Found for us and headlined, by reader and finder-of-stuff, Gavin, the October 2018 research by Edinburgh and Cardiff universities which exposes the truly divided nature of the so-called United Kingdom.

Click to access FoES%202018%20Slides.pdf

Thanks also to William for other finds.

I feel like a primary teacher (stop it!) with a smiley face stamp.

CLASS ASSIGNMENT PS:101

I have deliberately not analysed the above report for you. Please write any number of words in response to this question:

Why is the evidence in the report toxic for the future of the Tory party in Scotland?

Note: Though you might think choosing the kryptonite metaphor makes the Tories ‘supermen’, I feel sure Gavin had the 19th Century, Nietschean, idea of superman, as a cold, heartless killer, in mind. Think Ross Thompson, think nihilist, think, he means nothing to me?

 

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities report on the extent to which the UK government complies with its convention was published on 31^st August 2018. It condemns them thoroughly (see below for detail).

Yesterday, five weeks later, in the Guardian, we read headlined:

‘Exclusive: EHRC report reveals half of disabled people in the UK feel excluded from society’

and then:

‘One in five British people are suffering erosion of their rights because they are disabled, the government-backed Equality and Human Rights Commission has said in a damning report to the United Nations. The body cites “deeply concerning” evidence that despite government pledges to improve conditions for the nearly 14 million disabled Britons, their situation is getting worse across the UK.’

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/07/one-in-five-britons-with-disabilities-have-their-rights-violated-un-told

I can’t find the EHRC report online as yet, so I can’t establish whether it includes an EHRC: Scotland section or whether the Guardian report (and the EHRC report?) does the usual conflation of England with UK and British

I can, however, refer back to the UN assessment, at the end of August, triggering the EHRC response which had particular comments to make regarding Scotland. The only positive comments are reserved entirely for the actions of the Scottish Government:

• Repeatedly calling for the UK Government’s Personal Independent Payment regulations to be repealed and for a review of the Employment and Support Allowance conditionality and sanction regimes
• Engaging with disabled people and the organisations representing them when devising policies and legislation which impact upon their lives – specifically in building the new social security system and in compiling our national plan to implement the Convention’s principles
• Adoption of the Accessible Travel Framework and the work underway to make transport systems in Scotland more open and accessible 
• Following the passing of the British Sign Language (Scotland) Act 2015 the Scottish Government will publish its first National Plan for British Sign Language in October

We can add to this the Scottish Government allocation of £2.5 million to 13 projects across Scotland designed to ‘improve employment support’ by ‘linking with health and social care, justice and housing services.’ For more, see:

Scottish Government continues to show that it takes its responsibilities to care for its people seriously unlike its callous self-centred Tory neighbours

With regard to the UK Government, the UN called for these actions:

• The UK Government’s Personal Independent Payment regulations should be repealed and there should be a review of the Employment and Support Allowance conditionality and sanction regimes
• The UK Government must do more to engage with disabled people and the organisations representing them when devising policies and legislation which impact upon their lives

Evidence that these actions are desperately needed in England can be found in reports like this from the Guardian in May this year:

‘Pushing people to the brink of suicide: the reality of benefit assessments’

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/04/benefits-assessments-damaging-lives-hardworking-britain

and this from the Huffington Post in July:

‘Almost 600 Suicides Could Be Related to DWP Work Assessments, Claims New Research’

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/11/16/dwp-suicides-assessments-research_n_8577038.html

Don’t read them if you’re feeling at all down. I can only find one cased of attempted suicide by a disabled person in Scotland explicitly linked to DWP assessment. My search was for obvious reasons not too determined, so I may not have found everything there.

https://news.gov.scot/news/praise-for-scottish-government-actions

 

Sources:

Another little difference that tells us something: SNP to improve disability terms for terminally ill.

In the wake of the UN praise for Scotland’s approach to disability rights, NHS Scotland announces traineeships for disabled graduates

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

 

(Above graphic not directly relevant but liked by this editor)

As most of you know, the social reality many (Yoons especially) think they experience is, in large part, due to the Nomedia messages they consume. That’s why increased Nomedia reporting and dramatic productions of violent crime have caused many to fear it more than the actual fall in violent crime should suggest to them.

I know many regular readers here are, of course, illuminati, able to see through these messages to another reality, closer to the material reality of life under global capitalism. Don’t tell me that’s just another reality. Post modernism is past it. We’ll have no relativism here. Well maybe some then but only in the sphere of ‘culture’.

So, BBC Scotland news and even my old business chums at Insider have looked at the RBS PMI index and have gone for:

‘Scottish private sector’s pace of growth at five-month low’

It’s not entirely inaccurate of course in the sense that it is in the report but it’s, typically, inadequate to represent the whole report so here’s some of the other messages therein:

‘Malcolm Buchanan, chair, Scotland Board, Royal Bank of Scotland, said: “Scotland’s private sector economy continued to expand at a solid pace as the third quarter came to a close.”’

Several positive quotes had also been available for editorial (de)selection:

‘Scottish private sector employment rose in September. While the rate of job creation was modest it was quicker than August’s six-month low. Expectations of pressures from stronger demand motivated survey respondents to do more recruitment and workforce numbers rose at a comparatively quicker pace across the UK as a whole.’

‘Indeed, growth in the service sector has been well anchored in recent months and looks set to continue to support the overall Scottish business environment.’

Interestingly short-termist, was the end of this initially optimistic quote:

‘Although this signalled a weaker increase, the pace of expansion was robust and above the survey average. But, that said, the latest data ended a five-month sequence of accelerating growth rates.’

‘Ended’? They don’t mean that. Take it easy lads and lasses. There’s always another financial quarter unless I’m being a bit cavalier on the latest global warming threats.

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/royal-bank-scotland-pmi-index-13368635

I wonder, have we had any good news about business recently? Let me check my records:

Scottish business confidence well above UK average

SNP blamed as private businesses experience too much demand and overcrowding with new staff second only to Labour-mayored London.

SNP accused of standing-back as business confidence slumps to 15-month low in non-Scottish parts of the UK

Scottish business confidence stays high…Ah but!..Oh shut up Revoking Scotland!

63% fall in large business insolvencies as Scottish economy reveals strength

See this Douglas? Business investment in Scotland up 250%!

Scottish Business Strength No.77: Small Scottish construction firms’ growth up 17%

Scottish small businesses still more confident than those in non-Scottish parts

Business activity soars to four-year high across manufacturing and service

Business confidence in Scotland soars by 24% while it sinks 29% in non-Scottish parts of UK

Scottish businesses more likely to be stable than those in rest of UK: News from a parallel universe unknown to our mainstream media

Scottish Government supports economy with new business rates unique in UK

Scottish business confidence higher than in any other region of UK

 

 

(c) calladencious

More than one writer has compared London’s financial sector to the Indonesian Upas tree whose wide branches produce a toxic sap (Who are you thinking of right now?) which kills off any other plants growing near and sharing its supply of nutrients.

Here are two extracts from ‘The upas tree: the over-development of London and the under-development of Britain’ by Jeffrey Henderson and Suet Ying Ho:

‘The problem with Britain is that it is dominated by a single city: London. In other countries with highly developed economies and societies, political, cultural and economic power is dispersed: think, for instance, of Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich and Berlin; New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington DC; Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Vancouver; Milan, Turin and Rome.’

‘[Using] the Indonesian upas tree to symbolise London’s relation to Britain. The upas tree is a plant whose widespread branches produce a toxic sap that kills off anything that attempts to grow beneath them. London, historically but especially today, seems to have acted like the upas in respect to the rest of the country. Economically, politically, socially and culturally, London has become grossly over-developed and a consequence of its development process has been the systematic under-development of the rest of Britain.’

http://renewal.org.uk/articles/the-upas-tree-the-overdevelopment-of-london-and-the-under-development-of-br

The upas-tree effect is the sucking of human talent and capital investment, on especially, infrastructure like roads, rail and communications networks, from the regions, leading to underdevelopment in these regions. Making the effect even worse in the UK than elsewhere is the unusual centralisation around a single mega city with a huge financial sector.

On finance sectors, researchers at Sheffield University, have suggested, dramatically:

We all need finance, but only up to a point. Once a financial centre grows above its useful size and roles, it starts to become predatory and harms the economy that hosts it. This happens in many ways. An oversized City drains our best educated and most talented people out of manufacturing and other economic sectors, generates large economic distortions and financial crises, and many of its members focus on devising ever more creative ways to extract wealth from other parts of the economy (see RBS footnote)…..UK has suffered a £4.5 trillion cumulative cost in lost economic output from 1995-2015 – and counting. That is equivalent to a £170,000 loss per British household.’

http://speri.dept.shef.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/SPERI-The-UKs-Finance-Curse-Costs-and-Processes.pdf

The consequences for the English regions can be seen graphically here:

Figure 2: Public expenditure on economic affairs per head of population by region, 2011-12

Figure 3: Public expenditure on transport per head of population by region, 2011-12

http://renewal.org.uk/articles/the-upas-tree-the-overdevelopment-of-london-and-the-under-development-of-br

Readers might find graphs with Scotland included.

Finally, are their lessons for Scotland as Edinburgh booms?

Footnote: ‘The allegations first surfaced in 2013 when Lawrence Tomlinson, a businessman who was an adviser to the then business secretary, Sir Vince Cable, compiled a dossier alleging the bank [RBS] deliberately wrecked small businesses to make profits.’

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/08/rbs-facing-400m-bill-to-compensate-small-business-customers

 

 

Survation’s poll for the Sun seems to indicate that voters thinking about Brexit now will lead to 50% supporting a Scottish independence vote. If as expected, Brexit leads to dramatic and negative economic developments, that might be expected to climb further.

However, seeing that this was another telephone survey, reminded me of evidence I’d posted before suggesting that not only are telephone surveys inaccurate but they tend toward exaggerating conservative or no change outcomes such as a NO vote in Scotland 2014 or, as they clearly did, a Remain vote in Brexit 2016.

Here’s most of what I wrote in March 2017:

First see these reservations, from YouGov, about telephone interviews from the opinion polls which got the EU Referendum so wrong:

‘There’s a big difference between the online and telephone polls on the EU referendum – with online polls showing the sides neck-and neck and telephone polls showing about a 15% gap in favour of ‘remain’. Why? It’s striking that both methodologies right across the different polling companies give about the same number to the ‘leave’ campaign, around 40%. The difference is in the ‘remain’ number, which is around 52% from the telephone polls but only 40% for online polls.’

So, commonly, telephone surveys generate conservative, negative or status quo returns. Respondents are more likely to say no to a question about a big change of some kind.

In another YouGov report we read:

‘Now however we can reveal a real, significant and evidence-based difference between the two methodologies that explains why they are divergent and why it is online that appears to be calling it correctly.’

See this online survey report from the, far from sympathetic to Scottish Independence, Scotsman newspaper in June 2016:

‘Nearly six out of 10 Scots say they’d vote Yes in a second independence referendum. In a clear reflection of the growing backlash north of the Border to Thursday’s Brexit result, a ScotPulse online survey of 1,600 Scottish adults on Friday (24 June) showed that 59% of Scots now back leaving the UK.’

Further, not everyone has a landline to be called on. Roughly 20%, especially younger and economically disadvantaged citizens do not have one so cannot be surveyed. As the Herald report points out, the young and the less-well-off are more likely to prefer independence.

Here’s an even more interesting thought, from the USA admittedly:

‘There now may be something unusual about people who are willing to answer the phone to talk with strangers, and we should be sceptical about generalizing from the results of these surveys. It is possible that the new habit of non-phone-answering is evenly distributed throughout the population (thus reducing this as a sampling confound), but this seems unlikely.’

Now, are NO voters more unusual than YES voters?

 Sources:

https://www.indeed.co.uk/cmp/Bmg-Research/reviews

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/02/23/commentary-what-explains-difference-between-phone-/https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/02/23/commentary-what-explains-difference-between-phone-/

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/05/20/revealed-evidence-greater-skews-phone-polls/

https://www.statista.com/statistics/386778/share-of-calls-enabled-landlines-in-uk-hoseholds/

http://www.scotsman.com/news/poll-puts-support-for-scottish-independence-at-59-1-4163338

http://www.counterpunch.org/2004/09/20/what-if-the-problem-with-phone-polls-is-that-they-are-phone-polls/

 

 

Today’s headline with opening text is:

‘More than 1,000 teachers under 40 quit the profession. MORE than a thousand teachers under the age of 40 have quit the profession in the past two years fuelling Scotland’s school recruitment crisis. Official figures show 649 teachers between the ages of 21 and 40 dropped off the teaching register in 2018 – while 641 left the previous year.’

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/16963891.more-than-1000-teachers-under-40-quit-the-profession/

So, it’s only 649 in the last year but ‘more than 1 000’ makes a ‘better’ headline, eh? However, is 649 a lot or not a lot? The Herald goes on to suggest a staffing crisis.

There were 51 513 teachers in Scottish schools last year.

https://beta.gov.scot/publications/summary-statistics-schools-scotland-8-2017-edition/pages/3/

I don’t know how many were aged 40 and under, but 649 is only 1.25% of the total. If half of teachers are 40 or under, then it would still be only 2.5%. Would that make a crisis?

Anyway, how does the number of teachers per capita in Scotland compare with that in, say, England? There were 51 513 teacher FTEs in Scotland last year and 457 300 thousand FTEs in England:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/620825/SFR25_2017_MainText.pdf

So, Scotland has 10% of the population but 11.3% of the teachers.

Finally, how do the pupil teacher ratios compare? From the same sources, we get 13.6 to 1 in Scotland, 15 to one in English secondaries and 20 to 1 in primaries. So, not surprisingly, Scotland has a better pupil teacher ratio

Crisis what crisis?

In DIGIT today:

‘The World Electric Vehicle Association has named Dundee as Europe’s most visionary city for electric vehicles (EVs). At a ceremony in Kobe, Japan, the association presented Dundee City Council with an ‘E-visionary award’ for its pioneering initiatives to encourage the use of EVs at its annual gathering in Kobe….The city’s council has developed the UK’s largest public sector fleet of clean vehicles, with almost 40% of cars and vans being electric. In addition to this, 15% of taxis are now electric and are able to plug-in at the UK’s first solar-powered charging hubs.’

https://digit.fyi/dundee-named-europes-most-visionary-electric-vehicle-city/

Dundee has had earlier tributes such as ‘most design savvy’. See:

Is Dundee ‘punchin’? The only UK location in Lonely Planet’s top ten

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

It’s Dundee hitting the headlines for all the right reasons and not for the first time this year

Dundee second-best city in UK to start a new business is first with bear protection. No not against some Rangers fans, the Polar ones

Silver medal and second in list of best places to start a new business 2017, it’s….. Edinburgh? No, it’s Dundee. Sit down Edinburgh.

‘University of Dundee is UK’s highest ranked institution for influencing innovation’

 

 

(c) gisforthought.com

Blistering’ is a word I tend to associate with electric guitar solos, but Insider have used it for the dramatic growth of the commercial property market in Glasgow:Blistering’ is a word I usually asBlBottom of Form

‘Glasgow’s blistering commercial property market – bolstered by Barclays announcement for its Clyde-front office – has hit a record quarter for the expanding city centre. According to data from property agent JLL, Glasgow’s record quarter for office transactions brings the city centre’s total take-up for the year to date to 1,192,689 sq ft with three months of the year still remaining. By marked contrast, office occupier take-up for 2017 totalled 627,313 sq ft.’

https://www.insider.co.uk/news/glasgow-commercial-property-edinburgh-market-13366744

This can be taken as further evidence of strength in Scotland’s underlying economy. If businesses are investing in property, then that means they have contracts to fulfil and workers requiring accommodation to enable them to do the work required. It’s pretty concrete evidence of economic health.

Earlier pieces on Glasgow and on property are here:

Miles Better? Glasgow hotel revenue growing eight times faster than UK average

Massive increase in spending by international visitors to Glasgow

‘Edinburgh and Glasgow in top five cities to work in UK’

More real economic strength revealed as demand for Glasgow office space increases dramatically

‘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

One more indicator of economic well-being as Investment in Glasgow office property surges four-fold and Scotland ‘very much on the wish list’

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

One more indicator of economic well-being as Investment in Glasgow office property surges four-fold and Scotland ‘very much on the wish list’

More real economic data: 37% surge in investment in Scottish commercial property, greater diversity and higher profitability than in the UK

Scottish economy’s underlying strength invisible to our Nomedia

Miles Better? Glasgow hotel revenue growing eight times faster than UK average