Missing priorities

The First Minister tells us that a separate Scotland will unleash its engineering talent and industry will thrive.

So it is amazing that his white paper, Scotland’s Future, in spite of a prompt by me prior to publication, has not a single sentence on how or whether Scotland is going to create the major engineering institutions required to set the standards and monitor the development of professional engineers.

It is not just engineers: no professional bodies are planned for most medical or scientific disciplines either. All these professionals will have to qualify in a foreign country.

So what then are our government’s priorities?

Well, the white paper promises that we will be eligible for the Eurovision Song Contest and we are told this week that the government has decided that we, the taxpayers, are financing the issue of 84,000 condoms to Commonwealth Games athletes.

It is good to know they are sorting out the important things.

(Dr) Richard Marsh

Strathdon

Aberdeenshire