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Slow breaking news: it's taken a while to get there, but at last we can confirm . And how.

The second consecutive quarter of economic decline, in the final three months of last year, shows the pace of decline really picked up on the -0.8% fall in gross domestic product for July to September.

The economy contracted between October and December by 1.7%, according to the Scottish Government's statisticians.

What does that mean? Look at it this way. For every £1,000 earned the previous year, Scots workers were adding £983 in value by the end of last year.

We could live with that. But the alarming bit is the pace of decline, not least because it's faster than the UK figures, which we saw three months ago.

If that same pace continued over the year, it would mean a 6.8% contraction.

We're likely to hear from the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, that UK growth is on target to contract by about 3.5% this year, and that's seen as very bad.

So if the pace of decline at the end of last year were to be continued throughout this year, it would be really dire - close to the figure forecast for Ireland, for instance.

Broken down into sectors, you can see the worst affected by decline were production/manufacturing and construction.

Both fell in one quarter by 4.7%. Extrapolate that figure over a year, and you could see nearly a fifth of those sectors lost.

Services were down by 0.8%.

That includes banking, for which the crisis began during the quarter being measured, and for which substantial job losses have not begun to feed through into the statistics.

The impact on jobs remains not too bad so far.

The new figures are not calamitous, though they are continuing to head in a predictable and bad direction.

They continue to show Scottish employment and unemployment in a better place than the UK average.

The most accurate measure of unemployment was up to 143,000, a rise of 5,000 when measuring the most recent quarter with the previous one.

Those on Jobseekers Allowance were rising faster, up by 6,000 to 119,400.

The really telling comparison is with March of last year. It's risen by 50,600, which means a 42% rise.

All this full year extrapolation of the GDP figures is probably unduly gloomy.

The first quarter of this year looks like it may have been the worst of the recession, after which the negative figures are likely to get slightly less negative, and by some time next year, they should be positive again, as growth is re-established.

This Friday, we'll see if the UK figures for the first quarter of this year are picking up the downward pace or relenting a bit.

And given the global nature of the crisis, it might be worth factoring in some less gloomy news from abroad, which may help boost demand for British goods and services.

There was news yesterday that business pessimism is not quite as bad in Germany, though it has taken a real shock to its manufacturing exports.

And today, there are positive vibes coming from China about its growth rate.

Anything around 6% or below was grim by Chinese standards, and analysts and the central bank reckon it could be getting back above 8%, and close to 11% next year.

That's the kind of downturn Britain could use.