploration ‘at lowest level since 1970s’’

we see in Energy Voice today that US firm Apache has made a 10 million-barrel discovery in the Garten field 155 miles east of Aberdeen. Production will begin in 2019.

According to analysts Wood Mackenzie in Energy Voice:

‘Hot on the heels of Callater, Corona and Storr, that’s more than 85 million barrels discovered in the area since 2015.’

https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/north-sea/167034/apache-makes-multi-million-barrel-oil-discovery-in-north-sea/

So, just from that one well, with crude trading at more than $60 per barrel that’s $600 million minus production costs of at most $150 million or $450 million to be shared between the shareholders, the staff and the treasury. At a 20% corporation tax rate that should be at least $90 million or £64 million.

Add this to the £75 billion we should be taxing the producers for the 11.7 billion barrels, by 2050, already predicted by Office for Budget Responsibility.

Correction: Office for Budget Responsibility massively underestimates North Sea oil revenues

Not a huge increase but remember that’s just one field, one announcement.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-43461811

 

After the transfer of second and third preferences, Joe Wallace of the SNP won the Penicuik (Midlothian) by-election last night to make the SNP the largest party in the council.

By stage 3, Joe Wallace had 2237 votes to Tory candidate Murdo Macdonald’s 1788, giving him a 25% overall lead and 46% of the total vote of 4781.

With a high turnout for local politics of 42.9%, a 46% overall vote and evidence of Labour supporters giving more of their second and third preferences to the SNP, this result is more positive for the SNP than the underwhelming media response.

574 2^nd and 3^rd preference votes went to the SNP with only 335 going to the Tories.

https://www.midlothian.gov.uk/news/article/2437/penicuik_by-election_result

We can take five things, reasonably, from these results:

1. The notion of ‘SNP peak’ having passed with the 2017 General Election is wrong
2. With 46% of the overall vote, support for the SNP and for the Yes campaign still has a solid base
3. The Richard Leonard effect is minimal
4. The Corbyn effect is fading
5. The willingness of Labour supporters to betray their progressive policies to preserve the Union is less strong judging by the transferable votes above than it might have appeared a year or so ago. See:

Has loyalty to ‘Great’ Britain trumped progressive policies for fleeing Labour voters and produced a Tory surge?

I’m not getting carried away but it’s still a good news story.

 

(c) europeanbestdestinations.com

From Insider magazine today and maybe on Reporting Scotland tonight (?):

 

Glasgow and Edinburgh have finished top of a list of the UK’s top tourism hotspots for 2018. The research used booking data from Best Western’s 250 independent properties across Britain, combined with YouGov and Google search data.’

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/two-scots-cities-top-list-12232023

It’s good to see Glasgow doing so well in a range of surveys. See these recent reports:

‘Glasgow named top convention spot for a record 12th year in a row’

Glasgow’s lower costs and supply of technology graduates tempting financial services firms away from London

Glasgow only UK city to make New York Times top ten cities to visit. Dundee makes CNN’s most design-savvy list with Tokyo and Paris

Glasgow wins two first places in global tourism awards and comes 4th out of 50!

Did any of these make BBC Scotland News?

The Independent sub above makes the usual error of referring to ‘British’ before reporting on a survey of only England and Wales. The Guardian was more precise.

In the Guardian today, we read:

Police taking days to respond to 999 calls as budget cuts bite

Watchdog says fact that funding has fallen by a fifth since 2010 has put forces under stress

Almost a quarter of forces in England and Wales are struggling to deal with emergency calls in a timely way.

Britain’s police budgets to lose £700m by 2020, amid rising crime

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/22/police-taking-days-to-respond-to-999-calls-as-budget-cuts-bite

Our Unionist media were unable to apply these concerns in a Scottish context despite their previous attempts to turn individual cases into a wider crisis for Police Scotland.  There are good reasons for that. In Scotland, in the same period since 2010, police numbers increased. See this:

‘As at 30 June 2017, there were 17 249 full-time equivalent (FTE) police officers in Scotland.  This is an increase of 1 015 police officers from the position at 31 March 2007 (+6.3 per cent). Police officer numbers have decreased by 7 FTE officers in the last quarter, since 31 March 2017, and increased by 7 FTE officers in the last year since 30 June 2016.’

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime-Justice/TrendPolice

What do these figures mean in terms of the ratio of police officers to members of the public? See this:

Population England and Wales in 56 million

Number of police officers in 2017 was 121 929

Population Scotland is 5.3 million

Number of police officers in 2017 was 17 249

Ratio of population to officers England and Wales: 459/1

Ratio of population to officers Scotland: 307/1

So, as with teachers, nurses, and GPs, Scotland has a much better ratio of police officers to members of the public and thus presumably more presence on the streets.

Of course, staffing numbers are only part, though an important part, of the picture and the success in reducing, especially, crime of violence, north of the border will have multiple causes. See these for more:

Police Scotland, world experts on violence reduction, are now to advise The Met after helping the NYPD and Canada Police. Scotland’s media ignore the story in favour of anything negative they can find.

As knife crime soars in England and Wales and police numbers fall, Police Scotland is staffed at 50% higher level