Progressing Scottish Enterprise
Scottish Enterprise, the body being formed from the amalgamation of the Scottish Development Agency (SDA) and the Training Agency (TA), will become operational on 1st April 1991. Its likely impact has been considered elsewhere (for example Moore, 1989; Hayton, 1989; Danson et al, 1989). The purpose of this article is to look at progress in setting up the new organization and to consider the characteristics of those who will be directing the activities of the Scottish Enterprise “core” and of the 13 Local Enterprise Companies (LECs) that will be responsible for delivering a range of economic development and training services.
The hughes initiative: The blueprint for enterprise?
On 27 June 1988 the Glasgow Herald carried a report that Bill Hughes, the Chairman of the CBI in Scotland, was proposing the merger of the Scottish Development Agency (SDA) and Training Agency (TA) in Scotland into a new organisation called Enterprise Scotland. This new agency would be responsible for the combined budget of the SDA and TA amounting to £500 million and would work through a network of private sector led local enterprise boards. The main focus of this new body would be training. The principal advantage over existing provision would be that it would, firstly, bring more private sector leadership and, secondly, meet local training needs within Scotland in a way that the late MSC operating under national guidelines had apparently failed to do.
European Neutrality in Historical Perspective
This chapter places the neutrality policies of the established European neutral states—Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland—in historical context. It explores the origins of neutrality in the idea of non-belligerency in war and the history of neutrality in modern European international politics, highlighting the way in which quite a wide variety of states were or sought to be neutral at various points in the nineteenth century or the first half of the twentieth century. The chapter then shows how the Cold War division of Europe resulted in Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland (along with Yugoslavia) emerging as a distinctive neutral group of states between the two blocs. The chapter also reviews how the European neutral states’ foreign and security policies have adapted since the end of the Cold War. It finishes with some conclusions about neutrality in general and the neutrality of the established European neutral states in particular.