Winning at all costs isn’t part of Scotland’s values, yet it’s preached far and wide by management and business experts.

Mike Stevenson brought a countervailing Talking Up perspective to the Festival of Spirituality and Peace in a talk he gave on August 15 at St Cuthbert’s (Festival Venue 122), exploring the practical ways in which the churches, business and individuals could create change by going back to traditional Scottish values.

Business success doesn’t just equal a yacht in Monaco – that’s why Scotland produces people like Anne Gloag with her work in Africa and Tom Hunter, someone who invests in schemes of social and business improvement which seek to move government policy on and get further financial backing.

And it’s why Scotland’s produced social benefactors and improvers such as Andrew Carnegie and Frances Hutcheson with their belief in moral altruism and the idea of individual success being dependent on the happiness of others. It’s a lesson Scotland needs to learn again: it’s only by working together and having a bigger vision than our own advancement that we will we achieve real success as a nation and as individuals…