Talking-up Scotland

 

I’ve already written:

‘Scotland’s “expertise in renewable energy” is in demand around the world, with businesses working in more than 40 countries, according to new research. Projects include advising the government of Japan, providing cranes to build wind farms in Morocco and South Africa and working with the World Bank in Chile, industry body Scottish Renewables said.’ (Aberdeen Evening Express on 12^th December 2016)

See these:

Happy New Year Story: Scotland’s ‘renewable energy expertise’ in demand worldwide, says new research. At least 14 news agencies report it but BBC Scotland, STV?

Taiwan comes to Scotland for offshore renewables inspiration

Now, Scottish tidal energy specialist Nova Innovation are to lead a £17.8 million European project based on nine other groups as part of the Enabling Future Arrays in Tidal (EnFAIT) initiative.

Nova won this role after the great success of their tidal Bluemull Sound ‘grid-connected offshore array of tidal energy turbines’ off Shetland, the first in the world.

https://www.energyvoice.com/otherenergy/143982/nova-lead-17-8m-european-tidal-project/

Only London, the South and East of England had higher gross disposable incomes per head than Scotland in 2015. This is testimony to the robustness of the wider Scottish economy and the Scottish government’s progressive policies. The recent data revealing that the Scottish economy is growing at 4 times the rate of the UK as-a-whole and the numerous good news reports in my blog over the past months suggest that the 2016 and 2017 figures will be similar if not better.

 Table 2: NUTS1 gross disposable household income (GDHI)¹, UK, 2015²

NUTS1 Regions	GDHI per head (£)	GDHI per head growth on 2014 (percentage)	GDHI per head index (UK=100)	Total GDHI (£ million)	Total GDHI growth on 2014 (percentage)	Share of UK total GDHI (percentage)
United Kingdom	19,106	2.9	100.0	1,243,970	3.7	100.0
North East	16,197	3.9	84.8	42,512	4.2	3.4
North West	16,915	2.9	88.5	121,344	3.5	9.8
Yorkshire and The Humber	16,267	2.9	85.1	87,691	3.5	7.0
East Midlands	16,935	2.5	88.6	79,206	3.3	6.4
West Midlands	16,559	2.0	86.7	95,234	2.7	7.7
East of England	19,796	3.0	103.6	120,292	4.0	9.7
London	25,293	2.7	132.4	219,386	4.3	17.6
South East	21,808	2.8	114.1	195,138	3.7	15.7
South West	19,128	3.5	100.1	104,651	4.4	8.4
Wales	16,341	3.3	85.5	50,642	3.6	4.1
Scotland	18,315	2.7	95.9	98,408	3.2	7.9
Northern Ireland	15,913	3.0	83.3	29,466	3.6	2.4
Source: Office for National Statistics
Notes:
1. Figures may not sum to totals as a result of rounding.
2. 2015 estimates are provisional.

 

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/regionalaccounts/grossdisposablehouseholdincome/bulletins/regionalgrossdisposablehouseholdincomegdhi/2015

 

Scotland’s soldiers have been used in the UK Government’s false humanitarian interventions in Kosovo, and Iraq but there is a real one we can be involved and doing so will make us rich emotionally rather than economically.

I write this inspired by the wettest June since 1938.

Huge areas of the world, especially the Middle East and North Africa’s 400 million people, will be uninhabitable within a few decades, due to severe water shortages, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Here’s an extract capturing the severity of the risk:

‘This sharp water scarcity simply not only affects the already precarious provision of drinking water for most of the region’s 22 countries, home to nearly 400 million inhabitants, but also the availability of water for agriculture and food production for a fast-growing population. The new facts are stark: per capita availability of fresh water in the region is now 10 times less than the world average. Moreover, higher temperatures may shorten growing seasons in the region by 18 days and reduce agricultural yields a further 27 per cent to 55 per cent less by the end of this century. Add to this that the region’s fresh water resources are among the lowest in the world, and are expected to fall over 50 per cent by 2050, according to the United Nations leading agency in the field of food and agriculture.’

I know, it’s a long way away but if we can run oil and gas-carrying pipes thousands of miles across Asia and Europe then we can run a water-carrying pipeline from Scotland through the dryish bits of England and Europe and across the Mediterranean. The massive wealth of the gulf states and the EU can easily pay for such a simple thing. We can give the water free and make us all feel good about ourselves for doing so. I’m all for making Scotland wealthy with its oil, gas and electricity exports but water is a right and we can afford to give it away.

© dailyrecord.co.uk

Reported in Scottish Housing News today, the number of fires (238 in 2016/17) in high rise blocks has fallen 52% since 2009/2010. As we know, all of Scotland’s tower blocks have clean bill of health with regard to flammable cladding of the kind used at Grenfell and in over 500 other English tower blocks.

Nevertheless, it is heartening to hear of this fall in smaller more localised fires. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service must take much of the credit for this having made 18 241 Home Fire Safety Visits. These are free of charge.

There are only around 300 tower blocks in Scotland so that is a huge number of safety visits.

There had also been a 43% decrease in comparable fires in England.

http://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/national/15374280.Steep_fall_in_high_rise_fires_in_seven_years_before_Grenfell_Tower_blaze/

http://www.scottishhousingnews.com/16166/high-rise-fires-in-scotland-at-lowest-level-in-eight-years/

© ALAMY

Figures released yesterday from the Department for International Trade do seem a little confusing but, at face value, they suggest Scotland is getting a much bigger share of new jobs from foreign investment than the rest of the UK.

Scotland attracted 183 foreign investments and the UK, as-a-whole, attracted 2 265. I know that means Scotland is doing less well, apparently but the 183 Scottish projects created ‘over 5 500’ new jobs while the 2 265 UK projects only created ‘nearly 15 000 new jobs ‘across the country’. Again, if I read this stuff correctly and ‘across the country’ includes Scotland then there were less than 10 000 in the rest of the UK. So, with only 9% of the population we attracted more than 33% of the jobs? Maybe it’s all wrong arithmetically but International Trade Secretary, Liam Fox, said:

‘These results are great news for Scotland. As world leaders across a range of sectors including life sciences, oil and gas and financial services, it’s great to see foreign investors recognising the country’s excellence.’

So, maybe, most of the rUk projects are tiny and the Scottish ones are big? I welcome elucidation.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/foreign-investors-see-opportunities-in-scotland

As well as a much more severe 5-year maximum sentence compared to the English 2-year maximum, the Scottish law has the crucial additions of penalising the threatened as well as actual disclosure of intimate images and the reckless as well as intentional causing of fear, alarm or distress to the victim.

These differences have been praised by Dr Samantha Pegg of Nottingham Law School as enabling the Scottish version to avoid the pitfalls in the English system.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/law/how-scotland-has-improved-revenge-porn-laws-r5pgkhn7r

Scotland’s Justice Secretary Michael Matheson made this point clear:

‘There is no place for this abusive and manipulative behaviour in Scotland, and the threat of sharing images without consent will be viewed just as seriously as the act of sharing,’

https://news.gov.scot/news/sharing-images-without-consent

Here’s what a King’s Fund research report told us in 2013, four years ago:

1. Scotland, by contrast [with England], has abolished all vestiges of the ‘internal market’. (11)
2. There is relatively little cross-border flow of patients from Scotland to England. (11)
3. Scotland specifically embraces a philosophy of ‘mutuality’ between the Scottish people and the NHS. Internally it has a highly developed approach to partnership working between the trade unions and management. The partnership’s remit stretches well beyond terms and conditions to broader issues such as quality and the design of services. (11)
4. Scotland has a long and honourable tradition of clinical audit that over the years, both before and after devolution, has helped inform the approach of the other countries. (11)
5. Scotland appears to have made more progress [in developing integrated care], perhaps in part due to its relative organisational stability over the past decade (11)

http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/sites/files/kf/field/field_publication_summary/four-uk-health-systems-jun13.pdf

Now we have the Nuffield Trust telling us a very similar story four years later. Here are the key positive points:

1. Scotland has a unique system of improving the quality of health care. It focuses on engaging the altruistic professional motivations of frontline staff to do better, and building their skills to improve. Success is defined based on specific measurements of safety and effectiveness that make sense to clinicians.
2. Scotland’s smaller size as a country supports a more personalised, less formal approach than in England. The Scottish NHS has also benefited from a continuous focus on quality improvement over many years. It uses a consistent, coherent method where better ways of working are tested on a small scale, quickly changed, and then rolled out. This is overseen by a single organisation that both monitors the quality of care and also helps staff to improve it.
3. While comparing performance is very difficult, Scotland has had particular success in some priority areas like reducing the numbers of stillbirths. Scotland’s system provides possible alternatives for an English system with a tendency towards too many short-term, top-down initiatives that often fail to reach the front line. It also provides one possible model for a Northern Irish NHS yet to have a pervasive commitment to quality improvement, and a Welsh system described as needing better ways to hold health boards to account while supporting them in improving care.
4. While Scotland also faces particular issues of unequal health outcomes and very remote areas, there are pioneering initiatives to address these, and should be considered in other parts of the UK facing similar issues.
5. Scotland has a longer history of drives towards making different parts of the health and social care system work together. It has used legislation to get these efforts underway, while recognising that ultimately local relationships are the deciding factor – there is much for England and Wales to learn from this.

Now, I feel sure Ruth Davidson and Kezia Dugdale didn’t see the King’s Fund report, judging by their ill-informed criticisms of NHS Scotland over the last few years. Will they pay attention to the Nuffield Trust report, recognise the achievements of NHS Scotland and consequently its management by the SNP government? If it was the other way around, they’d be quick to blame the SNP for ‘not getting on with the job’, so?

https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/research/learning-from-scotland-s-nhs#key-messages

(c) http://everyinvestor.co.uk

I won’t attempt to put this from EnergyVoice into my own words. I couldn’t:

‘London’s blue-chip index bounced back on Monday as investors piled into commodity stocks in response to the rising oil price. The FTSE 100 Index climbed 64.37 points to to 7,377.09, driven by a strong performance from the mining giants, with Glencore soaring 5%, or 14.4p, to 301.6p. Oil major BP was also in the ascendency, up 8.5p to 451.3p, as Brent crude rose 1.4% to 49.44 US dollars a barrel.’

What I can do is say this is just more evidence of the security of Scotland’s oil industry in the medium to long term after one bad year in forty. Forty? There’s a joke there somewhere.

I’ve lost track of how many good news stories I’ve reported on the same thing. If you search my blog for ‘oil’ you’ll find them all. The overwhelming weight of evidence is that Scotland’s oil has decades to run. See for example:

Scotland’s Treasury to benefit from ‘Oil Price Shock In 2020’

Why Scotland’s oil is going to be worth a fortune in the years to come

https://www.energyvoice.com/marketinfo/143621/ftse-bounces-back-amid-rising-oil-price/

Even this morning the University of Strathclyde’s Fraser of Allander Institute’s blog was suggesting that the Scottish economy was shrinking, based on the last quarter (Q4) of 2016 and what they thought might happen in the first quarter (Q1) of 2017. You’ll have seen all the gloomy headlines over the last few weeks if you can bear to monitor the mainstream media.

They don’t seem to have seen the Q1 figures for 2017 published today by the Scottish government at 09.30am, showing the economy growing. See this:

‘The Scottish economy grew by 0.8% during the first quarter of 2017, according to statistics announced today by Scotland’s Chief Statistician. Change in gross domestic product (GDP) is the main indicator of economic growth in Scotland. The latest Gross Domestic Product release, covering the period January to March 2017, shows the economy grew by 0.8% compared to the previous three months. On an annual basis, compared to the first quarter of 2016, the Scottish economy grew by 0.7%. During the first quarter of 2017 output in the services industry in Scotland grew by 0.3%, production grew by 3.1% and construction contracted by 0.7%.’

https://news.gov.scot/news/scottish-economy-grows-0-8#.WVykRAtXCBw.twitter

I’ve already pointed to the general uselessness of academic economists in this:

Why Scotland’s looming recession is a figment of the imagination and propagandising

I did say I wouldn’t bother engaging with them directly but then my good friend Contrary sent me the gov.scot link and I couldn’t help myself.

Equally, I can’t help reminding you that economists know nothing vaguely true unless it’s already happened. Like some other disciplines, they think they can perceive and analyse a real world out there. I am, of course, a member of the Master discipline, Sociology. We used to believe the same until we discovered phenomenology and had to accept that all we can be sure of is that we are having thoughts and that you might be interested in them. So, when we publish research findings we ‘surface the researcher’. That means we tell you where we’re coming from, what our values are and what our methods are, in detail, so that you can decide whether to believe us or not. Economists think they’re too big for that kind of thing and despite their endless dismal errors go on expecting you to respect and trust them. More fool you if you do. By the way, anybody can call themselves an ‘institute’. There are no rules on this. Ironically members of institutes tend to become institutionalised and believe what everybody else in the institute does. To get promoted you have to parrot the same stuff. One historian called it ‘Working toward the Fuhrer.’

I know, the Scottish Government economists are subject to the same comment if they start predicting.

You’ll notice I’m saying nothing about BBC Scotland. My psychiatrist says Bird/Campbell-induced depression is almost un-treatable unless you have a sniper’s rifle to hand so I never watch them. Don’t tell me what they’ve been saying! Please!

According to the Independent yesterday, the Scottish Government will end the 1% pay cap next year while Westminster will carry on punishing low wage-earners for the errors of economic elites.

Here’s what Finance Secretary Derek Mackay said:

‘We will take a reasonable approach that absolutely recognises that the time is up for the one per cent pay cap. Not only will the SNP commit to that, but we will do it.’

Meanwhile in London, the unholy alliance between the Tories and the DUP voted down a Labour proposal to do the same. The DUP probably think it’s a holy alliance I suppose.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/scotland-public-sector-pay-cap-end-freeze-snp-nicola-sturgeon-scottish-first-minister-a7823146.html