The New Fat Scotland 'Thanks for all the Fish' Thread.

Shakethedisease

TrickyTree83 wrote: »

According to Shake these powers are being repatriated to Westminster.

Then again, this is from an official UK government spokesperson on the subject, so perhaps this could be taken as evidence that Shakey was wrong, totally wrong, on the topic of repatriation of powers to Westminster.

Some vindication perhaps? I may see that rarest of commodities, an admission from an indy supporter that they were wrong and I was right!

But I'm not counting any chickens.

No, it was Fluffy Mundell that said it, and the entire interview on Sunday Politics ( Scotland ) was a car crash.

None of us will believe it until it's plastered in the front of the Daily Record in fake parchment and signed by May, Farron and Corbyn. We've heard all this before. However, I will vindicate you for being right, for now. :T:T:T <

---

Hope that's enough cheering for you.

Shakethedisease

TrickyTree83 wrote: »

If it takes hysterics to crack the real post-truth that goes on in this world then consider it my modus operandi, it worked for the left for decades without any facts.

It's hardly indicative of insecurity to be completely and utterly bewildered by those who refuse to change their opinion based on evidence. The opposite is usually the case, that insecurity leads to a need to conform with certain beliefs, groups, ideologies due to the need to feel a part of something leading to irrationality during confrontation. That's a philosophical argument though, happy to have it somewhere else if you wish.

Now you can vindicate me right ? The below are what Leask, Farquarson and Prof Bell were referring to which I linked to an article highlighting. This survey in fact is entirely voluntary for Scottish companies once they are invited to take part.

**Exports to the rest of the UK
Rest of UK exports estimates should be treated with some caution. It is more difficult to ascertain the final destination of sales within the UK as companies have no statutory requirement to collate financial information below UK leveI. Furthermore, particular sectors face challenges in determining what constitutes an ‘export’.

In an Intra-UK situation, this is particularly the case in the service sector where output is harder to quantify and the residence of the final consumer may be less clear.

Comments relating to organisational structure of the company refer to situations where companies are part of large international corporations, possibly functioning as a subsidiary or a franchise operation within Scotland. The Scottish part of the business
may not know the sales figures or be able to split Scottish figures from the UK company account or be able to influence the company strategy for exporting.
Nineteen companies mentioned how difficult it was to split Scottish sales from UK sales or had difficulty determining visitor’s normal place of residence (particularly for the retail and hospitality sectors). For those companies having difficulty splitting Scottish sales from UK sales, this was mostly because accounting was done at a UK level.

A representative sample of 5,500 businesses operating in Scotland were invited to participate in this voluntary survey, and responses (including nil responses) were received from around 1,900 companies. Companies are selected from a Scotland extract of UK Inter Departmental Business Register (sourced from Office for National Statitsics) which along with address information also supplies employment and turnover data.

Rest of UK exports relate to trade from Scotland to either England, Wales or Northern Ireland. As with International exports, it is possible exports to the rest of UK are further transported onwards to International destination, as the survey does not collect the final destination of goods or services.

http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0046/00469028.pdf

**This is not my opinion for those that can't tell the difference. This is the report where the 64% of Scottish exports figure to rUK comes from.

Shakethedisease

Moto2 wrote: »

Not a chance

They'll just post page after page (they don't do concision) of something quite irrelevant and bizarre

- almost like the Two Ronnies sketch, where they answered the previous question -

in order to get you to give up in frustration and steer the narrative back where they want.

Lighten up you two ( Tricky inc ). It's only a discussion forum forum not the UN, and it's nearly Xmas. No need to get quite so apoplectic over a forum thread. Really.

A_Medium_Size_Jock

Shakethedisease wrote: »

Lighten up you two ( Tricky inc ). It's only a discussion forum forum not the UN, and it's nearly Xmas. No need to get quite so apoplectic over a forum thread. Really.

So says the one who feels a need to remind us that: "You seem strangely compelled to keep quoting me and directing posts at me personally or carp about my posting rather than stay on topic. As are a few here it seems. "; "It happens on pretty much all forums all the time ( I run and Admin a very large one ). The threads start getting personal and personalised concentrating on one or a few people rather than focusing on the topic at hand."
And "You don't get to tell random strangers on the internet what to do."

But lighten-up!
Yet more double-standards, what a surprise.

mollycat

Shakethedisease wrote: »

Lighten up you two ( Tricky inc ). It's only a discussion forum forum not the UN, and it's nearly Xmas. No need to get quite so apoplectic over a forum thread. Really.

Wind people up with post after post after post of misleading tosh, accuse people of "yawn inducing" contributions, THEN suggest others need to "lighten up"?

Yeah; that's rich! :rotfl:

mollycat

Booger; beaten to it by AMSJ

Moto2

Shakethedisease wrote: »

Lighten up you two ( Tricky inc ). It's only a discussion forum forum not the UN, and it's nearly Xmas. No need to get quite so apoplectic over a forum thread. Really.

beecher2

Mundell said that powers could come back to Scotland. He actually said they'd 'have to return to the UK or Scotland'. He certainly wasn't speaking as a spokesperson for the government and gave no specifics. I don't think this now counts as a 'fact' and it is a bit too early to say for sure what will happen.

TrickyTree83

Shakethedisease wrote: »

Now you can vindicate me right ? The below are what Leask, Farquarson and Prof Bell were referring to which I linked to an article highlighting. This survey in fact is entirely voluntary for Scottish companies once they are invited to take part.

http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0046/00469028.pdf

**This is not my opinion for those that can't tell the difference. This is the report where the 64% of Scottish exports figure to rUK comes from.

I don't see any problem with that at all.

Like GERS, it may not be 100% accurate as that would be largely impossible, but it will give you a good indication. That's how statistics like this work.

They are indicative, as all statistics generally are. It's very rare that you will have definitive statistics, such as there are 12 boys and 13 girls in class 8C, especially when you are looking at macro-economics.

I understand why you want to poke holes in this, because it goes against what you want to portray. That's the sum interest you have in this report. But frame it differently (I know you won't) and ask, if you were genuinely concerned about the impact of independence for Scotland and you wanted an answer, an indicative answer is better than no answer at all. i.e. in all probability it's more like that circa 64% of Scottish trade will be done with the rUK that not. That figure may rise, that figure may fall, but it should be acceptable to most that the figures indicate that the vast proportion of Scottish trade is done with the rUK, which is completely logical and reasonable. In the same way that the UK is an important market to Ireland, given our proximity, and that the rUK is an important market to Scotland, given our proximity and our current integrated market. Just because you don't want it to be true, doesn't mean it isn't.

In the same way that GERS will be accurate to the tune of +/-£n billions, it's still indicative of the overall picture of the Scottish economy. A budget deficit.

If you want to test what I've said, go and ask those 3 whether or not the figures are indicative, you seem to be on twitter a lot, I'm sure you can find their handle.

The indy support has got some way to go before they can claim that the EU is a more important market than the rUK. The EU market proportion is 11%, lets be generous and assume that's under estimated by almost 100% and say it's actually 20%, OK? Then lets assume that the statistics on rUK trade have an error rate of 50% (fifty percent!), that would mean rUK would stand for 32% of Scottish trade and the EU at 20% in this imaginary world with bias. It's still smaller. It's still not as important.

So you can see the benefit of indicative statistics. They tell a story, rather than filling in the balance sheet.

Lets now look at the jobs in Scotland that might be at risk. A study done before the 2014 referendum stated that approximately 1,000,000 Scottish jobs would be at risk if Yes won and Scotland became independent. We know the economy has grown since 2014 and we know that the domestic market has grown faster than exports (again these are indicative Scottish government statistics). Recently we've had a report where 80,000 Scottish jobs would be at risk by leaving the EU single market. Clearly, again, both of these figures are indicative and are meant purely to tell a story rather than give definitive answers as to whose job is on the line.

If we're biased towards the EU and double the amount at risk, we get 160,000 jobs at risk, that's a 100% increase on the current reported risk. If we then halve the amount at risk from Scottish independence we get 500,000 jobs at risk. So again even when we're arbitrarily biased towards independence and the EU, the statistics still fall short. The UK is important to Scotland. The indicative statistics tell the story well, it lines up with logic both geographically and historically as well as comparisons to those nearby without 'skin in the game' such as Ireland.

I work with statistics for a living. I will guarantee you won't find error rates as high as the biased examples (50%) I gave on either of those statistical reports. And even if by some bizarre miracle you did (it would be quite unprecedented, and a scandal for the civil service to be so ridiculously wrong), it still comes up short.

Shakethedisease

TrickyTree83 wrote: »

I don't see any problem with that at all.

Like GERS, it may not be 100% accurate as that would be largely impossible, but it will give you a good indication. That's how statistics like this work.

They are indicative, as all statistics generally are. It's very rare that you will have definitive statistics, such as there are 12 boys and 13 girls in class 8C, especially when you are looking at macro-economics.

I understand why you want to poke holes in this, because it goes against what you want to portray. That's the sum interest you have in this report. But frame it differently (I know you won't) and ask, if you were genuinely concerned about the impact of independence for Scotland and you wanted an answer, an indicative answer is better than no answer at all. i.e. in all probability it's more like that circa 64% of Scottish trade will be done with the rUK that not. That figure may rise, that figure may fall, but it should be acceptable to most that the figures indicate that the vast proportion of Scottish trade is done with the rUK, which is completely logical and reasonable. In the same way that the UK is an important market to Ireland, given our proximity, and that the rUK is an important market to Scotland, given our proximity and our current integrated market. Just because you don't want it to be true, doesn't mean it isn't.

In the same way that GERS will be accurate to the tune of +/-£n billions, it's still indicative of the overall picture of the Scottish economy. A budget deficit.

If you want to test what I've said, go and ask those 3 whether or not the figures are indicative, you seem to be on twitter a lot, I'm sure you can find their handle.

The indy support has got some way to go before they can claim that the EU is a more important market than the rUK. The EU market proportion is 11%, lets be generous and assume that's under estimated by almost 100% and say it's actually 20%, OK? Then lets assume that the statistics on rUK trade have an error rate of 50% (fifty percent!), that would mean rUK would stand for 32% of Scottish trade and the EU at 20% in this imaginary world with bias. It's still smaller. It's still not as important.

So you can see the benefit of indicative statistics. They tell a story, rather than filling in the balance sheet.

Lets now look at the jobs in Scotland that might be at risk. A study done before the 2014 referendum stated that approximately 1,000,000 Scottish jobs would be at risk if Yes won and Scotland became independent. We know the economy has grown since 2014 and we know that the domestic market has grown faster than exports (again these are indicative Scottish government statistics). Recently we've had a report where 80,000 Scottish jobs would be at risk by leaving the EU single market. Clearly, again, both of these figures are indicative and are meant purely to tell a story rather than give definitive answers as to whose job is on the line.

If we're biased towards the EU and double the amount at risk, we get 160,000 jobs at risk, that's a 100% increase on the current reported risk. If we then halve the amount at risk from Scottish independence we get 500,000 jobs at risk. So again even when we're arbitrarily biased towards independence and the EU, the statistics still fall short. The UK is important to Scotland. The indicative statistics tell the story well, it lines up with logic both geographically and historically as well as comparisons to those nearby without 'skin in the game' such as Ireland.

I work with statistics for a living. I will guarantee you won't find error rates as high as the biased examples (50%) I gave on either of those statistical reports. And even if by some bizarre miracle you did (it would be quite unprecedented, and a scandal for the civil service to be so ridiculously wrong), it still comes up short.

Waffle and bluster. <--- sorry couldn't resist given the stick I get on here.

We were talking about the Global Connections Survey that the Scottish Govt invites Scottish companies to take part in in order to nominally estimate exports. Not GERS etc.

I posted that they may not be accurate, that a few journo's and MP's were having serious problems getting to the bottom of them. Also that some economists are calling them 'iffy' due to the confusing way UK v's Scottish exports are calculated at UK level if at all in many cases. Final destinations on exports are also not recorded.

You ( and a few others jumping on a forum bandwagon ) accused me of making things up and not addressing your point about the 64%, then flounced off in a dramatic huff. Well, I've addressed your point about that 64% squarely and head on now just for you. Neither you nor I have any idea whatsoever how much they might be out by and I'm not saying anything either way.

But, they may not be accurate and are indeed 'iffy' so we should stop referring to them as as a wholly 100% accurate measure. Right ?

ps Moto2 please give up. I'm not interested in engaging with you unless it relates to the topic. Sorry.