Down with "social divisiveness"

Our governing politicians are beginning to notice that Scotland's population is falling. The solution: encourage more incomers

Mr McConnell's message was aimed at bright and qualified youngsters from outside Scotland, including the rest of Britain and the EU, and further afield. More than 5000 overseas students graduate in Scotland annually, and the executive wants them to stay to help stem the country's falling population.

Many workers from beyond the EU would require work permits and visas, a power reserved to Westminster and a source of criticism provoked by the detention of some skilled workers and their children in Dungavel.

Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser rightly observes that the executive has contributed to the population decline by refusing to reform "public services". But of course what is needed is the privatisation of almost all of these so-called services. Then our economy would be the envy of Europe. In the meantime the government is actively making things worse:

MINISTERS are to scrap the publication of national exam "league" tables, describing them as ''meaningless".

Peter Peacock, education minister, said the tables in their current form were "illusory", offering only "a very narrow measure of a school".

In a separate major reform of school education, Mr Peacock will announce today that he is scrapping national testing under the 5-14 programme and will consult the public on plans to replace the tests with a sophisticated form of scientific sampling.

Of all the Lab/Lib administration's crimes, the worst is surely the destruction of Scotland's education system. The educational-political establishment is paranoid about any kind of objective testing. Very well, let's expand this principle. It seems to me that elections for parliament are divisive - how devastating it must be for losing candidates to be "socially excluded" from power. Instead MSPs must be selected at random from the electoral roll - in a "sophisticated scientific" way of course. Think of all the money that could be saved by abolishing elections. Indeed, given that the idea of inculcating knowledge is regarded as being somewhat fascist these days, why not pick teachers at random as well?