"If you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions," Winston Churchill once remarked, "unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions."

The First Minister's Council of Economic Advisers is meeting today and will tackle the thorny question of potential job losses from the Lloyds TSB takeover of HBOS.  Alex Salmond wants the Council to come up with a case for why the merged entity should keep headquarters jobs in Edinburgh.

We can be sure that the Council will come up with something.  That is their job.  However, expect Lloyds TSB to do their own analysis regardless of anything Salmond's hired hands might say.

The wider issue is whether or not Scotland can claim to be a "world-class business base," as Salmond says, and whether it does have the "competitive advantage" that he asserts.  For Lloyds TSB and others to be convinced of that we really need to see a change in direction in the Scottish government.

So it should be out with talk of endless new entitlements and regulations, and in with a focus on creating in Scotland a genuinely entrepreneurial culture once more.      It is unfamiliar territory for Scotland's governing class but our economic future depends on it.