What Governments think a country must have in order to be credible seems to be driven to a remarkable degree by fashion rather than logic.
In the 1960s and 1970s every fledgling African country had to have its own airline - generally poor service, significant losses and the odd crash were the results.
Unfortunately, these misplaced ambitions extend to our very own Scottish Government. We had to have an iconic Parliament building - disaster, we had to have a world class tram system in our capital city - disaster, we must have an airport, or should I say Spaceport, in Ayrshire - bad and expensive joke.
Our current SNP Government has now moved on , in line with the current trends , and has decided we simply must have a National Investment Bank and a Government backed energy company.
The National Investment Bank sounds lovely once you get over the puzzling fact that there is already one within the Scottish Enterprise set-up called the Scottish Investment Bank. The potential duplication isn’t the real problem though, the new Investment Bank has all the hallmarks of a grandiose waste of time. We are told it will employ up to 200 well paid people - paid for by you and me - and should be ethical, inclusive and “mission driven”. What, dear reader, does that mean? Friends of the Earth I suspect have got it in one by announcing in delight “The mission-led approach takes the bank away from just pumping money into businesses and back to public policy and a focus on the common good”. Groan, what this means is that ministers want a publicly funded vehicle to direct taxpayers cash into politically correct perfectly gender-balanced no-hopers which will lose money. The bank will apparently have £2 billion to play with - that is about £400 for each Scottish citizen - just spend it on our crumbling transport system instead and curb this vanity project.
Although I strongly suspect the new National Investment Bank will prove to be a money losing waste of time, I am sure that many within the SNP Government genuinely believe - having looked at the facts - it is the right thing to do.
I would like to think that the proposed Scottish Government backed energy company has rather fewer real believers in Government because it is just, well, a stupid idea. Our old friend populism is at work here, the evil utility companies allegedly making too much money, not enough real choice etc. etc. When La Nicola announced it at the SNP conference the delegates loved it - unfortunately, this might mean the Scottish Government feels it actually has to do it - which would be a pity.
The Government backed utility idea sits astride a number of fallacies. First, it isn’t true that the utility companies make a lot of money from their retail operations - SSE, one of the best, made around £1 per week, per customer in the year to March 2017 - and that figure is going down. Not a lot for supplying you with gas and electricity. Smaller utility companies often struggle to make a meaningful profit at all. Second, it is just nonsense that there isn’t a lot of choice. Go on the internet, have a look, there is tons of choice. A Government backed energy supply company is just going to be unnecessary or a money loser - or both.
The Scottish Government should stop trying to meddle in the energy market and should stop these vanity projects.
Pinstripe is a senior member of Scotland's financial services community.
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