Talking-up Scotland

Reported in Insider today:

‘The Recruitment and Employment Confederation Report on Jobs for Scotland sound the number of people securing permanent posts has risen sharply  Bottom of Form. . Top of Form

Bottom of Form

The number of people securing permanent jobs in Scotland rose sharply in January, according to new data. Figures from the research by IHS Markit, Report on Jobs for Scotland, showed an increase in the number of temporary staff finding [permanent] jobs, following a modest decline in December.’

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/favourable-market-jobseekers-scotland-new-11990517

I can’t find what ‘sharp’ means in precise terms but this seems to be yet more objective evidence of strength in the Scottish economy contrary to the wholly unreliable estimates used for GDP and GERS and much-loved by our Unionist media as they rejoice in any opportunity to talk down their own folk.

Here’s a reminder of how useless GDP and GERS are. Both are heavily based on estimates rather than actual measures because the latter are not available for Scotland on its own. See this on GERS:

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

As for GDP, even the DAVOS elite have turned against it. See this from 2016:

‘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/

By contrast these are accurate and objective measures of the Scottish economy’s development and stability:

And another one: ‘Scotland Revealed as Top Place in UK to Launch New Business’

£226 million given in relief to small businesses in 2017-18 as part of most generous scheme in the UK

40% increase in number of new Scottish businesses mainly under SNP government

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

‘Fewer Scottish businesses failing in 2017’

Scottish businesses showing signs of greater health than those in the rest of the UK

Note in many of these reports, the role of the Scottish Government in supporting and promoting positive change in the Scottish economy.

Yesterday’s piece in Insider reported visitor numbers at Edinburgh Castle and the National Museum of Scotland exceeding 2 million in 2017 while the Scottish National Gallery, Loch Lomond Shores, Glasgow’s Riverside Museum, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and St. Giles’ Cathedral passed 1 million visitors.

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/two-edinburgh-cultural-attractions-surpass-11981003

Industry experts at Glasgow Caledonian University attributed some of the increase to the lower value of the Pound against the Euro and the Dollar and while this is no doubt true, the report failed to mention other factors such as the Outlander Effect and the perceived safety of Scotland by comparison with London and European cities which have suffered terrorist attacks in recent times. That there is a uniquely Scottish dimension to this can be seen in the different levels of increase in Scotland and the rest of the UK.

Tourism spending in Scotland surges ahead of UK figure

The weak pound has been attributed with responsibility for an 18% growth in UK tourism spending while in Scotland foreign spending surged by 27% on last year. We must assume the difference is due to other factors some of which I may have identified in:

North Americans lead surge in Scottish tourism because they feel safer here

‘Outlander links see visitors to historic sites soaring’

Visitors to Scotland’s historic sites surge by 470 000 to reach more than 4.5 million, breaking all records, in only 11 months!

You’ll no doubt have seen the new BBC weather map which seems to restore Scotland to a more accurate representation of its size relative to England. The previous version, introduced in 2005, represented the UK from a perspective originating in the south and, consequently made Scotland seem smaller than it is, in relation to England. Here are the two views:

Does making a country seeking independence look smaller and using this image many times a day on the weather reports, subconsciously affect citizens’ confidence in its ability to survive in the world. I did find it annoying but tended to concentrate my fire on other forms of propaganda. From a piece in iNews, yesterday, the risk of being ridiculed if your answer was ‘yes’, was reported:

‘In 2016, the then SNP MP Paul Monaghan accused he corporation of making Scotland “literally appear less significant” through its weather coverage.’

‘However, Scottish Conservative deputy leader Jackson Carlaw described their claims as “risible” and “the worst form of nationalist paranoia”.’

https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/new-bbc-weather-map-proves-misrepresenting-scotland-says-snp-mp/

There is, however, historical evidence on the use of scale and perspective in maps to deliberately propagandize and affect thinking on political issues. First have a look at these two different projections of the world:

Look at how the first, Mercator Projection, and the second, Peters Projection, represent the sizes of the dominant imperial powers of Northern Europe and America and the Southern hemisphere areas they have dominated historically. The Peters projection is a more accurate measure of actual area. Peters attacked the Mercator Projection as ethnocentric and map projection has been used to create cartographic propaganda by making small areas bigger and large areas smaller according to one researcher:

Monmonier, Mark (1996). How to Lie with Maps. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226534213

In an inversion of the Scottish example, projection to make a country look bigger, suggest a threat and induce fear has been used:

‘Cartographic propaganda during the Cold War often appealed to the fear of the masses. During the Cold War period, maps of “us” versus “them” were drawn to emphasize the threat represented by the USSR and its allies. R.M. Chapin, Jr. created the map, “Europe From Moscow,” in 1952. The map was drawn from a different perspective, from Moscow looking onward toward Europe which made it easy for the map reader to imagine (red) armies sweeping across Western Europe.^’

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartographic_propaganda#Scale_and_generalization

Returning to the Mercator Projection, it has been argued that it served to strengthen and perhaps even justify exploitation of the southern hemisphere:

‘This cartographic anomaly has the following effect on how we perceive the world- developing countries, typically located in the southern hemisphere, are seen as being smaller than the so-called Western world (Europe, the United States, and Canada). This diminishes not only their size, but their importance in an increasingly developing and global world. During the height of European colonialism and Western empire building (some may argue this is still the case in different ways) this map projection served the dominant powers’ purposes. Most people who look at a map don’t automatically assume that it is biased or incorrect, and rarely are maps intentionally created to deceive; however, maintaining awareness of your own perceptions of the world is very important.’

https://www.gislounge.com/cartographic-anomalies-map-projections-shaped-perceptions-world/

Now, I’m certainly not going to argue that the weather map making Scotland look wee played a major part in undermining the Yes campaign. There were many more damaging forms of propaganda on show in the months prior to the vote. However, I think I’d reject the argument that it had no part to play in subconsciously affecting the thinking of many Scots as they considered the question I often heard:

‘Is Scotland not too wee to be independent?’

 

(c) oilandgaspeople.com

In the FT today:

‘North Sea oil tax haul gushes to £1bn as crude recovers. Higher prices, increased production and lower costs drive revenue turn-round’

Pretty much ignored by the Scottish media other than reporting on BP profits, the Financial Times, free from a constant obsession with Scottish independence offers us useful evidence. They had more to say:

‘A £1bn boost to the Treasury will be good news for the Philip Hammond, the chancellor, who will give an update on the government’s budget in the spring statement in mid-March. HMRC declined to comment…. Production in the North Sea is also bucking the recent decline. Wood Mackenzie, the energy consultancy, expects it to average 1.9 million barrels of oil equivalent a day in 2018, its highest since 2010. BP last week announced two new discoveries in the North Sea and reiterated its ambition to double production from the region to 200,000 barrels a day by 2020….’

https://www.ft.com/content/995ad5c8-09c5-11e8-839d-41ca06376bf2

Will Hammond trumpet this good news? Will HMRC comment? Will Reporting Scotland mention it all or think it’s not in their remit as it’s clearly UK oil? See this evidence that it’s nearly all Scotland’s oil even after the sneaky shifting of the maritime border by Blair and Brown:

(c) quora.com Map: Location of UK gas and oil fields with Scottish territorial waters shown in dark blue.

I’ve written before on a related thought when the Guardian enthused about Scotland’s new independent commission on social security. See this for more:

How to get fair coverage of Scottish politics. Read a slightly left-of-centre English newspaper

There have also been times when you could only hear about how well NHS Scotland was doing by reading the website or by watching the ‘national news’ on BBC at 6 before Reporting Scotland at 6.30 went on to either ignore it or distort it into a negative. See:

SNP Gooood report on BBC Scotland News website is unbalanced without comment from Murdo Fraser

A Scottish 6 run by the Reporting Scotland staff? No, thanks!

Footnote: I’m not suggesting you can always trust the English press but Scottish independence is not the first thing on their minds as they worry about Brexit, Theresa and Jeremy and many other issues, so they often report unwittingly in ways supportive of our cause. Only the Scottish Unionist media are relentless in their anti-SNP propaganda.

 

Bias by omission is a well-know strategy and the Herald article yesterday on business rates repeats the trick throughout to suggest that all Scottish businesses will be suffering when, as they only mention in the 21^st of 21 comments, that 100 000 smaller businesses will pay no business rates at all! So, we see repeated mention of ‘shops’ and ‘offices’ when the comment is only relevant to larger businesses.

Further, the headline suggests ‘multi-million rates bill’ yet is only able to refer to a total bill, for an unquantified number of large businesses, of £127.8 million. How many large businesses are there in Scotland? How big are they? What are their profit-levels? None of this information is offered to help us contextualise the claims.

I can answer the first question. There are 2 365 large (250+ employees) enterprises operating in Scotland.

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Business/Corporate/KeyFacts

So, these 2 365 large businesses will be sharing the additional total cost of £127.8 million and thus paying, on average but, in reality, according to their size, around £54 000. It would be interesting to know how that figure compares with the executive pay, bonuses and shareholder dividends these companies are quietly content to pay out.

Interestingly no opposition party representative is introduced to slam this SNP initiative which is of course designed to raise revenue for public services.

Finally, when I read:

 ‘Meanwhile, offices face stumping up some £8.15m more than they would in England, while pubs will fork out £850,000 extra and utilities some £11.85m more.’

I’m reminded of regular media commentator and former Tory MSP, Brian Monteith, who has been telling us repeatedly that we should not be defending NHS Scotland by making comparisons with NHS England because it’s meaningless ‘whitabootery’. Tory hypocrisy? Surely not.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15919642.Scottish_businesses_facing_multi_million_pound_rates_bill/

This is clearly a move to make the Scottish taxation system more equitable and more progressive. There is no discussion in the article of this key factor in enabling readers to put the issue in the wider context necessary to understand it.

While reading the UCAS report for my previous piece on applications from those living in poorer areas, I found a paragraph beginning with the headline above. It was on page 4 so I suppose it‘s unfair to have expected the BBC or STV staff to have found it. Had they seen it, they must surely have published it. Here it is:

‘In 2018, the application rate in Scotland increased across all groups aged 20 years or

older, with record high application rates across the majority of older age groups. This continues the general upward trend seen since 2006. In England, application rates from

the majority of older applicants decreased, with the exception of 21 year-olds. Application rates in Wales showed similar declines, with increases seen only in 21, 23, and 40 to

60 year-olds. Application rates in Northern Ireland also declined for older age groups, with the exception of 21, 25 to 29 and 40 to 60 year-olds.’

https://www.ucas.com/file/147891/download?token=sjxwG1wA

It’s pretty good news, I’d say. As ‘lifelong learner’ myself, or a slow-learner as some of my relatives would have it, I like the idea that even among the 40 to 60 year-olds we see an increase in applications. This is a mark of a better more inclusive society along with many of the other measures reported here in previous days and weeks.

Here are the BBC and STV headlines this morning:

‘University application rates from poorest areas fall’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-42938097

‘Drop in university applications from deprived students’

https://stv.tv/news/scotland/1407644-drop-in-university-applications-from-deprived-students/

They’re not strictly incorrect headlines but they are fundamentally misleading and dishonest in that they and the content which follows fail to point out something very important in informing their audience about Higher Education applications as a whole in Scotland and something which their source, the UCAS UK application rates by the January deadline, 2018 cycle, makes clear as early as on page 3 and then repeats several times throughout the report.

Here’s the cautionary statement on page 3 which they surely saw:

‘In Scotland, there is a substantial component (around one third of young full-time undergraduate study) where admissions are not processed through UCAS (see note at the end of this report). Consequently, for Scotland, this report reflects the trends in applications that are recruited through UCAS and not, as elsewhere in the UK, full-time undergraduate study in general.’

https://www.ucas.com/file/147891/download?token=sjxwG1wA

So, around one third of applicants to Higher Education programmes in Scotland are not included in the UCAS figures because they are made directly to local colleges which have articulation arrangements with universities allowing students to progress to degree programmes there after completing years 1 and 2 in the local college. This approach allows students to reduce travel and accommodation costs dramatically and is likely to be particularly appealing to those from the poorest areas. The UCAS report in 2016 seemed to support this idea:

‘The problem is that there is rather less sub-degree HE in the non-Scottish parts of the UK than in Scotland but most of what there is appears to be recruited through UCAS; meanwhile in Scotland there’s a much larger amount of HE provided in FE colleges, pretty much all at sub-degree level, which is not recruited through UCAS at all…. Indeed, it’s the HE provided in colleges which gives Scotland the edge in overall participation rates.’

https://www.ucas.com/sites/default/files/jan-16-deadline-application-rates-report.pdf

I covered this issue in more detail, in April 2016 at:

Are the disadvantaged in Scotland actually less likely to enter higher education than the disadvantaged in England? UCAS admit they don’t actually know. I doubt it very much.

Both BBC and STV gave generous space for the Tory and Labour education representatives to repeat the misleading comments and to miss the UCAS cautionary note. Did they read it? Did they not make it to page 3? Only Iain Gray managed to forget to be careful with his words and ended up telling a straight fib with:

‘We know that young people from the most privileged backgrounds are three times more likely to go to onto higher education than those from the most disadvantaged, and these figures show a complete failure to narrow that gap.’

He should have said ‘university’ and not ‘higher education’ and he might have got off with it but, as it is, it’s not true. He forgot the 33% or so who access Higher Education, via colleges, so it doesn’t add up for the former maths teacher.

This happens every year. It’s not a difficult point. The failure to inform year after year suggests a clear agenda to do so – propaganda, though control?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election

I’m grateful to Wikipedia for doing all the work to make the above table available. The trend revealed, from General Election in June 2017, to late January 2018, suggests a recovery from a temporary dip, resulting at least in part from the media love-in with Ruth Davidson and the Corbyn Effect. As Scots begin to forget Ruth, as it becomes clear she has forgotten them and has her eyes turned south and as Richard Leonard’s repeated gaffs destroy any Corbyn effect, they seem to be returning to confidence in the SNP as the only party they can trust to govern here and to represent our interests there.

If you need a reminder of the kind lies and distortions I’m referring to, see these recent examples:

Scotsman acts as Tory propaganda outlet in fake news about knife crime as statistics reveal dramatic fall in possession and use across Scotland

Herald incorrectly includes Scotland in surge of anti-Semitic incidents elsewhere in UK

How to make a ‘potentially massive’ oil find one that ‘isn’t a big find’? Just lie, omit and minimise. Ask BBC Scotland.

Herald imagines ‘mounting fears’ and tries to scare public against SNP policy on custody

Watch Herald report good news on child health for Scotland and then…..

Michelle Ballantyne, Scottish Conservative early years spokeswoman

(c) The Southern Reporter

Yesterday, the Scotsman headlined with:

‘Scots teachers pressured to cover up knife incidents’

and followed up with:

‘A Johnston Press knife crime investigation revealed ten pupils across Scotland are found with knives on school premises every month.’

First, the headline is a straightforward lie, exposed in the article itself as, toward the end of the piece, we read:

‘A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “Knife possession is a crime therefore all teachers should report any incidents [my underlining] where pupils are found with a knife at school.’

So, there is no government pressure on schools to cover-up knife crime.

Second, the above Johnston Press investigation was a UK-wide survey and reported with only one mention of a serious knife crime in a Scottish school, in 2015! There is no mention of the ‘ten pupils across Scotland’ in the published report:

https://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2018/news/regional-publishers-investigation-highlights-uks-school-knife-crime-woes/

Notably, the ‘investigation’ only seems to have been reported in England. See:

‘JP titles which splashed on stories related to the investigation include the Lancashire Post, Shields Gazette, Wigan Post and Yorkshire Evening Post.’

There is of course, no indication of the scale or scope of the investigation. Indeed, absolutely no mention of the methods used is given at all.

The idea that teachers are being pressurised comes from an anecdotal comment by Seamus Searson, general secretary of the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association who, curiously, tells us that ‘some’ headteachers are pressurising staff to keep quiet and that:

“We are dealing with over half a dozen cases a year of teachers coming to us and saying ‘we should have been told’”

It’s not clear how his ‘over half a dozen [7?] cases a year’ and the Johnston Press investigation’s ‘ten pupils every month’ relate until we remember that the latter is probably based on English schools’ data.

Much of the rest of the report is given over to the one serious case at Cults Academy in 2015 and to Michelle Ballantyne, Scottish Conservative early years spokeswoman. Here’s an extract from her comments:

‘The SNP claims it’s tackling knife crime and violence in schools, but then we find out advice is being issued to keep incidents of knives in school secret. Parents will be horrified reputation is considered more important than pupil and teacher safety. This is not the way to address a serious problem and will just undermine confidence that effective steps are being taken to provide a safe environment for our children.’

Right at the end and sort of making all that preceded pointless, Police Scotland report, based on actual policy and evidence:

‘Our decision to specifically record offences of possession of weapons in schools supports efforts to make Scotland’s schools safer. We continue to work with schools and local authorities on anti-violence campaigns and curriculum programmes on a range of initiatives. There has been a 64 per cent reduction in crimes of handling offensive weapons in the last decade and we are determined to continue making progress.’

https://www.scotsman.com/news/education/scots-teachers-pressured-to-cover-up-knife-incidents-1-4681995

For a more accurate and contextualised account of the situation in Scotland, with diminishing possession and use of knives, see:

Of 35 children and teenagers killed with knives in Britain in 2017, not one was in Scotland, yet in 2005, the UN called Scotland the most violent country in the developed world.

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

Sky News suggests Scotland Yard can learn from Scotland on reducing knife crime. Scottish media miss the story

They might as well re-title the Scotsman as the ‘Unionist Scotsman’ or the ‘Fake Scotsman’.

 

Utterly desperate for something to attack NHS Scotland and by association, the SNP Government, BBC Scotland News used Freedom of Information requests to ask all health boards to provide cancelled operation figures for the three weeks, ending on 26^th January. They said:

‘The NHS [Scotland] statistics on cancelled operations in January will not be released for another month so BBC Scotland. All 14 NHS boards replied, and the total number of operations cancelled for non-clinical reasons came to 1,244. It is not known how many elective operations were scheduled but it is thought to be broadly similar to the 27,879 figure for January 2017, when 704 were cancelled.’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-42872062

First, let’s get an idea of the scale of the problem. Remembering that these were figures for only 3 weeks with, say, 21 000 planned operations (three-quarters of the above 27 879), 5.9% of all planned operations were cancelled for non-clinical reasons. Not good but not exactly a crisis.

Second, let’s get some comparison. There are, of course, no equivalent official data for NHS England. For some reason, BBC Salford didn’t do a Freedom of Information request in an attempt to embarrass the UK Government. I’ll come back to the whole business of BBC Scotland and FoI’s below. An FoI request wasn’t needed because the NHS England Medical Director had already told all of NHS England to cancel thousands of operations. Here’s how even the Torygraph reported it:

‘Every hospital in the country has been ordered to cancel all non-urgent surgery until at least February in an unprecedented step by NHS officials. The instructions on Tuesday night – which will see result in around 50,000 operations being axed – followed claims by senior doctors that patients were being treated in “third world” conditions, as hospital chief executives warned of the worst winter crisis for three decades. Hospitals are reporting growing chaos, with a spike in winter flu leaving frail patients facing 12-hour waits, and some units running out of corridor space. Sir Bruce Keogh, NHS medical director, on Tuesday ordered NHS trusts to stop taking all but the most urgent cases, closing outpatients clinics for weeks as well as cancelling around 50,000 planned operations.’

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/02/nhs-hospitals-ordered-cancel-routine-operations-january/

Now, remember that’s an estimate by Tory newspaper, the Mirror made it 55 000, and does not include unplanned cancellations which may have been made during the same period. However, giving them the benefit of the doubt, let’s accept the 50 000 figure and suggest that for the three weeks covered by BBC Scotland News request that would be equivalent to around three-quarters or 37 500. What percentage of 37 500 is 1244? It’s 3.3%. Of course, there are no figures for the number of NHS England operations which were carried out, yet, but I think it’s safe to rely on population figures as a rough guide. So, with 10% (5.3m) of England’s (53m) population, Scotland had, at most, only 3.3% of the number of cancelled operations.

Third, why did BBC Scotland New do an FoI request and BBC Salford did not? Had they done so, the rage and indignation from the UK Government and the Tory press would have been something to witness. You can imagine a headline:

‘Closet pinko-lefties in the BBC conspire to attack British Government!’

BBC Salford hardly ever pursue FoI requests of the government of the day or of the public institutions it is responsible for, for the very obvious reason that they’re afraid to and, in particular, worried about maintaining the licence fee. BBC Scotland have no such fears and carry out increasing numbers of such requests. See this for details:

How BBC Scotland digs for dirt with Freedom of Information requests to the Scottish Government yet will not respond to any themselves