Ludo Thierry:

The Fraser of Allander Institute seems to be much more prepared to challenge the Better Together economic orthodoxies at the moment. Having very recently deconstructed Jackson Carlaw’s Scottish Income Tax proposals with a deliciously dry humour – they have now utterly debunked Scotland In Union’s demented claims that the SNP Scottish Govt are ‘burying’ Scotland’s recent economic statistical revisions by the novel means of publishing these routinely in the official economic statistical bulletins! Link and snippets below:

https://fraserofallander.org/scottish-economy/economic-statistics-revisions-and-burying-bad-news/

Economic Statistics revisions and ‘burying bad news’

Fraser of Allander Institute – February 3, 2020

We were highly puzzled by some recent newspaper stories that seem to accuse Scottish Ministers of ‘burying bad news’ after revised data on Scotland’s economy was published last week.

We think this is unfair.

So what is the story?

Newly revised data on the size of Scotland’s economy was published last week as part of the Scottish Government’s Quarterly National Accounts publication covering the 3rd quarter of 2019. This is a National Statistics publication pre-announced weeks in advance. It is available here. There was an accompanying news release to the publication here.

You can’t really bury bad news if you publish it on your website as part of a regular statistical publication.

It is unreasonable to expect Ministers to comment on each and every statistical revision that takes place over the course of a year.

Suggesting that the statistics have been buried to hide questions about Scotland’s fiscal deficit is simply bizarre.

There will of course be an important debate to be had about Scotland’s relative fiscal position, but this should only take place when all revisions – not just to GDP but the underlying public finances – are published in the annual GERS report in the summer. It will be at that point the underlying strength of Scotland’s fiscal position can be assessed, including if it has been revised down, once all the updated data is available.

There are important debates to be had about the performance of the Scottish economy. But this isn’t one of them.

Let’s hope these recent encouraging efforts presage a longer term commitment to subjecting britnat arguments to the same level of scrutiny to which Indy arguments are subjected. All we request is a fair approach to the analysis being applied.

Ed: I did have a go at McLaren myself: https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2020/02/02/is-scottish-economist-depressed-because-of-lack-of-prostitution-and-drugs-under-snp/