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The scale of bank losses had become numbing - either too big to comprehend, or getting a bit less bad.

It was so last year's news.

But the £24 billion write-off on bad loans has restored the element of shock.

Coming on top of a £15bn write-off in the accounts published last year, most of this week's announcement of loss was from the Halifax Bank of Scotland legacy.

And most of the HBOS legacy was in commercial property.

Amid all the idiocy and greed that collectively ran numerous banks deep into the red around the world, there should be a special place in the hall of infamy for the Bank of Scotland's corporate division.

One consequence is that the biggest presence on the British high street is hobbled in how well it can re-engage with viable businesses and individuals who want to get out from under the recession.

Cost cutting

Another is hidden behind one of the other significant figures in this year's Lloyds results.

Chief executive Eric Daniels has turned up the heat on the cost savings he thinks he can drive out of the bank through the combination of Lloyds TSB and HBOS.

That was originally targeted at £1.5bn over three years, ending at the end of next year.

And so far, almost £300m has been spent on severance payments for more than one in 10 of Lloyds' staff.

About 13,000 employees have left, about 1,000 in Scotland.

Daniels is now targeting £2bn in savings by the end of next year.

So you can expect a whole lot more job losses, can't you?

Not so, claims a spokesman. This year is about "heavy lifting" of combining IT operations.

Meantime, we're not supposed to assume anything about job losses.

Too big to fail

So with our faith restored in the ability of banks to shock and astonish with the scale of their losses, greed and incompetence, we're back to the debate over what is to be done with those deemed "too large to fail".

Clearly, something's wrong with finance.

It's not meeting customers needs.

It's sustained by unsustainable global imbalances.

And it has proven too powerful to regulate adequately.

The issue was raised by economist John Kay on a recent visit to his childhood home of Edinburgh.

A fierce critic of the limits of regulation and the awesome lobbying power of finance, he's a vigorous proponent of breaking up the banks.

He's in powerful company, including the Governor of the Bank of England, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, significant opposition figures at Westminster, not to mention the President of the United States.

So it's probably worth a look at the argument.

Canadians conservatives

His lecture was partly to address the 'what if...' question of how an independent Scotland could handle its banks' problems differently.

That, in turn, raised the question of whether the people of small nations were solely responsible for the misdeeds of their banks.

Why, for instance, is Iceland being expected to stump up?

Yes, the country partied for a decade on the back of its financial boom, but that doesn't mean the whole country is liable, does it?

Isn't the systemic damage threatened by the collapse of an Icesave or, even more so, a Royal Bank of Scotland, much more of a threat to big economies than it is to small ones.

An independent Scotland would have had to go to an independent England and the US to say: solve this with us, or be in precisely the same mess we'll be in.

And what, for another instance, about Australia and Canada, asked Kay, in a lecture for the David Hume Institute?

Both had bank systems that avoided the meltdown relatively well. Why?

Perhaps because Australia's banks operate in a country with natural resources and Asian neighbours that kept it out of serious recession.

John Kay's argument is that their regulators were conservative, but only because the banks are likewise themselves.

And that leads to the third possible explanation: both countries may have been infected by the traditional canniness of Scottish emigrants that so disastrously deserted 21st century Scottish bankers.

Casino banking

What, then, about the notion of "narrow banking": that is, splitting and creating banks so that there are elements that are given explicit government protection because the functions they provide in oiling the wheels of the economy - the stuff that can't be done without, even for a day.

The next tranche of banking, argues John Kay, would be given more limited protection, at an insurance cost, and it would include the type of business banking that could withstand temporary disruption.

The casino, investment banking divisions would be left to operate more freely, in the knowledge that they have no protection, and could not collapse the rest of the system.

It remains unclear if you could have single corporations with firewalls installed to ensure these elements can be separated.

Credit crunch

In the eyes of some very senior Scottish bankers quizzing Kay, the questions included: how could this could meet the needs of business customers, whose needs for hedging instruments seem to fall across the boundaries laid down?

Would it provide sufficient returns to attract the necessary capital investment for existing banks or newcomers, when a less rigorous split in less regulated countries and sectors could take that capital elsewhere?

How can we encourage more diversity, with different types and sizes of banks specialising in different things? This addresses one of the results of Britain's banking regime - in a trade-off of domestic diversity against globalised scale of its big players, it is big scale that has won so far.

If unsubsidised by the profits that usually flow from investment banking, would the British public be willing to pay the costs of providing the nation's basic financial plumbing?

The message from bankers is: if you want narrow banking, don't think current accounts could remain free.

What about the contraction of credit?

The unravelling of banking as it has developed would mean an unravelling of the leverage that has provided credit at levels for which the economy has become geared.

Take the banks apart, require bigger capital balance, and it's hard to see how credit could do anything other than contract - a new type of credit crunch.

There are consequences to the proposition that banks need broken up. And there are unknowns.

The most obvious 'known', however, is that it would tear apart the vast machine centred on the City of London that has been pumping earnings into the British economy and the Treasury.

If it is as broken as John Kay and others say, and if it could be reformed to focus more on the needs of customers, breaking up Britain's international banking advantage could be an attractive political option.

Good riddance, argues Kay.

But the Big British Bank Break-up would need to be accompanied with a political narrative that offers the Next Big Thing to take its place in generating jobs and revenue.

And no politician has found that yet.

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• - What's this?

Good old-fashioned thrift is holding back the economy, we're told.

Today's show how much we're on a savings binge.

It's reporting another one million customer savings accounts over the past year. More significant is the £49bn of arranged overdrafts with business clients which is not being used.

With foreign banks busier in the British market-place than had been expected, RBS is using those factors to explain its failure to hit the business lending targets set by government.

Facing claims that it's constraining lending too much, it says it's approving 85% of loan applications - "consistent with previous years".

Its claiming that nearly £80bn in gross new lending to households and businesses means it's put more than twice as much credit into the market than Barclays.

An independent referee between banks' claims they're lending, and customers' claims they're not, is Bruce Cartwright, accounting partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

He says he's hearing lots of complaints about the pricing of credit, but not about its availability.

The key for businesses, he says, is to be clear what they need the money for: "Sometimes, companies are not clear themselves. There's a difference between seeking money to prop up losses you've incurred, and saying 'I'm coming out of recession with increased demand, so I want to stock up'. Credit processes will be more robust, so you have to have your facts together".

He adds that banks want thriving customers. If they are too keen to put them out of business, then the bank won't be around for long.

And facing nearly £14bn in impaired loans last year - the measure of RBS's exposure to problems in the wider economy - it will have to hope it's right when it says that has now peaked.

Squirrelled away

The shift from excessive borrowing by households and businesses to a startling rise in savings is a key factor shaping the state of the economy.

That was underlined by the most recent forecast for the Scottish economy from the Fraser of Allander Institute at Strathclyde University.

It shows that the household savings rate is up to more than 8%. At the start of 2008, before the downturn, that figure was negative. That saving is not just money being squirrelled away. It's debt being reduced.

In particular, there's been some evidence of mortgage holders using the opportunity afforded by low interest rates to lower their principal loan.

In the business sector, you get some idea of the savings from the disappearance of £200bn of newly-created money onto balance sheets.

According to Professor Brian Ashcroft, of the Fraser of Allander Institute, the surge in new money might have been expected to boost the money supply.

But because the quantitatively eased money is being used to strengthen balance sheets, that measure looks flat.

You can see its impact on RBS. The bank has shed nearly £700bn in assets in one year, leaving it with more than £1.5 trillion on the balance sheet.

So while that helps explain the increase in its capital base, known as core tier 1, that newly created money will have helped raise the capital base ratio - sharply up from 6% to 11% in a year.

Does that mean quantitative easing has failed? No, says Ashcroft - without it, we'd be deep in economic depression.

Bank job fears

The Fraser of Allander forecast for jobs suggests Scotland is probably close to a peak for unemployment. The most recent figures for those seeking work between October and December were at 206,000.

The forecast, though hedged about with uncertainty, is for a peak of 216,000.

Break that down, and the economists say the finance sector is due to lose more than 16,000 jobs this year alone. Yet it's reckoned only around 4,000 have been announced so far.

Does that suggest some big job losses announcement to come? Don't worry, just yet.

The economists are extrapolating from big picture figures, rather than offering inside knowledge of banks' plans.

RBS says it's already done its "heavy lifting" on shedding jobs.

There's less clarity on Lloyds Banking Group's plans.

But until it's sorted out the continuing multiple merger of Halifax, Bank of Scotland, Lloyds and TSB - with the Lloyds TSB Scotland element now on the market - and until its aligned its IT systems, the bigger job loss announcements may be postponed.

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• - What's this?

Which angers you more: giant profits for the companies that supply your electricity and gas, or huge losses from bonus-rich bankers who depend on the public's backing?

On Thursday, you get to choose. Royal Bank of Scotland registers a loss somewhat smaller than the £24.1bn last year, while Centrica, owner of the British Gas and Scottish Gas brands, delivers something a bit cheerier for its shareholders.

Formerly a nationalised utility, the energy company at first expanded into all sorts of other utility products, and then retreated.

More recently, it has expanded vertically - not just selling gas into homes, but extracting it from under British waters, and planning to build new power stations, including nuclear.

That expansion into offshore production was boosted by the purchase of Venture Petroleum, a £1bn Scottish company that added to the departure of corporate headquarters.

Centrica Energy, combining Venture with Centrica's existing offshore business in Morecambe Bay and off eastern England, chose to put its divisional headquarters into Aberdeen.

That, it seems, remains the place to retain and recruit the offshore skills, rather than around Windsor HQ.

Taps turned off

Venture's portfolio of offshore fields has added to Centrica's security of supply.

The company, with about 15 million British customers - that's more than half the households in Britain - now has control of more than half the gas it needs.

That security issue was more of a concern when Russia was shutting the taps on its pipeline through Ukraine.

But turning the taps on tanker-loads of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, has diversified supply, and helped bring gas wholesale prices to relatively low levels.

For those who see profiteering, Centrica will have some explaining to do.

But at least it has a defence.

It cut prices by 7% last month, opening up a gap which is reckoned by Ofgem, the industry regulator, to be about £100 in the annual bills levied by competing firms from the average household.

Company sources profess to be puzzled that competitors have not followed with their own cuts.

It may be that other companies hedged against prices rising after the wholesale spikes of the past 18 months, getting caught out when they stabilised.

Regulator's carrot

It may also be that Centrica can afford to squeeze margins on selling fuel, while it makes its money from advancing its army of central heating engineers.

Boiler replacement is particularly big business, as prices rise, the kit becomes more efficient, and it gets financial backing from UK and Scottish governments.

Similarly, these energy companies are incentivised, with regulatory stick as much as carrot, to become increasingly engaged in fuel efficiency measures.

But they also face a tightening of the regulatory screw on prices.

The latest Ofgem analysis of pricing shows the average household customer is delivering a net margin for energy utilities of £105 per year, up from £75 in November.

The difference is the fall in wholesale gas prices, which have not been matched by retail price cuts.

The regulator is talking tough. The Big Six, two of them based in Britain - Centrica and Scottish and Southern - cover 99% of the market.

Five million householders switched provider last year, but that was to one of the dominant players, rather than new competitors.

Micro-power

The options to open up the market include requiring large power generators to trade with small suppliers "on reasonable terms".

Likewise, they could offer better terms to small, independent generators - which could help Scotland's renewable energy as well as domestic micro-generation.

A market could be created by Ofgem, with the Big Six required to put power onto the market.

A market-making agent would post the best bid and offer, providing more liquidity to attract smaller-scale entrants.

Or Centrica and its ilk could find that, having spent all that money on buying Venture Petroleum, its vertical integration could face dis-integration, limiting the extent to which it can supply its own retail business.

Airports in financial fog

Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen airports are important utilities of a different kind. Owning them carries responsibilities.

That's why the annual results from Grupo Ferrovial, the Spanish owners of BAA plc, are notable for completely ignoring its Scottish assets.

On Monday, it published results for its London airports, including Heathrow and Stansted, with Gatwick offloaded in December.

But the results from Madrid on Tuesday suggest the Scottish airports are below the finance director's radar.

Heathrow, it is noted, did well to limit the decline in its traffic to 1.5% - "the smallest decline of all BAA's airports".

That may be true, in that Edinburgh Airport didn't register a decline at all. In its most recent figures, it actually grew numbers through the recession.

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• - What's this?

Thick with fresh snow, still, clear and very, very cold: winter in Aviemore doesn't get better than this one. At the weekend, the Speyside town was heaving with activity.

Further down the A9 near Blair Atholl, a less funkily-attired clientele keeps the House of Bruar expanding.

A case study in how to make a rural business thrive, its mail order is booming and there's a butcher on the way. There's not much sign of recession here either.

Rural Scotland has avoided the worst of the downturn.

Agriculture, fishing and forestry has kept growing while others contracted sharply. Approvals on bank loan applications have held up much more strongly than other sectors.

Tourism has benefited from the Great British staycation, allied to the weakened pound.

Even in construction, the decline in new house starts across rural Scotland has been much less pronounced than with the urban cousins.

The future already

So with more pressing concerns, it might be tempting to ignore the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats set out this Monday by the Scottish Agricultural Colleges.

In a comprehensive report, Rural Scotland in Focus, it's an important guide and route map to social, economic, climatic and biodiversity changes.

The approach has not been about scaring the horses to make political impact.

It's full of solid evidence and measured analysis, about the bit of Scotland that make up 90% of the land area and includes a million people, or one in five of us.

One message is that some changes the rest of the country see as far off have already arrived in parts of rural Scotland.

The report's editor, Sarah Skerratt said: "We have become so used to issues like climate change being linked to action targets set 10, 20 or 30 years ahead we sometimes feel we have plenty of time.

"But by examining the evidence about rural Scotland more deeply we have shown that, with many rural issues, things are happening now.

"For instance in some parts of the country the population has already aged to levels other parts are not forecast to reach for 10 years or more. We cannot put these things off."

Playing catch-up

But it's too easy to say rural Scotland is de-populating. Indeed, it's pointed out that rural Scotland is much too diverse to be given one-size-fits-all solutions to its problems.

"Accessible rural" Scotland - for instance, within commuting reach of Aberdeen or Edinburgh - has the fastest population growth, including younger adults with families.

There, the problem is more likely to be high house prices. But less accessible is the Isle of Harris, where the demographics make the community look moribund, and teacher salaries may have to give way for care workers.

Another challenging question of whether rural Scotland is doomed always to playing catch-up with the rest of the country on its infrastructure.

Transport is an obvious challenge.

Yet take a contrary look - after hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent on improvements such as bridges, causeways and improved roads, one of the unforeseen consequences is the disappearance of localised services.

An improved road, allied to changes under way in the delivery of healthcare, means the doctor can be located much further away.

Inverness, where more than half of retail spending is in Tesco stores, draws shoppers in from far afield, undermining small town and village shops which were at the heart of communities.

Fuel poverty

Broadband is another obvious problem for many businesses.

I've been told of one Hebridean company that supplies premium shellfish at very premium prices to wholesalers in Spain and France, and has such slow broadband that it can only take orders by fax.

How many offices even have a functioning fax these days?

While there are repeated reminders that the challenges facing rural and urban Scotland may be converging, one of the most striking differences is in fuel poverty.

Off the gas grid, in colder climes and often worse housing, here's a reminder that 37% of rural households are in fuel poverty, spending more than a 10th of their income on household energy. The urban figure is just over a fifth.

Extreme fuel poverty means spending more than 20% of household income on energy.

That's a fact of domestic finance for 16% of rural Scots - roughly three times the level for the cities and towns.

That's surely a case for linking renewable energy developments across rural Scotland to lower social tariffs. It might do something to answer nimbyism.

Challenges ahead include changes to agricultural subsidies.

The single farm payment, a mainstay for many farmers, could be reduced by as much as a third after 2013.

Europe's largesse to farmers is supposed to be on the way down, and the move is already afoot to pay Scottish farmers at least as much for their environmental protection as for producing food.

Communities too parochial?

That environmental question is not just to prettify the views for coach parties and improve hedges for the birdwatching market, but how to prepare and adjust to climate change.

That's a prospect that could hold opportunities as well as threats in a part of the world that could use a degree or two more on the thermometer, but which faces unpredictable effects too, such as more flooding and new agricultural pests.

Then there's a challenge also for the strong consensus that welcomes community involvement in taking over rural estates.

Yes, rural Scots are much more likely to do voluntary work - by a 47% to 29% margin - but do communities have the skills necessary for taking over estates?

Are these run by people who can be as undemocratic, high-handed and parochial as the landowners they replaced?

Are they up to the task and risks of securing and delivering investments in the land and infrastructure? Is the local perspective always the right one, and the outsider always wrong?

Expensively remote

The big and obvious challenge to rural Scotland is shared with the rest of the country, though it could be more acute.

The crunch in public spending could bear down harshly on the relatively expensive delivery of remote and less efficient services.

The report argues that employment levels in public sector jobs are not as high as the national average.

But if rural Scotland is to adjust, how is it to prioritise and get those communities engaged for "rural sustainability and prosperity".

Some big questions for the agenda at the next village hall and community council meeting.

This report, www.sac.ac.uk/rsif, is a good place to start the discussion.

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• - What's this?

The big distillers have good reason to need a dram if they're to steady their nerves. The recent half year figures for Diageo and Pernod Ricard had some unpleasant effects from recession.

If we didn't already know that drinkers have been staying out of pubs, and trading down to cheaper brands, then we could guess. With the two biggest spirits players issuing their first half results for 2009-10, now we've got lots of evidence.

The French company's Chivas brand saw a 13% fall in volume worldwide, while it was 5% down on sales. Sales in North America faced "persistent difficulties". The decline wasn't much better for Ballantine's, with its deluxe brand sales down 22% (notably in China) while The Glenlivet nearly held its own.

Irish whiskey fared much better. Jameson's was Pernod Ricard's premium brand that grew most strongly, its sales up 7%.

Ironically, while Guinness was the star performer in the Diageo stable of brands, the Irish market is one of the grimmest for the trade, down by more than 10% in a year.

Chairman Patrick Ricard was upbeat about the start of this year (the start of his second half). Comparing the back end of 2009 with the second half of 2008 includes three months in the earlier year before the bank crisis stopped consumer confidence dead.

Large-package stores

Diageo, as the dominant player in Scotch whisky, is reporting with the same factor in mind. But chief executive Paul Walsh was more downbeat about prospects.

His figures are held back by the after-effects of the sharp de-stocking of whisky that took place around the world last year.

But it's clear that it has had to reverse its strategy for boosting price and premium on its global Scotch whisky brands, notably Johnnie Walker. It has had to use price to fight over market share.

In North America, it's seen net sales down 6% and volume down 4%, Canada a bit more sharply than the US. Diageo notes that customer off sales have been moving to large-package and discount retail stores.

Very difficult trading

European sales were down 5% and volume down 2%. Spain, which has been a source of rapid growth, is now in rapid decline - with people moving out of bars and clubs to drink at home, sales were down by 11% on the first half of last financial year.

Developing markets, such as Russia, continued to face "very difficult trading conditions".

Across Europe, Johnnie Walker was down 10% by volume and 12% on net sales. J&B did even worse.

Style bars of Caracas

But being a global company (with reports that Diageo could move its headquarters and tax base out of London), this set of figures underlines the extent to which whisky's future lies further afield.

India has long been seen as a strong prospect, if only its tariff barriers could be removed. But even the share Diageo has on the sub-continent is not going well. It has had problems with its team in India, with a large over-shipment followed by a clear-out of the management team. Volumes were down 42%.

While China still beckons, though doesn't deliver much in these most recent figures, the area to watch for the future of Scotch is the burgeoning middle class in Latin America. Scotch whisky sales have grown in the key markets there by more than 50% over the past five years.

In Venezuela, there was an economic downturn and inflation eroding income, but it seems that message didn't reach the style bars of Caracas.

Using price increases per dram, Diageo offset double digit declines in volume with double digit increases in net sales on some locally popular Scotch brands; Old Parr, Buchanan's and Chequers. Johnnie Walker Red and Black Labels saw volume up slightly as well as double digit sales growth.

Recife dram

Not all Latin American markets are booming. But in Brazil, the volume of Scotch sales was up 14% in Diageo's half-yearly results.

It is reported that Recife, on the Brazilian coast, has the highest per capita consumption of Scotch whisky of any city in the world.

And if that claim should need further investigation to establish its veracity, I'm sure a journalist can be found to put himself forward. Selflessly.

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• - What's this?

Railways don't just get you from Achnasheen to Billericay. They shape a country.

That's why the plans getting rolled out for new, high-speed lines offer more than a way of easing congestion bottlenecks in the transport infrastructure.

Neither is it merely that public transport offers dividends in social benefits, and ought to reduce carbon emissions.

It's also that the places railways run, and the way people use them, allow for something Britain has barely even mentioned in recent decades: regional policy.

Network Rail's big wheels rolled into Edinburgh this week, for a bit of wheeltapping and shunting in Scotland's political marshalling yard.

They had done smaller events on the other major stops up the new west coast line they've got planned.

Chief executive Iain Coucher didn't have to work too hard to persuade a select gathering of MSPs and lobbyists that two hours and ten minutes travel time from the Scottish capital to London would be A Good Thing.

It's an easy concept to sell. Anyone with a half a notion of public transport on the continent can see that it works, and it's the mark of a modern country.

But while it's easy to understand and to support, its supporters are coy about the scale of public subsidy required, and even more vague about details of the route.

Magnetic levitation

People love train services, and stations near them. But they're not so keen to have tracks built through their gardens.

If they're to cut the journey times that matter, new lines will have to cut through the heart of cities, and often underneath them.

Network Rail's is only one of three options on or near the table. Transport groupies at Greengauge 21 have their own plan.

The UK government will next month set out what it makes of the "HS2" plan it commissioned and on which it's currently sitting.

Transport Minister Lord Adonis hoped to build a pre-election consensus on that plan, offering Tories to view the plans privately before publication, and to comment on them. The Conservatives were committed to high-speed rail lines before Labour, even toying for a while with magnetic levitation.

But that pre-election, cross-party consensus has been kiboshed. Shadow Transport Secretary Theresa Villiers would prefer to be kept in the dark until HS2 publication.

That way, she can reserve judgement and avoid the flak when the detailed route becomes clear, some of it through marginal constituencies.

The maps are likely to look roughly similar, varying perhaps in what they do with Heathrow, and how they handle the east coast option.

'Optimism bias'

Network Rail is holding back its plans to link London with Leeds and Newcastle. West coast capacity issues towards the London end are the more pressing issue.

It is rumoured HS2 will propose a new, dedicated line from London to Birmingham, and then an upgrade north of there, whereas Network Rail says it should be a new, dedicated track and trains all the way from London to Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The cost of that: £34bn, including a whopping "optimism bias" adding 66% over the original estimates, to account for unforeseen elements, slippage and over-enthusiastically loading up the benefits tally.

Such sums, when bandied around in the early stages of this debate, seemed impossibly large.

But in the wake of the bank bail-out and a £175bn borrowing requirement this year, they've come to seem quite modest.

But one question I've heard raised is about devolution: Scotland has around 10% of the resources, but as much as a quarter of the track length. How are the costs distributed fairly?

However, it's not the costs or business case that most caught my imagination about the Network Rail plans. It was the possibility of re-thinking Britain.

Pressure valve

One of the fears expressed further south is that a 45-minute travel time from Birmingham to London, and little more than an hour from Manchester, could simply make the Midlands and much of the north of England into a gigantic travel-to-work area for the capital.

But according to Iain Coucher, it's also possible that the train could draw people north, even commuting from London to Manchester.

The thinking is that the new train lines could be a pressure valve to reduce the capital's overheating.

It's impossible to be sure whether this is a force for centralisation or for de-centralisation.

But evidence from France is that the TGV high speed network has towns and communities clamouring to have a stop.

That's what acts as a magnetic economic development hub. It's not just a place to put a large Park and Ride facility to help people leave.

But to re-design Britain fundamentally, it may take more radical thinking than east or west lines.

David Begg, the transport professor who took on the reform of Lothian's roads when a councillor, is one of those who sees transport in Britain as overly concentrated on London's challenges, and Londoners as not particularly bothered about the transport concerns of much of the rest of the country.

Daunting costs

This has been at the expense, for instance, of links between the cities of northern England, argues Begg, in his current role leading the effort to improve such rail connections.

Tunnelling under this plan, in addition to daunting costs and planning objections, is a nagging fear that the heavy traffic in the southern section of a west coast line will justify an upgrade, but it will run out of money or steam once it gets north of Manchester.

Network Rail dismisses the idea of starting to build from the north. It will have to start where cash flow can most quickly be generated.

But Iain Coucher's assurance is that the business case only stacks up if Glasgow and Edinburgh are included.

He argues that it's only in the long northern stretches that you generate the big ticket revenue that such a project needs.

And having already all but killed off air routes between Manchester, Liverpool and London, it's only by letting the train replace more than three million passenger air journeys between Scotland and London each year that the carbon reckoning works.

All this is located somewhere over the heavily clouded spending horizon. What it does for now is to give us something futuristic, bold and perhaps even realistic to dream for.

As world leaders in this stuff, one of the lessons from Japan is that there should be a 40-year master plan, and you then build it one sleeper at a time.

* For Network Rail's view of the controversial Glasgow Airport Rail Link, click .

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• - What's this?

You'd be forgiven for being confused. It would be good to offer you something to steer you through the thicket of house price surveys, but there's a risk this may merely confirm you have every reason to be perplexed.

Let's boil the latest three surveys down to the essentials:

Lloyds TSB Scotland says Scottish house prices in the quarter to the end of January fell by 6.8% when compared with a year before.

Halifax Bank of Scotland, looking at the year to the end of December, nearly agrees, with Scottish average valuations down 7%.

But on the same day the Lloyds TSB numbers came out, the UK Department of Communities and (English) Local Government announced that Scottish prices in the year to the end of December had risen by 3.8%.

Des res confusion

So far, so confusing. But what about the comparison?

Halifax Bank of Scotland says that while Scottish prices fell 7%, the UK average rose more than 1%.

But the UK government's figures suggest that the UK average was 2.9% higher - meaning Scottish prices were rising more steeply than anywhere else.

Lloyds TSB Scotland spared us the confusion of having a UK comparison.

Why the difference? It could be the slightly different timings included, including the factor of December bringing the end of the stamp duty holiday for lower-priced properties.

But methodology plays a part. The surveys draw on a combination of officially registered transactions and on the details of completed mortgage loan agreements.

First time caution

This may give undue weight to homes that are bought with mortgages - a dominant share, but by no means all of them.

And then weightings are applied for property type and for the time of year, the way statisticians like to do.

So what are we to draw from this? That the property market is far from functioning well. All are agreed that the number of transactions is down by around half, and that in itself can skew figures.

The mortgage market is turning more competitive (at the expense of those who look to interest rates on their savings).

But there remains a lack of sellers, buyers and of confidence. It's far from clear that the stabilisation of prices in the past eight months or so is assured.

Another dip is a real possibility. And there are those who argue that would be no bad thing, as prices still look daunting for those first-time buyers who are needed to kick start the property market.

Sausage sizzle

Things are cooking nicely for the finances of Devro, based near Cumbernauld.

Profits are up 76% last year, on sales of £220m. The global leader in making collagen food casings, or sausage skins, has good reason to add a celebratory dod of ketchup.

Its results illustrate the Paradox of the Sausage.

Figures are up because, in developed countries such as Britain, sausages are more popular in recessions, as people trade down to cheaper cuts of meat.

But in developing countries, where recession isn't biting as deep, sausage sales are also up because the growing middle classes are trading up to meat and protein, and the collagen-wrapped banger is a modern, westernised way to consume it.

The strategy for Devro is to expand its Czech and Australian factories, and also to go for the "gut conversion", proving to sausage-makers and consumers that collagen, made from animal skin, is preferable and more reliable in production than the more traditional stuff from the stomach.

Tasty.

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• - What's this?

We're into bank results season. It's Barclays on Tuesday, with its shareholders being richly rewarded for keeping it out the clutches of the British government, and its investment bankers being richly rewarded for handling all that money taxpayers pumped into the economy over the past year.

The most controversial figures will be from Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland next week, as they're still on the public life support machine, and showing signs of staying there longer than many had hoped.

Lots more red ink is expected, yet bonuses for RBS alone are expected in the £1.3bn range. It's what Stephen Hester has previously called "the minimum we can get away with".

Halifax closures

But amid the return over the row over bonuses, what's happened to bank jobs? It's been noted before that the carnage many expected has been notable for its absence.

But not so everywhere. There's an interesting new analysis from the European Commission's labour market survey, showing a very mixed picture on banking job losses across the continent, in which Britain has come off relatively lightly, given its prominent role in the sector and in the crisis.

Taking the year from the third quarter of 2008, just before the crisis really hit home, and comparing that with the third quarter of 2009, it's reckoned Britain shed 24,000 finance jobs. That's 2% of the total, and only just over the average for the 27 nations.

More than half of that was down to Lloyds Banking Group, while RBS is reckoned to have shed 12,000 jobs across Europe.

Contrast that with Ireland, which had a staggering 25% decline in financial employment.

Only last week, the reverberations from Halifax Bank of Scotland, once a proud resident of Edinburgh and now part of Lloyds, took another 700-plus jobs out of the republic, as it axed the Halifax retail presence and its 44 branches. That's nearly half the Lloyds jobs in Ireland.

Inward investment reversed

The Slovak Republic lost 23% of its finance jobs, with Belgium and Portugal losing 13 and 11% respectively. Germany, which featured some inefficient Lander lenders, shed nearly 84,000 finance jobs, or 6% of its total.

At the same time, Poland, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Romania were putting on double digit employment growth in the sector, as was little Luxembourg.

Much of Ireland's jobs pain has been down to the rapid rate at which inward investment can reverse and disappear.

And on that front, it's worth noting a row that's erupted in Dublin over good news that came to Prestwick Airport last week. While Ryanair's Michael O'Leary took one of his own jets to Ayrshire to announce 200 jobs in an expansion of its maintenance operation, he had set a fuse burning on an explosive row with Mary Coughlan, his own enterprise minister and deputy prime minister, or Tanaiste.

The failure to convince the Ryanair chief executive to bring the jobs to Dublin Airport, which has just lost more than 700 maintenance jobs recently, is reverberating loudly round Irish politics.

Ryanair's challenge

Indeed, the problem seems to be that relations are so sour between Mr O'Leary and the owners of the capital's airport that he refuses to deal with them at all, and publicly challenges the minister to fight for his business.

What's now clear is that Prestwick won only 200 out of 500 planned jobs, and it's very unlikely to get the others. Talks are at an advanced stage with two other, undisclosed locations and governments somewhere in Europe.

And the challenge has been thrown to Coughlan and the Irish Government to do whatever it takes to win Mr O'Leary's backing.

He's a tricky customer, and a worse adversary. A legal challenge from Easyjet over claims made in Ryanair advertising has just brought the Ryanair response of a non-legal challenge from O'Leary to Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou; race round Trafalgar Square, possibly with a wheelbarrow or maybe in drag, or settle their differences by sumo or mud wrestling.

Hospital pass

While Conservatives are suggesting hospitals and other public services could be run by co-operatives, we've got new evidence of the difference a good management makes.

The Centre for Economic Performance has just published research showing that hospital services tend to be better when managers have some clinical experience.

They also found hospitals have better management where there are a larger number of competing hospitals nearby - though couldn't that be a factor of being in a larger population centre, with more patient throughput?

However, really, truly amazing is the finding that hospitals in marginal constituencies are "much less likely to be closed" than those in safe seats.

Who'd have thunk it?

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• - What's this?

The Ledger has been inadvertantly investigating the life science sector in recent days - specifically, an innovative, entrepreneurial niche outfit known as novovirus. It sounds like a research start-up company, but its exponential growth-rate is dizzying in all the wrong ways.

Had this detour not taken place, I would have been in Edinburgh on Friday, listening to Alistair Darling, as he dropped at least one significant hint about his forthcoming, pre-election Budget.

So, I've read his speech instead. And while all the pre-Budget attention is focussed on cuts, squeezes and tax hikes, the big and unsurprising hint is that he'd prefer to talk lots about growth.

There will be more about his plans for Infrastructure UK, a body to help build or fund the next generation of power, energy and transport connections. There will be more to be said about high-speed rail connections, but don't expect that to involve any commitment of money for the foreseeable.

What caught my eye was his talk of technology. He's facing flak aplenty for slashing England's university budget, and the consequences from that will flow into the Scottish Government's budget.

(With university principals now public in talking about the need for new funding streams, even the president of the National Union of Students is saying he's up for that.)

Universities punch

Alistair Darling wants to make a feature of technology as an opportunity and challenge for the UK economy.

"I am struck by how much research is coming out of UK universities, but with 18 universities in the world's top 100, we should be seeing even more spin-off companies."

It's a familiar refrain. But note how few UK companies are in the top 100 for registering patents. Only Unilever made it, at number 98.

The mismatch between Britain's technology brains and its commercial application has never been clearer - except, of course, in Scotland, where universities punch well above their weight, and private research and development spend punches well below it.

It falls, most often, to small companies to make the running, in the hope either of growing and being bought or, some hope, of growing to global scale.

Dollops of funding

The UK Government's response is to get tech entrepreneur Hermann Hauser to analyse what others are up to, and to see what can be learned. That should inform some of the Budget decisions.

According to one press interview, Hauser's heading towards much more focus on only those technology areas where the UK already has a lead, and institutes which would plant large dollops of funding with sufficient time for the scientists to produce results. The German model he seems to have in mind involves the private sector providing a third of the funding.

The key then is to make those results count in spin-offs and spin-outs to the wider British economy. And as we know in Scotland, that's an established area of dismal failure.

Let's hope Mr Hauser's global vision, from Germany's Fraunhofer institutes to the research hubs for Taiwan and Korea, takes note of the failure of the Scottish intermediate technology institutes to provide such centres of expertise and activity - at least their failure so far to link innovation to significant commercialisation.

Angels investors

I've been hearing about one Scottish tech start-up in its very early stages, but with hopes of going global. It tells you a lot that Glasgow-based drugs-testing company Sistemic has only six employees so far, but it already has an office in Boston.

I was hearing about this from its chairman Jim Reid, an "angel investor" in life science start-ups, having made a wedge of cash from his share of the sale of Aberdeen-based Haptogen to Wyeth in 2007. At this month's Scottish Life Sciences Awards, he got the award for outstanding contribution to growth of the sector.

Reid's chairman of Sistemic, through his investment company, ChimaeraBio. (And here's a plea: would life science companies please come up with more memorable, useable brand names, rather than barely pronounceable website addresses?)

Sistemic - beaten to the trophy for best new start-up by Edinburgh's BigDNA - hopes to fill some of the gaps in drug-testing capacity being left by Big Pharma's big lay-off announcements in recent weeks. Its offer is to run computer tests at early development stages, along with "re-purposing" - an ugly word meaning the finding of new uses for old drugs, which are at their most useful when 20 year patents are about to run out.

Mr Reid's beef with the university sector in Scotland is the speed at which it releases its intellectual property. And while he says the Scottish angel investment community is as good as it gets, he says the biggest gap in developing the sector is the support for companies to find the next tranches of funding for growth.

So just when Scottish financial community is trying to re-calibrate its attitude to risk, here's a challenge to get stuck into life sciences, one of the riskiest investments of all.

You can hear Jim Reid interviewed on The Business, broadcast on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Scotland on Sunday 14 February and available as a podcast or on ´óÏó´«Ã½ iPlayer.

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• - What's this?

The FlyGlobespan story hasn't flown away.

Putting Scotland's largest airline into administration, nearly two months ago, turned out to be more than just a casualty of recession.

We know now that it was primarily because the company handling its online transactions, E-Clear, was withholding cash - £35m of it.

And it was not for insurance against the airline's collapse, as we were told, but because it was struggling to keep paying bills from two previous airline failures.

There's more coming on Thursday. Face the Facts, to be broadcast on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4 at 1230 GMT, has taken a close look at Mr Elias Elia, the chief executive of E-Clear.

It has not only raised questions about the incompetence or illegality of his attempts to avoid collapse, but come up with some significant answers about the way he was funding his other businesses.

In Scotland, the collapse of Globespan and its FlyGlobespan airline has moved on to questions of how to fill the gap it has left.

It had well over 500,000 seats booked out of Scotland in the year ahead (one industry insider told me it was 700,000) and airport operators are struggling to fill that gap.

One problem was the timing. December is the point at which most budget operators have just finalised their schedules, and they don't have the flexibility to respond quickly to opportunities like a rival's collapse.

Edinburgh Airport reckons it has now made up the loss of seats on its sixth biggest operator, with Ryanair's chief executive, Michael O'Leary, taking one of his own jets from Dublin to Prestwick today to announce three new routes and a doubling of the capacity of his Ayrshire maintenance operation.

I asked him how he can afford aircraft maintenance on £5 tickets, once he has paid for the plane and for its fuel.

He assured me Ryanair can avoid heavy maintenance costs by running one of the most modern fleets.

And while he's re-oriented his Prestwick operation towards outbound, sun-seeking Scots, Edinburgh is the hub for inbound tourists.

It is easier to market Edinburgh to the world, and it seems O'Leary has at last found at the capital's Turnhouse a bit of BAA plc with which he can work.

The downside for Prestwick is that it means handling a more seasonal market.

And a downside for both is that there are never good margins on working with Ryanair.

Last year was pretty dire for Prestwick. Passenger numbers were down 24% to 1.8 million.

It badly needs to find some operators other than Ryanair: at present there are only a couple.

Glasgow passenger traffic was down 11% to 7.2 million. Because people are switching to the train? They've looked at the figures and concluded that's not the reason.

Aberdeen was down 9% to 3 million, while Edinburgh was up just under 1% to reach 9 million.

It was the only BAA plc airport to register growth. The capital also registered a bumper year for cargo, up by 135%, while its rivals saw air-freight fall steeply.

As a result of its location, well served by relatively uncongested roads, it's hard not to conclude that Edinburgh is a better proposition for airlines.

It doesn't help that Glasgow's rail network is now stuck in a siding for the foreseeable future.

And with the Competition Commission today serving notice that it intends to revisit its legally stalled push to break up Edinburgh and Glasgow, their relative valuations will be a key part of deciding which one gets sold.

While Ryanair has the scale and flexibility to swoop on the Scottish market with an expanded service, it's not a core part of the summer package travel trade.

That so-called "leisure market" is distinct from the low-fare one.

And without FlyGlobespan, Scotland now has two air operators - Thomas Cook and Tui - who have 80% of the market between them.

That, in itself, is seeing prices rise, by around 10%, and most steeply if you're booking flights only.

These leisure airlines want to sell seats to people who will be staying at their hotels, and buying their packages, so there's a hefty premium on not doing so.

And as they also prefer to stick to rigid seven or 14 day return tickets, that's not the flexibility many customers are seeking.

It adds up to a tough year ahead for outbound Scottish travellers, who have already shown a boost in demand with early January bookings.

The industry's hope is that the FlyGlobespan-shaped hole in much of the market may attract newcomers for their 2011 schedules.

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• - What's this?

We don't know for sure what happened when MSPs looking into the future of the Scottish financial sector met the chiefs of the regulators on Tuesday but a look through the keyholes gives some insights.

Holyrood's economy committee had separate meetings with Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, Treasury minister Lord Myners, and Lord Adair Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, on the day his chief executive, Hector Sants, was rattling the City with news of his departure.

The issue raised by that announcement was also in the discussions - plans by Conservatives to abolish the FSA and wrap its function into the Bank of England.

MSPs and regulators talked of the choice between splitting up banks to reduce risk, as favoured by Mervyn King and President Obama, and boosting the regulatory and capital requirements, as preferred by the Labour Government.

They talked also of the model, apparently being pursued by Santander, of isolating units of an international bank into distinct national entities, thus protecting the whole from failure of one part.

The message from the MSPs was to beware of regulatory change when there's a lot more to the financial sector than the Square Mile of the City of London.

Indeed, they put to les grands fromages on London's regulatory cheeseboard one observation made during their hearings: that perhaps the big Scottish banks might not have gone quite so pear-shaped if the regulator had more of a presence in Scotland.

One Scottish-based agent for the Bank of England, whose job it is to act as a listening post, may not be sufficient.

What the MSPs did not secure was a promise that's going to change. The response was "lukewarm".

But committee convener Iain Smith hopes that, at least, Scotland won't get forgotten in this year's big, international power play around bank and regulatory reform.

Next stop, on Wednesday morning, is to hear from finance secretary John Swinney. What is his vision for Scottish finance?

What, for instance, does he want to see become of Lloyds TSB Scotland, being forced to split from its Lloyds Banking Group parent under diktat of the European Commission?

There's been talk of a Scottish-based purchase, but not much more than that. Perhaps John Swinney can tell fellow MSPs if there's going to be action as well.

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• - What's this?

The future of Scotland's commercial media has become a bit clearer; it's local, micro-local and hyper-local.

It's also going to feature the rhetoric of being visionary, revolutionary, interactive and convergent, while featuring propositions which have connectivity and granularity.

And it'll turn to journalism students to unearth the stories and deploy the multi-media, cross-platform reporting skills of the future.

Big on jargon, that was the message to be taken from a public meeting, at which the two bidders for the STV News at Six slot - not to mention an £8m slug of licence fee money - made their pitches.

On one hand, STV itself, with ITN News and Bauer Media, which includes Radio Clyde, Forth, Northsound, Moray Firth and the like: on the other, the three publishing groups behind The Courier, Press & Journal, The Scotsman and The Herald, with the support of independent production company Tinopolis.

Innovative ideas

Just to to recap on this briefly: STV, as with ITV plc, has decided its current news operation is unsustainable on the advertising revenue being generated these days.

The UK government, with regulator Ofcom, has chosen Scotland to be one of three pilot areas, with Wales and north-east England, for a publicly-funded news operation, open to bidders with innovative ideas.

One complication is that southern Scotland is in the Border licence area, so it's with Tyne-Tees.

You can read more of the political background to all this in The Ledger dated 4 January.

What I didn't know then, but ken noo, is that; there will be £8m on offer, and £6m each for the Cardiff and Newcastle operations: existing staff will be transferred to the winning bidder under current contractual conditions, even if the incumbent is part of the winning bid: and any advertising revenue around the news programmes will go the broadcaster, not the news producer, at least during the pilot phase.

Hyper-local news

So, Monday was the day for the two shortlisted bidders to set out their plans.

Lacking much broadcasting credibility and without the advantages of incumbency, the newspapers' consortium has helped its case by unveiling as chairman Mark Wood, former chief executive of ITN.

With only six weeks until a panel of industry experts decides which consortium will supply news to STV, about 80 people were there to learn more about the distinctions between the two bidders.

Asked how many were genuine members of the public, without an axe to grind, only five hands went up.

Both consortia had done at least some market research showing - as it invariably does - that people say they want more local news.

That doesn't mean they'll use it, but that's what they tell people with clipboards.

The ´óÏó´«Ã½ was planning a more local online service, but after ferocious lobbying by newspaper publishers, the corporation was told to shelve that plan.

Social networking

So this was the opportunity for publishers to say how they would take advantage of the space thus created.

Fronted by a notably low-tech and low-key presentation by TV presenter Isla Traquair, the pitch was for hundreds of journalists already in place, working in 50 offices around the country, and adaptable for TV work.

The talk was of "lighting up Scotland", citizen journalists or "user generated content", community radio stations, journalism trainees, and being first to the news, on the ground, where it happens, without limiting news by the reach of a satellite truck.

Donald Martin, the man leaving the editor's office at The Herald to take over the Sunday Post, testily argued that newspapers already originate much of the material that broadcast journalists then pick up.

And there was a sighting of one of the rarest creatures in corporate Scotland: a member of the DC Thomson publishing dynasty.

Citizen reporters

STV had to say how it would be different, without criticising what it's already doing.

The talk from chief executive Rob Woodward was of driving down to local level.

In addition to the 6.15 news bulletins from four studios, he's talking about increasing that to six.

There are plans for up to 300 local websites. The technology is being put in place, and the STV-led consortium plans to roll out the content, hiring local online editors and with four journalism courses already signed up.

Add to that use of social networking and mobile apps, and you have a pitch for the younger demographic that all the established news media are struggling to reach.

The Herald's Tom Thomson wasn't to be outdone by that: "We intend to work with schools, to make children media literate."

For those who think TV news about the world and the UK should be reported from a Scottish perspective, Woodward's vision is to do so from STV. (That has been a political hot potato for the ´óÏó´«Ã½. The most recent evidence from a Scottish government survey suggests support for the idea is weakening, a bit - down to 49% in favour and 40% satisfied with the way things are.)

Rivals collaborate

For the south of Scotland, there's the option of bringing it into the broadcasting pilot for the rest of Scotland.

Research by Ofcom, said its adviser Stewart Purvis, showed different attitudes in different parts of the south.

The Borders as far south as Hawick look north to Edinburgh, he suggested, while Dumfries people look across the border to a common interest with Carlisle and Cumbria. It's not clear how they're going to handle that one.

Two questions lingered as the meeting broke up.

Has anyone a plan to make these bids commercially self-standing after the pilot phase?

That's supposed to be part of the remit, but there's a lot of work needed on that by the deadline for final bids a month from now.

And in the words of Mark Wood, there is something historic happening between Scotland's newspapers.

Having long been rivals, they're proposing to work together on both commercial and editorial fronts - not just trying to create a new television programme, but with the online reporting which is now at the heart of their activities.

It's hard to avoid the logic that money pressures, and falling circulation, will continue to drive them ever closer together.

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• - What's this?

This Westminster election campaign will almost certainly have a notable absentee: we won't have a dispute about the euro.

While Labour, the SNP and Liberal Democrats are, in principle, in favour of joining the single currency, they would be mighty brave to push the case for joining at the same time that it is creating such tensions, and may yet find some members parting company with it.

Greece raised the temperature last week, as the markets responded to fears that it can't handle its deficit. The cost of servicing its fast-growing debt was pushing up to 4 percentage points higher than that for the eurozone's German baseline. It doesn't take a downgrade of the national credit rating to have that effect: markets are pricing in these risks without being told to do so by Standard & Poors.

Portugal and Spain were drawn into those concerns. They protest they're different, but there's a fear of contagion, or domino effect, and they are seen as next most vulnerable. All three have problems in reaching a political consensus around what to do.

Pigs in muck

There's an EU chiefs' pow-wow in Brussels later this week to decide how to handle this pressure, which brings to mind a significant factor of this recession; the sense of crisis which saw an unprecedented global plunge around the turn of last year has ceased to have much sense of crisis for over a year. It's been quite a while since we haven't known how the week was going to pan out.

In Britain, the political debate ahead of the election revolves around the risk that the UK could join Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain (the so-called PIGS) on the critical list (PIGSUK?), with the national credit rating coming under pressure. How best and when to bring down the deficit is where Labour and Tory have so far clashed, and found themselves moving onto very similar turf.

But while a downgrade of Britain's credit rating would be expensive and politically humiliating, the markets also know that Britain can help get itself out of trouble by letting the pound slide. The PIGS don't have that luxury.

Budget pain

And being in uncharted waters - as the eurozone has spent most of its life in benign economic weather conditions - it's not yet clear how much the other eurozone members will do to help them through the difficulty and/or to punish them for their lack of budgetary discipline.

It seems the central bank and Germany will do what it takes. There's too much riding on getting the euro through its first big crisis. But at what price, for how long, and what impact will it have on the future of the euro if its members know they'll get bailed out in future?

You'll note Ireland may be the 'I' of the PIGS but for now at least, it is being treated differently from others in that unhappy sty. Ireland doesn't have Britain's flexibility with its currency. It has the same rigidity within the eurozone, but in Dublin, they've pulled back from the edge of the abyss by taking the kind of painful budgetary decisions being urged on Athens, Lisbon and Madrid.

Meanwhile, consider a quieter crisis besetting Latvia, a small European outlier. It's not in the eurozone, but it has pegged its currency to the euro, and it's paying a heavy price for doing so.

This Baltic state has lost around 25% of its economy since the recession began, and it's reckoned it will lose another 5%. As the Wall Street Journal recently noted, that's more than the 29% of output USA lost in the worst four years of the 1930s Depression.

Retail sales are down 30%, and austerity measures include a near halving of teachers' salaries and a 40% cut in hospital budgets.

The sense of crisis that's come back to Europe is being closely watched around the world, with fear of that contagion.

Women's skills

Longer term, with government budgets under severe pressure, what's the solution to this? One is to plan for changes to the shape of the economy. Labour market research just out from the European Commission underlines the shift towards high skill jobs, and away from low skill jobs.

It says that despite the sharp rise in unemployment recently, there could be seven million new jobs created by the end of the decade, along with 73 million vacancies created by the need to replace workers who retire or change careers. It also points out women are going to be more highly qualified, and more will have to be done to encourage them into using those skills in the workplace.

Plus, to continue this broad sweep of the continent, there's an interesting lesson from France in the past week. The country that invented the word 'entrepreneur', and then failed to follow through on it, is now seeing unusually strong growth in business start-ups.

Sterling slide

It's reported this is being driven by the diminished opportunities in the public sector. Or it could have to do with a new fast-track means of starting a company - doing it all online and avoiding red tape and tax until you start to turn a profit. While Britain as a whole does comparatively well at starting up companies, there may be lessons there for Scotland, where the entrepreneurial spark-plug remains damp.

Meantime, if those who lean towards the euro would do well to keep quiet about it during the election campaign, does that mean the Tories can crow about their opposition to membership of the euro?

Not really. They've been so burned by their own divisions over Europe that it carries too many risks for them to make a big deal out of it this time. And as an economic strategy, it doesn't do to trumpet Britain's freedom to let sterling slide, when the reality behind that is reduced spending power and the threat of inflation.

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• - What's this?

An oath to do good and not to harm your rivals? It's a tall order for bankers, who have tended to prefer the more straight-forward, less ethically-challenging business of making mounds of moolah.

But the idea has been floated at Holyrood's 'future of Scottish finance' inquiry, being carried out by the economy, energy and tourism committee. It comes from two leading asset managers in Edinburgh; Angus Tulloch and David Gait. They're at First State Investments, and have waded into the debate about the future of Scotland's banking with some provocative ideas. No wonder they're being made in a personal capacity.

The idea of following medics down the Hippocratic-style oath follows on other ideas to remove the short-termism from investing. They suggest delaying voting rights for 12 months after buying shares, and delaying the right to receive a dividend by the same length of time.

Short-term tax

Bonuses should have a minimum three-year incentive, getting investors to think more as owners. End monthly investment performance data, and the regulatory requirement for quarterly results. Six monthly should be sufficient, they say.

How about capital gains taxes specifically levied on short-term investors. India has such a 10% tax on foreign investors realising profits within one year (though apparently the loophole is that one pretends to be a company in Mauritius).

They'd like to discourage short selling, and stock lending in order to achieve it. And they think a way should be found for minority shareholders to have more power in the boardroom - perhaps drawing some directors from a panel of approved independently-minded people.

Sober analysis

So what about the asset managers' oath? Here's the draft, and they're looking for suggestions for improvements:

"I swear to fulfil, to the best of my ability and judgement, this covenant:

"I will treat my clients at all time as I would wish to be treated.

"I will not allow the pursuit of personal gain to cloud my fiduciary role.

"I will strive to achieve, through hard work, sober analysis and sound judgement, the best risk-adjusted returns possible for my clients.

"I will not, however, pursue these returns to the extent that my actions will knowingly harm others.

"I will remember that a share in a business brings with it responsibilities as well as rights.

"I will not forget, in my search for returns, that the primary risk faced by my clients is losing their capital.

"I will not succumb to irrational exuberance in good times, nor to unjustified gloom in bad times.

"I will present a balanced viewpoint, highlighting risks as well as potential returns.

"I will recognise that my role within society is to allocate capital where it can be used most productively for the future benefit of all.

"I will not be ashamed to admit my mistakes and will strive to learn from them, as well as those of others.

"I will share my experiences, both good and bad, with my peers and work together with them to earn the respect of those outside the investment profession.

"I will play my part in promoting financial education as it benefits wider society.

"Finally, I will recall at all times the stricture that 'those who stand for nothing fall for anything'."

MSPs on the future of Scottish finance inquiry have come up against a significant constitutional hurdle. For obvious reasons, they'd like to hear from the people at the top of the regulatory agencies; the Treasury, the Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England.

But for constitutional reasons, none of those agencies want to be seen to be accountable to the Scottish Parliament. So the compromise seems to be a series of meetings, in London next Tuesday, at which members of the economy, energy and tourism committee will meet: Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England; Lord Adair Turner, chairman of the FSA, and Lord Myners, the financial services minister at the Treasury.

But it will all be behind closed doors, without public hearings. That accountability is for the Treasury select committee at Westminster, whose members the MSPs are also to meet.

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• - What's this?

We've heard corporate Scotland complain about the behaviour of the banks in pushing up the costs of - and conditions on - credit. And we've heard the banks protest that they're making huge amounts of money available, but that even pre-arranged overdrafts are not being utilised.

Today, we get some independent adjudication, with detailed analysis of how the credit market is operating. PricewaterhouseCoopers and Strathclyde University's Fraser of Allander Institute have pulled together the company report, business survey and client evidence.

Some of their conclusions are no surprise, others are alarming, and some are both. Most of the lending activity in the market over the past year has been to re-finance debt, rather than to finance mergers and acquisitions. And in doing so, Scottish corporates face higher fees, margins and charges for undrawn facilities and guarantees. Where credit lines have not been drawn, access to that money is being withdrawn. Delays are common, and banks often prefer to roll over debt rather than commit to renewal.

So companies can go to the market for debt financing? Hardly. More than £50bn was raised in the corporate bond market last year, of which only 5% was for Scottish plcs. And that was across only four companies: Dana Petroleum, Stagecoach, FirstGroup and Scottish and Southern Energy.

"Entering into 2010, there is a strong case for more Scottish corporates to consider alternative sources of funding such as the corporate bond market, private placement or switching debt provider," says the report. But switching provider is not too easy, particularly when two banks so dominate Scottish lending.

Taking the 500 biggest companies in Scotland, and looking at their 2008-09 results, the research reckons they were carrying £23bn in debt by the end of last year - an increase of £4bn on the previous figure. Most of that increase was from utilities, construction, offshore and transport companies.

Yet UK businesses were cutting their borrowing by nearly 8% by the end of last year. Put those factors together, and you end up with an estimate of Scotland's corporate borrowing facility of between £36bn and £41bn.

Two of the big borrowing sectors are going to need a lot more finance, quite soon. The drive for renewable energy investment is colossal. The recent licences granted for offshore wind farm developments mean around £14bn of capital. Ofgem has today estimated that new energy investment around Britain will require £200bn of investment over the next 10 years. Meanwhile, FirstGroup and Stagecoach will need access to capital if they are to compete for new rail franchises this year.

Kshocolat has melted, and gone are the 25 jobs that went with it. The Glasgow-based luxury chocolate retailer - with its chilli almond, champagne truffle and black pepper/white chocolate offerings - wasn't up to the downturn in the most discretionary of consumer spending. It was cash flow that got it in the end.

At this time of year, you might have thought there would be hundreds of people clamouring at the company's three retail outlets to demand they get hold of their Valentine's orders before the shutters come down.

Not so, according to the administrators RSM Tenon. The total orders still having to be processed ahead of Valentine's Day was a mere three customers. That tells you something about the company's lack of business, but it also tells you something about lovers' late planning for gifts.

Those three are likely to get a refund, while administrators are looking for buyers of the company's stock. That could be an auction worth attending.

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I'm not going to pretend to have a clue about .

The fans seem deliriously happy, so you'd want to assume he makes good footballing sense.

But does he make good business sense?

The arrival at Parkhead, on loan from Tottenham Hotspur, smashes through the transfer window.

With three additional signings yesterday, it's contrary to the much smaller sums being spent by most other clubs - with the exception of Manchester City, backed by big Arab money.

The total estimated spending in the English leagues through the winter transfer window fell from about £170m last year to only about £30m.

Best for Hibs

The Keane move also goes against the trend of players heading south. A notable feature of the past month of stars from Scotland's top clubs being sought by clubs some way down the English league pecking order.

That, in itself, ought to tell you something about the financial state of Scottish football, at least relative to the English variety.

So what makes Robbie Keane worth £65,000 per week? That's simple. He's box office.

The presumption is that he makes sense in ticket sales, TV audiences and replica shirts.

But can a whole team expect to get proportionate pay, or could it be that the pay gap between sporting superstars and their less celebrated team-mates becomes ever wider?

Being on loan, Keane saves Celtic the multiple millions it would have cost to sign him from Spurs.

And unlike some who have headed for Scottish clubs, he's not at the washed-up end of his career. (I'm old enough to recall George Best joining Hibs in 1979 for the unimaginably large fee of £2000 per week.)

Rangers debt

And Celtic is in a strong enough position to take this kind of financial risk.

At the end of its last financial year, it had debts of £1.5m, and despite the peaks and troughs of football finance, it had retained revenue and cut its out-goings in order to turn a £2m profit.

By contrast, its rivals across Glasgow at Ibrox were carrying £31m, up by more than £10m in the year and leaving a loss for last year of nearly £13m.

Although its position is looking good in the Scottish Premier League, Rangers has the Bank of Scotland on its back and it has not been spending on new players.

And what's in all this for Robbie Keane?

The weekly pay packet is probably quite persuasive.

But the other factor is that element of football that doesn't feature on a balance sheet and which explains why the industry hasn't yet collapsed - loyalty and affection for the club from boyhood days.

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