Pioneering spirit

Dan Macdonald’s enthusiasm for his Scotland Means Business reports (Letters, 25 June) is laudable. However, N-56 may have missed one of the key lessons from the Danish model.

I admit it is difficult to argue with their plans for a long-term infrastructure strategy, an export-led growth policy, increased research and development spend on renewables and financial services, a productivity-boosting approach and a business-supportive tax regime.

However, the Scottish Government already supports many of these principles in its 
Government Economic Strategy from September 2011.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

It suggests positioning Scotland as a world leader in low-carbon activities, creation of a national renewables infrastructure fund, long-term investment through the Scottish Futures Trust and Next Generation Digital Fund, investing in higher education and promoting opportunities in overseas growth markets.

It also states that Scotland’s public sector should work collaboratively with the private, academic and third sectors, in pursuit of delivering growth and economic recovery – which is also one of the key N-56 proposals.

Therefore, there may be something else missing if N-56 believes the current economic approach is not working.

Take the Danish Globalisation Council, for example. Its first priority was to understand what created Denmark’s prosperity historically.

It discovered, through business analysis, that it was their culturally ingrained ability to collaborate and find new solutions to existing problems; ie co-operation was the key to their national economic strategy.

Therefore, N-56 should be 
asking the fundamental question: what characteristic delivered prosperity in Scotland in the first place?

There are many possibilities, but I would like to suggest the pioneering spirit, which historically led to many new engineering and scientific inventions, and to successfully work in many spheres and areas of the world where others had failed.

Brian Pope

Chartered Engineer CEng MICE

Hillsborough

County Down

(working in Glasgow and Belfast)