Last Friday I found myself in the magnificent Carnegie-funded Central Library in George IV Bridge, Edinburgh. I was due to speak at a Scotonomics conference and, after glancing at some of the more challenging questions that had been sent in advance, concluded that an hour or so’s revision was urgently called for on the respective attributes of new monetarism and wellbeing economics. Entering the reading room, I was asked by the kind library staff if I had a reading card. ‘Well, I was a regular user as a student,’ I ventured. ‘When was that? Our records go back a fair way,’ they said helpfully. ‘1973,’ I answered. ‘Please fill in the form.’
The conference itself was an erudite and fairly serious affair – as befits a group of people who study the economics of independence on a liquid Friday night in Dundee. I told the assembly that my three favourite economists were Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes and J.K. Galbraith, which I think is not a bad halfback line, although perhaps not quite green enough to impress this audience. What unifies all three? None was really an economist. Smith was a moral philosopher, Keynes an academic mathematician and market speculator and Galbraith an agriculturalist – thus all three tempered economic theory with practical experience. That’s what made them immortal.
I spent Sunday fielding calls from journalists looking for gossip on the SNP leadership and first minister’s race. The Sunday Mail published a striking front page on the ongoing police investigation into the murky matter of SNP HQ finances – ‘Buy Buy SNP… and hello to the cops!’ But why do they call me? Why would the leader of another nationalist party – Alba – have inside knowledge on the workings of the SNP? Even the now-ex first minister Nicola Sturgeon proclaims she didn’t know about its plummeting membership figures.
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