Making a difference

On Saturday I stated that the Scottish government is in the hands of incompetent morons. Perhaps I was unfair. It seems that there may be one minister who is not a moron and may even be competent. In today's Scotsman I read this:

BUSINESS leaders have lauded a dramatic weekend offer by the enterprise minister, Nicol Stephen, to "crash the diary" this week, by cancelling engagements to tackle head-on the vital issues affecting Scotland's economic growth.

The Minister's quick response to the complaints made by the business community is probably not unconnected to his being one of the few people at Holyrood (of any party) to actually have had real experience in the private sector.

We hear a lot from Jack McConnell about wanting Holyrood to be different from Westminster. Labour likes to have quotas for its candidates and so far these have been designed to increase the number of women elected to office. Why not show a real commitment to business by insisting that at least half of Labour's Scottish candidates have worked in the private sector? That would really be doing things differently from Westminster.