And First, Here's the Good News...

The SNP have outlined their economic strategy for Scotland and have been very clear on their targets:

1. To raise Scotland's GDP growth rate to the UK level by 2011.
2. To match the GDP growth rate of the small independent EU countries by 2017

Fine, every strategy needs targets....except in the short and the medium term future, the growth-rate of several of the those "small independent EU countries" is not looking that great....and also worth bearing in mind the reason the vast majority of the small independent EU countries have achieved high economic growth in the recent past is not through becoming independent per se, but by imposing, on occasions, quite brutal structural change in their economies.

Needless to say that inconvenient fact is not mentioned in the document and the "Resourcing" section of the implementation section is also rather, well, hazy:

IMPLEMENTING THE STRATEGY
D.1 RESOURCING
Growing the economy is at the heart of the Scottish Government's Purpose. The imperative of generating increased and sustainable economic growth has, therefore, driven the difficult task of prioritisation within the Strategic Spending Review process. The final decision on Scottish budget allocation will reflect the centrality of sustainable economic growth to our Purpose.

Which doesn’t tell us very much does it?
”Prioritisation” means something or somebody getting lower priority somewhere down the line and if top priority is to be given to promoting “economic growth”, then logically resources (ie financing) has to move from elsewhere.

Admitedly I’ve only had a very quick look at the document and perhaps how this "sustainable economic growth" will be achieved without tears shall become a bit clearer after the SNP’s first budget tomorrow...we’ll see.