Scottish Enterprise: History - Revision history

Billy: /* Scottish Enterprise History */

2007-02-13T16:17:51Z

Scottish Enterprise History

David: /* Scottish Enterprise History */

2007-02-11T11:05:23Z

Scottish Enterprise History

David: /* Further Reading */

2007-02-06T16:14:13Z

David at 16:13, 6 February 2007

2007-02-06T16:13:28Z

David at 16:12, 6 February 2007

2007-02-06T16:12:32Z

Billy: /* Further Reading */

2007-02-06T16:06:36Z

Billy: /* Further Reading */

2007-02-06T16:05:50Z

David: /* Notes */

2007-02-06T16:03:20Z

Notes

Billy: /* Pies in the Fingers */

2007-02-06T16:01:02Z

Pies in the Fingers

Billy: /* The Fraud Squad */

2007-02-06T15:50:50Z

The Fraud Squad

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 SE is the parent body of 14 Local Enterprise Companies (LECs).
-When Hughes proposed the SE system, he bypassed the then Secretary of State for Scotland, [[Malcolm Rifkind]], going straight to Mrs. Thatcher.   This unusual tactic was adopted because after the disastrous fall in the  Scottish Tory vote in the '87 elections, the Scottish Office was blamed for resisting the new economic culture through the Scottish Development  Agency (SDA).  Unable to conceive that her policies alienated the Scottish electorate, Thatcher was already mulling over plans to scapegoat and abolish the SDA when Hughes opportunistically knocked on her door.  We cannot fully reconstruct their conversation, but perhaps Hughes promised to set things to rights by transforming the SDA (created in 1975 by Willie Ross) from a child of Wilsonian Corporatism, into a vehicle for promoting Thatcherism.  Perhaps too, he would have said something about the deal being squeezed past the Treasury via the promise of selling off, what could be sold of the SDA's property portfolio (they managed to raise £100m before the slump set in), and privatising anything else the SDA had a share in.  Something made Thatcher's eyes light up and two years later the project was launched at the Dunblane  Hydro.  It has hardly met with a word of praise since.
+When Hughes proposed the SE system, he bypassed the then Secretary of State for Scotland, [[Malcolm Rifkind]], going straight to Mrs. Thatcher. (Reid, 1997)  This unusual tactic was adopted because after the disastrous fall in the  Scottish Tory vote in the '87 elections, the Scottish Office was blamed for resisting the new economic culture through the Scottish Development  Agency (SDA).  Unable to conceive that her policies alienated the Scottish electorate, Thatcher was already mulling over plans to scapegoat and abolish the SDA when Hughes opportunistically knocked on her door.  We cannot fully reconstruct their conversation, but perhaps Hughes promised to set things to rights by transforming the SDA (created in 1975 by Willie Ross) from a child of Wilsonian Corporatism, into a vehicle for promoting Thatcherism.  Perhaps too, he would have said something about the deal being squeezed past the Treasury via the promise of selling off, what could be sold of the SDA's property portfolio (they managed to raise £100m before the slump set in), and privatising anything else the SDA had a share in.  Something made Thatcher's eyes light up and two years later the project was launched at the Dunblane  Hydro.  It has hardly met with a word of praise since.
 Its initial hierarchy was established as follows: at the head of SE Sir [[David Nickson]] of the [[Clydesdale Bank]], [[General Accident]], [[Hambros]] Bank and [[Scottish & Newcastle]] Breweries.  This choice alone represented a sizeable  percentage of Scottish Capital and was further enlarged with the two leaders of the main LECs in Glasgow and Edinburgh: [[Lord McFarlane]] and Sir [[Charles Annand Fraser]] respectively.  Having the more obvious connections to Nickson, McFarlane is the director of some fifty or so companies, the main ones being The Clydesdale Bank, [[General Accident]], [[The American Trust]], [[Clansman]], [[Edinburgh Fund Managers]] and [[United Distillers/Guiness]] plc.  We should note here that Bill Hughes was managing director of MSJ Securities (a subsiduary of Guiness). McFarlane's other companies concentrate on  the construction and fitting out of offices from their painting right down to the packaging the furniture comes in, its transportation, and adhesive labels, the lot basically : if you work in an office, go the bank then go for a drink, McFarlane's interests are well served. Politically we can locate him on the Authoritarian Right, he funds [[British United Industrialists]] (a somewhat secretive channel for funding right-wing political projects), and in those days the Conservative Party, General Accident alone donated around £50,000 a year.

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 SE is the parent body of 14 Local Enterprise Companies (LECs).
-When Hughes proposed the SE system, he bypassed the then Secretary of State for Scotland, Malcolm Rifkind, going straight to Mrs. Thatcher.   This unusual tactic was adopted because after the disastrous fall in the  Scottish Tory vote in the '87 elections, the Scottish Office was blamed for resisting the new economic culture through the Scottish Development  Agency (SDA).  Unable to conceive that her policies alienated the Scottish electorate, Thatcher was already mulling over plans to scapegoat and abolish the SDA when Hughes opportunistically knocked on her door.  We cannot fully reconstruct their conversation, but perhaps Hughes promised to set things to rights by transforming the SDA (created in 1975 by Willie Ross) from a child of Wilsonian Corporatism, into a vehicle for promoting Thatcherism.  Perhaps too, he would have said something about the deal being squeezed past the Treasury via the promise of selling off, what could be sold of the SDA's property portfolio (they managed to raise £100m before the slump set in), and privatising anything else the SDA had a share in.  Something made Thatcher's eyes light up and two years later the project was launched at the Dunblane  Hydro.  It has hardly met with a word of praise since.
+When Hughes proposed the SE system, he bypassed the then Secretary of State for Scotland, [[Malcolm Rifkind]], going straight to Mrs. Thatcher.   This unusual tactic was adopted because after the disastrous fall in the  Scottish Tory vote in the '87 elections, the Scottish Office was blamed for resisting the new economic culture through the Scottish Development  Agency (SDA).  Unable to conceive that her policies alienated the Scottish electorate, Thatcher was already mulling over plans to scapegoat and abolish the SDA when Hughes opportunistically knocked on her door.  We cannot fully reconstruct their conversation, but perhaps Hughes promised to set things to rights by transforming the SDA (created in 1975 by Willie Ross) from a child of Wilsonian Corporatism, into a vehicle for promoting Thatcherism.  Perhaps too, he would have said something about the deal being squeezed past the Treasury via the promise of selling off, what could be sold of the SDA's property portfolio (they managed to raise £100m before the slump set in), and privatising anything else the SDA had a share in.  Something made Thatcher's eyes light up and two years later the project was launched at the Dunblane  Hydro.  It has hardly met with a word of praise since.
 Its initial hierarchy was established as follows: at the head of SE Sir [[David Nickson]] of the [[Clydesdale Bank]], [[General Accident]], [[Hambros]] Bank and [[Scottish & Newcastle]] Breweries.  This choice alone represented a sizeable  percentage of Scottish Capital and was further enlarged with the two leaders of the main LECs in Glasgow and Edinburgh: [[Lord McFarlane]] and Sir [[Charles Annand Fraser]] respectively.  Having the more obvious connections to Nickson, McFarlane is the director of some fifty or so companies, the main ones being The Clydesdale Bank, [[General Accident]], [[The American Trust]], [[Clansman]], [[Edinburgh Fund Managers]] and [[United Distillers/Guiness]] plc.  We should note here that Bill Hughes was managing director of MSJ Securities (a subsiduary of Guiness). McFarlane's other companies concentrate on  the construction and fitting out of offices from their painting right down to the packaging the furniture comes in, its transportation, and adhesive labels, the lot basically : if you work in an office, go the bank then go for a drink, McFarlane's interests are well served. Politically we can locate him on the Authoritarian Right, he funds [[British United Industrialists]] (a somewhat secretive channel for funding right-wing political projects), and in those days the Conservative Party, General Accident alone donated around £50,000 a year.

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−	*Young A. (2005) ''[http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ mi_qn4156/is_20051204/ai_n15900940 Will enterprise network reform hit the buffers?]'' Sunday Herald, Dec 4. This noted that 'competition' — that most entrenched of capitalist concepts — does not apply to the SE:	+	*Young A. (2005) ''[http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20051204/ai_n15900940 Will enterprise network reform hit the buffers?]'' Sunday Herald, Dec 4. This noted that 'competition' — that most entrenched of capitalist concepts — does not apply to the SE:

	:"The original plan was for competing consortia of local business people to bid for the right to run the LEC in each area. Each franchise would come up for renewal every few years. Business would take the lead in economic development. The state would not try to second guess its judgements. Apart from one early abortive attempt to contest the Glasgow LEC franchise, it never happened."		:"The original plan was for competing consortia of local business people to bid for the right to run the LEC in each area. Each franchise would come up for renewal every few years. Business would take the lead in economic development. The state would not try to second guess its judgements. Apart from one early abortive attempt to contest the Glasgow LEC franchise, it never happened."

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 Much writing and analysis has been undertaken on SE, which has followed its unsteady past.  Below is a summary of a range of sources which contain contextual and historical observations.
+*[[George Kerevan|Kerevan G.]] & Don G. (2003) ''[http://www.policyinstitute.info/AllPDFs/KerevanDonDec03.pdf The Voyages of the Starship “Scottish Enterprise,” Lessons and Ideas For Scotland’s Economic Agency]'', The [[Policy Institute]].
 This presents two reports from the right-wing think tank.  The first asserts that Hughes' ideas stemmed from the example of the US approach to tackling poverty.
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 The aim here was to help the poor "In the black ghettos of Los Angeles and Boston, with their burned out houses and shuttered supermarkets".  Hughes' initial aim for SE "was to eliminate Scottish unemployment."  (Hansard 1992, Debates for 18 Nov.) The question of why public money was used is ducked by the notion that with SE, Hughes thought: "in due course, the public money would be phased out and replaced with private sponsorship."  That is hard to believe in the era of PFI, and harder to believe since it actuality shows no signs of manifestation and evidence to the contrary is in abundance.
-It also states that Crawford Beveridge, the first chief executive of the new SE, was influenced by the ideas of the American business guru, Michael Porter:
+It also states that [[Crawford Beveridge]], the first chief executive of the new SE, was influenced by the ideas of the American business guru, [[Michael Porter]]:
 :"who preached that national global competitiveness was boosted by having dense clusters of supporting companies specialising in particular markets... With a skilled, cheap and English-speaking workforce to hand one that was also easy to fire, thanks to Mrs Thatcher - Beveridge soon tapped into the 1990s high tech boom." (Kerevan &  Don, 2003:7)
-* Reid G. C. (1997) ''Making Small Firms Work: Policy Dimensions and the Scottish Context'', Centre for Research into Industry, Enterprise, Finance and the Firm, University of St Andrews. [http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/crieff/papers/dp9811.pdf]
+* Reid G. C. (1997) ''[http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/crieff/papers/dp9811.pdf Making Small Firms Work: Policy Dimensions and the Scottish Context]'', Centre for Research into Industry, Enterprise, Finance and the Firm, University of St Andrews.
-This states that Hughes bypassed the SDA without consultation and gained direct access to Downing Street and was subsequently invited to a meeting at Chequers. There, he met the Secretary of State for Employment, then Norman Fowler:
+This states that Hughes bypassed the SDA without consultation and gained direct access to Downing Street and was subsequently invited to a meeting at Chequers. There, he met the Secretary of State for Employment, then [[Norman Fowler]]:
-:"who had already been influenced by the Director of Employment and Training Policy in Massachusetts, who was proselytising for the concept of Private Industry Councils (PICs). These PICs allowed the business community to
+:"who had already been influenced by the Director of Employment and Training Policy in Massachusetts, who was proselytising for the concept of Private Industry Councils (PICs). These PICs allowed the business community to take an active role in spending training funds of the US Federal Government. Business could play a role in enterprise stimulation, which included the design of training schemes and even extended to influence over school curricula. These PICs were moderately successful in cities like Atlanta, New York and Boston." (Reid, 1997:13)
 This then, with its mention that 'training funds' came, not from the business community, but from the US Federal Government, would then contrast sharply with the Policy institute's version of events — and possibly consign to the realm of fiction any 'phasing out' of the dripping roast of public funds. The report also adds that Hughes was: "Borrowing much from the Massachusetts ‘growth coalition’ idea," adding, somewhat conspiratorially, that "hardly anyone was explicitly involved" in the formation of this grandiose democratic project to aid the poor via 'trickle-down' economics.
-*Young A. (2005) ''Will enterprise network reform hit the buffers?'' Sunday Herald, Dec 4. [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20051204/ai_n15900940] This noted that 'competition' — that most entrenched of capitalist concepts — does not apply to the SE:
+*Young A. (2005) ''[http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ mi_qn4156/is_20051204/ai_n15900940 Will enterprise network reform hit the buffers?]'' Sunday Herald, Dec 4. This noted that 'competition' — that most entrenched of capitalist concepts — does not apply to the SE:
 :"The original plan was for competing consortia of local business people to bid for the right to run the LEC in each area. Each franchise would come up for renewal every few years. Business would take the lead in economic development. The state would not try to second guess its judgements.  Apart from one early abortive attempt to contest the Glasgow LEC franchise, it never happened."
-It also noted that by 1999, Bill Hughes, was calling for his creation to be scrapped and replaced with a series of local venturing companies, investing real risk capital in growing new Scottish companies.  "Scottish Enterprise needs to be shaken not stirred, " Hughes is quoted as saying, along with "It's the structures that are the problem, not the people."
+It also noted that by 1999, [[Bill Hughes]], was calling for his creation to be scrapped and replaced with a series of local venturing companies, investing real risk capital in growing new Scottish companies.  "Scottish Enterprise needs to be shaken not stirred, " Hughes is quoted as saying, along with "It's the structures that are the problem, not the people."
-*Sutherland J. N. (2003) ''An Analysis of the Policy Background to the Establishment of a Creative Industries Network in the Dundee Area in the late 1990’s'', University of Edinburgh, Moray House School of Education. [http://www.btinternet.com/~akademos/INTTAY.PDF]
+*Sutherland J. N. (2003) ''[http://www.btinternet.com/~akademos/INTTAY.PDF An Analysis of the Policy Background to the Establishment of a Creative Industries Network in the Dundee Area in the late 1990’s]'', University of Edinburgh, Moray House School of Education.
 This report points out in specific relation to SE, that Quangos were:
-:"“readily associated with Conservative control of a country that had not endorsed Conservative policies” and that it was perceived “the Conservatives were appointing their own supporters to the [quangos] committees.” ... SE was lampooned as “the Conservatives ‘Scottish solution to a Scottish problem’ … the brainchild of Glasgow businessman and leading Tory, Bill Hughes.” ..., “Quangos must thus be, almost by definition, a matter of concern for anyone committed to democratic accountability.”' (Sutherland, 2003:6)
+:"“readily associated with Conservative control of a country that had not endorsed Conservative policies” and that it was perceived “the Conservatives were appointing their own supporters to the [quangos] committees.” ... SE was lampooned as “the Conservatives ‘Scottish solution to a Scottish problem’ … the brainchild of Glasgow businessman and leading Tory, Bill Hughes.” ..., “Quangos must thus be, almost by definition, a matter of concern for anyone committed to democratic accountability.”'(Sutherland, 2003:6)

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 == Scottish Enterprise History ==
-Scottish Enterprise (SE) which was invented in 1988 by Bill Hughes, at the time a CBI boss, advisor to the Thatcher government, Scottish Tory Party treasurer, Scottish Business in the Community and director of Grampian Holdings.
+[[Scottish Enterprise]] (SE) which was invented in 1988 by Bill Hughes, at the time a CBI boss, advisor to the Thatcher government, Scottish Tory Party treasurer, Scottish Business in the Community and director of Grampian Holdings.
 SE is the parent body of 14 Local Enterprise Companies (LECs).

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	*Young A. (2005) ''Will enterprise network reform hit the buffers?'' Sunday Herald, Dec 4. [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20051204/ai_n15900940] This noted that 'competition' — that most entrenched of capitalist concepts — does not apply to the SE:		*Young A. (2005) ''Will enterprise network reform hit the buffers?'' Sunday Herald, Dec 4. [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20051204/ai_n15900940] This noted that 'competition' — that most entrenched of capitalist concepts — does not apply to the SE:
		+

	:"The original plan was for competing consortia of local business people to bid for the right to run the LEC in each area. Each franchise would come up for renewal every few years. Business would take the lead in economic development. The state would not try to second guess its judgements. Apart from one early abortive attempt to contest the Glasgow LEC franchise, it never happened."		:"The original plan was for competing consortia of local business people to bid for the right to run the LEC in each area. Each franchise would come up for renewal every few years. Business would take the lead in economic development. The state would not try to second guess its judgements. Apart from one early abortive attempt to contest the Glasgow LEC franchise, it never happened."

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−	*Young A. (2005) ''Will enterprise network reform hit the buffers?'' Sunday Herald, Dec 4. [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/ mi_qn4156/is_20051204/ai_n15900940] This noted that 'competition' — that most entrenched of capitalist concepts — does not apply to the SE:	+	*Young A. (2005) ''Will enterprise network reform hit the buffers?'' Sunday Herald, Dec 4. [http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20051204/ai_n15900940] This noted that 'competition' — that most entrenched of capitalist concepts — does not apply to the SE:

	:"The original plan was for competing consortia of local business people to bid for the right to run the LEC in each area. Each franchise would come up for renewal every few years. Business would take the lead in economic development. The state would not try to second guess its judgements. Apart from one early abortive attempt to contest the Glasgow LEC franchise, it never happened."		:"The original plan was for competing consortia of local business people to bid for the right to run the LEC in each area. Each franchise would come up for renewal every few years. Business would take the lead in economic development. The state would not try to second guess its judgements. Apart from one early abortive attempt to contest the Glasgow LEC franchise, it never happened."

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	It was Bill Hughes' experimental contribution to this, in the form of the creation of SE, which would have really made Mrs. Thatcher's eyes light up. Back in '88 when she gave him the go-ahead Hughes must have felt like Yul Brenner in the Magnificent Seven, gathering up institutional investors in his own Company and his CBI chums and riding into town — the difference being that the Bandits terrorising the locals were indistinguishable from their new found protectors.		It was Bill Hughes' experimental contribution to this, in the form of the creation of SE, which would have really made Mrs. Thatcher's eyes light up. Back in '88 when she gave him the go-ahead Hughes must have felt like Yul Brenner in the Magnificent Seven, gathering up institutional investors in his own Company and his CBI chums and riding into town — the difference being that the Bandits terrorising the locals were indistinguishable from their new found protectors.

−	~~== Notes ==~~

−	~~{{note\|1}} The Glasgow Herald, May 1, 1993.~~
−
−	~~{{note\|2}} The Glasgow Herald, November 11, 1993.~~
−
−	~~{{note\|3}} The Glasgow Herald, 10 July, 93.~~
−
−	~~{{note\|4}} Lobster, no.26 p16.~~
−
−	~~{{note\|5}} The Financial Times, 13 April, 1994.~~
−
−	~~{{note\|6}} Covert Action, No 39, p28.~~
−
−	~~{{note\|7}} The Scotsman, January 12, 1993.~~

	== Further Reading ==		== Further Reading ==

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 One other, now ex-director of SFE is [[Angus Grossart]] whose companies Noble Grossart (Scotland's first merchant Bank), [[Alexander & Alexander]], [[American Trust]], [[Scottish Investment Trust]], [[Scottish Television]], The Royal Bank of Scotland, Edinburgh Fund  Managers, Hewden Stuart and Murray International Holdings; make Grossart  one of the most influential men in Scotland : Alexander & Alexander is the world's second biggest insurance broker, and back then (more or less) aimed to take over the running of the Glasgow Royal Infirmary Trust, imposing ludicrous conditions on the ancillary staff who started a strike in protest.
-And here we have the crux of the matter:  you have a conflict of interest, because it is they who make their money through people making private provision for theses things, through private pensions, health care insurance and so forth, add to that the unaccountability of a quango and we can see the LECs as a key instrument in this somwhwat opaque use of 'public' money.  We can connect Angus up with Norman McFarlane through The American Trust which they both run (interestingly along with [[Aims of Industry]] member Lord Goold);  they also jointly run [[Edinburgh Fund Managers]], its parent company.  These two companies run the mineworkers Pension scheme and the British Coal staff pension scheme, investing it in American securities.  Edinburgh Fund Managers also manage the investment  portfolio of The Smaller Companies International Trust, which they  foolishly invested in a company called International Signal & Control (IS&C), which some readers may know became part of the BCCI/Iran-Contra saga: it was an arms company which merged with [[Ferranti]] and then collapsed, leaving a £1bn hole in Ferranti's accounts (causing its collapse) and sending IS&C's far-right chairman into an American jail (the other directors who were Washington power brokers seem to have escaped).
+And here we have the crux of the matter:  you have a conflict of interest, because it is they who make their money through people making private provision for theses things, through private pensions, health care insurance and so forth, add to that the unaccountability of a quango and we can see the LECs as a key instrument in this somwhwat opaque use of 'public' money.  We can connect Angus up with Norman McFarlane through The American Trust which they both run (interestingly along with [[Aims of Industry]] member Lord Goold);  they also jointly run [[Edinburgh Fund Managers]], its parent company.  These two companies run the mineworkers Pension scheme and the British Coal staff pension scheme, investing it in American securities.  Edinburgh Fund Managers also manage the investment  portfolio of The Smaller Companies International Trust, which they  foolishly invested in a company called International Signal & Control (IS&C), which some readers may know became part of the BCCI/Iran-Contra saga: it was an arms company which merged with [[Ferranti]] and then collapsed, leaving a £1bn hole in Ferranti's accounts (causing its collapse) and sending IS&C's far-right chairman into an American jail (the other directors who were Washington power brokers seem to have escaped). [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DE5DD1731F93BA25752C1A96F948260] [http://www.jacobsmeyer.com/Marquardt/Appendix%20A.htm]
-It would be interesting to see when Edinburgh Fund Managers ditched their IS&C shares, this would reveal an insight into Grossart and McFarlane's far-right connections.  The investment world is a tricky  business and to get in on the bottom floor one must engage in what can only be termed espionage.  The world of banking and high finance has long interpenetrated with that of the Secret Service and the sharing of intelligence forms the basis of how UK interests are protected and advanced.
+It would be interesting to see when Edinburgh Fund Managers ditched their IS&C shares, this would reveal an insight into Grossart and McFarlane's far-right connections.  The investment world is a tricky business and to get in on the bottom floor one must engage in what can only be termed espionage.  The world of banking and high finance has long interpenetrated with that of the Secret Service and the sharing of intelligence forms the basis of how UK interests are protected and advanced.
 The far-right connections seem to abound here, going back to Forbes McPherson, our GDA leader shares his seats on the board of the TSB and Hill Samuel with Sir Richard Lloyd of the [[Ditchley Foundation]] and various arms companies.  The Ditchley Foundation is based at Ditchley  Park and " is a conference centre... used for private VIP meetings guarded by Special Branch and MI5.  It was used by the ISC [Institute for the study of Conflict] as a conference  centre from 1972 onwards; the ISC Council minutes of 21/1/72 mention an  ISC conference on Ireland that was held under conditions of extreme  secrecy.  Ditchley park is closely linked to the Bilderberg Group, 14 of whose members sit on the centre's board of  Governors."    Lloyd has been on the Council of management of the Ditchley Foundation since 1974, and he also sat in on the mid-seventies Wilson Committee's attempts to curb the unaccountable power of the financial world, so Forbes keeps some interesting company.
 The question of whether the LECs are underwriting the expenses of the larger businesses and financial institutions is hardly  open to debate.  It is hard to see what the waste of time and money represented by the Commons tinkering enquiry into it  achieved, a fine perhaps, some government funds returning to the Treasury, one or two resignations ?   From this point here was a few resignations from within the LECs on the basis that some directors were not told what was actually going on.
 == Cleaning Up ==

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 But none of this would come as any surprise to our founding father, Bill Hughes.  He has gone on record as viewing the situation thus :
-"You're  always going to get the joker, always that one case every year or two where the Fraud Squad is called in.  That's unavoidable in any walk of life today... If we are going to have top-quality people serving on LEC  boards I would be surprised if they weren't trying to help their own businesses.  Gosh they're giving up their time for nothing and that's good news".
+:"You're  always going to get the joker, always that one case every year or two where the Fraud Squad is called in.  That's unavoidable in any walk of life today... If we are going to have top-quality people serving on LEC  boards I would be surprised if they weren't trying to help their own businesses.  Gosh they're giving up their time for nothing and that's good news".
 That kind of talk cuts both ways of course: as was mentioned above Hughes runs a company called [[Grampian Holdings]] which is engaged in such diverse activities as transport bulk tippers, plant hire equipment, sporting goods and pharmaceuticals, its institutional shareholders are Murray Johnstone: 4.08%, Scottish Widows: 4.89%, Barclays Bank: 4.3%, Standard  Life: 3.48%, Scottish Amicable: 3.52%, National Westminster Bank: 3.09%,  Abbey Life: (a subsidiary of Abbey National) 3.27% and Scottish Mutual Insurance: 3.55%, the bulk of whom we have already encountered above as the recipients of GDA funding.