On Scotland's people...

The Scottish Household Survey "is a continuous survey based on a sample of the general population in private residences in Scotland" which is "designed to provide reliable and up-to-date information on the composition, characteristics, attitudes and behaviour of Scottish households and individuals, both nationally and at a sub-national level". The numbers of respondents are very large - running into the tens of thousands - and as a result, it is always an exciting moment for obsessives when new annual figures are published. My remarks of last year bear repetition:

"I’m a great fan of quantitative social research. While much of the texture of people’s lives are lost by its persistent reduction of lived experience to a webway of percentages, percentiles, means and medians, groups above or below average, the quantitative view invariably tells us something we did not know, or only dimly appreciated. I’ve found that life exercises strong temptations to regard the self and your ordinary life, universalised, as the ordinary condition of most men and women. While sometimes, images and information succeed in temporarily rebuking this jealous sense of one’s own ordinariness, it tends to return, the lives lead by our fellow citizens collapsing once again into our own experience, its tenor informed by the settings in which we loiter and the people we meet. Big, hefty quantitative research is uniquely empowered to give those comfortable assumptions a shoogle. Even if the aggregation of conceptual categories can be problematic, and leave us empty-handed in terms of the whys and wherefores which brings that state of affairs about, the social frame is sketched in in our minds. We know ourselves better. That at least is my polemic on the goodness of quantitative research, and the interest in the Scottish Household Survey..."

The survey's concerns are domestic and civic, capturing forms of life in Scotland in broad quantitative categories, from marital status to housing tenure, internet access to participation in "cultural activities", rates of smoking to rates of saving, perceptions of anti-social behaviour and attitudes to peoples' environments. For example, did you know that 51% of Scotland's adults (folk aged 16 or over) are married, while 1% are in same-sex civil partnerships, while 6% reported being divorced, while a further 3% were separated? Or that 46% of men are in full time work in Scotland, compared to 28% of women, while only 1% of men "look after the home/family" compared to 10% of women? All is not entirely positive. In particular, I get agitated by "ethnicity" statistics. In particular, how can white or black be ethnic categories? Isn't white a loose coalition of pinkish pigments? I'm at a loss to see how skin colour can plausibly relate to the cultural and social differences that support ethnic distinctions. Indeed, such categories are basically racialising, however innocently the statisticians might have resorted to them. Here are just a few of the other statistics which caught my eye. 

On housing tenure...

In 2008-09, 66% of householders “owner occupied”, with 22% in social rented housing, 10% in private rented housing and 2% making some other arrangement. This is much the same as last year, save that social housing loses ground 1%, accruing to private rental tenure. We don't always notice transformative social changes. If we needed a reminder, contrast 2009's figures with those a decade previously. While in 1999, owner occupation was still a high 61%, 32% of respondents at that time lived in social rented housing, compared to only 5% who undertook private leases. The shifts are even more telling if we leap back further in time to 1961. At that time, only 25% of folk owned and occupied their own houses. Returning to the “15% most deprived”, the rate of home ownership within this category is 39%, up from 34% last year. Social rented housing remains the predominant form of housing tenure among the most deprived at 53%, decreasing from 57% last year. 

Safe walking home alone?
In the middle of a very fulsome section on attitudes towards our civic habitats, risks of crime and perceptions anti-social behaviour, they asked three quarters of their respondents if they felt safe walking home alone at night. 75% of adults said they felt fairly or very safe doing so, while 20% of the total feel imperilled doing so. However, the figures also bear out the fact that men and women's comfort occupying public space and perceptions of endangerment differ. While most respondents of both genders felt safe, there was a 19% difference, with 85% of men feeling safe in the posited situation, compared with 66% of women. On the very unsafe or bit unsafe side of things, only 12% of men reported concerns, while 30% of women thought they were endangered, walking home alone at night.

On smoking... 
In 2009,  24.3% of respondents smoked, a decrease on last year in line with an (almost) continuous reduction in smoker numbers since 1999, when 30.7% of the population partook. Men have a higher rate of smoking than women, 26% of the chaps doing so compared to 23% of the chapesses. Smoking is most common among men aged 25 - 34, 33% of them lighting up. While only 3% of those still at school owned up to nicotine use, a massive 59% of those unable to work due to short term illness do so, followed by 51% of the unemployed seeking work and 48% of those classified as permanently sick or disabled. Like so many of these figures, deprivation looms large here. The contrast is at its most delineated when the most deprived 15% is compared with the rest of Scotland. Remember the average rate of smoking across the population is 24%. 41% of the most deprived Scots smoke, compared with 21% of the rest of the country.   

On "life satisfaction"...
A rather irritating phrase one can imagine a vacuous life coach goading their devotees with. However, not an insignificant concern, one's fundamental happiness with one's existential lot: "All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole nowadays on a scale where 0 means extremely dissatisfied and 10 means extremely dissatisfied?" This question is new to the Survey and happily revealed that 15% are extremely satisfied with life and that 86% of all respondents choose positive numbers, 8 being the number selected by the highest number of people (29%). Women were slightly more disposed to express extreme satisfaction than men, 17% of women doing so to 13% of men. Many older people seem to be having a whale of a time. Just under a quarter of 60 - 74 year olds (21%) said they were extremely satisfied with life. That said, 11% picked the middle point on the scale, presumably denoting neither satisfaction nor dissatisfaction with their continuing vitality.   

On internet use...
In the last quartile of 2009, 67% of households were connected to the internet, up from only 40% in the first quartile of 2003. In 2008, 68% of men use the internet, whether on a personal computer or at work, while 30% don’t. Amongst the ladies, 61% make use of it on the same terms, with a 7% hike in female internet non-use, up at 37%. Recently published figures show that use continues to rise, with 71% now making use of the internet whether at work or at home, while only 27% never make use of it. On the female front, usage now stands at 67%, compared to only 31% who never give it a go. Age clearly plays a part in this. That said, a great many people across the generations now have access. While an overwhelming 90% of 16 - 24 year olds have access, although usage declines slightly from this useful high, usage remains in the 70s and 80 percentages until a sharp decline in those over 60 to just under 50%. On the phenomenon of the “silveriest surfers” in Scotland, the figures show that 90% of women over 75 still don’t use the internet – while 19% of more tec-savvy chaps over 75 “surf”. Affluence makes itself felt here. Only a tiny 4% of those in households with incomes in excess of £40,000 do not use the internet. In stark contrast, of those in the 15% of households which are most deprived, a significantly larger 42% of people don't connect. 

On banking...

Asked, do you have a bank or building society account? 93% said yes, while 4% confirmed they did not, another 3% not owing up, one way or the other. Contrast this with 1999, when 86% of respondents confirmed accounts, while a significantly larger number – 12% – had no account in the household. Here's an easily overlooked deprivation variable. While only 7% of all respondents had a Post Office card account, among 14% of those who are most deprived have one. Compared to the 1% of the total population with no account of any description, in line with last year's results, 4% of the most deprived continue without one. 

On reading for pleasure...

Books are great friends and boon companions in my life. 63% of the population think so too, reading for enjoyment's sake, but sniffishly excluding newspapers, magazines and such like. Affordably printed and made available through public libraries, books have a potentially emancipatory, democratic accessibility, partially reflected in the responses. While those with degrees are the most likely to read (82%), 47% of those with no qualifications. Women are keener bibliophiles than men, 69% of them reporting an enthusiasm for reading, compared to 57% of men. Moreover, for most readers, their books are almost constant companions, 83% dipping into one at least once a week, with 10% doing so less often than weekly, but certainly once a month.

Those are just a few, hastily collected bits and pieces. The report itself runs to over a hundred pages, with innumerable graphs and divisions by category. For those of you who enjoy a good going bout of social research in your spare time, you can read the whole publication here.

On internet banning orders...

This is a blog typically given over to a measure of pompous frivolity. What follows, however, is a discussion of a subject which is anything but frivolous. I’m sure all of you have read, skimmed and encountered the harrowing, suggestive accounts of the crimes against children perpetrated by Neil Strachan and James Rennie. Lord Bannatyne gave both life sentences, Strachan with a minimum term of 16 years, Rennie 13 years. Four others were convicted of offences associated with this conspiracy. It must have been an appalling case for the jury to encounter. An experience which none could have anticipated as they gingerly approached the receptions with their forms from the court’s clerk on their first day. Encountering the indictment, hearts must have sunk.

I don’t intend to add anything more to the discussion of these people’s crimes, nor comment on their punishment. Rather, what is of interest is the broader significance of the case, which has been described as a “landmark” in the identification of sexually abusing conspiracies – and the transmission of that identification into successful convictions in Scots courts. Kenny MacAskill has blandly repeated that “lessons will be learned” from the case. This I don’t doubt. Experience and integration of its teachings are an inevitable part of activity. What particularly concerns me – troubles me – is some of the policy options and the restrictions on liberty which are being mooted.

Personally, I find the intervention of senior police officers into policy discussions generally rather problematic. Certainly, informed insiders can identify regulatory failures and barriers to their efficient performance of their tasks. Equally, countervailing interests insist that regulation should present a barrier, that implementations and enforcement of public power must be constrained. Although little-commented on, at the very end of October, the Herald carried a story, quoting Detective Superintendent Allan Jones, who was in command of the police operation which brought Rennie and Strachan to court, in which he made the following suggestions.

“The ubiquitous availability of the internet and its use as a discreet and efficient medium of contact has meant that some perverted individuals have used this otherwise positive attribute as a means to perpetrate their deviant behaviour.

“My personal view is that people who have been observed electronically exchanging this type of imagery should, after appropriate investigation and punishment by the police and other authorities, have their internet service provision withdrawn.

“This is because there can be no guarantee that having been punished, they are not going to go back and do it again.”

Although appropriately keen to stress this is a personal opinion, and not a corporate suggestion, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice told parliament, on the issue of restricting sex offenders’ use of the internet that “We’re prepared to look at anything in how we make our communities safer from serious sex offenders”. I must say, I’ve serious qualms about this suggestion. Although MacAskill is clearly committing himself to nothing, the idea that anything is permissible is, I think, a pernicious one, however hideous the convicted person.

Part of the explanation for this, I think, originates in our confused and ambivalent categorization of individuals broadly labelled ‘paedophiles’. Terms such as wicked, wilfully evil come readily to mind – both public and judicial – in summarising feelings of condemnation and horror. The idea of choice, responsibility and connivance are all implicated in lending this judgement its full force. Simultaneously, look at what the police officer says, and what it seems to imply. Consider the place which psychological, medicalising accounts of child sex offenders has in the field of people who talk about the “management” of paedophiles. An idea of lack of control, of an almost irresponsible, organic drive to behave in a particular way exemplified by the idea that he’ll do it again does not sit easily alongside justifications for punishment and a pecuniary analysis of guilt which can be effaced by “paying debts to society”. Here we are treading on the boundary between traditional explications of the legal and criminal process – and ideas of confinement and constraint for public safety. Between insanity in bar of trial – and the supposed wilful and consciously enacted malice of a sagacious prisoner.

My point, and my qualm, really concern the extremity and proportionality of the measure. People use the internet in innumerable ways to banish loneliness, overcome isolation, make material acquisitions, as bloggers to engage in the creative exchange of opinion, to communicate with people, to spend hours on World of Warcraft. “Serious sexual offenders” are an unpopular category. Few might be pinched by a serious curtailing of their liberties of movement and relations with the world. Obviously, as MacAskill describes it, the category is far, far too unjustifiably broad. Rape is a profoundly serious matter, but typically has no connection with use of the internet at all. What of those whose offences do have such a connection? Who decides?

I imagine that this is a subject where the blogosphere may fan into a spectrum of opinions of many colours. I’d be interested in your views – and how you’d conceptualise the problem or justify or refute the restriction on the liberty of citizens being vaguely proposed by the police officer and vaguely answered by the Cabinet Secretary. For myself, I’m not convinced that the extremity of the measure and the restrictions on liberty implied are justified, even by the evil which police officers might cite to justify it. Lack of control can be a haunting experience. Overcompensation lending a sense of control and having a robust account of statutory powers of discipline can seem to stopper these anxieties about basic powerlessness. Yet beneath the bung, I’m not sure that pressure doesn’t build up all the same. Shouting to jilt the silence and make you feel less alone does not furnish you with real company.

Scotland's secret quantitative life...

I’m a great fan of quantitative social research. While much of the texture of people’s lives are lost by its persistent reduction of lived experience to a webway of percentages, percentiles, means and medians, groups above or below average, the quantitative view invariably tells us something we did not know, or only dimly appreciated. I’ve found that life exercises strong temptations to regard the self and your ordinary life, universalised, as the ordinary condition of most men and women. While sometimes, images and information succeed in temporarily rebuking this jealous sense of one’s own ordinariness, it tends to return, the lives lead by our fellow citizens collapsing once again into our own experience, its tenor informed by the settings in which we loiter and the people we meet.

Big, hefty quantitative research is uniquely empowered to give those comfortable assumptions a shoogle. Even if the aggregation of conceptual categories can be problematic, and leave us empty-handed in terms of the whys and wherefores which brings that state of affairs about, the social frame is sketched in in our minds. We know ourselves better. That at least is my polemic on the goodness of quantitative research, and the interest in the Scottish Household Survey 2007-08, published this week. Obscured by the froth and vinegar attending Megrahi’s release, the survey contains various interesting little sparkling motes of illumination into Scottish life, and per the report’s mandatory corny ante-title, Scotland’s People. Here are just a few of the statistics which caught my eye. For those of you who enjoy a good going bout of social research in your spare time, you can read the whole publication here.

On t’internet…

One for the bloggers, this. We pioneers of citizen journalism and happily, among the digitally included. On the question of use, asked flatly, 68% of men use the internet, whether on a personal computer or at work, while 30% don’t. Amongst the ladies, 61% make use of it on the same terms, with a 7% hike in female internet non-use, up at 37%. On the phenomenon of the “silver surfer” in Scotland, the figures show that 93% of women over 75 don’t use the internet – while 17% of apparently more tec-savvy chaps over 75 “surf”. 44% of men aged 60 – 74 use the t’internet, while only 33% of women the same age. For both men and women under 44, internet use is in the 80% + region. Deprivation emerges as an exclude force here. Among the 15% classified as most deprived, 50% use the net personally or for work, some 14% lower than the average across Scotia. On the home access question, 64% had access in the last quarter of 2008, compared to only 40% in the first quarter of 2003. Deprivation reappears here also. While the Scotland averages are around 60% have home access, 40% don’t – these figures invert among the most deprived, with 59% not able to access the internet at home.

On being cultural…

I’ve mentioned this before, in the context of unpopular operatics and balletics. The lassies are more cultural than the chaps, once again, with 77% of women getting up to something cultural, to only 67% of men. On the figure of reading, which I mentioned before, men continuing to be dismal, with only 57% of respondents reading for pleasure, opposed to 70% of women. This is a decrease on all counts on the previous figures. Marginally cheering news for Scottish Opera, with a swelling 1% increase on last figures, to 6& of the population taking an interest in howling Brunhildas and yammering hairdressers. Scottish Ballet, however, languishes stead on its 5%. The National Theatre of Scotland may be more cheerful, with 28% of the population up for plays and drama, including panto. A quarter of the population, however, enjoys “none of the above” even once across the year, including museums, galleries, the cinema, libraries, live music – or all the rest. A pretty grim life, that.

On housing tenure…

On housing tenure in 2008, 66% of householders were “owner occupied”, with 23% in social rented housing, 9% in private rented housing and 2% making some other arrangement. Contrast this with the figures from 1999, where the percentages were 61, 32, 5 and 2 percent respectively. Contrast this with the reported owner occupation rate in 1961, which was only 25% of the total. When mapped against the Survey’s cohort identified as the “15% most deprived”, the rate of home ownership within this category is 34%, with a much higher use of socially rented housing, at 57%. Interestingly, with this 15% excised from the whole, and the “rest of Scotland” is examined along the same lines, owner occupation runs at 72%, use of social rented housing 17%.

On banking…

Particularly interesting, this. Asked, do you have a bank or building society account? 91% said yes, while 5% confirmed they did not, another 5% not owing up, one way or the other. Contrast this with 1999, when 86% of respondents confirmed accounts, while a significantly larger number – 12% - had no account in the household. Like much of the survey, deprivation seems to be a key variable. “4% of households in the 15% most deprived areas did not have an account of any kind compared with only 1% in the rest of Scotland” (2009, 77).

Savings or investments…

The survey also enquired about whether households had either of the above between 1999 and 2008. Rates vary a bit – and toughminded souls telling the researcher to stuff their question increase from 6% in 1999 to 9% in 2008 – but in the period a maximum of 54% of householders have any savings or investments between ’99 and ’08, while households admitting having no savings varies from a low of 37% in 2002/03 to a high of 42% in 2008.

Purchasing goods on credit…

52% of households have and have used a credit card from one of their collective wallets, while 34% use no kind of credit in 2008 – be it mail order schemes, charge cards, hire purchase or what have you. Peering into how credit relates to types of household – be they single adult, small adult, single parents, single pensioners or what have you – the single pensioner is the least likely to have a credit card (31%), and the most likely to make use of none of these streams of debt (54%), followed by single parents (46%).

On highest qualification…

24% of respondents in ‘07/08 had a degree or professional qualification. Splendidly, at this level, there is a basic gender parity with 25% of male and 24% of female respondents. Roughly the same % of the total, 23% have no qualifications – including O grades, Highers and equivalents. Given prevailing educational policies, the weighting of this towards the older cohorts is perhaps unsurprising, with 42% of 60 – 74 year olds and 56 % of those older than 75 have no qualifications.

On driving licenses…

Think everyone can drive? (I certainly can’t. Hate the hideous metal things.) Am I a lonely, incompetent, faintly emasculated soul? Apparently not! Only 67% of adults hold full diving licenses, of which 76% are men and 60% women. Among the young – those 16 – 24, 45% of chaps can legally tot their vehicle, 40% of chapesses can. That means that being driving-license bearing youth pitches you into the minority. Yeehaw.

On puffing fags…

Recorded averages put smoking rates at around 26% of men and 25% of women questioned. Among the “youff”, the percentages are higher, with 30% of male 16 – 24 year olds are smoke cracked, to 28% of nicotine-soused young women. Apparently, 58% of those classified as “unemployed and seeking work smoke”, while a massive 64% of those unable to work due to short term ill-health do so. Devil making smoky work for idle hands, there, I imagine.

On being Green…

No, the question is not whether you are yet another bald man, standing for public office representing the Scottish Green Party. Rather, and arguably, much more simply – the question – do you recycle? If so, what? Its pretty de minimus stuff – namely, did you recycle anything in the past month. But still, interesting to see changes in patterns. In 2008, 83% of households recycled some newspapery artefacts, an increase from a mere 45% in 2003. Given our boozy nation undoubtedly generates a good deal of glass bottles, a pleasing 70% of households chucked one of their old Merlot bottles into the recycling tubs, another increase on the 2003 figure of 35%. Interesting variations in whether folk recycle by what kind of house they live in, be it bungalow or flat.

That’s my selection. Plenty of other material in the Report's 200-odd pages to titillate and delight the quantitatively sensitive that I've left out. Equally, there are political implications associated with the data and in particular, the continuing exclusions associated with deprivation in Scotland. The detail serves to remind us of the consequences of deprivation in small places, and how far it acts to constrict access to public goods and society's cultural capital.