IF living in areas with a lot of traffic noise and other hubbub, you may not have heard the strange sounds emanating yesterday from locations around Scotland and London.

Beginning with a loud pop, the noise became a hiss, then a faint whine, before disappearing altogether, leaving nothing behind but an embarrassing whiff. Had the phenomenon happened in rural areas the beasts of the field would have reckoned they had acquired some serious rivals in the expulsion of hot air.

Yes, this was the Scottish balloon of doom, held in the hands of the country’s opposition parties, popping on the news that the economy, far from slipping into recession as had been widely forecast, had grown by 0.8per cent in the first three months of 2017. This was four times that of the UK as a whole.

As a result, like the Green Day concert at Bellahouston Park, what was intended to be national Private Frazer Day, when notables and quotables would queue up to tell Scotland why and how it was doomed, was called off. Cancelled. To be rescheduled. Away hame with ye.

Faced with a story expected to go one way suddenly heading in an entirely different direction, opposition parties launched what we in the newspaper trade call a “reverse ferret” operation and welcomed the news. Still, we know what the parties were set to say had Scotland slipped into recession because, perhaps keen to get off on their holidays, they had made their pronouncements the day before the figures arrived. The nationalists have no one to blame but themselves, said the Scottish Conservatives. The Scottish Government is not using the powers it has to boost the economy, pronounced Scottish Labour. The SNP response was just as predictable: stop talking Scotland down.

To be clear: it is good news that Scotland’s economy is doing better than expected. But dodging one bullet does not mean the battle is won. Scotland is not making enough, not earning enough, not preparing enough, not ambitious enough, to give all its people a decent standard of living today, or to create the best possible life chances for the generations to come.

One does not need to wait for the next set of GDP figures to know which way the economic wind is blowing and the kind of chill factor it will bring with it. The list of causes is ever growing: Brexit; an ageing population; lower oil prices; a decline in manufacturing and over-reliance on services; lack of training; faltering confidence; falling productivity; declining standards in numeracy and literacy, and so on. It is a grim pick and mix which amounts to the same thing: Scotland needs to do better. But how?

Imagine that the numbers had gone the other way yesterday and that all political parties, alarmed by the implications, agreed that growing the Scottish economy and making it fundamentally stronger was a matter of national importance, something above mere party politics.

As is the way, a summit would be called, and the problems listed. Some of the difficulties would be new, such as Brexit, and hard to address because the situation is fluid and the UK Government, in charge of negotiations with the EU, is not giving much away, either because it considers it wise form to do so, or, more likely, because it does not have a clue how this one plays out. Other factors affecting Scotland, including the fall in oil prices, have been apparent for a while. Still others are chronic, the decline in manufacturing and failure to close the productivity gap chief among them.

For every economic problem there is a solution, usually one that has already been offered, or one that is in existence elsewhere. Most fall into the category of what should be the bleeding obvious. Don’t treat workers as liabilities rather than assets, for example, if you want to boost productivity. Got a growing ageing population and a shrinking tax base? Keep the young people you have or open the door to new ones. Scotland, Brexit aside, does not need to reinvent the wheel to sort out what ails its economy.

What it does need, however, is the will to do so. While we are at it, a sea change in our attitude towards wealth creation would not go amiss either. Scotland can spend money just fine, but when it comes to generating pounds and pence, too many of us think that is someone else’s job. Making money is treated like a mysterious act that happens elsewhere, behind closed doors in offices, factories, and business parks. Little to do with us. This timidity extends, in turn, to spreading the wealth around in ways that would improve life for us all. Too unsure of any more of it coming our way, we tinker with problems such as inequality then wonder why it is always with us.

Scotland hardly needed to be reminded this week by Naomi Eisenstadt, the independent adviser on poverty to the First Minister, that the life chances of young Scots are determined by the wealth and class of their parents. It was always thus, some will say. Like the song says, them that’s got shall have.

Yet by accepting this, Scotland is writing off young people who could be making real contributions to society, cash and otherwise. One of the reasons they are not doing so is that the traditional routes out of poverty, a good education followed by learning a trade at college and on the job, are being closed off . What money is available is going instead on steering youngsters towards university. While it is a grand thing to have arts graduates, it is just as fine, even better many might say, to have plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, engineers and other tradespeople. But these are still seen as jobs for working class youngsters only. The middle classes want their children to be the kind of people who employ plumbers; they do not want to see their own son or daughter become one. In 30 years’ time, however, it is more likely that a machine will have replaced an accountant or lawyer than a plumber or electrician.

Unless Scotland changes its attitudes towards wealth, gets its hands a little dirtier, becomes more ambitious for all its youngsters and not just some, it will be condemning itself to decades of low to no growth. That is not talking Scotland down; that is embracing reality. We can do better.