Mannerisms

So when they set up the Alba Centre for high-level chip design it was probably predictable that the Scots would adopt the same strategy which failed ignominiously for encouraging high-tech manufacturing.

One remembers the long list of famous foreign electronics company names which took the regional development grants to set up (often pretty screwdriver-ish) manufacturing operations among the Gaelic banks and braes and glens.

And then pulled out to scuttle back to their own countries when the international electronics market went through one of its periodic, and inevitable, recessions.

Many wiser heads than those working for the Scottish authorities bemoaned this waste of money, pointing to the wealth of home-grown talent emerging from Scottish academia.

The land of Bell and Baird should not have been reluctant to invest in its own.

But then along comes Alba. The would-be world-class centre for chip design employing a hoped-for 6,000 engineers.

And what do the Scots do? You guessed it, they looked to attract big foreign companies.

Now that aspiration is gone. But it’s left behind something they should have started with in the first place. A high-tech business incubator.

There is also a change of policy at Scottish Enterprise towards manufacturing which is looking more to local start-ups than foreign implants.

So maybe a Scotsman can change his mind. Given the time.