It is always encouraging to see investment going in to the Scotch whisky industry.

Diageo, following on from Pernod Ricard’s £40m investment in its malt distilleries announced last week, have upped the anti - big time - to a cool £1bn to fuel future expansion in the the emerging markets of Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Commentators are very excited by this booming investment. Clearly on the face of it this is a Good Thing. It is good for whisky and the industry, but is it good for Scotland?

Of that headline grabbing figure, £500m is to build two 10m litre Roseile class distillofactories, expand existing capacity by 20m litres, and build new warehousing to store all the maturing spirit in.

Diageo will seek planning permission for Roseile 2 at one of three existing potential sites Teaninich, Inchgower and Glendullan.

It will in addition expand capacity at nearly half its existing 28 distilleries, and is looking to build the second distillery, Roseile 3, in two to three years time.

Diageo said it would consider building a third plant if whisky sales continued to grow at more than 10% a year to make four Roseile class plants.

The other £500m is the working capital for the extra 40m litres (possibly 50m) of spirit per annum that will be laid down over the next five years. Distilling is a very capital intensive business.

The company will increase its existing single malt distilling capacity by 50%.

So it’s £500m in infrastructure and £500m in cash flow over 5 years of extra distillation. ‘100s’ of new jobs will be created. “Whisky Jobs Galore!”

The Guardian reports Campbell Evans of the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) saying that the promise of these new jobs marks ‘a turning point’ for the industry, because ‘while many producers have been increasing production – including reopening mothballed distilleries – it has so far not particularly boosted employment’.

However I happen to know one reopened, mothballed distillery that employs 51 people.

The reality is that whisky distilling is super efficient. The £4bn turnover industry employs only 8,000 people - and most of them are in administrative, warehousing, production and marketing roles; around 750 are employed in distilling alone.

Few have The Independent reminded folk that “in 2009 Diageo ended a 192- year history of Johnnie Walker with the Ayrshire town when it closed the facility in March with 500 job losses.” 200 were relocated.

So how many new jobs will the £1bn new investment create? How many are the SWA’s vaunted ‘turning point’, the news channels’ headline grabber, the ‘Whisky Jobs Galore’?

Er, actually 100 new jobs. That’s £10m per job.

In addition, to be fair, there will be 20 apprentices and graduate trainees per year, over the next five years, but these maybe funded by government initiatives. There will be construction jobs but these are rarely for locals.

By contrast, James Watt’s £12m turnover BrewDog today has announced 40 new jobs - for the investment of £2.2m

Diageo increases its current single malt distilling capacity by a whopping 50% and creates just 100 jobs. It is this extraordinary efficiency that we should be in awe of - not the phoney ‘jobs galore’ spin.

Who would have thought Diageo dirty tricks?

Diageo again caught red-handed fiddling the result of a 'people's choice' awards ceremony, and exposed to the world via social media.

The powerful like to suffocate dissent, promote their agenda and eliminate competition. But like the Arab Spring - Syria, Bahrain etc. - social media has given volume to the small voice.

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At the recent World Whisky Conference Diageo's Nick Morgan called for a conversation.

In whisky industry parlance, a 'conversation' is a euphemism for 'this is what we are going to do'.

The subject is, surprise surprise, the contentious new category, blended malt. Morgan's proposition, as it was tweeted by drinks industry news provider Just Drinks, is he wants to sow the seeds of converting existing single malts in to new blended malts. This is the reheated Cardhu Debacle all over again. back then in 2004 Diageo were obliged to concede that, while not exactly illegal, it was not in the spirit of things to hoodwink the consumer. At the time, in full Arnie-mode, a spokesman said: "we'll be back".

And here they are.

But this time the landscape has changed: SWA members have now seen the light; a new category has been specifically created for this purpose.

Nick's conversation is about setting the narrative for allowing certain single malts to become blended malts. The reasoning is simple, and of course it is to do with money: a blended malt would allow the better margins of a single malt to be achieved, but with the unlimited volume of a blended whisky: blended malt equals the best of both worlds. This economic argument has already won over SWA members; there is no longer any industry opposition.

How will whisky retailers be convinced? Continuity of supply, better price points. And the whisky-buying public? Expect platitudes along the lines of 'blending is an art', our master blender, cheaper prices for your favourite malt, the brand looks the same, no one will notice the difference, etc.

And of course they would be right. 90% of whisky is exported overseas, so brand-conscious Johnny Foreigner is unlikely to catch on to the deception, that his whisky no longer comes form the specific place that he thought has been told it came from, but instead some anonymous blending facility. And, and this is the main point, if origin, spirit, appellation and brand are decoupled, where will it all end?

After all, the only difference on his favourite Scotch whisky will be the transposition of two little words, just 3mm high: 'single' for 'blended'.

The SWA are determined to force The Blanded Malt category upon us all.

The SWA is 60% owned by Diageo & Pernod. It represents 95% of distlling capacity but only a a third of Scottish-based whisky companies. What right does it have to play fast and loose with laws that will impact so heavily on Scotland's heritage and image overseas?

What's wrong with the existing title "Vatted Malt" that is clearly distinguishable in any tongue by both sight and sound from the existing terms "blended whisky" and "single malt".

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The er... draft Scotch Whisky Regulations 2008 have been circulated to the whisky industry

The consultation process, duly promised by Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), concerns proposals by the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) ostensibly to ‘enhance the protection of Scotch Whisky and protect consumers’.

The consultation ends on 31st March - yet I haven’t heard any discussion or debate about the implications.

DEFRA acknowledge that “The industry is highly concentrated with the top 6 companies accounting for 85% of the distilling capacity and case sales.” Nearly 60% is controlled by just two companies alone.

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It's more like the Mugabe's press department everyday.

Quoted in the Scotsman, the SWA said that the "overwhelming majority of the industry was supportive of the Government's proposals for new Scotch whisky regulations".

Not true. Firstly they are not the government's proposals but the SWA's that the government has been asked to implement. Sure the SWA does represent 95% of the distilling capacity, with 80% of the SWA owned by just 5 companies, the largest of which also provides the Chairman. They probably are rubbing their hands with glee knowing the huge commercial benefits they will enjoy. But SWA members make up only a third of the companies that comprise the whole whisky business, albeit the most powerful.

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This tongue-in-cheek parody is a theoretical extrapolation, a glimpse of the way the whisky industry could develop. Pure fantasy or manic paranoia.

Single malt sales stagnate.

Blended malt sales explode after industry 'conversation'.

Lagavulin blended malt (50:50 with Caol Ila) grows from 100,000 cases to 500,000 cases.

Single malts become very expensive, driving down demand. Baccarat crystal decanters used.

Having disassociated the brand from the distillery with Blended Malts, redundant distilleries are shutdown.

William Grant bought by Edrington Group.

5 more distillo-factories built, smaller inefficient distillery close as production is further centralised.

Cardhu sales hit 1 million cases.

Single malts become non-existent in an increasing number of overseas markets.

Edrington absorbed by Bacardi.

Lagavulin Islay blended malt production comes from Caol Ila. Lagavulin becomes whisky heritage site.

CL Burn Stewart bought by Pernod.

Whisky laws changed: blended malt category replaced by “Scotch Whisky”

15 Single malt distilleries left in operation and 8 distillo-factories.

Cardhu Red Barrel sales, having reached 20 million cases, start to fall as consumers tire of the ubiquitous brand.

Diageo Ricard sells off whisky interests to bioethanol producer.

New anti-counterfeiting laws sought by the Scotch Whisky Association may have more sinister implications.

The proposed laws will add Scotch whisky ‘regions’ to an EU list of Geographical Indications that the World Trade Organisation would be obliged to protect. Currently unscrupulous overseas traders can pass off inferior products by using the regional Scottish names for domestically produced spirit that was not made there. Obviously action against counterfeiting and protecting the integrity of single malt scotch whisky is welcome.

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