The chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland has announced 3,700 job losses from branches and the need for at least £25bn more in government capital injection, taking the taxpayers' share of economic value (though not voting power) up to 84%.

He was told by the European competition commissioner Neelie Kroes to sell large parts of RBS, which he points out this morning cost the UK taxpayer £9bn this week alone in the reduced stock market valuation of our stake.

And now there's a third quarter pre-tax loss of more than £2.1bn, or (as RBS prefers to emphasise) an operating loss of £1.5bn, sharply reduced from the second quarter. Impairments, or losses on loans, seem to be at a plateau, but it's a high one, at £3.3bn for the third quarter.

No huge surprises to any of this. But there's an interesting new message from the RBS chief executive, as he admits the bank is struggling to hit the government's demands for ensuring lending is available to homebuyers and businesses.

He's now pointing out that companies - his customers - are choosing to repair their balance sheets, and that means reducing the level of debt they're carrying. And he points out that's the way it should be.

The USA is out of recession, while companies are paying off debt faster than they're doing in Britain and savings are up. So pushing more credit into the economy may not be the way back to growth, and probably isn't good for us anyway.

There's a new figure from the bank that helps explain what's going on, suggesting the problem in reaching the lending targets is not the lack of willingness from banks, but the lack of demand from customers.

RBS has identified £27bn of credit available to its small, medium and "mid-corporate" customers through arranged overdrafts, which is available, easily accessed, but not being drawn down.

This looks like a big hint to Chancellor Alistair Darling, RBS's majority shareholder: time to re-think those lending targets.

Alex Salmond today sought to draw a distinction between cuts from either Labour or Conservative governments after the next election, and on the other hand... well, that's less clear.

But expect to hear lots more about the cost of renewing Britain's nuclear deterrent, and what could be done with that money instead.

This was brought on by the report by auditor general on Scotland's spending choices. Robert Black wasn't telling us anything startlingly new - not, at least, to readers of The Ledger.

But his advice carries rather more weight than this or any blog. And you could sense from First Minister's questions at Holyrood that its publication crystallised a definite shift of tone and direction for Scottish politics.

It makes it more difficult for efficiency savings to be used as an avoidance mechanism for difficult political decisions. Robert Black noted that the efficiency savings are being achieved, but they don't go far enough.

And he pointed out that there's still much we don't know about productivity in the public sector - the link between spending, activities, performance and outcomes - without which it's hard to see where and how to improve it.

So the new battleground is in answer to the question of what government should and should not - what it can and cannot - continue to fund for everyone. What should it abandon completely, and where should it means test or target?

Pensions challenge

How, asks Robert Black, will decisions be made between competing priorities, and what will success look like in public service delivery?

Where would it be better to spend now to deliver recurring savings in the future? Have we got the balance right between long- and short-term changes?

Are public service managers doing enough to break down barriers between them, and working in partnerships? Do we have to reshape the organisations themselves, starting with councils, health boards, police and fire boards?

What, continues the Audit Scotland report, are the implications of an ageing workforce for the staffing of front-line services? That's not talking about the cost of more elderly people with growing health demands, but a question that gets at the difficult issue of public sector pensions.

And here's a tricky question, cannily worded: "Does the public sector have a sufficiently flexible workforce to allow jobs to be changed? Is there a need for skills development and an improved understanding with the unions and staff about the needs and opportunities for re-designing how services are provided?"

Those words represent a can of worms for public sector unions, while carefully avoiding talk of job cuts. It holds out the opportunity for service reform without the provocative challenge of a target for slimming the public sector.

Intensive care

Scotland is not alone in facing this question, of course. The rest of Britain has been slow to reach a consensus around the reality of looming public sector spending cuts, but it is ahead of Scotland in its appreciation of the choice between universal and targeted spending - or at least the consequences of the universal approach which has been Holyrood's default for a decade.

And two neighbours are facing language about cuts that is much more brutal than Robert Black's.

Ireland has just been told by the OECD (rich country's economic club) that its problems are likely to require a return to student fees, bigger class sizes, cuts in civil service jobs as well as in civil service salaries.

On Thursday, the finance minister confirmed the country remains "stable, in intensive care" with credit rating agencies bearing down on Dublin. Ahead of a budget in December, the Prime Minister has said public sector pay cuts are inevitable.

Manx advantage

And the Isle of Man has recently been shocked by the imposition of a sudden shift in its tax position, as the Treasury in London sharply reduces its hand-back of VAT receipts.

The island's government budget is being cut by 10% next year and by 24% within two years, without much sympathy from Chancellor Alistair Darling, who sees it as a tax haven.

There may be lessons for Scotland from the middle of the Irish Sea on how to handle big cuts.

But there's another lesson for those hoping to design a change in Holyrood's tax powers: if the Isle of Man is any guide, don't assume the Treasury will help making the transition a smooth one.

That's particularly for those, like the Manx, who use corporation tax to give themselves competitive advantage - precisely the preference of quite a few people in the debate over Scottish constitutional powers.

In the infamous words of Whitehall spin registrar Jo Moore (where is she now, by the way?), Tuesday was a good day to bury bad news.

RBS took a media hit for its announcement of 3,700 branch jobs getting sawn off, starting next year. But it must have known that releasing the news at 5pm on Monday, the day before the big announcement, it would soon be overshadowed.

In came HSBC on Tuesday afternoon with another 1,700 job losses. And Barclays sneaked in a significant shake-up, though not many casualties, at the top level of its investment bank division.

Lloyds Banking Group, which came out of the European Commission's crackdown rather better than Royal Bank of Scotland, put out an interim trading statement about its third quarter. It didn't get much attention.

The figures on impairments remain astonishingly large. The retail end of the business, which deals with household finances and mortgages, is facing growing problems towards the end of this year and into next, as a result of rising unemployment. That means £2.5bn of losses during this year so far, up from £1.6bn in the same period last year.

The wholesale division, which includes business lending and commercial property, saw £3.2bn of third quarter write-downs, slowing down the rate of flow of red ink from the first half, when there were £9.7bn losses.

While things are getting less bad, look in more detail at insurance, based in Edinburgh and dominated by Scottish Widows, and things look rather uglier. New business on life, pensions and investment sales fell by 27% in the first nine months of the year, when compared with the first nine months of 2008.

Market conditions were "extremely challenging", particularly through independent financial advisers.

Even without counting the £11 bn write down on 'negative goodwill', Lloyds still expects to make a loss this year. This is what chief executive Eric Daniels called a "robust" performance in "challenging" times.

What about jobs? Well, let's quote the Lloyds statement in full, particularly for those who like an inventive euphemism for job losses:

"We have continued to make significant progress in capturing integration related cost savings and £250m of cost synergies and other operational efficiencies have already been realised in the first nine months of the year to support a target for 2009 which has now been increased to £450m. We expect these will represent annual run-rate savings of approximately £750m by the year-end, some £50m higher than our previously announced expected run-rate".

Translated: we're £50m ahead of our very large cost cutting target, with lots of job losses in there.

Friday morning brings the third quarter figures from Royal Bank of Scotland, with chief executive Stephen Hester still bruised by his encounter with first the European competition commissioner and the subsequent stock market reaction.

The other figure that has been overlooked in much of this has been the impact on Britain's public finances. We know that between £30bn and £40bn is being put into RBS and Lloyds to shore up their balances. Even more than that was expected, had there still been a need to insure nearly £600bn of toxic assets.

But because there is a transfer of risk from down the road until a re-capitalisation this year, the impact on the UK government is that its borrowing target for this financial year has just risen by £13bn.

As the target was already £175bn, who's going to worry about another 13?

Or indeed, another £25bn of quantitative easing/new money creation, as just announced by the Bank of England?

RBS insurance division looks quite a strong prospect for a float.

It was put up for sale earlier this year, but the only offer at that time would have required RBS to finance it.

That didn't seem to make much sense for a company on a crash diet, so chief executive Stephen Hester walked away.

With the financial market a bit less volatile than earlier this year, the big insurers could be more interested than when it was last offered, particularly if they know it has to be sold.

Even if there's to be no rushed fire sale, that probably gives buyers a negotiating advantage.

Names like Allianz, Generali and Zurich are being mentioned.

Peter Woods, who got very rich by setting up Direct Line nearly 25 years ago, is reported saying he prefers to focus on his current interests - esure and Sheilas' Wheels - doubting that the Direct Line model is well placed to match the growth of price comparison insurance websites.

I've heard the same concern from other insurance analysts.

However, one question nags about floating off a successful insurance division: does that have anything to do with increasing competition in retail banking, or is it merely punishment for being big?

The Royal Bank's RBS-branded branches in England and Wales - numbering 312, to be re-named Williams and Glyn and with a bias to north-west England - have a strong business banking profile and are perhaps the most attractive package of all.

A suggestion from one who ought to know the bank market well, is that they could be a good fit with the Clydesdale and Yorkshire banks, which are owned and run from Glasgow and Leeds as a joint unit for National Australia Bank (NAB).

Clydesdale's response? It said with its annual figures last week that it has been rather good at organic growth in the recent past, and that's how it would prefer to continue.

While NAB would look at opportunities to increase deposit strength and capability it doesn't have, it says that would have to measure up against the options for those organic growth options.

Then there's Intelligent Finance, an online division of Bank of Scotland that employs more than 350 people, most in Livingston, some in Rosyth.

It seems likely Lloyds will attach it to Cheltenham and Gloucester, for the simple reason that it lacks its own banking licence, and getting a new one is not an easy process.

Nor is it cheap. Buying a bank requires not only the capital to buy the business, but a whole lot more capital to sink into its balance sheet.

And as for Lloyds TSB Scotland, perhaps renamed the Trustee Savings Bank on the eve of that venerable Scottish mutual's 200th birthday?

Lloyds clearly won't want its name used by a rival.

Barclays and HSBC might like a vehicle for expanding into Scotland, but it now seems the political pressure is on to ensure the current British big four don't cannibalise each other to retain their dominance.

It could be snapped up by a big foreign bank wanting a foothold in the Scottish market.

Bank of China is one of those that has ambitions, and it's already getting active in the UK mortgage market.

It may also be interested in the RBS network south of the border.

But what about a Scottish consortium? The place to look is to that group of people who fought to stop Bank of Scotland being taken over by Lloyds TSB last year, arguing a great Scottish institution should remain Scottish.

They lost that battle, and Bank of Scotland has turned out to be a lot less great than it looked even then, as the losses on its corporate division have unravelled.

Sir Peter Burt, former chairman of Bank of Scotland, was one of those opposing the takeover.

He says he's not now part of a Scottish consortium to get into the market for these assets.

He has his doubts about the ease of disentangling the Scottish Lloyds TSB network from its larger southern sibling.

But he likes the idea and backs the push for more competition.

Ben Thomson, chairman of Noble Group, is seen as the key mover and shaker in this group of financiers.

He denies he's leading a consortium to buy Lloyds TSB Scotland. But he also supports the idea - very strongly.

"There's an opportunity to get the right structures in place," he told me.

"We can be ahead of the curve, in terms of restructuring the financial services industry to be in a good position to compete in the future."

"It's a huge opportunity. And it's far too important an industry not to put a huge amount of effort into getting it right".

p.s. With details now published, the leaks and speculation got it broadly right, but didn' t stretch as far as the Lloyds sell-off plans.

Between 250 and 300 Lloyds TSB branches in England and Wales are on the market, bracketed with 185 Lloyds TSB branches in Scotland and the Cheltenham and Gloucester.

That creates a new unit with stand-alone potential, representing 5% of Lloyds Banking Group's current accoiunt customers and 19% of its mortgage business.

That scale and geographic reach makes a Scottish consortium bid look much less likely.

As chief executive of Scottish Enterprise, she's been around for 20 years in economic development agencies, including two years in the World Bank - memorable for being evacuated out of Mongolia and some alarming times in Central and South America, which has at least left her with fluency in Andean Spanish.

The last decade of scrutiny has made the chief executive's office an uncomfortable place to be as well. Jack Perry has not enjoyed the criticism that has come from Holyrood and the media, and his predecessor, Robert Crawford, quit because of the intrusion of the job's public profile into his family life.

Lena Wilson has risen through the ranks to become chief operating officer of Scottish Enterprise and head of its inward investment and exports division, Scottish Development International.

So she ought to know what to expect in the top job she takes on this Wednesday, and how best to "bite back occasionally". She's up for lots of "legitimate challenge", but hopes for less controversy.

"I'm here to listen, to our angriest customers and biggest critics, because that's the only way we'll develop. We shouldn't be sitting in a darkened room with a towel over our head thinking what business wants."

Under the spotlight

The controversy is under way already, over a salary higher than that of the Prime Minister, and the same level as Jack Perry, despite Scottish Enterprise being much smaller than the agency he took on six years ago: no careers service, a sharply reduced budget, more focussed responsibilities and no local enterprise companies.

That £200,000 salary was not for her, but for the board to set independently, she told me in an interview to be broadcast this weekend.

But don't judge a chief executive by the extent of her remit: "Size of budget is a factor, but for me, it's not the determinant factor. It depends on the weight of the responsibility the chief executive has to carry".

Wilson started life in the Partick area of Glasgow, and grew up in East Kilbride, where her father worked at Rolls-Royce.

In the interview, she talks (and she's one very good talker) about what she brings to the job that might be different from her predecessor: "The fact that I'm me means I'll do it differently, with more focus, more clarity, more pace and more customer engagement". She goes back repeatedly to stress that customer engagement:

Yet having been in public sector agencies for 20 years, does she fulfil the remit of Scottish Enterprise to bring a business focus and ethos into government's role in the economy? It was a question that featured in her job interview as well:

"In the past few years, I've been working exclusively with businesses. I get the opportunity to be in the boardrooms of top companies all over the world, understand where they're going, understand their strategies, have an in-depth understanding of their sectors. I am moving in business circles and have a wider experience than some people in business."

You can hear more about her hopes for the Scottish economy and for Scottish Enterprise's role (though she was less willing to talk about her enthusiasm for rock music) on The Business on Radio Scotland. That's at 1000 GMT on Sunday 1 November, and also available by podcast.

Today we've got confirmation that Lloyds Banking Group has been trying to find a way of avoiding the government's Asset Protection Scheme.

It hasn't yet found that way, but the banking giant is considering a rights issue, and conversion of some assets, so that it increases its core capital balances. And on some scale, reported (though not confirmed) to be £25bn in total.

That could be seen as acting as a safety buffer, or a form of insurance, and the bank today said it could avoid the heavy up-front costs of using the UK government's bespoke insurance scheme.

If it can escape that offer - one which originally looked like it couldn't be refused, given the Government is 43% shareholder - then it will have implicitly had insurance on £260bn of troubled/distressed/toxic assets since the scheme was first announced in March, and at no cost whatsoever.

At the end of this turbulent year, the assets look less risky than they did.

So if anyone knows how to insure a car or home on that retrospective basis, let me know, as it sounds quite attractive to the customer.

A European Commission spokesman has told the BBC today it will rule "within two weeks" on the conditions it will impose on Lloyds in return for approval of state aid. The ruling on the Royal Bank of Scotland may take longer, but it's expected by Christmas.

How significant will it be? There's been lots of speculation, but one sentence in today's Lloyds statement stands out as calming down expectations of the maximal impact: based on the discussions to date with the UK government and European Commission, Lloyds "is confident that the final terms of its restructuring plan, including any required divestments of assets, will not have a material impact on the Group".

The stock market liked the look of that, along with the statement that Lloyds' performance remains "robust" and in line with previous guidance. Lloyds was up 7.5% on the day.

The speculation on the forced sell-offs and break-ups has included most permutations, including Bank of Scotland and/or Halifax being split from Lloyds, or Scottish Widows being put on the market.

Indeed, the only speculation I haven't read is that Lloyds will sell Lloyds - but if that crops up in a headline soon, remember where you saw it first.

A new variation today suggests Lloyds TSB Scotland and Intelligent Finance, an online division of Bank of Scotland, will be put up for sale.

Intelligent Finance was being pared back already, having stopped doing new mortgage and current account business last July.

Just like Cheltenham and Gloucester, it may be revived in order to sell it off, reducing its market share of current accounts and mortgage below the 30% level - the Royal Bank is looking to do the same in England with its RBS branded branches, bringing back the Williams and Glyn name it dropped in 1985.

Lloyds TSB Scotland is relevant for its branch network.

Anyone who knows the average Scottish high street could see that Lloyds was never likely to keep so many branches, when Lloyds TSB was often as reliably close to Bank of Scotland as docken leaves to nettles.

The process of rationalising has not begun, leaving many staff waiting anxiously, and that delay may be because the bank was waiting for the European ruling.

So just supposing Lloyds TSB Scotland's branches are up for sale, who might be interested? Obviously a group without much of an existing presence in Scotland.

A branch network doesn't look like a priority for the newcoming innovators in retail banking, such as Virgin Money and Tesco Bank.

But what about Barclays, or HSBC - neither of which has significant Scottish networks, but which have been showing increasing interest north of the border?

And what would happen to the trust that has been taking a share of Lloyds TSB Scotland profits since the Trustee Savings Bank was floated in 1986? It has fallen out with its funder in recent weeks, at considerable risk to Scotland's charity income?

Update 30 October 1715 GMT

Perhaps someone at UK Financial Investments, the Government's bank stakeholder arm, has been reading this blog.

Today we've had a solution to that apparently free insurance of Lloyds' troubled assets covering the period from March until now.

In order to get out of the government's Asset Protection Scheme, it has emerged that Lloyds would have to pay the government a "break fee" of as much as £2.5bn.

The Scottish Power takeover by Iberdrola, and similar Spanish acquisitions of BAA and O2, have been found to have been based on corporate tax breaks which are now being banned.

That comes a bit late for those who fretted nearly three years ago about the loss of one of Scotland's big corporates to raiders from Madrid.

Then there's White Van Man, who is being told that his emissions are being brought into the same tight framework as passenger cars over the next seven years.

You can find a new strategy on advanced use of next-generation internet to control traffic congestion, manage energy demand and improve health care at a distance.

All significant in their own ways. But perhaps most significant is a move afoot by the European Commission to stick its regulatory nose into the food chain.

It has figured that the balance of market power is not properly calibrated.

Or to put it another way, big food processors and supermarkets have disproportionate power over the small producer and farmer.

Most notable among the little guys who have been hard-squeezed are dairy farmers.

They have a separate announcement today that they are being given the green light for governments to offer a one-off emergency 15,000 euro grant.

One solution being targeted for improving the operation of the food market is for EU members to have more transparent price information across retailers.

That's probably not something that will revolutionise food retailing in Britain, which is relatively efficient and competitive.

More relevant in the UK is the power of very few, very large supermarkets, which is more concentrated than you find elsewhere.

Of more relevance still might be the concern about prices going up, with market prices rising, but not coming down at the same pace.

That's a familiar argument to the one used against energy companies, having seen oil and gas prices spike over the past 18 months.

The European Commission wants to force more transparency into food pricing, so that consumers benefit from falling prices.

And that goes for more oversight of the food futures market to curtail speculative bubbles.

The politics has gone out of the economics of food, while food inflation has been relatively subdued.

But there are pressures growing from resurgent Asian economies and poor harvests, and Brussels commissioners are making preparations for the possibility - some might say the probability - that the acute pain of high and fast-rising prices could easily come back.

But if you want it trucked from Lanarkshire to London, it will cost you less. Perhaps £38.

Some hauliers may be willing to offer you less than £30, which is below their costs.

This is just to fill up space on the south-bound trip, because while there's still lots of freight heading up the A1 and M74 to supply Scottish businesses and shops, there's far less Scottish produce now available for the return trip.

Yet it's only by filling trucks on all their trips that the freight industry can make its profits.

Those figures aren't good news for the haulage industry, particularly the Scottish businesses that depend on the England-Scotland routes.

Typically small operators, they are up against much bigger hauliers who can cross-subsidise their more northerly destinations with a wider range of English and continental routes.

More widely than that one industry, this tells you a significant story about the state of the Scottish economy.

It's true that many of the most successful manufacturing businesses - for instance, Weir Group, Clyde Union, Aggreko and BVT - shift a lot of their produce by air, train or ship.

Others, in the service sector, can deliver online.

But the lorry remains a vital link for getting Scottish goods to market - not only to England, but to English ports.

And these freight costs show that Scotland is making a whole lot less than it was.

The biggest gap in recent years has come from electronics.

It's not that Silicon Glen has disappeared. Scotland still shifts around £4bn in export earnings from its electronics sector.

But only ten years ago, it was shipping more than £11bn worth.

And from the point of view of the hauliers, it doesn't help that electronic products have become more compact.

The other lesson worth noting is how important the rest of the UK is to Scottish businesses.

The most recent input-output tables tell us that 42% of Scottish added value is accounted for by Scottish customers.

While 10% is investment, and 17% is government expenditure, 31% is exported from Scotland.

Of that 31%, 21 percentage points are accounted for by England, Wales and Northern Ireland, while 10 percentage points are sent further afield.

The Scottish government has policies to develop its links with its major trading partners - notably the US, Germany and China, with more emphasis being put in recent weeks on India's potential.

So what's the policy on exports to England?

No-one wielding the economists' slide-rule had reckoned on a 0.4% drop in the third quarter - July to September - but that's what we got. And while it's a move in the right direction, that's only a slight improvement on 0.6% in April to June.

You'd be forgiven for being slightly confused with the position in Scotland, where it was reported on Wednesday that Scottish GDP had fallen by 0.8%.

To help clear up that confusion, it's probably worth noting that that Scottish figure was for the second quarter, April to June, whereas the latest UK figure was for July to September.

The Scottish Government takes longer than the UK Office for National Statistics to compile figures and extrapolate the Scottish bits of the UK data. That makes its publication almost exactly three months behind the UK figures.

If we follow through on the growth path from the second quarter, which showed the return of Scottish economic activity lagging behind that of the UK, we could assume the Scottish economy declined by around 0.5% last quarter.

That's a much clearer position than we've heard from George Osborne before, and has been sparked by the trenchant views of Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, during a speech in Edinburgh this week.

Mr King said there hasn't been enough structural reform of banks, or talk of it, and that it is "a delusion" to think that reform of regulation will be sufficient response to the problems banks created over the past two years.

Gordon Brown made it clear at Prime Minister's Questions that he disagrees. His argument was that it is not clear splitting banks between utility and risky investment elements will have the desired effect:

Northern Rock was a small retail bank without investment risks, while Lehman Brothers was large and an investment bank without much retail, yet both became insolvent.

Mr Osborne's made his views clearer in Glasgow today, (Thursday), where he was taking questions from members of the city's Chamber of Commerce.

For the record, this is what he told me afterwards: "I thought Mervyn King did make a persuasive case in Edinburgh. I thought it was extraordinary that Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling dismissed it out of hand.

"And it's a concern that you've got this dispute at the heart of economic policy making in the UK. We've got to fix the regulatory system, and that means putting the Bank of England in charge.

"You also need to look at the scale of these banks, and as we come to sell the big government stakes, we need smaller banks, we need a more competitive banking sector, and we need to protect the taxpayer from really risky investment banking activities which sit uneasily with taking deposits on the high street. Mervyn King has a lot of sensible points."

Mr Osborne went on: "We've seen what's happening to the Scottish banking sector over the past two years. It's probably suffered more than any other banking sector in the world, and I want to see if there's a Conservative government that these mistakes are not repeated".

So is he in favour of bringing in more competitors, or in breaking up the banks we've got?

"You need to do both. You need to allow more people to come into the market.

"You need more competition in the sector. We've lost a lot of players. HBOS and Northern Rock have gone.

"We need to create more competition by allowing new people to come in, offering services to Scottish business. They're currently struggling to get that, because the credit crunch is still happening, and that's costing jobs.

"We also, when we come to sell the big stakes the Government owns in Lloyds, HBOS, RBS and the like, that we look to have a more competitive banking sector, that there are smaller banks. That's good for the UK, for the UK financial services sector, good for the customer".

One suggestion is that a Tory government could sell off its stakes in the banks with a share offering aimed at small investors taking small stakes, as the Conservatives did in the 1980s privatisations.

Says Osborne: "We haven't reached that point yet. The first thing is to get the banks nursed back to health. We've got to have a strategic plan. You can't just sell when it looks like a good price. You've got to have a plan for the banking sector".

Taking questions from Glasgow business folks, Mr Osborne also stressed his commitment to high-speed rail connection.

It won't be in the early stages of his intended crackdown on public spending, but he made the point that spending squeezes should not fall only on capital projects. Even if "full guns" are applied, he said it won't be 2015 until the first tracks get laid.

Population experts like to take recent trends and project them forward, which may make them the only people in Britain not to realise how much things have changed with recession.

One effect of subdued growth will likely be that Britain becomes a less attractive place for people to migrate to, so the main driver of recent immigration growth is at least shifted down from fifth gear. Recession can also lead to an increase in out-migration.

But let's suppose they're even partly right when they say population increase is on track for rapid growth over the next 20 years, up by around 10 million to 70 million. By that same reckoning, Scotland's population would stop hovering above 5 million, and add another quarter million.

That raises significant challenges - in housing, for instance, and transport, skills, employment, and areas of social policy around immigration.

Heat map

This is already a busy island, and lopsided to its south-east, in both population and economic terms. And news of the supposed population surge comes along with evidence that the economic map of Britain spreads the benefits of growth unevenly, and does the same with recession.

Experian has compiled a 'heat map', showing the ways recession, and the consequent public spending squeeze, is going to impact differently across Britain's council areas.

It probably won't surprise the people of Blaenau Gwent, Kingston-upon-Hull, Glasgow and Inverclyde to find they are the ones who will experience the worst of the financial stress on households. That includes unemployment, income, debt and savings.

Looking at council finances, Experian forecasts services in the south of England would be least affected by the looming squeeze, the north of England would take the worst of the impact, while Scotland would be somewhere in between.

And looking at prospects of recovery, Experian makes it look good for London, Edinburgh and Leeds. But the list of those with the slowest recovery prospects looks odd, at least from a Scottish perspective, in that it includes East Dunbartonshire, Argyll, and Dumfries and Galloway - either prosperous or benefiting from in-migration.

Hit harder

Add to that a further piece of research, this time from the Institute of Public Policy Research North, based on Tyneside. It has found that recession has hit poorer northern English towns and cities hard because unemployment, already relatively higher, has become disproportionately worse.

It argues that necessary regeneration is stalled because of the slump in housing. And just as Experian finds, those communities most dependent on public sector spend are going to be the communities worst affected by a squeeze.

There's a connection between these forecasts, and it probably matters more to the north of England than it does to Scotland.

If population growth suggests the need to "concrete over" the remaining verdant bits of south-east England, and if this recession is worsening the impact of past ones in exacerbating a north-south divide, then isn't it time to think again about the neglected subject of what Whitehall likes to call "regional policy"?

That could mean proactive means to push both economic opportunity and population growth out of the south-east. It could be done with spending programmes and with tax incentives - even with devolved tax powers.

It's doubtful, however, that the gigantic spend on the Olympics in east London is such a clever place to fire the starting gun.

And it's rare to have the privilege of meeting someone close to the extraordinary phenomenon that is Hannah Montana.

But such a man is Andy Mooney, native of Whitburn in West Lothian. It's hard to imagine any Scot with more marketing clout, having grown Disney Merchandising gross retail sales from $12bn in 2000 when he became its president to $30bn last year. That was after a stellar job heading up Nike apparel.

While his end of the Los Angeles-based business goes from strength to strength, helped by the acquisition of 5,000 superhero characters with Marvel comics, the rest of the vast Disney empire hasn't been finding recession a happy experience. Several films have badly disappointed, and the head of its studio has just been replaced.

New stories

The new approach to the movie business is for what they call "tent-pole" projects - fewer huge projects around which the rest of the business clusters. Those coming up include another Toy Story, another Cars, another Pirates of the Caribbean and another take on Alice in Wonderland.

You might feel the sequel and re-working of past commercial success displays a lack of creative thinking. But according to Mooney, Disney's business is now 60% non-American. That helps explain why they've got creative teams working on new story lines in Japan, India and China. "We want to see ourselves as global story tellers, moving those characters around the world," says Mooney.

As for the merchandising end of things, Mooney is into a lot more than cuddly toys and pyjama sales. He talks of having "tribes" of his staff working across toys, fashion accessories, home products, stationery, consumer electronics,health, beauty and food.

Mickey prints

Disney food? "You'd be surprised," says Mooney. "We're even managing to brand fresh vegetables [around] Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse. We made a conscious decision to exit some of the unhealthier food categories about five years ago, and in turn put an emphasis on getting the kids to eat a little healthier, and that would require more fruit and vegetables. So we've been working with retailers and their private label brands, to introduce the characters into those categories and create ways to help mom get kids to eat these products - through sticker campaigns or collectibles."

Dimensionalising that emotional connection - that is, making a connection with Buzz Lightyear and then finding ways to continue that in different dimensions after you've left the cinema - isn't just driving towards profit from next Christmas' stocking.

Not that they don't want lots of that. But the Disney business model can afford to think long-term. That connection goes on until parenthood and grandparenthood. One part of the Mooney empire is in high value reprints of Mickey Mouse original sketches.

Hear more from Andy Mooney on today's edition of The Business on Radio Scotland, available on iplayer and podcast.

But it doesn't look so good if you're one of those affected.

It was a personal story from someone who signed on this week that brought a sobering jolt on Wednesday as BBC Scotland hosted its Big Debate about the nation's economic future - one of the series of broadcasts trying to discern the path from recession to recovery.

Angela Robson from Erskine worked for 25 years in finance, most recently for Lloyds TSB.

But the credit crunch hit home when the bank started axing jobs.

Her husband, also in the finance sector, lost his job in January.

So they've gone from two comfortable salaries and a company car, with one daughter at university and the other at school, they've burned through most of their savings, and they now face getting by on £100 per week.

Of course, it's no surprise that unemployment continues to rise even as the growth figures show signs of turning the corner back into positive territory. Recessions tend to do that.

But this is an unusual recession. Never in modern times has the contraction been so sharp.

And never before have governments and central banks acted with such vigour to spend their way out of trouble.

If those green shoots are any evidence, then that splurge may just be working - and we can worry about paying off the nation's giant credit card bill when it comes in later.

But there are other unusual aspects to this recession.

The threat of a postal strike is a contrast to the rest of the British economy, where there's been remarkably little industrial strife.

It's been for the French to occupy factories, take bosses hostage and, in several companies, to have employees respond to workplace stress with spates of suicide.

Evidence from America shows loyalty to companies has plunged, and so has trust in bosses.

In Britain, on the whole, the workforce has been remarkably co-operative and compliant - this as 40% of private sector companies froze pay this year.

Bosses have hacked away at benefits such as pensions, holidays and sickness entitlements, while putting staff on part-time work.

But there's also evidence that managers have worked harder than before to draw employees into understanding the problems being faced, with more information and at least a sense of shared pain.

This has been illustrated in an extensive survey carried out by Reed recruitment consultancy, in parallel with one it conducted during the last major recession, 17 years ago.

In that downturn, the groups that took the brunt of the job losses were part-timers, middle managers, and those aged over 55.

Two factors contributed to making sure these categories are not featuring in the current recession.

One is that companies in the early 90s permanently changed their management structures, cutting out those hierarchies that had dominated British business.

So there are far fewer middle managers in the so-called headcount, who can be delayered, structurally adjusted and let go.

The other factor is that laws against age discrimination have been introduced since then, protecting those at the upper end of the working age scale.

So who suffers in this recession? Well, the pain's more widely spread. The good news is for those in the human resource departments, and in IT.

The worst news is for those aged under 25. Not having been around long, they're easier to shed. And not having experience, they struggle to compete for jobs with unemployed older people who DO have experience.

So age discrimination now works against the young.

And there's a sting in the tale of this recession, as we look for ways out of it.

While skilled people are now looking for jobs, the Reed survey has registered a clear warning that employers plan on a post-recession recruitment drive to get skills on board.

Through the recession, and having learned the lessons of past ones, many employers have sought imaginative ways to hold on to the skilled workers they value: from extra training to low-paid gap years.

A significant number are already expanding their IT, sales and marketing forces.

While 24% of firms have shed skilled workers in the downturn, 37% hope to recruit them in the upturn.

In other words, even when we're still in recession, it looks like there's a skills shortage looming.

Not so fast, says Britain's Peter Mandelson. We've got an international agreement to curb bank bonus excess. He's saying that banks that pay with reckless greed (or what some bankers call 'a market rate') can be required by regulators to hold much larger capital deposits.

So while thumbing its nose at public opinion, Goldman Sachs super-brainy financial whizzes are giving the political agreement its first big test. Will the US regulators step in with Goldman?

In other countries, banks are desperate to get out from under the heel of government ownership and at least partial controls.

Consider the argument from Royal Bank of Scotland, for instance. It says it has to pay its best financiers the market rate, even if it has been bailed out with huge amounts of UK government money and is 70% publicly owned.

If that's the case, then the market rate set by Goldman Sachs has a direct impact on the pay bill at Gogarburn headquarters and elsewhere. So we all pay for the consequences of the New York bank's bonus bonanza.

Excess profit

But look at it another way. One reason given today for the astonishingly high pay that bankers expect is that there are so few people capable of doing what they do.

The free market economic theory which they espouse would also suggest that excess profit is a sign of a dysfunctional market. It showed signs of monopolistic behaviour before the crash, and with a lot of competition removed by collapse and merger, that is going to get even more concentrated.

So if the market lacks competition, it's up to government and regulators to make the market function better, to ensure the barriers to entry in the market-place are reduced, so that bankers don't operate as a small, cosy and extremely lucrative global cartel.

So that's another argument for the banks to come under much more regulatory pressure.

Goldman Sachs' largesse to its employees may improve Krug sales for a weekend. But it looks even more short-sighted than the bonus culture was before last year's crash, if it gives governments and regulators that golden opportunity and a new wave of public anger with which to flex their muscles.

A year on from the bail-out of HBOS, its parent company, Lloyds Banking Group, is telling current account holders about changes it is making to the conditions, whether customers wanted that or not.

Where Bank of Scotland and Halifax previously sold it as a high interest current account, it's not high interest any more. Indeed, balances won't earn any interest at all.

Then look at the new bank charges on agreed overdrafts. If you've arranged an overdraft of up to £2,500, then any one day spent in the red will cost you £1. Going over the £2,500 mark puts the daily charge up to £2.

Strange developments

There will be no charges for the privilege of having the bank write to you to tell you that you're overdrawn. No more interest rates to bamboozle you. Couldn't be simpler.

But if Lloyds Banking Group were to advertise the APR, or equivalent annualised percentage rate of interest, for accounts that are only £1 overdrawn, it wouldn't look too good. In fact, it would look something like 36,400%.

And that's where the perverse incentive kicks in, because once you've gone £1 overdrawn, you might as well take out another £2498. It would cost you exactly the same.

Maintaining that overdraft throughout a year, you would pay £365, meaning 14.6% in annual interest.

With such strange developments in personal finance, it's just as well the Money Matters Roadshow is in Glasgow this week, to answer all your questions, and probably some that hadn't occurred to you. Find out more here.