By Rab Bruce’s Spider

Would you like to lose some weight before Christmas? There are still a few weeks to go and, if you aimed to lose two or three pounds each week, you could realistically expect to lose a stone by Christmas. There’s a target for you. It’s challenging but possible. It would mean cutting down your food intake, eating healthily and taking plenty of vigorous exercise but you could do it.

Of course, there is rarely a good time of year for dieting. Life tends to get in the way and present such obstacles as birthday celebrations involving cake, lunch dates, evenings out and just the odd occasion when you really, really want that burger, packet of crisps or bar of chocolate. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say you tried to lose that stone and made a good effort at it. How would you feel if, come Christmas Eve, you stand on the scales and have lost twelve pounds? (For the metrically minded among you, say you’ve lost 5.5kg out of a target of 6.5kg).

Have you failed? Technically, yes, because you didn’t hit your target. But you still lost a good deal of weight and proved you could more or less stick to the self-imposed regime. That’s the problem with targets, you see. They are often fairly arbitrary constructs designed simply to encourage a certain behaviour change. Whether you actually hit them or not is often not the point although that would obviously be an ideal. But in the weight loss example, why impose Christmas as a deadline? It’s an obvious choice because of the expected overindulgence but you could equally set yourself the target of losing two stones by the end of February, taking account of some excesses during the Christmas break and coming close to achieving the second target would be an achievement in itself because, unlike targets, actual achievements are real, tangible things.

So it is with the targets for reduction in carbon emissions set by the Scottish Government. The latest figures reveal that the target has been missed for the fourth year in a row and Patrick Harvie, Green MSP, has been expressing his concern over the failure. He is quite right to do this because it is his job to keep pressure on the Scottish Government but the story has, as usual, allowed the Scottish media to produce yet more #SNPBad stories over failure to achieve targets. But while the politicians squabble over the reasons for the failure, it remains true that Scotland’s carbon emissions are reducing, just not as quickly as the Government had hoped. As with other areas such as NHS waiting times and monitoring of school pupil performance, the Scottish Government has set itself very challenging targets. This is only right because setting easy targets defeats their purpose. If the effect of those targets is to improve things overall, then failing to regularly achieve them is not a complete failure in the way that the media likes to portray them.

WE must, of course, be wary of targets. They can be useful but they can also be harmful. For example, the setting of targets for staff working in the financial industry was a major contributor to the culture of taking short cuts in order to achieve short term goals and thus earn individual bonuses at the risk of less spectacular but steady and sustainable growth.

Targets need to be challenging but realistically achievable. They also need to have a purpose. The purpose is not merely to hit a target but to encourage a cultural shift in behaviour patterns in order to bring about lasting improvements in whatever field they are used. Setting arbitrary and nonsensical targets simply in order to appease public opinion is, sadly, all too common in politics. Examples include David Cameron’s assertion that immigration would be cut to "tens of thousands" in apparent ignorance of the fact that the UK cannot control migration from within the EU. If you cannot possibly control something, setting a target to control it is simply absurd.

So let us by all means maintain pressure on the Scottish Government to achieve their targets where those targets are sensible in their aim of improving things but let us also acknowledge that missing a target does not necessarily mean that your entire policy is a failure.