The LSE report is a "negative portrayal of indy" in the same sense that Debenhams' last set of accounts is a negative portrayal of a major retailer. https://twitter.com/LesleyRiddoch/status/1357271826842472456

And if you're wondering about the quality of @ScotNational's "rebuttal" of this report from one of the top economic research institutes in the world, you only have to note that the anonymously authored piece dismissively describes the authors as "two LSE PhD students". Not quite.

There are three authors: Dr Hanwei Huang is Assistant Professor at the City University of Hong Kong who completed his PhD in Economics at LSE in 2018. Dr Thomas Sampson is Associate Professor of Economics at LSE who completed his PhD in Economics at Harvard in 2011.

The third author is Patrick Schneider, who *is* an Economics PhD student at LSE. Before commencing his PhD in 2018 he worked as an economist for the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank Of England, analysing long-run issues in productivity and trade.

In short the 3 people whose expertise @ScotNational tries to dismiss in its desperation to downplay this report are in fact 3 of the most eminently qualified experts in the world to make this sort of assessment. While whoever wrote the "rebuttal" didn't even put their name to it.