We’ve had no answer from the BBC’s Andrew Neil to the question we asked him at the weekend. There has, however, been an interesting development in the debate over whether there have been severe real-terms cuts to the Scottish Government’s budget since the Conservatives came to power in 2010.
The extremely highly-respected economic analysts Jim and Margaret Cuthbert (the former of whom was Chief Statistician for the Scotland Office) have today written an article for Bella Caledonia seeking to establish the truth of the argument between Mr Neil and ourselves. Their conclusions are expert, detailed and very clear.
This month we’ve been noting a sudden avalanche of factually-questionable articles in the media attacking the SNP’s record in government. At the weekend and yesterday we also picked apart a highly misleading and disingenuous claim by Andrew Neil on the BBC’s Sunday Politics that there had been no cuts to the Scottish Government budget since the Conservatives came to power in 2010.
At the weekend this site noted that on the BBC’s Sunday Politics, presenter Andrew Neil claimed that the Scottish Government’s budget had not been reduced in real terms in “the last five or six years”, and that therefore Scotland has not faced cuts.
But as we pointed out, the Scottish Government budget HAS been cut, year-on-year, since the Tories took office. The independent Fiscal Affairs Scotland assessed the cumulative reduction at a hefty 10%, or a little over £3bn a year.
In its kneejerk “SNP BAD” reaction to the Alistair Carmichael affair, the Unionist establishment – politicians and media alike – has furiously tried to divert attention from Carmichael’s smear and attempted cover-up by harking back to an incident in 2012, when the press gave vast amounts of coverage to a claim that Alex Salmond had “lied” about legal advice regarding an independent Scotland’s EU membership.
In modern Scotland, you’ll struggle to find a politician from any party who won’t agree with two propositions: that Scotland is a nation and that devolution has, on balance, been a positive experience.
Debates about Scottish nationality are rare these days too. A substantial majority of Scots define themselves as “Scottish only”. Even UKIP has quietly ditched its plan to abolish Holyrood and now talks of forming a government.
But for all this consensus, Scotland’s inability to fully represent itself on the airwaves and onscreen remains one of the most critical issues we must now face up to.
The referendum created an eclectic range of alternative media. But, whether we like them or not, large media institutions like the BBC maintain a reach both online and offline that only a very select number of new platforms can begin to rival.
No single project can address this problem. Only a systematic renewal of Scotland’s media landscape will change the current reality of managed decline.
Jim Murphy had an uncomfortable few minutes on Sunday Politics this morning (though in fairness, not quite as uncomfortable as those Natalie Bennett of the Greens had just endured as Andrew Neil shone some light on some of the more out-there sections of the party’s manifesto).
Murphy did his best to waffle and stall for time as he avoided almost all of Neil’s questions. He had no opinion on whether Nicola Sturgeon should take part in election debate, no view on whether Labour would work with the SNP in the event of a hung Parliament, and refused point-blank to clarify his own position in terms of standing for his current Westminster seat this May.
Our brain protected us from looking at the Scotsman yesterday, so it wasn’t until late last night that we noticed what we first thought must be some sort of elaborate spoof.
“Labour claim 1m may lose jobs after independence”, ran what we suspect may in the post-match analysis come to be regarded as the most deranged headline of the entire referendum campaign. There are fewer than 2.6m people working in the country altogether, which would mean Labour were threatening almost 40% of all the jobs in Scotland would be lost with a Yes vote.
It wasn’t until two thirds of the way down the article that we discovered the headline writer had in fact gotten a little carried away, and that Labour had once again just plucked the word “million” out of the air to sound scary, claiming that only “some” of the jobs were allegedly at risk.
One of the great things about this site’s sky-high viewing figures is that on the rare occasions when we might be, for example, out having a walk in the park to get over the crushing disappointment of somehow losing yet another Scottish Cup semi-final, our ever-vigilant readers will remain alert.
