Best laid schemes?

Down Pleasure’s stream, wi’ swelling sails,
I’m tauld ye’re driving rarely:
But some day ye may gnaw your nails,
An’ curse your folly sairly

As we approach the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns’ birthday it would be interesting to contemplate what the bard would make of the current economic situation. Burns was highly critical of the hypocrisy and excesses of the wealthy and would surely be slightly bemused at the vast sums his fellow countryman is throwing at the banking sector.

The Scottish Government is hoping to exploit the global popularity of Burns in order to bolster the flagging economy. The Homecoming Scotland initiative, which kicks off with the Bard’s birthday on 25th January, aims to attract people with Scots connections back from abroad during 2009.

The initiative has received flak from opposition politicians who question its potential impact. But with limited financial powers to stem the economic tidal wave the Government must be glad to be seen to be doing something. The problem facing both the banks and Homecoming Scotland is that this truly is a global financial crisis.

The increasingly interconnected nature of the global economy means that there is no hiding place from the economic misery. The stereotypical cigar-smoking Texan is unlikely to be appearing on a street corner near you to hand out fivers to dirty-faced scamps. Even China – the much vaunted new economic powerhouse – has seen rising unemployment and workers returning to the countryside.

The answers must lie closer to home. For many people the days of easy wealth are over. And tipping more money into the banking black hole is not the answer. The bankers have had their place in the sun for long enough. We have lost the connection between what we do for a living and what we consume.

It is perhaps time for a return to a more straightforward form of economic development that doesn’t rely on debt, impenetrable financial equations and house prices that working people can’t afford. Perhaps it’s time for a new localism with a greater level of self-sufficiency and with people taking more responsibility for how they invest their money and how they buy their goods and services.

Communities across the world and up and down the country have introduced initiatives to promote local small traders and to encourage greater use of local services. Other communities have gone further and developed local trading systems inspired by the German economist Silvio Gessell.

These schemes work by encouraging people to spend more quickly within their local economy rather than hoarding resources. By encouraging spending quickly and locally these trading systems have a greater and more immediate economic and employment impact.

Some commentators have suggested that the government should issue time-limited spending vouchers to everyone in the UK as a means of kick-starting the economy from the grassroots. Handing more money to the bankers who got us into this pickle is an enormous gamble.

Still, if it doesn’t work we can always take solace in the words of the great man himself.

Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine;
A Man’s a Man for a’ that:
For a’ that, and a’ that,
Their tinsel show, an’ a’ that;
The honest man, tho’ e’er sae poor,
Is king o’ men for a’ that.