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It seems that if you suggest all is not well with the Edinburgh trams project, that can be "deeply damaging to the progress of the project".

That's according to the spokeswoman for Tie, the company in charge.

She was responding to the claim by SNP MSP Shirley-Anne Somerville that the £545 million budget could be forced up to something between £650m and £750m, and the trams will arrive years late.

Jenny Dawe, leader of Edinburgh City Council leader, responded: "The funding situation and projected delivery date for trams running on the street has not changed since being reported to the council last month".

That's reassuring. So all we need to do is find out what was reported to the council last month.

And here it is. It shows costs going up because of the well-known dispute between Tie and its main contractors: "Known areas of increased costs" included "the need for additional commercial and legal support, increases in re-charges from partners, extra traffic management cost and other related costs such as those associated with unexpected ground conditions".

Already, £7 million has been added to the utility diversion works, or 12% of works value.

With the dispute to be resolved through mediation, "it is unreasonable to expect that all adjudication outcomes will be awarded in favour of Tie Ltd".

In conclusion: "Given the above issues, it is now considered that it will be very difficult to deliver the full scope of Phase 1a within the available project envelope of £545m. Until the key issues are resolved through the contractual and legal process, it will not be possible to forecast accurately a revised budget outturn".

That's right. When the council leader said the funding situation has not changed since being reported to the council last month, what she didn't mention is that there is now no price tag at all. It's just as open-ended as when the council nodded this Status Report through on August 20.

The explanation is that this approach is smart negotiating: don't tell the other side how much you can afford.

However, recollection of the notorious Holyrood parliament building project is that, despite lengthy legal wrangling over cost, there was always a total amount placed on contracts already let, mid-range for contract prices expected, plus a calculation of risk assessment.

You may recall from nine years ago that a failure to admit the scale of that project risk assessment had Donald Dewar close to resignation, because he felt he had misled the Scottish Parliament. But Tie and Edinburgh get round the problem by offering no figure at all.

Even when I asked if the £147,030,154 being spent by Tie in the current year is on budget or not, and how that fits with the £361,765,661 spent in total by the end of this financial year, I couldn't be told a figure for what the budget had been and how these figures compare to it. I was told, however, that six months in, this year looks like it is "working well to the budget".

If the tactic is not to tell the contractor how much Tie is willing to pay on behalf of the city, perhaps it would be smarter to tell the consortium that the city can't actually afford the money to which it is already committed.

In addition to £500m - grudgingly given by the Scottish Government because it lost an early vote to its combined opposition soon after the 2007 election - the £45m promised by the council was based on assumed contributions from developers and land sales.

But now, of course, the developers have hunkered down for the recession, and land prices have plummeted.

So after a property consultant looked anew at the books, the plan now is for the council "to meet its obligations to the tram project by funding loan costs and interest payments during the economic downturn and repaying the capital once the level of developer contributions and capital receipts recovers".

According to DTZ consultants, that doesn't look likely until 2014.

If the budget goes over the £545m, and the SNP Government is unwilling to pitch in more - which it will be - the city will have to borrow more. If Shirley-Anne Somerville is even half-way right, it will have to be a lot more.

Where does this go next? We may not get an outcome to this legal mediation until the end of January.

And meanwhile, it goes on the buses, with the drive to put the tram company under the same corporate heading as Lothian Buses, to be known as TEL.

To those who don't know Edinburgh, its municipally-owned bus company, with its quality fleet, is a source of quiet civic pride. Its most recent figures were in the red, partly through fuel costs, but also because tramworks have made travel across the city so unattractive.

If the buses have to take on the debt that comes from a possible tram overspend, then don't be surprised to see FirstGroup or Stagecoach circling, vulture-style, over the city.

To suggest as much, however, may be "deeply damaging to the progress of the project".

So it's probably best to hope for the best, eh?

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• - What's this?

Banking in crisis? Too many local Post Offices closing?

Gordon Brown offered a similar and highly attractive response in his : get the Post Office network to provide bank services.

It's such a smart idea that the Post Office has already thought of it, and offers a range of savings and mortgage products. Bosses have announced it's looking at offering a current account as well.

The catch is that it's being offered through the Bank of Ireland, in a deal hatched in the pre-crisis days when Irish banking was riding high.

So would this be building up an Irish bank to bolster a Great British postal institution?

And at the expense of the British banks still struggling to get back onto their feet, only propped up for now by the UK Government?

That would be a strange outcome from the current contradictions in banking policy, to add to the "be more prudent, but lend more freely" mantra.

The Chancellor, Alistair Darling, has talked about proactively encouraging more competition into British banking, and the Bank of Ireland could be his way of achieving that.

Yet on the contrary, Stephen Hester, chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, was telling a banking seminar in London on Tuesday that he foresees consolidation in the sector and fewer competitors.

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It's quite a good time to be picking up some good deals in corporate fire sales.

And pretty much everyone is agreed that more should be done to encourage competition in the banking sector. So why not buy a bank?

It seems there's one for sale - Standard Life Bank - even though it doesn't have the look of a fire sale and it won't expand competition much if it merely means more consolidation.

It also seems that Standard Life is not far off closing the deal on separating its bank subsidiary out of the Edinburgh insurance giant.

Eleven years since being set up by former chief executive Scott Bell, and employing more than 250 people in the Scottish capital, it's been running down what was a modestly-sized mortgage book over recent months and concentrating more on savings.

The key is that the bank is not seen as core to what Standard Life does, and is a throw-back to the days when it didn't have shareholders asking awkward questions about core strategy.

Barclays is reported as the front-runner, with the price put somewhere between £200m and £300m.

This strategy is being linked with David Nish, the group finance director.

And that may be significant, as he's also one of the two internal front-runners to become next chief executive.

On the other hand, this strategy could be seen as having odd timing about it, when a successor to Sir Sandy Crombie is yet to be named.

But yet more market rumour has it chairman Gerry Grimstone is very close to making the announcement on the new boss on Lothian Road.

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It's not immediately obvious what KitKats have to do with selling Scotland, but when the Marketing Society gets together, they can turn their firepower on any product.

The link with the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖcoming programme was one reason why senior ex-pats from the marketing of Disney merchandising, Amazon and Nestle confectionery were there to impart some wisdom in Edinburgh at the back end of the week.

I interviewed David Rennie, managing director of Nestle confectionery, based in York - spiritual home of Rowntree chocolate, where there are three factories producing awesome quantities of KitKats.

Since Nestle took over the company in 1988, it has built KitKat into a £1 billion product, with production in every continent; its secret in its ambiguity - neither biscuit nor chocolate bar, quite British but locally appealling in every market.

The "Have a Break - Have a KitKat" slogan goes back nearly all of the 75 years since Rowntree's marketing manager took the radical step of commissioning customer research into the appeal of rival market leader, Cadbury's Dairy Milk.

George Harris found the chocolate bar could be a bit too sweet and a bit too filling, and instead of Rowntree's repeated attempts to find something that matched its rival's lead product, it found an alternative niche with something less sweet and less filling. The rest is marketing history and has featured in countless tea breaks and lunch boxes.

In Japanese, KitKat comes very close to the words for 'good luck' - so it's become the gift of choice for someone about to take an exam. A lot of Japanese kids take a lot of exams. That's smart marketing for you.

So what did David Rennie have to say about the marketing of Scotland?

"Any iconic brand - and that could be a product, a service or potentially a country - has to have some certain things working for it, and it starts with the fantastic product. In the case of KitKat, it was developed specifically to appeal to people with its product form and product shape.

"Without stretching that parallel too far, if you don't have a decent offering, if you don't have something that people really want and value, anything else you do in terms of marketing is really academic and fluff.

"There are lessons for some services and potentially for some countries: what it is we offer, is it something people value? If they do, people will stick it, and you have a chance of developing it. If you're trying to sell something people don't want and don't value, it will never work."

And from York, how does his home country score?

"Scotland from the outside is well managed, but still has some room to grow. Scotland has some amazingly strong characteristics and stregnths. In the past ten years, it has found its voice and is beginning to speak out. What Scotland has to do is ensure as a nation we have to be outward looking and not inward looking and fractious."

You can hear more of the interview if you listen again to The Business, broadcast this morning on Radio Scotland.

Stick around, and next week on The Business, you can find out the secret of marketing branded Winnie the Pooh honey, among Disney's other food offerings, without getting stuck in the healthy eating trap.

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• - What's this?

Mumpreneur: noun, a mother who starts a business from home.

It's a new word for me at least, and a quick internet search shows it's much better known in the US, as Mompreneur.

But it's a stereotype that's got home-working wrong.

That's according to research from the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship at Strathclyde University.

It's Global Entrepreneurship Monitor has done in-depth analysis of home-based business start-ups, and found they represent 58% of the start-up total.

So the office in the back room, or on the kitchen table, really matters as the seedbed for the future of the economy.

What does this teach us? That 69% of home-based start-ups are male, compared with 66% across the UK.

And contrary to another stereotype, nor do they tend to be older.

They are distributed evenly across the age groups, with the exception of those under 24.

Younger enterpreneurs seem to prefer somewhere away from home to get their businesses under way - perhaps because their homes are smaller.

Do they work shorter hours?

No sign of that, when compared with those operating out of separate premises.

They do tend to be less productive in sales per employee, less innovative than office-based businesses, but they do well at exports.

Just over 40% are educated at least to degree level.

Is this phenomenon due to the lifestyle advantages - such as migrants and refugees from the city wanting the good life and a nice view from their Highland croft?

Wrong again. Most home entrepreneurs have lived in that home region all their lives - it's a much stronger link than you find with people doing the same in other parts of the UK.

Jonathan Levie, the academic who co-ordinates the research from Strathclyde's Hunter Centre, points out that there's a problem here for those who rent their homes.

The model secure tenancy lease says that tenants are not allowed to operate a business from their homes.

It says they can ask permission, and that may be granted, but it could raise the rent.

So council tenants, who are probably more likely to face redundancy, are typically being told by their landlords that they can't set up a home-based business.

Nearly 60% of start-up businesses are home-based. And yet the council is now responsible for local economic development. Go figure.

That rural factor in business start-ups is also highlighted in the latest GEM report.

It's looked into the best (or least bad) areas of Scotland for business start-ups.

It looks worst (or least good) in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire.

The better figures are to be found in rural Scotland and Edinburgh.

Dr Levie is clear why that is, even though this can be a contentious subject: it's migrants into these areas that bring entrepreneurial skills and drive with them, and they're the ones making the difference.

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The Royal Bank of Scotland is not alone in trying to avoid a further dilution of its non-government shareholding.

It's already well past the 50% ownership point that Eric Daniels at Lloyds Banking Group is trying to avoid.

The state currently owns 70% of RBS, so an increase to 84% to fund the Asset Protection Scheme (if you include non-voting B shares) is hardly a huge change in the nature of RBS's relationship with Alistair Darling and the Treasury.

But the option of a rights issue, being sounded out with investors recently, and floated in the media at the weekend, also fits with the strategy of getting more private capital into the bank to impress the European Commission.

That private injection is one of the competition commissioner' priorities, and the Royal Bank and Treasury are keen to show willing to Neelie Kroes while she spends the next few weeks considering the recently-delivered UK proposal for more state aid in the form of the Asset Protection Scheme.

But look what's happening elsewhere, and you can see bankers running from the clutches of government. Goldman Sachs is reported to be considering abandonment of its commercial banking licence in order to avoid the intrusion of the US government into its bonus-setting policies.

In Spain, Santander is considering a rights issue. Swedbank has already gone for one. And in Italy and Austria, the prospect of government strings being attached to a capital injection for UniCredit, Italy's biggest bank with a major presence on the Austrian side of the Alps, has it also looking to a rights issue.

That suggests two things. One, that the tension of being in part-government ownership is proving increasingly irksome to bankers - not least when their bonuses are in the political cross-hairs.

And they seem to think there are billions of pounds and euros available for rights issues. At Lloyds, there is also thinking about testing the market waters with securitised loans - yes, that's the same type of products that got banks into so much trouble.

No wonder RBS shareholders feel queasy at the reminder of Sir Fred with last year's £12bn record rights issue that disappeared down a black hole only four months later.

But as the crisis anniversaries are marked this autumn, it's interesting to notice these strong hints of investor confidence slowly seeping back into the bank sector.

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• - What's this?

Katherine Garrett-Cox arrived in Dundee last year with a formidable reputation for asset management.

As the new chief executive of Alliance Trust, she gained more respect for moving into cash while others were left exposed to the worst of the downturn.

But the 120-year old Tayside finance house has just produced below par results, trailing the industry average.

Total shareholder return to end-July was at 8.8%, while the global average was 14.2%.

The telling bit is what Garrett-Cox is saying about the state of the stock market.

Her company - with £2.6 billion under management at the end of July - has moved back into equities in a big way, but it's not bullish about prospects.

With the half-year results comes a warning about over-confidence from stock market investors boosting valuations above the market fundamentals.

That's the defensive explanation for a big fall down industry rankings.

"This reflects our reluctance to commit aggressively shareholders' capital in a period of rapid, but in many cases narrowly-based recovery in equity markets," the Trust explained.

It says the stock market rally has been mainly in the shares that fell most over last winter:

"In some cases there has been no fundamental change to these companies and the increase in their share price is not necessarily reflective of any improvement in their underlying value".

As Garrett-Cox emphasises: "Our policy is to invest in companies and not share prices". And that seems to be the cause of her continuing caution.

Alliance Trust's analysis has been to boost its portfolio most in Asian stocks, which have duly performed best of any category.

And where it has backed stock in the UK markets, it is most impressed by those earning from Asian markets, such as HSBC and mining companies.

That's where it sees the best prospects for future growth, which tells its own story about the prospects for recovery.

This is a canny company, its results paying the price of being canny.

Placing big question marks over the sustainability of economic recovery, it's choosing to stay cautious.

The new player worth watching in Scottish finance is busy recruiting, and not just the 800 new posts Tesco Personal Finance is creating in Glasgow.

Chief executive Benny Higgins is advertising for five senior positions.

No surprises in the Payment Cards Director, Head of Personal Loans, Head of Motor Insurance Products and Head of ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Insurance Products.

But what about his International Director?

"In this role, you'll operate on the global stage, exploring opportunities for further expansion and developing relationships with our banking partners".

This is not a bid for world domination from a company that's only been standalone for 10 months, I'm told.

TPF is already operating where Tesco does, and as the world's third (or arguably second) biggest retailer, it's got quite a footprint: Ireland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Malaysia, Thailand and South Korea.

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• - What's this?

The big six energy utilities, including Scottish Power and Scottish and Southern, are today brazenly facing down criticism that they seem to be failing to pass on lower energy prices to their customers.

There's no anti-competitive collusion, concludes the regulator, so customers are left to pressurise the companies as they choose.

The main explanation is that the forward prices of gas, to which they have committed, are higher than the wholesale market if they buy now.

But that's merely a row about the short term. And the price of raw materials for gas and electricity only account for between 50% and 60% of bills.

What about the medium-to-long-term?

It doesn't look good.

The message I'm getting from the utilities is that several different factors are driving costs up relentlessly, and it's not just about their need to turn a profit.

The source of gas, of course, is becoming less secure, and its price more volatile.

It's not even following the price of oil these days, as it's previously done.

Oil has bounced up again from its lows in winter, and gas has plummeted in price since its peak last year.

It's been helped down by a highly carbon-intensive process of extracting gas from Texas shale, which has been sharply increased in recent years for the US market.

Britain now needs to import gas. It's at the end of the big pipelines from Russia, and, eventually, from Libya.

The insecurity is eased by the recent start of liquefied natural gas being shipped into Wales, but that doesn't stop a vulnerability to spikes in global prices.

A key factor is the need to replace generation capacity, and to make it greener.

Wind power is much more expensive than conventional big power stations, but it's essential to meet climate change targets.

Other renewable technologies haven't even been proven commercially yet, and once they are, they don't look like they're going to be cheap either.

Even without the need to boost renewables, old power stations need replaced.

Old nuclear will cost vast amounts to de-commission.

New coal is supposed to come with carbon capture technology - clever stuff, though unproven technology, a long time from becoming fully commercial, and it's reckoned to be one of the most expensive ways to save the planet.

Distribution costs are another significant pressure, already accounting for about 15% of the bill.

Energy reaches us via a national grid which is creaking, partly through age and partly through changing patterns of demand.

It was built as a solid piece of fine British engineering. But that was decades ago. Many billions of pounds are needed to replace kit.

And it was built to link big power stations with population centres. That pattern is changing.

Power sources are moving to more remote areas, where renewables can be generated most efficiently.

So new power lines, carrying more capacity, are needed.

The most recent costing for a British upgrade was heading towards £6bn, and all of that can be expected to land up on your power bills.

There's also a need to build an international grid, across the North Sea and the English Channel, as the ability to trade power will be important to keeping supply constant.

That will cost lots more. One energy expert told me this week the cost of of re-wiring the European Union over the next two decades is reckoned to start around 600 billion euros, and that could easily hit a trillion.

If we're smart, we'll also need power lines that allow homes and businesses to feed back their surplus micro-generated power. More cost.

Talking of smart, we're all due to get meters that inform us how much energy we're using, so we can monitor our use and cut down on unnecessary waste.

Between electricity and gas, up to 44 million smart meters should be distributed to 26 million homes in the next decade. The cost of that will be piled onto bills.

The list of upward pressures goes on. As prices go up, so does fuel poverty, and there's additional political pressure to combat that.

One solution is use social tariffs. But with government finances getting very tight, is that money going to come from the taxpayer? More likely it will come from levies and pressure on the utilities, which are also being expected to fund energy conservation measures, such as insulation or advice services.

Any way you plug in the figures, the power surge on your bill can be expected to keep going.

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• - What's this?

March 2014: that's the month when economic experts expect Britain can celebrate having returned to its national income peak achieved in the first quarter of last year.

Similarly, other economists tell us it will take about five years for employment to return to its boom years peak.

We know this because of a compendium of research about recession which has been published today by the Economic and Social Research Council.

This organisation spends more than £200m of public money each year on commissioning academic research. Lots of its moola goes into research that has nothing to do with the economy.

This week, for instance, ESRC-funded St Andrews University research taught us that that deep voices frighten young girls but become attractive to teenage girls as they get older, and that younger and older girls prefer boys with more feminine faces. (Perhaps that's obvious or a waste of money, but it could be useful to someone in the advertising industry.)

Anyway, back to recession. Much of the research has already been published, but in compiled format, it provides breadth to what we understand about recession now and what we can learn from recessions past. Some of the more interesting, significant and unexpected bits:

* House prices may fall for three more years. With fewer houses on the market, potential buyers reckon it will be harder to find their dream home, so they drop out of the market. Result: further declines in price.

* With reduced house-based asset wealth as collateral for loans, entrepreneurs find it harder to finance their plans.

* After studying the deep decline of the south of England's economy in the 1990s recession, followed by a steep bounce back, it is reckoned that the resilience of the south can be a feature of this cycle as well: "There is unlikely to be a fundamental long-run shift in Britain's economic geography."

* This has not been the middle-class recession that many predicted (me included, I seem to remember). Despite financial services being at the heart of the downturn, it is low-educated, low-skilled workers whose employment prospects have suffered most.

* Unemployment in a recession can have long-term implications. The experience of unemployment can damage people's chances of keeping a job once they find one.

* Young men from advantaged backgrounds, who did well at school but who were unemployed for a year or more in the 1980s recession, were much less likely to be high earners, in a professional job or own their homes in 1991.

* Those who leave school with few qualifications during a recession often shuttle between government programmes, inactivity and unemployment, while those who can are more likely to stay in school and continue in full-time education. That could help the government hit targets for staying-on.

* However those with degrees who are leaving university into the teeth of an unemployment surge could see losses to their earnings over their entire working lives.

There are social impacts beyond the economic:

* People who lose their jobs in Britain increase the chances that they will lose their spouse or partner. And a woman losing her job is increasingly likely to lead to partnership dissolution the longer the partnership has lasted.

* Unexpected falls in house prices can damage family stability. They're particularly destabilising for the relationships of young couples with low family income, high mortgage debt and dependent children.

* Unemployment increases the risk of depression, and it's worse still if there are home repossession or heavy mortgage burdens. There's also a steep decline in happiness ratings when people lose their jobs. Only a fifth of that decline is down to income loss. The rest comes from intangibles, such as loss of status, self-esteem or lost social networks.

And what about business?

* Evidence from the US recession shows employment falling much faster than output. This seems to be because information and aggressive management practices are letting firms cut staffing and introduce more efficient systems.

* In the return to growth, research shows firms should not cut their way out of the recession. Growth doesn't come by competing on cost, so it's essential to offer more valuable products and services.

* Those businesses that were good at innovation before the recession benefit from that during the recession, being more open to change and adaptation.

* In competition policy, recessions provide opportunities for anti-competitive mergers and market concentration. It is reckoned that suspension of competition policy in the USA during the 1930s extended the Great Depression for seven years. (That looks like a lesson for those considering the regulation of Lloyds Banking Group, which took advantage of recession conditions to get permission for precisely that kind of merger.)

* For every 100 jobs lost in a country with high levels of migration, there are 10 fewer immigrants - but recession also leads to higher anti-immigrant sentiment.

* While international government aid budgets tend to suffer with a downturn, individuals tend to maintain their level of charitable giving through the tough times.

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• - What's this?

This month's unemployment figures weren't quite as bad as some had feared, but they continue to head north.

There's still a gap in Scotland's favour, when compared with the rest of the United Kingdom. But the rate at which Scottish figures are growing, in comparison with the rest of Britain, is "starting to look worrying", according to Stirling economist Professor David Bell.

Scotland's got 4.7% of the labour market on Jobseekers' Allowance, while the UK figure is 5%.

On the International Labour Organisation figures, measuring the number of people seeking work over a three-month period, Scotland's up to 7% while the UK figure is 7.9%.

The only parts of the UK with lower unemployment were south-east, south-west and east England, and Northern Ireland, which shares with Scotland a high proportion of public sector employees.

There are plenty worrying aspects to the human stories behind these percentages. The most worrying is for young people, with Scotland's claimant count among those aged 18 to 24 now up to 41,800. That's a rise of 79% since August 2007.

The problem for them is being more vulnerable to the axe when jobs are being cut. And for those setting out, it's difficult to get a job without experience, when there are plenty experienced people with whom they're competing. Not having made a good start to their working lives, there's evidence that they suffer from lower earnings even after the economy as a whole has improved.

David Bell's analysis is that it is the older group of workers who are having the least bad recession. And drilling down, he finds it is Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire and Ayrshire that are the areas of Scotland facing the worst of the recession.

Watch out also for the numbers dropping out of the labour market. Across Britain, the numbers of "economically inactive" was very close to eight million in early summer, up 125,000 on the year.

The stereotype is of women opting to stay at home with children, but the stereotype is clearly not telling the whole story. Men accounted for 3.28 million of those opters-out.

It's partly explained by half a million people of working age who have retired early. More than two million are out of the jobs market because they're students. Slightly more than that are looking after their family or home. Another two million-plus have long-term illness.

Then there's 60,000 people - nearly doubled over the past two years, and still climbing steeply - who have stopped looking for work because they're "discouraged".

It's also worth bearing the international picture in mind. The Office for National Statistics offers comparisons with other European nations' figures from July. It shows, on the broader ILO count, that Britain could be doing a lot worse.

The comparable UK figure was 7.7% - the same as Germany, and slightly higher than Italy. The Europe-wide figure was at 9%, France was on 9.8%, Ireland on 12.5%, Latvia on 17.4% and Spain on 18.5%.

It's the Netherlands that stands out for keeping unemployment lowest in Europe, at 3.4%, while the USA is on 9.5%, following a particularly steep rise.

The bigger picture is more daunting still. The developed world, meaning the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development, has seen 15 million people put out of work since the recession began. According to a report out today, it expects another 10 million jobs to go by the end of next year - meaning a near 10% unemployment rate, reaching its highest level since 1945.

Added to the numbers already in the system before recession hit, that makes 57 million across 30 countries. It's a figure that represents a lot of application letters, and probably a lot of discouragement.

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• - What's this?

This morning brings an update on unemployment figures - expected to keep rising, and perhaps not to return to their pre-recession trough for around five years.

As that trough was achieved with a big boost to public sector employment, and as the political consensus is now shifting to a cut-back in the scale of state spending on services, that cycle may become further elongated.

But the prospect of a bounce back from the depths of recession is becoming clearer.

Fed chairman Ben Bernanke talked on Tuesday of the recession being "very likely over", at least technically.

His caution is matched by Bank of England governor Mervyn King, who continued to warn of uncertainty and volatility (including, you'll note, of inflation rates).

Closer to home, this week's second survey of Scottish business sentiment shows signs of a return to growth.

It's not there yet, but the direction of travel is clear.

And contrary to consensus opinion only three or four months ago, it looks like that might be achieved by the end of this year.

Lloyds TSB, working with the Fraser of Allander Institute at Strathclyde University, has found manufacturing/production is still facing the worst of a crisis - even though it was led by the service sector.

Its quarterly business monitor, covering June to August, shows exports are on the way up again, after sharp falls, but the prospect of rising turnover for producers is heavily outweighed by those who are gloomy.

Significant shifts underlying those headline figures include an easing of concern about access to credit.

It's more expensive - no surprise there - but less of a worry.

And the service sector is showing a slight uptick in concern about the availability of skilled staff, which was a major concern through the boom years of a tight labour market.

That's a reminder of the importance of continuing to educate, train and retrain workers for the jobs of the future.

We are also hearing this morning about the latest trends in retail.

Looking back on a year of trading through recession, it is extraordinary how total spending growth has held up, and held up particularly well in Scotland.

It is also odd that the Scottish/British Retail Consortium has been so reluctant to celebrate that stability through tough times.

What may make them nervous, but is not shown up by the figures, is how much those sales figures have been held up by discounting, leaving holes in corporate balance sheets.

Drilling down into the retail trends, the consortium offers interesting indicators of the way we're spending money differently.

Big ticket items are continuing to struggle, but it is forward orders for fitted carpets that get marked out for special concerns.

After months of trading down from almost every level to cheaper options, food retailers have seen some signs of "trading up and treating". (For those not taking holidays overseas during summer, it was the least they could do for themselves.)

And after DIY stores struggled their way through the trough at the start of the year, they are now showing signs of benefiting from one consequence of the sluggish property market.

If people are not moving house (and the lack of property on the market is itself pushing up prices, according to chartered surveyors), then there comes a time when home-owners want to spruce up the one they've got.

Sure enough, the trends are towards "home improvement and refreshing, rather than moving".

Retail figures from the US on Tuesday also registered a reasonable state of health, having been in negative territory for much of the past year.

This was led by a rise in car sales, up by more than 10% on July - the biggest leap in eight years.

And that, of course, is explained by the 'Cash for Clunkers' scheme, similar to those operating in Europe.

It has now run out of federal dollars, so the uplift from that will head down again.

One impact of the scheme is that those who have bought new cars are typically stretching their finances, leaving it harder for non-car retailers to persuade them to commit to other big ticket items.

Yet as with all such government schemes, once the subsidy is in place, there's a lobby quickly created to ensure it stays there.

Stand by for similar lobbying when the VAT rate on the British high street rises by one sixth, or 2.5 percentage points, to where it was before last November.

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• - What's this?

It used to be that business leaders in Scotland kept away from any controversy around the country's constitutional future.

A few lined up on either side of the debate ahead of the 2007 election, when endorsements dominated the final 10 days.

But since then, almost all have been very careful to avoid comment on the prospect of a referendum and how business would view a move towards independence.

But there's a bold opinion been expressed by Scottish Financial Enterprise, the trade body representing the banks, asset managers and insurers.

In written evidence to the Holyrood committee newly embarked on an inquiry into the finance sector, SFE makes it clear where it stands.

In answer to the question: how should Scotland differentiate itself and promote itself in future, the submission reads: "We need to take the initiative and, to do that, continued co-ordination between Scottish and UK agencies and actors is essential. Scotland's position as part of the UK and part of the City of London brand is very important internationally."

It goes on: "More than half of financial services jobs in the UK are outside London and the distinctive nature and heritage of Scotland as a financial centre enhances and broadens the UK's promotional pitch for international business."

There follow a couple of calls for the Scottish Government to avoid actions that damage business's prospects in international markets, particularly in relation to other parts of the UK.

It doesn't actually spell out the possibility of higher income tax, but you can see where they're going with this: "We suggest that all policy proposals at the hand of the Scottish Government should be subject to an 'international competitiveness assessment', similar to environmental impact assessments. If a policy seems likely to harm our international competitiveness, consideration of that should weigh heavily in any decision whether to proceed."

The warning is of a high speed rail network that stops in northern England. That is seen as the most significant infrastructure issue in the immediate future, "and we cannot afford to put Scotland at a disadvantage to competitor areas south of the border by allowing High Speed Rail links to stop short of Scotland".

More when chief executive Owen Kelly is quizzed by MSPs on Wednesday.

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• - What's this?

Does this sound familiar? A household brand with a long established link to a hard-pressed Scottish town suddenly tells its workforce that it's closing down within two years, and moving production east at a cost of about 900 jobs.

National and local politicians are incensed that they were not warned, and take a public revenge on the company. But the closure goes ahead anyway.

What's happening in looks uncannily like the story of Boots in Airdrie, where Soltan sun care lotions and No 7 products used to be made.

The high street chemist announced in February 2003 that

The most incensed politician back then wasn't in the Scottish Government.

It was the then Secretary of State for Scotland, one Helen Liddell, who was also Labour MP for Airdrie and Shotts (until two years later when she became Britain's High Commissioner in Australia).

So does that experience hold out any lessons for how to steer Kilmarnock, Diageo, East Ayrshire Council and the Scottish Government through the next few months?

Some interesting answers to that question come from a study of the Airdrie process carried out by the Scottish Council Foundation think tank.

Dusting it down, it shows much of the workforce was never reconciled to the reasons given for closure of its cosmetics plant - over-capacity rather than under-performance.

There remained resentment that the company didn't offer other options or seek voluntary redundancies before going for closure.

"Not even the smartest communication strategy could have bridged the cap between the company and the workforce at this stage," says Jim McCormick's report.

"In any such closure, it is likely that an initial period of antagonism between the company and employees will occur, with trade unions, politicians and much of the media backing employees."

With workers guaranteed wages up until closure days, there was an incentive to take that cash and find other work while they could.

The report recommends enhanced payments for those who stay with the company until the final closure.

There were five stages of redundancies over the two years of closure, with Boots managers believing this would be more responsible.

Yet nearly half of employees said they felt the extended period had made the situation harder.

Support for workers to get new jobs or retrain was seen positively by staff, with most saying they gained from using the Next Move Centre.

But the report offers two suggestions: more information on self-employment, and more effort to help older workers retrain, recognising they may be more discouraged than others.

By tracking Boots workers over the next two years, the Scottish Council Foundation found about half secured similar or better jobs elsewhere, and about half experienced worse jobs, particularly in pay rates.

This was during the economic good times, which is not what Kilmarnock workers face.

"Some of the more pessimistic expectations on long-term job losses and damage to the local economy do not appear to have been borne out... and did not result in significant flows into long-term sickness/incapacity or early retirement as may have been expected in recent decades."

One crucial point of relevance to Kilmarnock was that Boots donated £3.6 million from the sale of its factory land to the regeneration effort that accompanied its departure.

Another £250,000 went into Airdrie Business Centre, and £100,000 into projects to help workers retrain or find new jobs.

The land was used in the boom years to build housing and a primary school.

That seems to be where Scottish Government thinking is heading in Kilmarnock, judging by the detail with which Finance Secretary John Swinney addressed the future value of the Johnnie Walker plant.

Local Labour MP Des Browne has also served notice his intention now is to squeeze the most out of Diageo as it departs his constituency.

The drinks company has said it wants to a leave a legacy (other than unemployment) and is open to ideas.

But there's a final warning for Diageo, East Ayrshire Council, Skills Development Scotland, the Scottish Government and anyone else who counts as a "stakeholder" - don't expect any thanks.

Tracking staff opinion as Boots pulled out of Airdrie, it concluded "none of the key stakeholders should expect to earn much credit from former employees".

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• - What's this?

So what was the plan - now confirmed as dead - which was put to Diageo for saving the in Kilmarnock and/or the Port Dundas distillery in Glasgow?

The Scottish Government won't say, unless there is approval for its publication given by the rest of the taskforce. We've heard from ministers today it was detailed and significant, but without any detail about its significance.

That leaves us relying on Diageo to explain why it failed to meet the company's requirements. And the gaps in the offer are striking.

According to David Gosnell, head of global supply, the proposal failed even to address the economics of the industry. It didn't look at developments in the marketplace. And it didn't offer funding for the suggestions it had.

So what did it have? For Port Dundas distillery, there was "no alternative presented, other than us delaying our action... pending a change in market conditions". That falls some way short of sounding compelling.

How much money? Some for training and regeneration, according to Diageo's head of global supply, David Gosnell. Alex Salmond later said in a television interview that the land could have been provided for a new-build plant somewhere around Kilmarnock.

We're now being told by the Scottish Government: "We have always been clear that public funding was a potential part of our alternative proposal. Any specific amount was always a matter for discussion and negotiation with Diageo to ensure that any support maximised the public benefits".

I'm told the amount they had in mind was around £6m to £8m per year they reckon it will cost public services to handle the knock-on costs of so many redundancies.

That's been likened to calculating the cost to the NHS of ill health through smoking tobacco, and then giving that sum to the tobacco industry as payment for not selling its weed in Scotland. It's an odd incentive and not sustainable.

Diageo's chief executive, Paul Walsh, made it clear he wanted specifics about money, and where it was going to come from, as a key condition of any reversal. It doesn't look like that's what he got.

And to add insult to the injury of failing in this campaign, the company told the Scottish Government not only did its rescue plan fail to deliver a model that would be good for Diageo: nor, it said, would it be good for Scotland.

It's worth remembering, in all this, that Diageo had a number of audiences in mind.

Yes, it has to protect the brand value of Johnnie Walker against the risk of reputational damage. It also has to show itself to be a good and responsible corporate citizen, particularly as it draws on Scotland's image to sell one of its principal products.

But from the point of view of the chief executive, his foremost audiences are in and around the London and New York stock markets on which Diageo is listed.

Analysts and traders there are brutal to company bosses who show any sign of weakness in driving efficiency and controlling costs.

To have given in to such a public campaign and kept Kilmarnock open would have sent the markets a sign of weakness.

So while the public campaign made its campaigners feel good about their collective effort, the high profile they adopted probably only increased the chances of its failure.

There are lessons for both industry and government to learn from this one.

It's not just what happens with the next factory closure. It also raises questions about what happens when the squeeze hits public sector jobs.

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• - What's this?

Dateline: Aberdeen. I'm at the , which jams the traffic around Aberdeen's conference centre every two years.

Don't under-estimate the significance of this event - bringing the industry together from around the world, and deepening the foundations of the city's reputation as Europe's energy capital.

Two themes from the first morning's conference deliberations stand out as over-shadowing the North Sea industry, or UKCS, as they prefer to call it here (UK Continental Shelf - the Treasury's 1970s device for avoiding any hint that oil riches this might be in Scottish waters).

One is the maturing of the oil fields, and how to incentivise the industry to keep drilling and extracting when the costs get ever higher.

There are other places to sink your drill bit around the world, with better prospects for a financial gusher.

So the pressure is on the Treasury - and energy minister Lord Hunt, who is here today - to give more tax breaks for mature wells.

The industry is segmented into specialist companies, some of which put all their effort into mature wells, while the majors exit and focus on what they do best on a big scale.

That process began well over 10 years ago, when Talisman was among those that took over wells from the majors.

Today, Talisman president and CEO John Manzoni was pointing the way to the next generation of small innovators.

But he raised a couple of problems.

It is hard for Talisman to sell on depleting oil fields when small companies are the ones having most trouble getting credit, and especially when they have to raise large amounts for the securities they need to cover de-commissioning liabilities.

It's a fair bet that rows and tensions over de-commissioning are going to grow.

The other complexity of depleting oil fields is that they require ever more energy to do the extracting.

And more energy means a bigger carbon cost.

With carbon costs rising further in future, there is an incentive to abandon those wells with hundreds of millions of barrels of untapped oil and gas because you can extract the same oil with a lower carbon footprint elsewhere.

But going where the oil is most cheaply produced doesn't do much for the British exchequer or for energy security.

That question of climate change leads on to the other factor over-shadowing the Aberdeen conference and exhibition: renewable energy.

Ramco set the tone yesterday.

The Aberdeen-based company that was once an oil and gas innovator announced yesterday it's innovating out of oil and gas altogether.

It will re-brand as SeaEnergy and focus only on offshore renewables.

However, you can sense a bristling from the oil and gas industry bosses when turbines loom on the conversational horizon.

They're not against renewables, they stress.

But the emphasis being placed on turbines and green power ignores the importance of the oil men (and a few women) keeping our economies and lifestyles fuelled and lubricated for the next few decades at least.

Don't forget and ignore us, is the plea - you're going to need us yet.

And be aware that the complexity of extracting oil and gas in depleting and more remote basins is going to become more of a burden and technological challenge, not less.

That exchange began early today between Alex Salmond and Scotland's foremost oilman, Sir Ian Wood.

Salmond was pointing to the vast opportunities of applying oilfield skills to renewable engineering challenges.

Sir Ian was pointing to the work still to be done on North Sea hydrocarbons.

Andrew Gould, president and chief executive of Shlumberger, followed up with the observation that the oil industry is not necessarily best placed to lead the renewables revolution.

John D Rockefeller did not create Standard Oil by buying up Boston's whaling industry, he pointed out - a strange parallel to choose, as he himself went on to observe that the whaling industry quickly died when Standard Oil came along with its new "energy solution".

Talking of solutions, of which the Bridge of Don currently has many, I have to go and venture through the vast, wind-battered marquees of this exhibition.

I spotted a stand earlier offering "innovative pigging solutions", but without the smell of hog roast.

Time I went back to find out more.

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• - What's this?

There may be a small amount of money to be clawed back from daily-disposable-contact-lens maker Bausch and Lomb, as a result of the millions put into its Livingston plant in government assistance over the past 13 years.

It started with a £2m grant in 1996, and then a further £1.35m awarded six years ago.

But there seems more prospect of gaining some research contracts for Scottish universities as the company looks to the next generation of "eyecare solutions" products.

There's not much chance of that employing all 500 people being put out of work over the next 20 months as the American corporation moves production to Waterford in Ireland and Rochester, in upstate New York.

In meetings with the Scottish management - who will also be out of work and who say the first they heard of the threat was less than six weeks ago - West Lothian Council and then John Swinney, the economy secretary were today firmly dissuaded from launching a jobs-saving campaign.

This looks like a company that did its homework before Friday's announcement, watching what happened to Diageo.

Its first lesson was to engage politicians first. Alex Salmond met the chairman/chief executive, Jerry Ostrov, twice in recent weeks.

And Scottish Enterprise sent a team to the Rochester headquarters in a bid to make a case for keeping the plant open.

B&L's next lesson was to emphasise the scale of its savings.

A statement from the chairman and chief executive saying the closure of one of his three plants would save "hundreds of millions of pounds" over the long term was a clear steer about the prohibitive cost of subsidising him to stay.

The debate has since moved to why Waterford proved more attractive.

The answers seem straight-forward. It's double the scale, with room for expansion, and its got a research base attached.

The company owns the site, whereas it leases the one in Scotland. Severance costs would have been much higher in Ireland, as the average time spent working there - at around 16 years - is double that of the Scottish workforce.

Having corporation tax at less than half the rate of the UK may not have done any harm to Ireland's case either.

But then, it's hard to make that argument for being more like Ireland while explaining the near doubling of Ireland's unemployment rate during the recession.

After a summit on jobs today in Glasgow, I asked Alex Salmond about the issue.

While he said the Scottish workforce is not too flexible, from an employment point of view, he claimed Britain is probably the cheapest place in Europe in which to close a plant, and urged policy makers (at Westminster) to think through the implications of that.

He also defended the Scottish Government's approach to the campaign on Diageo/Johnnie Walker jobs, having taken flak from CBI Scotland and the company's chief executive, Paul Walsh, for making Scotland look hostile to inward investors.

He said: "People are entitled to campaign for their jobs. If we ever accept any assumption in Scotland that people don't have a right to fight for our jobs, then we'll be a poor country indeed.

"Don't under-rate the international respect there is for a workforce committed to fighting for their jobs and the traditions that make their industry what it is".

The proof of their pride in the product? Well, the whisky bottlers gave the first minister a bottle of Black Label for his efforts in supporting them - possibly of more use to him than a month's supply of contact lenses.

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• - What's this?

One: Five hundred workers will lose their jobs at the Bausch and Lomb plant in Livingston manufacturing disposable contact lenses.

But it's not that demand is down with the recession.

On the contrary, it's on the way up.

But recession provides cover for big restructuring, even if it means jobs are lost at the worst possible time for employees.

The plant's American owners reckoned its plant in Waterford, Ireland, has a better cost, research and investment base and potential.

The equipment will be shipped over there during the next 20 months or so, and although that's a big workforce to axe in Scotland, the Irish can't expect many more jobs, as this is increasingly automated.

Outside the West Lothian plant, as news of the announcement spread, the workforce seemed resigned to their fate.

Some were confident that something else will come along.

And the Scottish Government, which has already been in discussions with the New York bosses, holds out little to no chance of reversing the closure decision.

It's exactly the same net loss of jobs as Diageo's plans for Johnnie Walker packaging.

The different approach has not been lost on the SNP's political opponents.

Two: Recession brings opportunities to pick up distressed assets and grow companies.

Stagecoach is now part of the buy-out plan for National Express, picking up two rail franchises and city bus services in the Midlands and Dundee.

The deal, now in the hands of National Express shareholders, is now more attractive, because the Government has withdrawn its threat to take the rail franchises off National Express's future owners, as penalty for its failure to handle the East Coast Main line operation.

The main brake on Stagecoach seems to be regulation of its dominant market position.

Three: One answer to recession and to technological change and challenge is more collaboration.

It's not just Google moving aggressively into digital books. It's closer to home.

Rob Woodward, chief executive of STV, has let slip that there have been discussions between the Glasgow-based broadcaster and Scottish newspapers about creating a single, paid-for website for Scotland.

There are also trials under way for pooling more resource with his Clydeside neighbours, the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ.

And the Ayr United fan told the Daily Telegraph he is looking to help Scottish football clubs set up their own channel alongside STV, to help replace some of the potential revenue lost through Setanta's collapse.

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• - What's this?

Alistair Darling is not the kind of politician noted for blowing his own trumpet, but in Glasgow's Hilton Hotel last night, he gave it a bit of a blast all the same.

It was hard to find anyone who agreed with his Budget view in spring that Britain could be back into growth by the end of the year, but he was rather pleased to report that more people do these days.

Likewise, he reminded us that he had said in August last year that Britain was heading for its deepest economic downturn in 60 years, and was roundly condemned for undue pessimism (by those close to the Prime Minister, he didn't have to add). That was only wrong in understating the problems that lay ahead.

Indeed, if you read his speech, there's quite a bit that doesn't seem to come from the same script-writers as his neighbour in Downing Street.

Gordon Brown was yesterday signing a joint UK-French-German leaders' letter that took its cue from Nicholas Sarkozy on the way to crack down on "reprehensible" bankers' bonuses. But Alistair Darling used his speech to disagree with the French president over how to do so, with a defence of British financial sector interests.

And then there was public spending. Gordon Brown has been trying to present the future of the public finances as a choice between Tory cuts and Labour investment, as he has successfully done in past elections.

That's not quite what Alistair Darling was saying. The Chancellor is setting out clearer language about the nature of the looming squeeze, preferring to call it "slower growth", and without mention of Conservatives.

In a loud echo of Tony Blair's days in charge, the talk is of public service reform - "focusing not just on the pounds and pence we spend, but on what the money actually buys for the economy".

"It does not mean some sort of dark age," he said. "It means deciding what's important now and what's less so. It means setting clear priorities and choices - a clear sense of direction - underpinned by our values."

Was this a speech to the CBI Scotland in Glasgow, or had it become mixed up in one of those ministerial red boxes with a memo to the Prime Minister?

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• - What's this?

Want to spruce up the en suites in your bed and breakfast business?

Want a Bangladeshi-style micro-loan to set up a micro-enterprise?

Or have you got a top idea for a new gizmo, but need some cash to start along the road to market?

If so, things may be just about to get a little brighter.

There's a £150m pot from the European Investment Fund looking likely for Scotland, which will back up the private sector in taking equity stakes in small companies or in making loans.

This has been a long time coming. The money has been available to the Scottish Government, but Treasury rules meant that if it were accessed, that same amount would be clawed back from the block grant.

That's just changed, with the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, altering his department's accounting rules.

So Scottish Enterprise is now, cautiously, on the trail of the money, stressing that there remain other obstacles that need to be cleared before the money is in place.

It could well take its place in an, as yet, very vaguely outlined plan for a Scottish Investment Bank, which is intended to draw together some of the operations already funded publicly.

The £150 million would come from the European Investment Fund, mostly owned by the European Investment Bank, which is distributed through banks and other intermediaries across the Union and a bit beyond, to plug financing gaps faced by small and medium-sized enterprises.

Scottish Enterprise appears to be the intermediary that can hold the fund for others to access, adding to the investment funds it already has funded from its mainstream block grant and trading activities.

Senior figures in the bank are suggesting that others could bid into the fund, and use a share of it to set up and administer a range of subsidiary funds.

These could include a micro-finance facility, as suggested for Scotland's poorer communities by the Nobel Prize-winning founder of Bangladesh's Grameen Bank, Professor Muhammad Yunus, pioneer of the use of tiny loans without collateral for women setting up their own businesses.

It could also provide for the idea of a tourism development bank, which has been kicked around for a while, filling a hole in hospitality financing where the banks have recently scaled down or withdrawn their activities.

It's in start-up funds for technology companies that there are also significant gaps.

Those in life sciences face big risks and long lead-times before they can hope to start earning revenue.

The best developed venture capital markets, such as you find in parts of the US, are experienced at handling that kind of loan.

There's a lack of that scale of activity in Scotland, but no lack of good ideas in science and technology.

Before the recession, venture capital was mainly run by angel investors, and Scotland's most prominent angel investors have been badly stung by the property slump and by the retreat of Bank of Scotland Corporate division.

So there's some repair to be done in that part of the finance market. And this European fund might be quite helpful in that repair job.

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• - What's this?

When the business lobbies complain about red tape and increased expense, it's usually to point out the cost they face of unintended regulation.

But what if the , introduced from today, are fully intended? What if the ramping up of the cost of selling alcohol is exactly what the regulators want?

The ministers who passed the law in 2005 and those implementing it now may not admit as much, but it seems the need for two licences (premises and responsible licensee), the segregation of alcohol and other goods in larger shops, the end of two-for-one in on-sales and happy hours, etc etc, seem intended to put people out of the business.

The only catch with that explanation is the manner in which the law was passed in 2005. I was at Holyrood that day, and it was a burach.

The Licensing Act was probably the worst example of bad legislating in 10 years of the Scottish Parliament, as both government and opposition tore up any carefully constructed pre-legislative advice, consideration and balance, and spent the day having a dutch auction for the most draconian amendments they could manage.

I also recall ministers telling me, as the dust settled the next day, that they had years to sort out the mess. And yet they didn't. Nor did their successors.

Those innocently wanting to add a modest splash of alcohol to their supermarket trolley before 10am, and being stopped from doing so, might like to keep that in mind.

And so we turn to the next Licensing Bill, which is expected in the new session at Holyrood.

The idea of minimum alcohol pricing has brought plenty criticism from the industry, particularly in on-sales.

The Scotch whisky industry has led the lobbying effort on behalf of others, because it carries status and immense amounts of exporting clout.

With that in mind, Gavin Hewitt, chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association, has today issued a blunt warning about the impact of the law on export markets.

We've heard this before. But this summer has made the relationship between the Scottish Government and the whisky industry a fractious one due to the Diageo/Johnnie Walker restructuring row, and there's less of an understanding of shared interests and mutual understanding.

In his speech to a conference on Scotland's international ambitions in Edinburgh today, organised by the Scottish Council Development and Industry, Mr Hewitt, a former diplomat, was not all that diplomatic in his approach.

There was a very thinly-veiled criticism of the Government's handling of Diageo's plans for closing its Kilmarnock plant.

Enterprise minister Jim Mather had just told the conference that the case being made to Diageo was for "enlightened altruism" in aligning its corporate objectives with those of its workforce, and Mr Hewitt was withering in his dismissal of that argument.

"Like any other sector, the Scotch whisky industry can't stand still," he said.

"Taking out costs and streamlining facilities are as much part of our business as for any other industry. It is essential when operating in a high cost base, such as Scotland, and competing in the challenging global market where we do most of our business."

But it was the minimum pricing plans that are now the main target of the whisky lobby's concern.

It has long been arguing that foreign tax authorities have been watching the tax regime for Scotch whisky in its home market.

A rise in duty from the Budget at Westminster is, we've been told, used to justify a rise in duty overseas too.

Using health grounds to justify a further attack on pricing - which is an exemption allowed under World Trade Organisation rules - is seen by the whisky/drinks lobby as a further opportunity for foreign governments to discriminate against Scotch.

That argument has long come with distant sound of crying wolf, but now the argument comes with more specifics.

In South Korea, for instance, the locally-produced spirit, soju, is weaker than whisky, at 25 per cent alcohol by volume, so the Seoul government could use health grounds to impose swingeing duty on stronger spirits, effectively creating a trade barrier aimed at Scotch.

The same goes for Russia's, Japan's and China's domestic spirits markets.

Hewitt's case is that the Scotch Whisky Association has lobbied against such health-related measures by foreign governments as spurious health grounds masking barriers to free trade, but if the same arguments against alcohol are being used by the Scottish Government, that argument becomes hard to sustain.

His call today was for a more joined-up approach to supporting the industry.

"Above all, we need a business environment in Scotland conducive to doing business - where companies, from both home and abroad, are attracted to invest, and where government is seen as benign".

Could he have been referring, once more, to the row over Johnnie Walker?

As for the threat of American boycott of Scottish exports to its biggest single market, in the wake of the Lockerbie bomber release, the US blogosphere is being watched for Scot-bashing.

But the important next event is when Congress returns to Washington from its summer break. We'll find out then if its members have the appetite for stoking it further. Just as the French were criticised for their response over the invasion of Iraq in 2003, perhaps Americans will drop any Scottish references in product names, meaning they'll drink Freedom whisky and secure their parcels with Freedom tape.

But look at it from the other point of view. In emerging markets, and particularly Muslim ones, I'm hearing the release has done Scotland's reputation and trading prospects no harm at all.

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• - What's this?