Talking-up Scotland

According to Insider:

‘Royal Dutch Shell has given the go-ahead for an expansion of the Penguins oil and gas field in the North Sea, its first major new project in the region in six years. The development will include the construction of a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel, which is expected to produce up to 45,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd). Shell said it will generate a profit even with oil prices below $40 per barrel, making it competitive against other offshore basins and most of North America’s shale production.’

It’s interesting that they use the $40pb rate, long surpassed. Brent prices burst through the $70pb figure last week and have been above $60pb for some time. See:

Second prediction that Scottish oil may rise beyond $70 per barrel to as much as $100 per barrel and that demand will grow over the next ten years.

Are they worried they might have to pay taxes if they acknowledge higher prices?

The Scottish Government Energy Minister said:

‘This significant investment by Shell and ExxonMobil is further evidence of rising confidence in the future of the region and it will offer a significant boost to communities across the north-east of Scotland, along with boosting the wider Scottish economy. We have always maintained there are significant opportunities remaining in the North Sea, even in the context of a low carbon transition, and that a strong and vibrant domestic offshore oil and gas industry will play an essential role in the future energy system we set out in our recently published energy strategy.’

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/shell-start-new-drilling-project-11855810

Some readers may remember that Shell paid taxes to every other country they worked in but not to the UK, in 2016, so we’ll have to keep an eye on them. See this:

Surely the UK government didn’t let them off just to damage the case for Scottish independence? No, there must have been some good reason we colonials wouldn’t understand. See this for an explanation:

North Sea oil producers making massive profits as costs fall and prices rise. Are we taxing them, or might that damage the Unionist case?

(c) DFT/CROWN

The Scotsman’s reporting isn’t all bad just quite lot of it is especially when its just a press release for her majesty’s loyal opposition, in Scotland. However, this optimistic report based on SNP MP, Dr Phillipa Whiteford’s comments has sneaked in next to all the recent fibs about NHS Scotland. Perhaps I’ve been unfair. Surely this means they’re balanced 😉?

Here’s a bit of what they say:

‘Scotland is in ‘a strong position’ to host the first UK spaceport and to capitalise further on commercial space activity, an MP has said ahead of a Westminster debate on the sector. Dr Philippa Whitford, whose Central Ayrshire constituency includes Prestwick Airport, said the second reading of the Space Industry Bill was another chance to highlight Scotland’s success in this sector, with 18 per cent of the UK industry based in Scotland and Glasgow now building more satellites than any other city in Europe.’

Other Scottish candidates include the A’Mhoine peninsula in Sutherland and Campbelltown in Argyll.

https://www.scotsman.com/future-scotland/tech/scotland-in-strong-position-to-host-first-uk-spaceport-1-4662079

No harm to the other two but wouldn’t it take longer to get to them in the first place than for the actual space journey and much longer than for the satellite launches. My money’s on NotGlasgow Prestwick.

Mind you, maybe London makes more sense? Boris and the Gove are already wired to the moon and post-Brexit England could make good use of it for its new ‘lucrative’ trade arrangements with Timbuktu and Tierra del Fuego.

As you know, the Scottish Government surpassed its youth employment target four years early in 2017 and by 48.3% as opposed to the 40% target. See this for more detail:

Scottish Government meets its youth employment target four years early to place Scotland as among the most successful in Europe

This achievement is impressive and is testimony to the Scottish government’s initiatives including the Developing the Young Workforce programme based on education, improved careers advice, work experience and modern apprenticeship opportunities. Most recently, they have announced £96 million of funding to create fairer employment support services to help the disabled and those facing social and economic barriers to get into and to stay in work.

The impetus is clearly still there for 2018 as the Scottish Government-funded Skills Development Scotland announced plans to create 3 500 new-style apprenticeship places. See this from a report in Insider:

‘The national skills body’s figures consist of 2 600 foundation apprenticeships for school pupils and more than 900 graduate apprenticeships Bottom of FormTop of Form. Bottom of Form

Skills Development Scotland has announced that 3 500 new-style apprenticeship places are to be created in 2018. The SDS figure is made up of 2 600 foundation apprenticeships for pupils and more than 900 graduate apprenticeships. They are intended to provide educational qualifications and workplace training for both senior school pupils and graduates and are an addition to the national skills body’s modern apprentice programme which last year supported 26,000 apprentices. SDS says it is committed to increasing that number to 30,000 by 2020.’

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/skills-development-scotland-apprenticeship-places-11841441

Youth unemployment in Scotland is the fifth lowest in Europe at 9.4% and lower than the UK figure of 12.1% in 9^th place. If we had a Labour or any other administration they’d be crowing about it, so the SNP must take a fair share of the credit.

(c) cakart.in

According to the Scotsman today:

‘NHS Scotland pays £193m in compensation over five years. Medical negligence payments paid out annually by NHS Scotland have risen four-fold in the past decade, new figures have revealed. In 2016-17, £38.3 million was paid out – up from £9.4m in 2006-07. NHS Scotland has paid a total of £192.9m in medical negligence claims to patients over the five years between 2012-17.’

https://www.scotsman.com/news/nhs-scotland-pays-193m-in-compensation-over-five-years-1-4662230

First, lumping together the figures for five years to get a bigger number for your headline is cheating. Only the annual figure is meaningful and only the increase from one year to the next tells us anything useful.

Now I know that the Scotsman’s new research officer, ‘Brains’ Monteith, has told them they don’t need contextual comparisons anymore now that he has labelled it ‘whitabootery’. However, the research council has rejected his application for it to be recognised as a proper adult concept and the nearest professor of journalism I could find says context is still very important and required for even a bare pass in first year, in semester 1, in week 1, on day 1, before lunchtime.

So, from the FT, see this on compensation claims in the ENHS (English, not Estonian!) in the same year:

‘The number of successful clinical negligence claims against the National Health Service has more than doubled in the past decade, leaving a bill that may be having an impact on the quality of care. The National Audit Office says that over the past decade, spending on the clinical negligence scheme for NHS trusts has quadrupled from £400m in 2006-07 to £1.6bn in 2016-17.’

https://www.ft.com/content/9a7c010a-9307-11e7-a9e6-11d2f0ebb7f0

Now, let me think is £1.6 billion much more than £39.3 million when they have a much bigger population? I know let’s do a cost ratio per head of population. What, you don’t have a mathematics pass? Oh, alright I’ll do it for you.

NHS Scotland compensation plans are running at £38 300 000 per year divided by 5 300 000 folk, or:

£7.22p per head of population.

NHS England compensation plans are running at £1 600 000 000 per year divided by 53 000 000 people, or:

£30.18p per head of population.

We must be doing something better.

I’ve just reported on falling domestic violence in Scotland and the increasingly inaccurate nature of the stereotypical view of Scots and Scotland as violent. The Complete University Guide has published some shocking data which was too large to fit into the previous report and which reveals a shocking difference between the level, in particular, of the risk of violence against the person in Scottish, English, Welsh and N Ireland city-based universities. The tables show the three-year rolling average of crime per 1 000 population.

Here’s the table for England and Wales:

Here’s the table for Northern Ireland:

Here’s the table for Scotland:

These are quite remarkable differences with the risk of violence against university students in Scottish cities significantly lower than in all the other UK cities. Even Glasgow, has a far lower rate than the least violent of the English cities

https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/preparing-to-go/staying-safe-at-university/how-safe-is-your-city/

A few years ago, Frankie Boyle suggested that Scotland should become an Islamic Republic but that it would mean we’d have to treat our women better. I know, it was a joke but it played to a negative stereotype of the Scots which is increasingly under attack by facts on the ground.

Stereotypes take a long time to change. Comedians and, sometimes, TV drama writers, continue to characterise Scots as violent, drunken and mean. Similarly, the Welsh, are regularly portrayed in negative ways. In sharp contrast, ethnic and religious minorities are treated with care and, after some time, the Irish are rarely stereotyped in the ways they were in earlier times. Is it because we, the Scots and the Welsh, is not independent?

Reports that domestic abuse in Scotland have dropped from those of 2016 by 6.1% may suggest another example. The figures are still horrible though. Between December 10^th 2017 and January 7^th 2018, there were 4 799 reported incidents, down from 5 111 over the same period the previous year.

https://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/news/scotland/fall-in-number-of-reports-of-domestic-abuse-over-the-festive-period/

Not only are reports of domestic violence falling in Scotland but they are falling well below those of England. See this diagram from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in 2017:

From: ‘UK Poverty 2017 A comprehensive analysis of poverty trends and figures’ Report by the JRF Analysis Unit

Domestic violence is, for all age and deprivation-level groups, lower in Scotland than in England. It would be really interesting to have a precise gender breakdown for the Scottish figures to compare with the shocking level in one of the groups above – 10%!

I’ve already reported on other changes which challenge the negative Scottish stereotype. See these:

Racial hate crimes increase by 33% in England & Wales while falling by 10% in Scotland: Who says we’re not different?

Scotsman headline is untrue: hate offences against Jews in Scotland are extremely rare by contrast with the rest of the UK?

Scotland’s homicide rate falls by 47%, is lower than the rate for England and Wales and has fallen faster than many other countries in the ten years of SNP government

Extracting the positives for Scottish Government from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report on Poverty which you are unlikely to hear of elsewhere: Lower poverty, better qualified workers, lower domestic violence, smaller educational gaps and eating just as much fruit!

Scotland takes nearly 26% of Syrian refugees settled in UK with only 8% of the UK population

UN condemns UK Government’s ‘human catastrophe’ on disability rights but praises Scottish Government’s actions

Footnote: I’ll do a separate report on how safe Scottish university cities are by contrast with those elsewhere in the UK. It’s shocking.

(c) conservativehome.com

I’m a bit late getting to this second of Monteith’s appearances as the Scotsman’s NHS Scotland and by association, SNP, critic. Here are his main points that the Scottish Government is ‘being disrespectful to voters when they resort to “whitabootery” (comparing with NHS England) and that there are ‘official statistics and credible anecdotal evidence that demonstrates a growing crisis in Scotland’s NHS.’

There are two things to say about comparing one system with another. First, it’s a very common and, if done properly, fairly objective way of measuring how effective a system is. It’s the method used by the Commonwealth Foundation of New York to compare the US health system with 10 others in 2015. Its findings were used to make recommendations for improvement in the US system and much liked by Tories such as Mrs May and the Hunt. To take another example, the PISA comparative research of educational standards also seems an acceptable form of ‘whitabootery’ to the Scottish Conservatives. See:

‘Ms Davidson has previously warned her party could withdraw its support of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) after schools recorded their worst ever performance in a global study.The latest Programme for International Students Assessments (PISA) found Scottish pupils not only trailing behind their English counterparts but those in former Soviet bloc nations Slovenia and Estonia.’

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/774722/ruth-davidson-scotland-conservative-conference-failing-snp-curriculum-education

There are of course problems in PISA but that’s for another place. One more example to make the point, are the GERS figures regularly used to undermine Scotland’s economic case for independence. Here’s Tory Murdo Fraser on them:

‘Scotland’s notional deficit therefore stands at a staggering £13.3bn or 8.3% of GDP. The UK-wide deficit, meanwhile, stands at 2.4%. The gap between the two deficits is the highest it has been since GERS started being compiled in 1998/99’

http://www.scottishconservatives.com/2017/08/gers-day/

I know, the GERs figures are almost all based on estimates and of little value but, again, that’s for another place and time.

So, it seems comparisons with England or the UK are just fine when they damage the case for independence but not when we seem to be doing better. Notably, of course, the NHS comparisons, so disliked by Monteith, come from the reliable sources, Nuffield and BBC Scotland (😉) and are not subject to any undermining critique. See, for example:

‘Scotland has a unique system of improving the quality of health care’ says the Nuffield Trust: Looking at the full report and not the Labour/BBC Scotland extracts in July

Putting the A&E figures in perspective: NHS England patients were more than twice as likely to wait over four hours throughout 2017.

By comparison, both PISA and GERS have attracted widespread criticism. See these summaries:

Scotland’s school’s PISA results ‘lean’ toward nothing meaningful. Finland’s success is not real. South Korea and China’s educational programmes amount to child abuse

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

The Scottish Sun’s grammatically incorrect but politically correct and helpfully blunt assessment of GERS

Monteith’s other main point is that there are: ‘official statistics and credible anecdotal evidence that demonstrates a growing crisis in Scotland’s NHS.’ Let’s deal with the anecdotal first. His Wikipedia page doesn’t say what degree he has or if has one in the Education section. In the Career bit it reads: ‘Following university Monteith initially worked as a researcher for Thatcherite London-based think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies.’ Is he another of the ‘Murphy school’ who didn’t graduate in anything or pass the Research Methods module? Anyhow, he should still know that an anecdote is an anecdote even if it’s true. You can’t use them to make generalisations, at all! As for the official statistics, he offers these:

‘Conservatives demonstrated that even though the SNP promised to end the practice, more than 10,000 ambulances have been dispatched with one crew member on board in the last four years. Last year, the SNHS sickness rate was 7.6 per cent, a third above the target of five per cent and well beyond the private sector average of 1.9 per cent. Hospital beds continue to decline (down from 21,340 hospital beds in 2016/17 against more than 23,000 in 2012/13) but are not replaced by more social care places for the elderly, as these too have declined (down from 38,465 in 2012/13, to 37,746 in 2016/17).’

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/opinion/brian-monteith-time-the-snp-stopped-dodging-nhs-responsibilty-1-4661303

I’ve already dealt with his and other misunderstanding of the ambulance and hospital beds stories here:

‘Ambulance-chasers’* BBC Scotland digs up fake news as Scotland’s ambulance services disappoint them by coping well with the winter surge in demand

Scotsman’s reputation in tatters as they parrot Labour report on bed-blocking which is, of course falling

As for the sickness rate in SNHS being higher than in the private sector, well of course it is. They work with sick people. They’re exposed to infected bodies and clothing. They’re exposed to people suffering. I’d like to see Monteith’s attendance record after a year in A&E or a ward for extreme mental health cases. As for the private sector having a lower rate, well of course it has. Leaving aside the point just made, many private sector workers have no union protection and, in some cases, absolutely no rights at all and are thus afraid to go off sick. If he’d like an anecdote, I was served recently in a filling station by a young man who seemed to be suffering from the flu. His colleague told him to go home but he said he couldn’t because he’d been off ill in the previous month!

This is Monteith’s second rant in the Scotsman in seven days. I know he’ll be cheap, but the Scotsman needs to recover more than a little pride in itself.

This isn’t the first time that many of us have noticed differences between the BBC Scotland news reported on the website and that reported on Reporting Scotland or Good Morning Scotland. While the latter two remain horribly imbalanced and often utterly dishonest in their creation of a climate hostile to independence, the website is often pretty-fair, balanced, and even prepared to report on good news for Scotland with no ifs or buts.

I’m not the only one to put this down to a strategy whereby a captive older audience, getting nearly all of its news from the TV, radio and the press, can be scared off independence while a younger audience, getting most of its news online from diverse sources, cannot. However, many of my online friends and supporters are, I know, ‘silver surfers’ like me, who are perfectly capable of accessing those more diverse sources. That they both voted Yes and are confident internet users suggests, I suspect, that it is a personality unafraid of change rather than age which counts in their cases. However, are they, perhaps, exceptions to a pattern which might be revealed in statistics?

The BBC website reported today:

‘Hundreds of jobs are set to be created during the construction of a vessel which will be used to redevelop a North Sea oil and gas field. Shell said between 300 and 400 jobs, mostly in Scotland, would be needed to support construction of the floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel for the Penguins field. Once operational, the vessel is expected to support about 70 jobs.’

They even allowed SNP Energy Minister, Paul Wheelhouse, to make a statement without inviting the Unionist parties or Douglas Fraser, to remind us a range of ‘ah buts’ so that we didn’t get too carried away with optimism. He said:

‘This significant investment is further evidence of rising confidence in the future of the region and it will offer a significant boost to communities across the north east of Scotland, along with boosting the wider Scottish economy.’

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-42688721

The report finished there on this high note in manner unheard of in broadcasts.

So, back to the opening question of why the website is clearly not part of the No campaign. Have a look at the statistics represented in these two figures:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/itandinternetindustry/bulletins/internetusers/2016#main-points

YES                                                                            NO

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/20/scottish-independence-lord-ashcroft-poll

There’s a fairly strong correlation between age and voting Yes or No for independence and there’s an equally strong one between age and internet-use. Silver surfers over 75 are not really that numerous and BBC propaganda is geared quite accurately to its audience. Allowing the website to be less biased also means that they can pretend to an overall balance of reporting, across their whole output. It’s what Karl Marx called ‘repressive tolerance.’ As long as views contrary to the establishment view are relatively rare and with a small audience, freedom of expression and thought can be claimed.

(c) oilandgaspeople.com

In Oil and Gas People today, Takayuki Nogami, a chief economist of the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation, predicted growing demand and the possibility of prices rising to $100 per barrel. This follows, the July 2017 comments from the Aramco chief describing the outlook for oil supplies as ‘increasingly worrying’, argued that the transition to alternative fuels will be ‘long and complex’ and that this will result in huge shortages. Discoveries are down 50% in the last four years.

Luckily for Scotland, there have been massive finds west of Shetland in the last few months. See:

Estimates of Scotland’s oil reserves West of Shetland now massively increased to around 8 billion barrels! ‘A super-resource now on the cards.’

Speaking about alternatives to oil, the Aramco chief said:

‘Looking at today’s energy mix, the expectations for alternatives are through the roof,” Nasser said. While acknowledging that electric vehicles are gaining in popularity, he said they currently make up less than two-tenths of one percent of the world’s 1.2 billion vehicles and were unlikely to account for more than 10 percent of the global fleet by 2030.’

As for shale oil, the chief echoed my earlier expressed confidence that:

‘Investments in smaller increments such as shale oil will just not cut it.’

Even these small increments from shale are far from secure with a world shortage of the essential fracking sand already with us. See:

The Scottish Third Wave of Oil Productivity is built on solid foundations but those of the Shale Oil Industry are built on sand and on sand that is disappearing fast

Returning to Nogami, we see similar thoughts to those expressed by the Aramco chief:

‘Global demand for crude oil is likely to grow for at least the next 10 years. This is because economic growth in emerging economies including China and India will spur demand in sectors such as transportation and chemicals. Although some believe that the demand for oil will decrease due to the spread of electric vehicles, it will take a considerable amount of time to be fully implemented. One of the major challenges is the high costs of setting up necessary infrastructure such as charging stations.’

https://www.oilandgaspeople.com/news/15881/crude-oil-demand-will-grow-for-next-10-years/

As Scottish crude bursts through the $70pb figure, just over one year after the 2016 slump, to $27.67 (up 154%), it seems there is much revenue to be gathered from the oil producers and that it will last well into the period of independence.

BBC Salford headlined their report yesterday with:

‘The British Dental Association said England had a “second-class” dental service compared to Wales and Scotland.’

Before going on to note that:

‘The BDA said England was receiving a “second-class service” because, unlike Wales and Scotland, it has no dedicated national child oral health programme. It said the government’s centrepiece policy Starting Well – aimed at improving oral health outcomes for “high-risk” children – had received no new funding and was operating in parts of just 13 local authorities in England.’

In incisor-sharp contrast, government initiatives in Scotland and Wales seem to have more bite and are resulting in falling rates of tooth decay in young children. Scotland’s ‘Childsmile’ programme has cut £5 million off treatment costs.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42662425

Loyally following the advice from Tory health spokesperson, Miles Briggs, that making comparisons with NHS England is a diversionary tactic which is wearing thin for Scots, Reporting Scotland have ignored the above story for this

‘SNP fail Scottish children’s teeth by excluding Irn Bru from minimum-pricing policy’

A Freedom of Information request by the Scottish Conservative Party, nicely written-up, even spell-checked, for BBC Scotland, has revealed the SNP’s shocking incompetence in excluding the high-sugar content Irn Bru from their new minimum pricing policy yet imposing it on the low-sugar content English bitters popular with many Scottish children. Some have suggested that the exclusion of Irn Bru and the inclusion of English beer is a clear sign that the SNP is pursuing anti-English policies.