Have I just read the Scotsman's most ludicrous article ever?

After reading the paper for more than thirty years, I think that I may have done just that.

Steve Glover's piece seems to be connected with the International Television Festival. Let's start here:

But here, unlike most European countries, there's no real difference between the two likely future governments

OK. So far so good. But here's the next bit:

Each passionately subscribes to a form of free market militancy that seems uniquely ill-chosen for the exigencies of the current recession. We're left with a choice between two leaders, each of whom belongs, in world economic terms, to the same faction of the free market Taleban

Can any sentient person think that Britain's two main parties are wedded to the free market? Since 1997 Labour has waged a relentless attack on the freedoms of the British public. The "free market" is simply freedom in action. It's what people do when the government doesn't step in and control things. Just because Labour has sweetheart deals with certain private companies doesn't mean that we enjoy a free market. Just the opposite in fact. And as for the Conservatives, one only needs to see how scared they are of any discussion about the NHS. Neither Labour nor the Conservatives (not to mention the bizarrely named "Liberal" Democrats) have any understanding of what a free market means.

Nor has Mr Glover.

But it gets worse:

The real political power, though, lies not in erasing a conversation but in not allowing it to take place at all. The unlikely father of this technique is surely the Austrian aristocrat and economist Friedrich August Von Hayek. If you've never heard of him, you've seen more than enough of his ideas on television.

Well I have indeed heard of Hayek, and, unlike Mr Glover I suspect, I met Hayek, and I have read all of his books. But I don't recall hearing about Hayek's career as a television producer...

Here's the next bit:

In common with many intellectuals between the wars, Hayek condemned the rise of the new Nazi state. What was unique about his critique was that he felt the Nazis were too left-wing, accusing them of socialism by other means.

Give us a break! Here's a clue Mr Glover: Nazi means National Socialist.

Glover continues:

Hayek, having endured decades of rejection by the political and academic elites as, well, frankly, a headbanger, found a saviour for his theory of monetarism in General Pinochet of Chile, but Pinochet's initiation of the idea resulted in economic catastrophe.

Not quite. Pinochet adopted the "monetarist" policies of Milton Friedman, not Hayek's theories. The term "monetarism" is associated with Friedman's Chicago School of Economics, not with the very different Hayekian Austrian School. Does Glover understand the difference? Besides, what "economic catastrophe" happened in Chile anyway?

Then we get this:

Hayek argued that all western civilisation as we know it advanced from the ownership of private property. This is an impressive and persuasive thesis. Indeed, the only thing it lacks is any evidence whatsoever to support it.

"Persuasive" but without evidence! Look around the world Mr Glover.

Here's the next bit:

Nevertheless, its assumptions underlie the Thatcherite slogan, "The Property Owner's Democracy". This is a phrase that becomes ever more oxymoronic the longer you think about it, but it inspired our hard-of-thinking television programmers to launch an entire genre.

The intemperate rush into heavy debt, and subsequent tragedy fuelled by Location, Location, Location and its endless imitators that saturate our television schedules, has slowed.

And what precisely has this to do with Hayek? Austrians believe in the abolition of state-created fiat money, which is the root cause of the property boom and bust.

Let's ignore Glover's Alabamaphobia * and his blaming Hayek for "Dragons' Den" and "Gok Wan", but consider Glover's odd theory that connects Hayek with neo-conservatism. I suspect that Glover doesn't have a clue about what the term neo-conservatism actually means. Nor does it seem likely that he's read one of Hayek's most famous essays: Why I am Not a Conservative.

(* America's third blackest state)