scotlandisdifferent

GERS, as readers will know, is the "Government Expenditure and Revenue for Scotland", and is published yearly. The report for 2016-2017 came out recently, and economist Richard Murphy questioned its accuracy, voicing his early suspicions that these books had been cooked. His claim elicited a vigorous rebuttal from Scottish entrepreneur Kevin Hague, blogging as chokka blog. In my view, Hague's rebuttal, which you can read here , should have used more moderate and factual language, which would surely have made it more persuasive. Instead, he wrote a sarcastic and emotional attack on Richard Murphy's competence, and also included a welter of raw data. This made the thread of Hague's argument difficult to follow, and in the end (in my view) weakened his case. I've therefore re-presented his argument below, leaving out the emotive language and the overly detailed data, in order to make his argument clearer. This is what I think he should have written: Professor Mur...

Vile Blogger Stuart Campbell (Wings over Scotland) , for whom I have a high regard, appears to be indisposed for a few days. So since I'm by profession a linguist, here's a Scottish/English joke to cheer him up: Queen Victoria, on a visit to the Highlands, after eating Stu (correction: stew [pun intended]): That was delicious. Tell me, what was in it? Highland Clanperson: Och, weel, ma'am, there's leeks intillit, and potatoes intillit, and... Her Maj: Really lovely! And what, pray, is "intillit"? Highland Clanperson: Och, weel, ma'am, there's leeks intillit, and potatoes intillit, and... The conversation could go on for ever - she's asking about the meaning of the word "intillit", and they're telling her what's in the stew. And that takes us on to Joke 2 about two old besoms hingin' oot the windaes in Auld Reekie (gosh, what a patronising choice of words!), of whom Dr Johnson said, "They'll never agree. They're ar...

IndyRef2.scot is currently monitoring BBC political output in the expectation of showing bias. In my view, the approach they've taken is unsatisfactory - it's aimed at cheering up the troops and inciting hatred of the BBC, rather than winning over doubters by showing the true facts. A recent case concerned Reporting Scotland's news item about data relating to NHS staffing levels. You can read their criticism of Reporting Scotland here ; below is my suggested rewrite. BBC Reporting Scotland : NHS Staffing Levels : Broadcast on Monday 31st July 2017 This news item relates to a consultation initiated by the Scottish government under the title, "Safe and Effective Staffing in Health and Social Care". The government's aim is to introduce a law requiring health boards to maintain safe staffing levels, thus securing patients' protection and defining providers' responsibilities. This is an aim which it would be difficult to disagree with. The consultation is ...

Craig Murray says it all, doesn't he?: "I do not recognise Brexit Britain as the country in which I was born and raised. The UK has become a nasty and mean-spirited place, and the sooner it is broken up the better." (See context).

Astounding stuff on BBC Radio Four News tonight: "Scotland's whisky producers see new opportunity in Brexit," were the words headlining the item in the opening overview of stories. Goody, something new and good is happening! What's the new development, what's changed, what's the new opportunity? After 18 minutes we got the detail: 1. David Mundell, Secretary of State for Scotland, has visited a distillery on Islay. Hardly a new Brexit opportunity. 2. Sarah Smith, our BBC Scotland editor, said that the Scottish whisky industry had seen Brexit as unwelcome, but that now "the mood appears to be changing". However, she didn't present any interview in which anybody said the mood was changing, she didn't play any clips of anybody saying it, in fact she didn't offer any evidence of it at all. She might as well have made it up, and given her lack of evidence, the conclusion that she did is pretty inescapable. 3. A Scotch whisky spokesman said tha...

A neo-liberal is one who thinks that people should have maximum freedom of action, unconstrained by the state or institutions. This sounds entirely laudable, until you realise that it undercuts any rule of law ("unconstrained by the state"). A neo-liberal is not a liberal (a person with liberal views), and we mustn't let the similarity of the two terms confuse us. A liberal believes in freedom of action within the existing law. Clearly, then, a battleground arises over what is allowed and not allowed by the law. Neo-liberals want to wear away the constraints of the law, to give themselves more freedom of action, whereas liberals want to use the permissions they already have - embodied in law - to further the interests of their community. It was absorbing, therefore, to hear two fully committed participants, one on each side of this argument, debating Jeremy Corbyn's proposal to make empty property available to those made homeless by the Grenfell Tower disaster. The li...

Gisela Stuart told us last night on BBC Radio Four's "Any Questions?" that more people voted Leave in the EU referendum than have ever voted for a UK government before. An impressive statistic, and absolutely right. Here are some figures from General Elections over the last 70 years, showing the number of votes that the winning side took: 1945 11.9m votes 1950 13.2m votes 1992 14.0m votes 2005 9.5m votes 2015 11.3m votes EU Referendum 17.4m votes Between 1945 and 1992 turnout remained steady but the population grew, increasing the winner's number of votes; but since 1992 turnout has decreased faster than the population has grown, reducing the winner's votes. This means that we're not going to see winning numbers of votes like that of 1992 unless there's a dramatic change in turnout. So the winner's number of votes in the EU referendum was indeed a formidable and startling result. Still, maybe we should just cast our glance a little more widely, and get...