A Place to Stand

  Last Saturday I wrote of a book discussing why we Scots, at least in Scotland though expatriates are quite the opposite, tend to back off form trying to achieve things. I must admit getting to new chapters at the end of the book I find the author wittering about how we can feel good without economic growth, living in harmony with the planet and maintaining enforced equality which suggests she has gone native. However the worth of a thought does not necessarily determine the worth of the thinker.

   As Pournelle says "free people aren't equal, equal people aren't free" which is self evidently true. Economic growth does not itself guarantee happiness but being better off certainly helps, though the law of diminishing returns applies. However economic success, personal achievement and happiness all have personal freedom as a major cause. Growth is so obviously popular that every politician claims to have it as their first priority, even those who have no slightest intention of doing so. Thus any government that doesn't achieve growth is, by definition, either opposed to the people's wishes or incompetent (or both) and unworthy of trust in any other objective.

    So anyway here is a list of some ideas (many offered here previously as ways of improving the economy) of increasing Scotland's self confidence, entrpreneurialism and achievement.:

1. Cut Income Tax by 3p as allowed under devolution. (other proposals originally on this link)
2. Add vitamin D to staple foods sold here.
3. Fire everybody in BBC Scotland. Their attitude of politically correct miserabilism rots our collective (or individual) souls.
4. Run TV series about the achievements of great successful Scots across history. What better way is there of making people both feel good about their country and that they personally can contribute? The amount of money needed to pay for a TV series in nothing in a national budget.
5. A space X-Prise. Even something as simple as the asteroid landing prise would produce a sense of achievement.
6. Require any Scottish X-Prise competition vehicle to carry a saltiire prominently.
7. Propose knighthoods and other such titles to people who have actually achieved something not just  parasitic civil servants, union leaders, retiring politicos and party donors.
8. Get rid of destructive, jobsworth civil servants.
9. Give prises to pupils (and to teachers) when they produce good results.
10. Put a couple of white lasers in Glasgow and Edinburgh with their beams crossing overhead, visible across much of the central belt - just to show we can.
11. Sponsor an annual Road From the Isles hovercraft race. (#28)
12. Make a DVD of Scotland's history & post it to Scots, or those with Scots names, over the world. Include links encouraging Scottish tourism.
13. A schools voucher system would improve personal freedom.
14. No new politically correct vindictive bans. The smoking ban was NOT in manifestos at the last election.
15. Introduce a right to referendums on motions that would not increase government power as UKIP have called for.
16. The smoking ban is an illiberal restriction on individual freedom. End it.
17. End fuel poverty. France produces 80% nuclear at 2p a unit. We can do the same or indeed better.
18. Reform planning regulations so that people can build houses when and how they want rather than spending more time and money on sucking up to "civil servants" than actually building.
19. Build the Scottish Tunnel Project. Being able to travel freely around your own country is a blessing.
20. Fire any social worker kidnapping children or otherwise increasing human misery to build their empires.