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The talk is not of green shoots, but of bright spots.

That is, there's no pattern pointing to recovery for the Scottish economy, but some things are going right, despite everything else.

Renewable energy, for instance. And fund management, as it looks for new markets in China. And, er, that's about it.

The rest of the analysis of by Dr Andrew Goudie, chief economic adviser at the Scottish Government, ranges between uncertain, bumpy and a bit bleak.

He recognises the signs that the rate of decline may be slowing, but seems to be cautious about embracing the evidence with any enthusiasm.

What the report proves beyond doubt (in case any lingered) is that Scotland is far from being insulated from recession.

It may not be as dependent on manufacturing exports as England's Midlands, or Germany or Japan, but Scotland's is an open economy, depending on trade.

And as an unusually strong characteristic of this recession is its global nature, it is trade that has been hardest hit, and therefore those who have most successfully depended on trade.

Has Scotland been protected by its larger public sector?

There's mixed evidence there.

Decline in output has so far tracked that of the UK, and looks set to continue doing so.

Meanwhile, the employment picture is mixed.

Whereas a relatively high proportion of women have been in Scotland's workforce in recent years, giving the country a high level of employment, there is evidence from the start of the recession that around 20,000 of those women stopped working and stopped being available for work.

That's a more significant retreat from the workforce than most parts of Britain.

But looking at the unemployment figures, which understandably get more attention, Scotland is faring relatively well, with the rate lower than the average and the rate of increase the lowest of any part of the country.

Has Scotland been protected by having less of a property bubble?

In relative terms, that looks like the clearest difference.

There's evidence from this report that the excesses of south-east England left Scotland less vulnerable.

Measuring the bubble by the ratio of house prices to earnings, Scotland had less far to fall.

The UK figure hit 5.8 times earnings at its peak nearly two years ago, while Scotland reaches 4.7 times earnings.

The Scottish level of house prices is now reckoned to be around 3.7 times earnings, and that is close to the trend level for the past 25 years.

What that could mean is that the house price floor could be getting close - but it depends on access to mortgages, and on buyer confidence levels at a time when unemployment is on the way up.

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Trading down has been one feature of the recession so far, from restaurants to pre-cooked meals, and from pre-cooked meals to ingredients for cooking.

Egg sales have risen at a cracking pace since the start of the year, offering the best value source of protein.

And as people go less frequently to the hairdressers, sales of hair dye are up 47%.

It's not that people have stopped spending, particularly on food. But there are significant changes in consumer behaviour, which retailers reckon could come to mean a permanent shift on a scale we haven't seen for generations.

Experian, the retail consultants, today publish their latest analysis of consumer behaviour, looking to what will happen after recession.

It finds - and retailers agree - that there has been a sharp drop in consumer loyalty, or "brand monogamy". More than a quarter of shoppers say they have been more likely to look around for the best deal over the past six months, and 80% say they have become more aware of the price of goods and services.

The big supermarkets have been able to count on 80% of their consumers coming back week after week. But recently, they've found shoppers getting much smarter and sharper, searching out value.

Part of that breakdown of loyalty has been a reduction in the public's trust of big business.

Experian has never seen so much suspicion, with 40% saying companies are "not fair" to consumers.

That is surely affected by the banking crisis. Asda has researched trust issues, and found banks and the police fare badly, while supermarkets are in the top levels for public trust, alongside Google and the National Health Service. (Incidentally, if you look at political positioning on the NHS, you can see political focus groups have been coming up with the same finding).

That change is permanent, according to Experian's Joe Staton. In marketingspeak, he foresees "the promiscuous bounce-back consumer".

"The biggest casualty will be brand monogamy as consumers demand higher levels of service than ever before and drop those brands they do not believe fully appreciate, and indeed reward, their custom," he argues.

The consultancy is talking about loyalty being rewarded and re-won every day with reward points, personalised discounts and targeted one-to-one communications.

Personal recommendations will become more important to out-performing the competition.

And that chimes with developments from the major retailers in using social networking sites, with Waitrose launching a chat site, and Asda being astonished by the big response to an invitation on till receipts to share money-saving ideas.

That analysis also helps explain why Tesco is doubling its Club card reward points.

Another significant shift was being highlighted at the Scottish Parliament yesterday by Asda. It was trumpeting its increase in sourcing from Scottish producers, up from £16m last year towards a target £25m this year. Sales of "local food lines" are up 55% on last year, says the company.

This is, Asda reckons, driven by consumer preference, both to support local businesses and to cut back on carbon-emitting food miles. While the demand for organic produce and fair trade has sharply reduced, the awareness of green consumer responsibility remains high. According to Experian, 70% of shoppers are concerned about what they can do for the environment, compared with 40% a decade ago.

Asda managers say Scotland is ahead of the rest of Britain in supporting local producers in the in-store choices they make, while the most locally loyal parts of England are Norfolk, Lincolnshire and Cornwall.

The American-owned grocery giant commissions an independent tracker of spending power, and notes that reduced interest rates and inflation have been a key factor in pushing up Scottish spending power slightly faster than the British average.

Figures from the income tracker show the average Scottish family last month had £4 more in discretionary spend each week than it had last April, after taking into account the cost of essentials. A low point for the past year was September, before interest rates were cut and when fuel and food inflation had pushed that discretionary element down to £136 per week. Since then, it has risen £15.

The Asda response to recession is to do more of what it was already pushing, with relentless pressure and marketing on price, varying from its rivals by setting national prices across all its stores.

That price pressure is the reason it's not moving into high street convenience locations, as Tesco and Sainsbury's have been doing, even though Woolworths' demise has left lots of prime space vacant. Nor is Asda pushing, as Tesco and Sainsbury are doing, on further diversification into retail banking.

Its focus remains food and price, with a concern that the big retailers' hedging against currency fluctuations have protected British consumers fairly well so far, but that these arrangements will run out in the final quarter of this year, and we'll see upward cost pressure on produce priced in dollars.

The decline in the pound may have gone into reverse in recent weeks, but there's still plenty potential to import inflation to the check-out till.

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In ye olden times, before the crunching of the credit, this would have been disaster day for Britain's banking sector, possibly even setting alight the European Parliament election campaign with a real European issue.

This could have been portrayed by the Euro-sceptic press as a cause to defend the English Channel against Johnny Foreigner's incursions, whereas the fascination is more with who pays to clean Douglas Hogg's moat.

In a double whammy, a Spanish brand is to replace familiar names from the high street.

Abbey no more. Alliance no more. Bradford, Bingley and Leicester are to be wiped off the financial map, and now Santander is to succeed where King Philip and his Armada failed.

It bodes ill for Manchester United's chances against Barcelona in the Champions League final.

On top of that comes news from Brussels, where the European Commission today set out its plans to centralise and co-ordinate much of the banking regulation across Europe.

The British Government is not over-pleased about some of the elements in it.

They could see continental supervision curtailing some of the more innovative sectors of the British financial sector, as power moves to the European Central Bank.

While one of the proposed new bodies would be a watchdog against the build-up of systemic risk, three others - for insurance, banking and securities - would have powers to enforce common technical accounting standards across all 27 countries.

Whitehall doesn't like the sound of that enforcement power.

Such are the financial times and the loss of confidence that cross-border regulation and the imposition of a Spanish brand are almost being welcomed.

The cross-border nature of banking, without matching cross-border supervision, has clearly been a factor allowing the banking crisis to spin close to catastrophe.

So everyone is on board for changing that.

And the fact that Santander has the clout and the appetite to do business in British banking is a sign that we could eventually get back to a normally functioning international financial system.

One of the problems the British economy has faced in recent months is that foreign banks - notably from Iceland, Ireland and the USA - have retreated to their home markets and to repair their balance sheets.

It's also a reminder of how this crisis looks to some smaller countries. Britain, and Scotland, have been used to exporting financial services, and to their banking giants being big global players.

This crisis has threatened some countries with the collapse of their domestic banking industry, leaving them dependent on decisions made in foreign headquarters.

While Britain has had its own huge challenges, and paid for them at huge risk to the taxpayer, there has never been much doubt that British-based banks would emerge from the wreckage.

But go to the Netherlands or Belgium, and the disaster that befell ABN Amro and Fortis affects their sense of economic autonomy.

Perhaps that explains why they have had much more raucous, shoe-throwing shareholder meetings than the politely grumpy gatherings in Britain.

On the same theme, we've got confirmation today from Nationwide, having taken over the Dunfermline Building Society, that it's not going to post any cessation accounts, leaving a veil over what went so badly wrong. All you can see from the Nationwide annual figures is that the Dunfermline had net liabilities of £1.4 billion that the largest part of that exposure was a £2.3 billion accounting entry described only as "shares".

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Dateline: Cumbernauld. It's the end of an era, as Robin Barr retires from the chairmanship of AG Barr.

I've been to interview him, and to get inside the inner sanctum of the Essence House, where he monthly mixes the secret potion that gives Irn Bru its distinctive flavour.

Ten minutes in there, and the intensity of the ingredients hanging in the air had me losing my voice.

The charming 71-year old enjoys the pawky, irreverent humour that has given his products' advertisements their cutting edge.

His understanding of the online social and viral marketing of the product is, let's say, limited.

But he knows it's the future, and understands sufficiently that the secret of its viral success is in letting it happen without a big corporate push.

The Snowman pastiche, made by the Leith Agency and used for the past three Christmases on TV, has been particularly successful on YouTube.

The success of Irn Bru's modern-day marketing and advertising is well known, at least north of the Tweed, where 'brewed in Scotland, from girders' has been recognised as one of the most effective slogans of recent decades.

As 'Scotland's other national drink', it pushed those patriotic credentials in the 1970s and 1980s.

But that's made it more difficult to break into markets outside Scotland and Scots exiles, for whom Irn Bru can be a taste of home, accompanied by a Tunnock's Caramel Wafer.
(It can be a top hangover cure, though it's never worked for me.)

The story goes back to Falkirk in 1830 and a cork-cutting business, branching into soft drinks in 1875 when it was clear there wasn't much of a future in cork-cutting.

Only in 1901 was the 'Iron Brew' recipe settled upon by the great grandfather of Robin Barr.

With a version made by many small producers, AG Barr in 1947 changed the spelling to get round prospective laws (long preceding the European Commission, you'll note) that required labels to be accurate descriptions of food contents.

Although it has small amounts of iron compound, Irn Bru isn't brewed.

Chatting with the outgoing chairman about the state of his market, he pointed out there were around 8000 soft drinks manufacturers in 1945, but the effective war-time nationalisation of the industry - with the Government of the day dictating a limited range of recipes that could be used - contributed to consolidation.

Now, British soft drinks are dominated by Coca-Cola and its bottlers, with Britvic handling the Pepsi range.

To a much smaller extent, GKN, better known in Big Pharma, does Lucozade and Ribena at the premium end of the market, and there are some big bottlers handling supermarket own-label fizzy pops.

AG Barr is the biggest independent survivor in a sector now down to only around 80 soft drinks makers in Britain, and most of them are struggling at the margins of the mineral water market.

Its products are, of course, dominated by Irn Bru. The diet version is outsold by the sugary one by a 7:3 margin, whereas Diet Coke outsells Coke (that alone tells you something about Scotland's sweet tooth).

But there's more to AG Barr than that.

It has Tizer in its portfolio. D'N'B stands for dandelion and burdock, which is a regional tradition that has around 10% of the market across the north of England.

AG Barr's sponsorship of rugby league has been for D'N'B in recent years, but the efforts to push Irn Bru into the English market mean that the lead product is soon to be Irn Bru.

KA is a pineapple drink, with even more sugar than Irn Bru, that appeals to the Afro-Caribbean market in England.

Now with a market capitalisation of nearly £250 million, around quarter of that in family hands, recent years have seen AG Barr buying Strathmore Water, bottled in Forfar, and given the same funky advertising treatment that has built Irn Bru.

Last year, the company bought Rubicon, a fruit drinks business based in Wembley, that specialises in exotic fruit combinations that sell well into the South Asian market in the south-east of England.

The idea is to move into the premium brand market, though the recession has made that tough.

With people trading down, Irn Bru sales have held up well as a cheap treat for financially worrying times. But Rubicon and Strathmore have found it a bit tougher.

The one other country where Irn Bru sells well is Russia, where AG Barr spotted the opportunity to get into the market in 1993, stealing a march on its big American rivals.

But it's a premium soft drink there, and the recession has hit sales hard, down by at least 15%.

According to Robin Barr, the big growth area in soft drinks is in the sugar and caffeine loaded sector to keep its drinkers clubbing, studying, driving and just buzzing through the night... and often into the next day.

Red Bull is market leader there, but its rivals have been growing the market aggressively since last summer, using half litre cans.

Coca-Cola Enterprises has one product of its own, called Relentless. It's also just signed a deal to distribute Monster, the number one 'energy' seller in America.

With much of the battle over the on-sales trade for what marketers like to call "high tempo occasions", AG Barr is in that game as well, with a UK licensing deal for Rock Star.

It suggests that another of those niche products doing well in a recession is something that gives you a whole lot of pep.

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The original renewable energy is due for some renewing.

And just some of the potential of hydro power is included in a plan set out today by Scottish and Southern Energy for getting a lot more out of its Sloy plant next to Loch Lomond.

SSE is still known in parts of Scotland as the Hydro Board, and the 'Scottish Hydro-Electric' brand is still the main one for customers north of the Border.

More than 50 years since large tracts of the Highlands were changed forever by the building of dams and installation of giant turbines, the company - long since privatised - is back for more.

The Sloy project, priced at £30m, would see a pumped storage facility built in to the existing scheme.

This means that water could be pumped uphill and stored in Loch Sloy, available when there are peaks in demand.

Of all the options open to generators, there is nothing as effective as hydro for meeting sudden surges in demand.

Open a sluice gate in SSE's new, state-of-the-engineering-art plant at Glendoe, above Loch Ness, and with a drop of 600 metres through its new tunnel, its power is coursing through the National Grid within 30 seconds.

The other attraction in the renewables sector is to provide base load - the energy you can rely on when, for instance, the wind and the waves drop.

Much of the debate is around building a new generation of nuclear plants to meet that need - and nuclear is one of a wide range of joint ventures signed by SSE in the past year to hedge its options across the energy spectrum.

However, a combination of renewables could go some way to avoiding that need. Wind turbines can be used during the night, when demand is low, to pump water uphill.

At present, there are only two such schemes.

SSE chief executive, Ian Marchant, told me this morning - as he was talking through his annual results - that the intention is to move beyond the "splash and dash" approach.

That means they need hydro power that doesn't just fill the gaps, best produced by relatively small amounts of water falling long distances.

Instead, they're looking for much bigger lochs, and the distance from top to bottom of the hydro scheme matters less.

As Mr Marchant put it: "We want pump storage that can run for days and days when there's no wind".

An industry/government study published last September calculated there are another 600 Megawatts of "financially viable" hydro power available in Scotland, much of it from small-scale, run-of-the-river projects.

That's nearly half as much again as is currently installed. And it's twice as much as the new Glendoe project, which is reckoned to provide for 100,000 homes during the short times it's called upon.

SSE is looking at two such minor sites, and it has taken a large stake in a small company, Green Highland Renewables, which specialises in developing more.

Its bid for a Sloy upgrade is on a more significant scale.

It would take the oldest scheme developed by the Hydro Board, opened in 1950 and refurbished in the past ten years, and it would sharply increase the average year's yield.

At present, Sloy generates around 120 Gigawatt hours, and with the enhancement, that could rise by 100 GWh.

Today's SSE annual figures for 2008 has come with confirmation of another application for a giant wind farm on Shetland, lodged yesterday in a joint venture with the islands council.

The company has acquired a power station in Wales, with a view to building a replacement on site.

But its return to its hydro roots are perhaps the most intriguing option for SSE, particularly if it gives that longer-term base load pump storage potential.

Ian Marchant says his team of geographers and engineers think they might have identified such a site.

They're not saying where yet, but expect more on this in the next three or four months.

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Here's yet more evidence of MPs having privileges denied to others.

This time, however, it's not about expenses. You might even be grateful to the Scottish affairs select committee for bringing the former bosses of Dunfermline Building Society to account.

If you were a saver or borrower with the Dunfermline, you were a member of it, and therefore one of its owners.

And you might have a few questions you would want to put to the people who took the decisions to go for much riskier investments than it was used to, and riskier than it was able to handle.

But although the Society had to publish its annual figures at the start of April, it never did, and nor did it have a meeting at which members could question the chairman, the chief executive or their predecessors.

Instead, the Dunfermline was bailed out by the government, taking on more than £1.5bn of its riskier assets, while its mortgage book, branches and head office were joined with the Nationwide.

The only public comment was from former advertising boss Jim Faulds, in the hours before he was forced out the chairmanship, furious at the government and its regulators for suddenly shifting to a forced sale.

The Westminster committee heard on Wednesday from the regulators, who said they had warned the Dunfermline about its unsecured mortgages and move into commercial property.

And in Harrogate, at the meeting of the Building Societies Association, there have been some robust exchanges along similar lines.

Regulators were reminding mutuals they had issued warnings about risky lending, unsustainable margins and over-ambitious growth targets, with exposure to risky loans being taken on even during last year.

Mutuals were conceding there will have to be further government support to get them through this crisis, pleading for a system that is less biased towards banks.

What has just been announced is that the Commons committee - which has formidable powers to call witnesses - has secured an appearance at its next hearing into the Dunfermline's effective collapse from not only Jim Faulds, but also the chief executive who ran it into such serious trouble, Graeme Dalziel, and Jim Willens, the ex-Nationwide executive who took over in December after the damage had been done, but who was central to the rescue process.

There's only an hour scheduled for the three of them on the afternoon of 10 June, but it's more than we've heard so far.

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More jobs are going from Lloyds Banking Group, as it drives towards its £1.5bn cost savings target. There's no great surprise, though there's plenty of disappointment, that 625 people are to go from wholesale banking.

Half of those are to come from Scotland, and they will be "considered" for new jobs being created elsewhere.

As new owner of Halifax Bank of Scotland, Lloyds has made clear it is not going for big job loss numbers. That contrasts with the Royal Bank's recent announcement of up to 9,000 jobs, half of them in Britain, going from its biggest division, providing back office support.

Lloyds says it's working through its divisions, systematically looking for savings and synergy. It's found some already, but it's clear there are lots more to come.

The Unite union reckons that 2,225 job loss announcements have been made so far. And now there's pressure from Jeremy Purvis, LibDem finance spokesman at Holyrood, for them to be much clearer about what they're up to.

"It is becoming apparent that their corporate strategy is to make a series of relatively low key but significant announcements," he said today.

"This should not be used to mask the real picture if they are intending to have large-scale job losses in Scotland in the coming months."

Finance Secretary John Swinney weighed his words carefully when he acknowledged Lloyds recently favoured its Scottish Widows brand over Clerical and Medical, but warned about "the centralisation of activities within the new banking group".

That serves warning to Archie Kane, executive director for Scotland and insurance, that there are potential political implications to Lloyds' plans.

The reckoning from a banking expert watching Lloyds closely from outside is that the likely cuts are far greater than yet acknowledged.

It is calculated that there are actually three mergers going on; Lloyds TSB with HBOS is the obvious one, but managers are also taking the opportunity of crisis in the group to gain much more value from tying Lloyds and TSB more closely than they have been, and from links between Halifax and Bank of Scotland that have not yet been realised.

Three simultaneous mergers, extreme shareholder pressure on the management and a labour market where it's relatively easy to shed staff: it adds up to grim prospects for Lloyds workers.

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In the depths of Scotland's last deep recession, I was sitting O-grades and Highers, and my age cohort was leaving school into a grim jobs market.

While I was fortunate enough to go to university, the evidence from my contemporaries is that those who hit the dole queue as they left school back then are still paying the price of their unfortunate timing.

Stirling University economic research, led by Professors David Bell and David Blanchflower - much of it from the USA - suggests those who didn't make a quick transition into training or work when they left school were more likely to suffer from repeated bouts of unemployment and from lower wages right up to the present.

Making those links back to the early 1980s, I felt a bond across a generation with the lads I met in Glasgow's East End for a report that was broadcast on Monday on Reporting Scotland. They are trying to find a foothold in the jobs or training market at a time when it's becoming exceptionally tough.

As Gary Hay, of Glasgow East Regeneration Agency, reminded us, it's a hirers' market out there, and employers can add conditions of experience and qualification that they would or could not do in a tighter labour market.

The most recent unemployment statistics, up to April and published last week, show there's been a rise in 18 to 24 year olds on jobseekers allowance from 21,000 last June to more than 37,000 now. That's more than 10% of the age group.

And according to Professor Bell's calculations, it means those young people make up nearly 30% of the entire claimant count, while they only represent 14% of the population.

That means that if you're aged between 18 and 24, you're twice as likely as the average Scot to be on the dole. Young men are nearly twice as young women to be looking for work, with young male unemployment rising 72% in the past year, and young women's up by 62%.

And if you're 16 or 17, you don't qualify for the dole anyway. So that's just one of the ways you might feel that you don't count.

The researchers note that youth unemployment in the UK has been on the rise, as has its its share of the total claimant count, against the downward international trends since 2004.

It adds up to a high priority of tackling youth unemployment. And the urgency gains pace in the next few weeks, as young people leave their Standard Grade and Higher exam halls and add to the queues.

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He was the kind of corporate financier who put the grand into City grandee.

But Sir Victor Blank is leaving the chair of Lloyds Banking Group to spend more time with his pension.

The company has just confirmed that he'll quit the post as soon as a successor has been identified, which means by the AGM next year.

That avoids the potential of a humiliating protest vote at the AGM in Glasgow next month.

What we don't know is whether UK Financial Investments, the government agency which controls £70bn of troubled bank shareholdings, would have backed him or not if he had decided to stay.

And its failure to back him when the media started reporting doubts about the shareholder vote may have been what made his mind up.

It had the look of the chairman being hung out to dry.

Big hurdles

Private and institutional shareholders from Lloyds TSB had good reason to feel unhappy at Blank's role in the takeover of Halifax Bank of Scotland.

As he was bluntly told by small-scale shareholders at last November's general meeting to approve the deal, they had invested in Lloyds TSB because it was conservative, and that's the way they wanted it to stay.

But the biggest institutional investor, the government, with 43% of Lloyds Banking Group, had reason to be grateful to Sir Victor for taking HBOS over when he did. That avoided full nationalisation.

Indeed, the deal was done between Blank and the prime minister last September, when HBOS was heading towards collapse.

Having taken the Lloyds TSB chair in 2006, Blank had held informal, pre-crisis chats with HBOS about a merger, but they knew their joint clout would face big hurdles at the Competition Commission.

With crisis looming fast, Gordon Brown told Blank the rules would be waived, and objections overruled, as duly happened.

Saying nothing

As chief executive Eric Daniels subsequently told the Treasury Select Committee, the Lloyds TSB due diligence on HBOS fell far short of desirable.

And as the 2008 results were yet to show, the Bank of Scotland corporate division was to contribute £7bn of red ink to the overall £11bn loss.

We found out this month that the corporate impairments are expected to increase by 50% this year, which was when the pressure on Sir Victor was ramped up.

He continued to stress, however, that "in the medium term, it remains a unique, value-enhancing opportunity".

The deal may have been a disaster for Lloyds TSB shareholders, but it was a relief for Gordon Brown.

And yet, as shareholder anger at Blank warmed up this month, where was the government on Blank's future? Saying nothing.

Until that is, his decision to stand down was announced on Sunday.

Find people

Less than an hour later, UKFI said it "supports his re-election in the context of its wider support for the Lloyds board, strategy, and executive team led by Eric Daniels".

It then "notes" his decision to step down before the next AGM.

That may give some pause for thought for other senior bank executives who have to look over their shoulder to a majority shareholder in Downing Street.

Will they get political support when they need it, or only after they announce they're quitting?

And who takes over from Blank? Well, it hasn't been that easy for the banks and the government to find people willing to sit on part-publicly-owned boards.

Two were found for Lloyds, announced in February, but three are still being sought for the Royal Bank of Scotland, seven months after the bail-out.

Pressure's on

One clue to the replacement chairman may be the decision by the Lloyds Banking Group on Sunday morning to appoint soon-to-be senior independent director Lord Leitch of Oakley to the role of deputy chairman.

On behalf of the rest of the board, he commented that they had unanimously wanted Blank to stay on as chairman, and that while his decision to stand down was a personal one, they respect and understand it.

He was Sandy Leitch and formerly chief executive of Allied Dunbar and then Zurich.

He was born in Dunfermline, Fife, and lacks Sir Victor's grandness.

Those roots and that style may explain why he gets on rather well with Gordon Brown, and his advice on business has long been trusted in Downing Street; chairing the New Deal Task Force from 2000, with a review of skills training three years ago, and becoming a life peer in 2004.

According to the Financial Times, Lord Leitch was spotted entering the Treasury building on 7 May, the same day this month's trading statement did for Blank's future.

If he is on course to get the chairman's office at Lloyds Banking Group, Leitch may wish to be clear how much backing he can expect when the pressure's on.

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More evidence that Aberdeen Asset Management is one of the financial firms well-placed to take on business that others need to shed, with yet another tranche of Credit Suisse coming within Martin Gilbert's growing empire.

It was announced as I was listening to Alistair Darling and Lloyds' director Archie Kane set out the 10- to 15-year prospects for Britain's financial services sector to tackle threats and opportunities developing globally.

This was a presentation of the Bischoff Report, published last week, and although it suffers from quite a bit of vagueness, there were some significant pointers to the way to survive and possibly thrive.

Archie Kane reminded us how vast a financial force swirls around London's Square Mile, with 10 trillion pounds of funds flowing in and out in a good year.

He pointed out that despite the UK and US being seen as culprits in the events that led to near meltdown, nevertheless, London and New York are benefiting from business coming from less established centres in "a flight to quality".

With Singapore now "racing ahead" towards third position in the rankings, the other strong prospects are in Mumbai - "developing a strong offering in a very short space of time", Middle East centres led by Dubai, and above all, Shanghai, with the Chinese government setting itself the task of making it a global financial centre by 2020.

But there is a Bischoff report warning against a "zero sum game mindset" - meaning the growth of other financial centres need not mean the demise of existing ones. The key, according to Bischoff, is collaboration and networking, internationally and with other centres around Britain.

And after a lengthy committee debate on the optimum size for banks looking into the future - potentially separating investment from retail banking - the conclusion reached was that narrowly-focussed banks were among those that suffered most; Lehman Brothers and Northern Rock.

Alistair Darling's take on this: "If you look at who's failed, very sophisticated complex institutions have run into difficulties, and some very narrow banks have failed.

"You shouldn't say to a bank: 'OK you've done well, but now you're not going any further'. What do you do to a bank that's got a retail basis, a lot of commercial customers, but it can't help them if they want to do more complicated investment bank-type work? They're sent somewhere else. I suspect they'll say: 'thank you very much, we'll transfer all our business elsewhere'."

A hint, there, of the regulatory reform proposals due next month. But as the Chancellor said, there are no easy answers.

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So is Scottish finance too reckless or too canny?

Scottish finance has taken a lot of criticism for reckless risk-taking in recent years, notably at its two biggest banks.

But were Scottish financiers willing to be risky enough, and were they sufficiently innovative?

It may be a question worth considering when the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, and Archie Kane, a senior executive director at Lloyds Banking Group and chairman of the Association of British Insurers, present a gathering of big cheeses in Edinburgh's financial sector with the findings of a report into the global prospects for UK Finance plc.

It may be further discussed at the meeting, also scheduled for this morning in Edinburgh, of the Council of Economic Advisers, set up by First Minister Alex Salmond, and chaired by former Royal Bank boss Sir George Mathewson.

That's where the somewhat contrary argument was put at its most recent meeting.

According to the minutes, it was argued, by an unnamed adviser: "If the Scottish banks had been relatively aggressive in the preceding years, Scottish fund managers had been relatively conservative.

"In particular, Scotland played only a modest role in the boom in alternative assets - hedge funds and private equity - since 2000.

"In 2009, however, with the winding down of both these new sectors, this relatively conservative stance may be seen to have served the Scottish industry well.

"Moreover, Scotland's competitive advantages - which rely in large part on a reputation for trust and solidity - are likely to be of particular value in the years ahead.

"There are, however, some questions about Scotland's long run competitive advantages in this sector.

"The fact that Scotland did not appear to be an especially attractive location for private equity or hedge fund managers, even though it may be a relief in the current environment, raises questions about whether Scotland is at the forefront of innovation in this sector."

And one of the questions arising out of that: are Scottish universities, so innovative in so much of what they do, sufficiently plugged into the appetite for finance sector innovation?

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• - What's this?

In Perth, a strange combination: one part of the Conservative Party is hoping to re-establish itself more securely somewhere on the Scottish political radar screen.

The other part is having to weigh its words very carefully, as it positions itself for (it hopes) winning power at Westminster.

For Commons front-benchers, their visit to the Scottish conference includes significant amounts of ear-bashing from lobby groups, notably about the state of the economy.

Today, Oil and Gas UK had visiting them on an Aberdeen stopover.

Chief executive Malcolm Webb was impressing on the politician the industry's reckoning that it faces a £2bn reduction in capital investment, due to rising costs, falling output prices and the credit squeeze.

That translates, according to OGUK, into 40,000 jobs, and in a sector that earns £45bn per year in export earnings.

Last months' budget, from Alistair Darling, had left the trade body with "general disappointment" at a lost opportunity that the industry was not put on a better footing.

Music to Mr Osborne's ears, no doubt, but with the public finances in some state, it's not clear whether he can afford to do avoid continued offshore sector disappointment.

Back at the conference, Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox has been trying to walk a difficult line on procurement.

A Strategic Defence Review is proposed, as an early priority for an incoming Tory government.

Painful cuts are expected. That may be true of any government after next year's Westminster election.

Mr Fox's speech only guaranteed one element of the review - "there will be a replacement to the submarine-based nuclear deterrent under a Conservative Government".

That follows a recent hint that whatever follows Trident may be in three subs instead of four.

And what of projects that are already under way? The supercarrier contract for instance, which is vital to the future for the Clyde's two shipyards and Rosyth?

All Mr Fox says about it in his speech is "some debate the merits of Britain building two new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy".

Not quite a ringing endorsement of the plan. But could there be cancellation if Tories win office? Only at considerable expense, and quite a bit of political pain.

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• - What's this?

In the interests of balance, let's note that Glasgow's Weir Group had its annual general meeting today, and it's looking good.

First Group, based in Aberdeen, produced a healthier set of figures this morning than others in the transport sector.

But on the other side of the Scottish corporate balance sheet, the recession's toll on newspapers has pushed Johnston Press - Edinburgh-based owners of The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday along with hundreds of local papers - back down into danger territory, with a 38% today, following a trading statement.

It reported that the company's intended sale of Irish titles has fallen through, with offer prices deemed inadequate.

That means Johnston Press can't meet its banking covenants, and is in "constructive" discussions about relaxing the bank conditions.The debt has fallen slightly, due to currency movements, but at £448m, that's a big covenant to be breaking.

Advertising revenue is down more than a third since the start of the year when compared with the same period last year. That may weigh heavily on the minds of bankers deciding whether to pull the plug on Johnston.

Circulation is also grim. As circulation drops, it requires the cover price to go up, and so the circulation drops some more.

With UK daily newspaper sales down 4% in a year, The Herald was down nearly 10% and is just above 60,000.

The Scotsman was down 8% and below 50,000. Scotland on Sunday was down 10% and below 62,000, with the Sunday Herald beaten only by the Independent titles in the pace of its decline - down 14% and just above 42,000 (the figures only cover 'national' titles. The Courier and Press & Journal have to wait for six-monthly publication).

All that provides the context for The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday going down the same road as the Daily Record/Sunday Mail and The Herald/Sunday Herald, with editorial staff being merged and staffing cut - in the most recent, Edinburgh case, by around 25 posts.

And while the news about newsprint is particularly bad for Scotland, of course it takes place in the wider context of newspaper decline internationally.

Great American titles are closing or moving out of print. In Colorado, the Rocky Mountain News has gone, after 150 years.

The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times have sought protection from creditors by filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Boston Globe came close to closure, until its labour unions agreed to big compromises. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is now only available online.

With some arguing newspapers have special status as watchdogs of democracy (and that's before the Daily Telegraph's expenses revelations about Westminster), one suggestion from US Senator Ben Cardin is that newspapers should be supported with special non-profit status and charity tax breaks.

Some managements seem resigned to their fate. That doesn't include Rupert Murdoch, whose British stable - including The Times, The Sun, The Sunday Times, the News of the World - is part of an empire that extends to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and The Australian, quite apart from his extensive Sky and Star broadcasting interests.

He has just announced his plan to start making money out of the journalism on his websites, and doing so within a year, reckoning advertising revenue is insufficient to sustain his newspapers' business model.

Aged 78, Mr Murdoch hasn't lost his appetite for innovation, and whatever you think of his papers' journalism, his nous for the future of media is always worth taking seriously.

He's not alone, either. The Guardian and The Independent groups are thinking of taking the same direction. The Financial Times already does. The Scotsman and The Telegraph charge for some content.

But will it work in turning around newspapers' dizzying decline? It requires persuading people that content they've had for free in recent years will now meet a paywall. And in order to make that a sufficiently low hurdle, the prices will have to start low.

One key is getting the right software for micro-payments, charging tiny amounts per article or low rates per day, either counted down from an online credit account or simply added, at a click, to a payment card.

It is surprising, given the rate of innovation in online commerce, how slowly such micro-payment technology has developed.

The other factor may be that print remains attractive for some, such as commuters.

Not everyone will be attracted by reading articles on screen, whether mobile-phone sized or products, now coming on the market, that are the size of a rigid tabloid newspaper.

So why is it that printers are so stuck at A4 or its American equivalent? Given their cheapness, couldn't it become the norm to have a tabloid-sized printer at home?

Bundle up a compendium of articles from your favourite newspapers and websites, according to a pre-chosen news/features/sports formula of your choice.

These could slot into a shared template. You print it out and stuff it in your pocket on the way to catch the bus.

Maybe you have better ideas.

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• - What's this?

After a weekend visit to the Black Isle, I can report the number of visitors at Rothiemurchus near Aviemore, and the length of the hold-ups at A9 roadworks, hint at something going not too badly for Highland tourism.

At the cheaper/value end of the industry, anecdotal evidence suggests order books are looking quite peachy, from bed and breakfast and youth hostels to the Cream o'Galloway visitor centre in the far south-west.

The weakening of sterling since last tourist season has made the 'product' more attractive to those earning foreign currencies, while those of us who earn in sterling find eurozone prices are a strong incentive to stay close to home.

But look at the latest Purchasing Managers Index for Scotland, which is published by its Royal Bank of Scotland sponsors, and you find it is 'travel, tourism and leisure' (let's call it TTL) that is getting hardest hit of any within the service sector.

It found last month that TTL recorded the steepest decline in activity within the service sector, and by a wide margin: the steepest contraction in new business: the volume of outstanding business contracted at the strongest pace there: for the sixth consecutive month, the steepest rate of staff shedding was recorded in TTL: and input costs rose "at a considerable rate", while the fall in demand drove down the prices being charged.

So is my anecdotal evidence plain wrong?

It's more likely it's because this is a big sector, Scotland's biggest export-earner and biggest employer, covering much more than lifestyle businesses around the Highland honeypots.

It may be because leisure is seen as a discretionary spend. There is plenty of evidence that people are eating out less.

The VisitScotland reckoning on numbers visiting major attractions, as published last Friday, are depressed in most categories, other than green tourism and places of worship (draw your own conclusions from the latter).

The parts of the industry dependent on people flying out of Scotland - such as travel agents, airports and airlines - are clearly having a tough time.

We've got new figures due out this morning on passenger numbers using BAA's Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen airports in April, after significant falls in the previous months.

It's also because much of the industry has been feeding off business travel, and of course, that's one place that recession-hunkering finance directors are cutting a swathe.

Those five-star team-building exercises for bank staff don't seem to be quite so common. The conference business has taken a tumble. Hospitality budgets ain't what they were.

Just ask those whose Six Nations rugby-watching was at the RBS's considerable expense ... until this year.

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• - What's this?

At the risk of sounding like I'm Twittering, I'm currently on the phone, listening to the Royal Bank of Scotland's chief executive Stephen Hester on an international press conference call.

He's answering a question from a reporter from the Wall Street Journal about the .

This is part of the openness and accountability that was not a feature of the previous regime at Gogarburn headquarters, which the new bank boss describes as the strategy for "a return to grace".

The results include startlingly good news about part of the same investment banking division that did such damage to the balance sheet last year.

It's perhaps surprising that customers have been so loyal, and new ones have been attracted, with a healthy increase in the number of insurance policies issued and in savings and current accounts opened.

But set against that is another huge write-down on those toxic assets, with reference to "an element of shutting the stable door while the horse has gone", and an even bigger write-down of loans that are turning sour in the broader economy - what he calls "the headwinds of severe recession".

Stephen Hester's very clear and sombre message is to warn the stock market against over-enthusiasm, saying the good starting quarter in the investment bank is unlikely to be sustained.

"Both 09 and 10 will be difficult years for us," he emphasises.

And sure enough, the RBS's share price has ignored him with a shot of enthusiasm, up by more than 10% so far.

It's such a huge bank that there are any number of angles to the RBS's troubles, but one particularly interesting one from the statement is in staffing and cost cutting.

Hester warned that the Bank has faced a substantial loss of talented people over recent months, particularly concerned that the UK Government has closed down the bonus prospects they used to enjoy and hope to enjoy elsewhere.

"We've lost hundreds of people in the last few months with some of these concerns foremost in their minds. That is something we combat every day. We're taking some hits on the staffing front, but they're not de-stabilising, and I hope they don't become so".

The cost-cutting target remains a whopping £2.5 billion within the three-to-five year time horizon of Hester's recovery plan.

So far, £312 million of that target has been "actioned", and it's clear from Stephen Hester's comments that the job cuts will continue.

Another interesting point: Hester strongly argues there is nothing to be learned about the future structure of banking from those that got into trouble.

Those in investment banking, retail banking and both have got into trouble, just as all three sectors have banks that have avoided trouble.

As he pointed out, the Dunfermline Building Society wasn't trying to be an investment bank - so far as we know.

And on that subject, there are to be hearings before the Scottish Affairs Select Committee, including some accountability from the Dunfermline team - so far, we don't know which members of it - for the first time since it was forced into a sale to Nationwide.

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• - What's this?

On Sunday, The Trustee Savings Bank has its 199th birthday in Scotland. But it will be lucky to reach its 200th birthday before being despatched from the high street by its new owners, Lloyds Banking Group.

That much has been confirmed this morning by Archie Kane, the bank's board member responsible for Scotland and insurance.

We knew the Halifax was to be dropped from the BOS of Bank of Scotland, leaving a much clearer branding for the 314-year-old lady of the Mound. But it's been a bit less clear what was to happen to the 'Lloyds TSB Scotland' branding.

Lloyds stays, of course, as name of the London-based group. But what of TSB or Trustee Savings Bank, founded in Ruthwell near Dumfries by the Rev Henry Duncan in 1810, to help poor parishioners exercise the virtue of thrift? I'm told there's a search on for a way to keep it going.

Twenty-four years ago, when the TSB in Scotland was forced to give up its mutual status, a campaign against that was led by civil servant Jim Ross.

I seem to remember that won him the Scot of the Year award from listeners to Good Morning Scotland. Perhaps blog readers have ideas how best to preserve the name now.

The much bigger picture on Lloyds Banking Group is updated this morning, with news that its corporate impairments are set to rise by 50% this year.

This is partly down to the huge, inherited problems Lloyds TSB took on with HBOS. It's partly down to the state of the economy dragging more companies into trouble.

Here's the news in their own words: "We continue to expect retail impairment levels to rise significantly during 2009, in both the secured and unsecured lending portfolios.

"We expect continuing declines in commercial property prices and reducing levels of corporate cash flows as we anticipate a continuing difficult economic outlook.

"These factors are now leading us to anticipate further corporate defaults during the rest of the year, notably in the commercial real estate portfolios in the UK and Ireland.

"In particular, the real estate exposures in the legacy HBOS portfolios are more sensitive to a downturn in the economic environment. As a result, corporate impairments in 2009 are expected to be more than 50 per cent higher than in 2008".

Life assurance and pensions sales are 22% down, while 500,000 new current accounts have been opened, and the drive to strip at least £1.5 bn out of the cost base over the next three years is, reportedly, on track, with a tenth of that already identified.

Tomorrow, we get a trading update from the Royal Bank of Scotland, expected to include its first quarter figures. But the overall picture in the banking sector is of a whole lot more confidence.

The RBS share-price has risen sharply in recent weeks - so much so that the Government's huge investment in shareholding is on the cusp of showing a paper profit.

And this morning, the Treasury has published its review of Britain's position in the global financial sector, emphasising that it's about a whole lot more going on than the City of London's Square Mile.

Less than a third of the sector's million-plus employees work in London, with clusters around the country, notably in Scottish asset management, but also in Leeds and south west England.

And it seeks to challenge what it calls a myth: that the British economy is unbalanced towards finance.

The report, by a committee chaired by Sir Win Bischoff, argues it has fluctuated in a band between 5 and 8% of output, much less than the 14% or so in manufacturing, similar to the US and the Netherlands and significantly lower than Singapore and Hong Kong.

More on that soon-ish. Sir Win and the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, are heading for Edinburgh soon to discuss their findings with the finance sector in Scotland.

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• - What's this?

The strongest indication of the "" of economic recovery so far is the number of media mentions of the phrase soaring in the past month, as measured for the Economist magazine.

But there are more indications, hints and straws in the wind than headline writers.

On Tuesday, the Purchasing Managers' Index showed things for the construction sector are looking up - or at least they're not looking nearly so far down as they have for seven months.

Now the same PMI surveying is reporting on the service sector, and it's a similar story - not actually growing, but shrinking at its slowest pace since last August. The new business index has seen its strongest figures for 10 years, though from a dismal base.

Nationwide Building Society put out its index of consumer confidence.

Its monthly measure of people's perception of the current economic situation has been falling since last June, but the balance between good (5%) and bad (80%) has narrowed by one point.

Asked about the jobs market, 68% of people reckon there are not many jobs available, with 20% being positive.

Much more buoyant are the expectations of what to expect next. The percentage of people believing the UK economic situation will get worse over the next six months has fallen from a peak of 60% last July, down to 53% in January and the most recent figures are at 32%.

Meanwhile, those thinking the British economy will be in better shape six months from now have risen from a low point of 11% last summer to 26%.

With confidence a vital and precious commodity to any upturn, Nationwide found those thinking this is a good time to buy a house or car have risen from 14% last August to 42% now, and the 'bad time to buy' figures have fallen from a summer figure of 68% to 38%.

And further evidence of a return to the shops, from Synovate retail consultants, shows footfall in April showing its strongest growth for more than five years, perhaps because people are replacing foreign holidays with retail therapy, perhaps because of the dates Easter fell this year and last.

But of course, there are downsides. Halifax Bank of Scotland reports that UK-wide house price figures are falling at a slightly faster rate last month, with the past year's annual fall now looking like 17.7%.

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research has just announced that it reckons on a 4.3% decline in the British economy this year, much worse than the Treasury forecast of 3.5%, and worse also than other economic modellers.

That is largely fuelled by the expectation that unemployment figures have only started to rise, and that will surely impact on consumer confidence and the property market.

None of these organisations is encouraging talk of green shoots. Everyone knows there remains a bumpy ride ahead, and that much of this statistical approach to confidence is only registering a declining pace of fall.

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• - What's this?

A bad end to last year in Scotland's residential property market has been followed by a much worse start to this year.

We've got figures out today from Registers of Scotland, the government agency required by law to include every property transaction that takes place, usually within a couple of weeks. These show the first quarter of 2009 saw a drop of 8.7% in the price of those properties changing hands, when compared with the final quarter of 2008.

Look at the year-on-year drop, and it's not quite so bad. Prices were still rising in the first half of last year, if you take this measure, so there's a 6.6% drop in average prices.

Drill down into the figures and you find the value of detached properties have fallen faster than typically cheaper properties. In leafy, well schooled East Renfrewshire, which saw the bubble expand more than elsewhere in the boom times, detached villas have dropped 28% in value during the year. In Edinburgh, detached houses rose in value.

Average transacted prices, meanwhile, went up over the past year in Angus, East Dunbartonshire, Falkirk, Moray and Orkney, though sometimes on the basis of quite small figures.

Terraced homes held their prices better than flats, which saw annual decline of 8.2%. This might be explained by the glut of new-build flats, most obviously in Edinburgh and Glasgow, with some evidence that developers have been dropping prices because they need the cash flow as a matter of survival. In Glasgow, more than 800 flats changed hands from January to March, with prices down 12% on the quarter and 13% on the year.

For those thinking of getting into the market as seller or buyer, the key figure is the 57% drop in the number of transactions over the past year. That demonstrates the lack of confidence in the market, as buyers stay out the market in the classic problem of deflation - the expectation that prices have further to fall, so it makes sense to hold off on a purchase.

The short-term fear of policy-makers is what could happen to the economy if that takes hold across the board. It's a very hard cycle to break, as the Japanese found in the 1990s.

And a further calculation from Registers of Scotland is the total value of transactions, down by 60% in a year. That directly impacts on those in the property industry. They depend on the amount of money flowing through the system, and it's impossible to sustain their employment levels on such a sharp drop.

But this is only one take on the state of the Scottish property market. There are other ways of taking the temperature.

Halifax and Nationwide have their own surveys, which tend to track each other quite closely as they have similar methodologies - taking a typical home in each bracket of the market, and seeing how it is performing in the market.

They agree that Scotland has had a much tougher start to the year than it saw last year, but the overall fall in the average Scottish price looks much steeper than the Registers of Scotland. The most recent Halifax figures, from March, show UK prices down 2% in a month and 17% in a year, while Scottish figures were 14% down in a year, but with a much steeper fall of 7% in the first quarter of the year.

Nationwide registered a 15% annual drop in Scottish prices, slightly less dramatic than the UK figure of 16%, but the drop in Q1 of this year was 5%.

Despite that, from the perspective of those wanting prices to hold up (and remember those wanting into the market take a different view), Nationwide rates Scotland as having been the best performer in holding up prices over five consecutive quarters.

Bear in mind that the average Scottish house is worth more than twice what it was 10 years ago, and 45% more than what it would have fetched five years ago. What matters to most people is how well their house would hold up if they had to move - that is, what could they buy for the money raised by selling? And for Scots, there's good news there.

With prices falling at different rates across the UK - up last month in north east England, while falling fastest in the West Midlands, according to England's Land Registry - the London benchmark has become more affordable.

Five years ago, the average London property would have cost 2.8 times more than the average in Scotland. That has fallen to 1.9 times as much.

And finally, on affordability, there are some significant figures from Halifax Bank of Scotland. Helped by falling prices and even more helped by falling interest rates, the cost of servicing a mortgage has come within reach of many more people starting out on the property ladder.

At the peak of the market in the third quarter of 2007, a typical mortgage payment for a new borrower in Scotland took 37% of disposable earnings.

The average over the past 25 years is 31%. But by the start of this year, that had fallen to 26%.

For those in search of green shoots, that affordability for first-time buyers looks like a good place to focus attention.

If only they had more confidence that prices will hold up.

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• - What's this?

It was a brave Celtic tiger cub that tried to take on the big cats of football broadcasting, and for several years, Setanta did so quite successfully.

But a combination of recession and the loss of key games in the English premiership to its main rival, Sky, have left the Irish company on the edge of a .

The most acute problem it faces is in a £35m fee due for English football within two weeks.

But it is in discussion with commercial partners across its pay-TV broadcasting portfolio about re-negotiation, from the golfing PGA Tour to cricket's Indian Premier League, with a total annual rights bill from next year of £120m.

That includes the Scottish Premier League.

Setanta broke through to the international big-time through Scottish football, having previously made a modest living from 1990 by beaming Irish sport to Irish ex-pats in Britain.

The SPL's club members have a special general meeting this Thursday morning at Hampden, with the Setanta contract understood to be top of the agenda.

The clubs face the prospect of a nasty knock-on financial crunch if its Setanta contract from next year has to be pared down.

The contract is important to balancing some precariously balanced club books over the next few years.

It was for £125m over the four years starting from next year - more than doubling the amount they paid for the current four year period.

It's reported Setanta, under a new management team led by Sir Robin Miller, previously of EMAP, wants to cut the length of that agreement, and also reported that it would settle for a 20% cut across the four years.

It's also reported the original deal was not supported by Celtic, Rangers and Aberdeen, who would have preferred the SPL to go with Sky, but they were out-voted by smaller clubs.

Because it affects the season starting next year, it should not be money that's already committed by the football clubs.

But a cutback would certainly constrain their plans, when recession was already putting a chill through the boardrooms.

And while the bigger clubs may not face the worst pain of a cut in TV income, it would have the biggest impact on clubs such as Motherwell, where Mark McGhee has warned Setanta's financial problems could have "catastrophic" effects on Scottish football, making it hard for him to hold on to key players.

There are knock-on implications also for the Scotland team's away matches in World Cup qualifiers, which were separately negotiated with foreign football associations.

First Minister Alex Salmond has criticised the lack of free TV access to Scotland's qualifiers.

Would Rupert Murdoch's Sky like Setanta to fail? Possibly not, as there is a much bigger player which could be interested in picking it up cheaply and making inroads into the British pay-TV sports market.

And ESPN is a much more serious rival to the Murdoch's sports broadcasting empire than the Irish company has been.

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• - What's this?

We're occasionally accused of being unduly negative in our economic coverage these days.

So at ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Scotland, we deliberately went on the lookout for good news stories in the midst of recession.

We left aside the fact that there has been balance to the coverage.

And what we found was not just about the boom times for insolvency lawyers, car repair shops and cobblers.

Nor is it just those for those who are awaiting the upturn, when they can take advantage of their rivals' weakness.

There are plenty of companies holding steady or even planning for growth in the midst of recession.

And on The Business on Radio Scotland this weekend, presenter Graham Stewart and producer Magnus Bennett have picked a wide range of stories about those doing just fine, from childcare to oil services to sushi to fake tan, and from Aberdeen to Galashiels.

ProStrakan, for instance, is a Borders-based company with a good story to tell about its drug delivery system.

Instead of chemotherapy being injected, cancer drugs can now be taken by 'transdermal' patch, similar to a nicotine patch.

Its prospects are strong in the US, as it staffs up for a big sales push.

There's an unusual story from a trio of Japanese nationals made redundant by JVC in East Kilbride last year, who decided they wanted to stay in Scotland, and have had a strong start to a sushi company called Bento Box, which has just taken a supply order for Peckhams delicatessen chain.

Hear more about these and more at 10am on Sunday 3 May on Radio Scotland, or you can listen again on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iplayer or on The Business podcast.

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• - What's this?

Old King Coal is making a comeback, and the merry old soul is trying to clean up his act.

Last week, we had UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband announcing a new generation of coal-burning power plants, with the replacement of Kingsnorth in Kent already established as an environmental battleground.

Why coal? Because it's plentiful, easy and relatively cheap.

Compared with nuclear, oil, gas and renewables, it has the benefit of being cheap, easy, secure, with stable supply, a less volatile price, fewer political downsides, and there's lots of it still under Britain.

But it's dirty. Very dirty.

The key to having coal as part of our electricity generating future is to capture the emissions and get them out of harm's way.

That's why CCS, or carbon capture and storage, is very popular with politicians.

The science makes a lot of sense, but it hasn't yet been proven commercially, and there's a lot riding on making sure that it does.

Ed Miliband said Kingsnorth and others getting planning permission will have to ensure at least 25% of its emissions are captured and stored, which has met criticism for lack of ambition.

The latest development is in Edinburgh this morning, with publication of research by academics and industry experts showing the North Sea may have the capacity to store all of Scotland's industrial carbon dioxide output for the next 200 years, then keeping them under (what we are told is) a safe cap of rock for the foreseeable future.

As First Minister Alex Salmond has been keen to stress at the publication, the capacity under Scottish waters is reckoned to be greater than the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark combined.

The research has been backed by the Scottish Government and Scottish Power, which is keen to see its Longannet coal-burning power plant in Fife as one of the pilot projects being funded by the UK Government.

In last week's Budget, Chancellor Alistair Darling announced there would be up to four such projects, and the one by the north bank of the Forth has the attraction of lots of emissions already ready to treat.

It also has easy access to the pipeline network that has brought oil onshore for the past few decades, and is now facing redundancy as the mature oil fields deplete.

The same network could take liquefied emissions out to the oil fields, to be pumped into deeply-buried porous sandstone filled with salt water, known as saline aquifers.

It's a mixed picture, though.

Only an eighth of the 80 saline aquifers studied have shown the rock is suitable for storage, and of those ten, there's a very wide range when calculating the potential - of between 4600 tonnes and 46,000 tonnes.

Of the 200 oil wells surveyed, only 29 were found to be suitable for storage.

Some have had sea water pumped in at high pressure to remove oil, and there are problems with using those.

The clever bit is if they can use the technology to boost oil production.

By pumping the liquid down, it should help displace the remaining oil from porous rock, improving the return on the North Sea's older fields and making CCS more financially attractive.

If all that works, Longannet would take six years before the pilot project could be pumping liquefied carbon dioxide.

And if that works, three or four storage and pumping hubs would have to be built along Britain's east coast, at a cost for each one with its pipeline network estimated between £700 million and £1.7 billion.

A whole lot more pipelines could bring liquefied carbon from continental Europe.

Norway is also interested in developing this technology, and is hosting an international conference on it later this month. Indeed, this is highly competitive stuff.

There are rich rewards for the companies and countries that get ahead in the race to make the science into engineering and technology and then show it can be commercial.

The recent Scottish Council for Development and Industry, (SCDI)/ Wood Mackenzie research report into Scotland's energy future estimated the replacement of Longannet could be £2.2 billion, with the cost of fitting on a CCS plant at £2 billion.

SCDI reckons there are around 50,000 coal-burning plants around the world, with China in recent years opening them at a rate of roughly one every week, so fitting scrubbers to all or even most of them is going to mean a lot of manufacturing.

Fast-developing economies including China, India, South Africa and in South America are relying on coal to plug the large shortfalls in power supply.

And in the United States, coal remains very important to keeping the lights on.

The recent stimulus package from the administration in Washington DC includes a whopping $777 million (£522m) for low carbon energy research.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy is being set up on the model used for the USA's efforts in the 1950's space race.

The European Union's stimulus package has also earmarked £340 million for clean energy, with an emphasis on avoiding over-reliance on Russian fossil fuels.

Polish coal-burners are keen to get their hands on that money from Brussels, with the biggest polluting plants on the continent and today seeing an important new step in Europe's polluters being brought into the carbon trading system, meaning the economic incentives to avoid emissions are getting ramped up.

The race to capture carbon is on.

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