Alf Young on Tuesday: The latest quarterly forecast from the British Chambers of Commerce is packed with heavy numerical symbolism. Over the next two or three quarters, the BCC expects UK growth �to be slightly negative or zero�, making a technical recession �a distinct possibility�.

The latest quarterly forecast from the British Chambers of Commerce is packed with heavy numerical symbolism. Over the next two or three quarters, the BCC expects UK growth "to be slightly negative or zero", making a technical recession "a distinct possibility".

Over the next two or three years, it thinks UK unemployment could top the two-million mark. And in the midst of this downturn, it believes the government is "very likely" to breach its own golden rule, that it should only borrow to invest over the economic cycle.

However, the Scottish arm of the Chambers network thinks our economy can avoid outright recession, as it did last time around, in the early 1990s. So does Scotland's first minister, who penned an article for the Sunday Times this weekend, claiming "Scotland's economy is performing significantly better that the UK as a whole, albeit this is a relative improvement against an absolute decline".

Both Liz Cameron for the Scottish Chambers and Alex Salmond cited, in evidence, Scotland's recent growth performance. It had "matched or surpassed that of the UK in each of the past three quarters", said Salmond. "We have equalled or exceeded UK growth rates in each of the last three quarters," was Cameron's almost identical formulation.

In truth, we know nothing about the comparative growth performance of Scotland and the UK for the most recent (April/June) quarter, when economic prospects in the UK and the eurozone have taken a decided turn for the worse. We know provisionally that the UK economy managed a meagre 0.2%. We won't know the comparable Scottish figure until it is published in October.

Those three successive quarters of matching or surpassing, equalling or exceeding the UK as a whole cover only the second half of 2007 and the first three months of this year. In the third quarter of 2007, when the global credit crunch was just beginning to break surface and oil was still priced around $70 a barrel, Scottish growth was 0.8% against a UK rate of 0.6%.

In the final three months of last year, both Scotland and the UK grew at 0.6%. In the first quarter of 2008, both rates slowed, to just 0.3%. I leave readers to judge whether that picture justifies the first minister's claim that Scotland is performing significantly the better of the two. Perhaps the inclusion of that almost Orwellian qualifying phrase about "relative improvement against an absolute decline"

rather gives the game away.

In the most recent quarter for which a (provisional) Scottish growth number is available, the sharp 10.9% fall in Scottish banking's contribution to national GDP was a particular cause for concern. Financial services are a keystone of Scotland's future prosperity. They are also a significant employer. Any sustained contraction in activity there would be very painful.

We know it must concern Salmond for he took the very unusual step, for a politician, of issuing a message of support for his former employer, Royal Bank of Scotland, when it released its interim results, revealing its first loss in 40 years, on August 8. Many Scots, shareholders, employees and others, will hope the first minister is right in his conviction that Royal Bank "will overcome current challenges to become both highly profitable and highly successful once again".

But that aspiration, like claims Scottish economic resilience will see us through the current downturn, will only amount to anything if the bank and the wider Scottish economy deliver the goods.

The heavy numerical symbolism in the latest BCC forecast comes with a purpose, to try and persuade the Bank of England that it should start cutting interest rates soon. Recession - albeit technical - and two million unemployed are emotive outcomes, charged with political significance.

But the actual economic reality of two successive quarters of 0.1% growth, say, against two successive quarters when the economy contracts by 0.1%, is actually less significant, in output terms, than growth falling from 0.8% to 0.6% to 0.3%, as it has done, in Scotland, between July of 2007 and March of this year. Two million unemployed when 29 million people are in employment is a rather different place to be than having two million out of work when only 25 million have jobs.

I don't doubt rival politicians and business lobbying groups will continue their habit of trying to squeeze some advantage out of even the most provisional data. And they will continue to highlight numerical stepping stones and thresholds as if they carried us all into completely new economic territory.

Economic reality is a lot more subtle, a great deal more complex. Numbers have a power to inform, but they can only ever be a proxy for that underlying reality. And forecasts? They are simply a description of what might happen next. And I can tell you one thing without a shadow of a doubt. If I had a pound for every forecast I've ever had to read that turned out, in the fullness of time to be wide of the mark, I would have money to bu