Wings Over Scotland: An Apology

Unknown February 28, 2015
I feel bad.

I've upset the Reverend Stuart Campbell, custodian of the "Wings Over Scotland" website.

In August 2014 I attempted a knowing nod to his own shock-jock style in a blog post entitled "The Wee Blue Book of Lies".  In that post I tried to mirror his own irreverent approach whilst highlighting some material errors in his then recently published "Wee Blue Book". I understand now that the Reverend was so stung by my hurtful tone that he wasn't able to actually read the blog. My bad.

If you doubt that my gentle ribbing upset Stu so much that he was unable to read or respond to my blog, here's a selection of his Twitter responses











This is all very unfortunate.

His Wikipedia entry explains that his aim is to provide a "fair and honest perspective on Scottish politics".  By failing to be polite and respectful in my tone I prevented him from discovering that he was actually being unfair and dishonest in his Wee Blue Book.  I'm sure if he knew this he'd be deeply upset; I let him down.

So let me address Stuart directly

******

Dear Mr Campbell (or Reverend if you prefer)

I'm sorry if my previous attempts to clarify your errors caused you offence.

Please allow me to clearly, politely and respectfully help you understand why - as a man of integrity and honesty - you will want to issue a public apology for a rather significant error in your Wee Blue Book.  There are others I could choose but let's look at this paragraph on page 13.


I choose this statement as it is central to your economic thesis and widely accepted as true by your followers and readers.

I want to focus on the words "on average Scotland sends £1,700 more per person to the UK in taxes".

The link you provide is to the Scottish Government White Paper which does cite £1,700 as the figure for 2011/12.  There are a number of issues here so let's take this very carefully.

  1. The figure quoted there is for 2011/12; it's not an average of any sort
  2. That figure came from GERS published in March 2012 (which was the latest available when the White paper was published)
  3. At the time you published the Wee Blue Book, updated GERS figures were available (and had been for about 5 months)
  4. When the 2012/13 GERS were published the Scottish Government restated the figures for 2011/12 to correct an error in the geographic allocation of oil revenue1 
To help you out here is a simple summary of the actual data that was available when you published the book (still the most recent GERS2  figures)


If you wanted to use the most recent figure (as you seemed to be trying to do in your original statement) you should really have said "In the most recent year for which data is available Scotland sent around £800 more per person to the UK in taxes".  I recognise that this is significantly less than the higher expenditure we receive; it's an unfortunate truth that doesn't really suit your central thesis.

So if you want to use an average figure to match the figure you (correctly) use when you say "UK spending is around £1,200 higher per person in Scotland than in the UK as a whole" you should really say "on average Scotland sends around £1,200 more per person to the UK in taxes".  The next sentence would I guess then read "We actually get back 100% of the extra money we send to London".

As a man who is keen to ensure that the Scottish people are well informed I think you will agree this is a materially different conclusion from the one you published. I take back my accusation that you knowingly lied - I am willing to accept it was probably just a mistake which I know you will want to correct.

You might also want to point out that in the most recent published figures we actually get back significantly more than we send to London (as we have in three of the four most recent years).  You could mention that this will undoubtedly be true in 2013-14 and 2014-15 as well - but it's perhaps unreasonable to ask you to stretch your honesty and integrity that far.

At the very least I am sure you will have the decency to update the electronic version of this document.  I imagine too you will also want to remove the words "Everything inside it is still true" from your fund-raising site (where you are selling hard copies of the book for £52 a shot).


Kind regards

Kevin

****


For those who wonder why I still bother about this - this matters because this distortion of the facts was very widely circulated.

To quote directly his fund-raising site where he celebrates the success of the Wee Blue Book "At 72 pages it was twice as big as we originally planned, and we distributed around 300,000 print copies to every corner of Scotland - more than three times as many as the Scottish Government's White Paper - with another 800,000+ copies of the electronic version downloaded. In all we spent over £70,000 on it."

At the time of writing he is even flogging tin-foil wrapped souvenir editions.

He actually says "Everything inside it is still true".

Oh dear.




If you think this is a one off and Stu is the only culprit - see my recent post > Simplify Exaggerate & Carry on Regardless


****

Footnotes

1. The main source of revision for 2012-12 was the correction of North Sea Oil revenue allocation; you can see the full amendments as applied by the Scottish Government on page 86 of the 2012-13 GERS

2. In case there is any doubt about these figures here are the actual data tables from GERS



Tags

Post a Comment

0 Comments