Striking it lucky for Scotland

DAVID Booth's story is the type that sends sales of metal detectors soaring - and the rest of us drooling with envy.

Less than a year after digging up four 2,000 year-old gold neckbands, he has made another valuable find - a well-preserved 800-year-old silver antique reckoned to be worth several thousand pounds.

Not bad for a hobby that Mr Booth's partner describes as "a bit dorky". Metal-hunters are not principally motivated by money - though the odd thousand pounds do help.

It's the thrill of discovering items buried for hundreds of years that bring the ancient world alive.

But Mr Booth's success may have the finance minister John Swinney wondering if this could be a neat way out of those horrible spending cuts ahead. Why not tool up all those civil servants at St Andrew's House, send them out into the fields with metal detectors and hit on sufficient treasure to make good the 42 billion that the chief economic adviser tells us is the "cumulative loss foregone" in public spending?

Mr Booth has the aura of a walking good-luck charm. Just the man, you might think, that the mightily humbled Royal Bank of Scotland now needs in its business finance division to restore its fortunes back to the glory days.

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