AT lunchtime yesterday I interviewed Annabel Goldie, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, live in front of an audience of Herald readers. For the first time since we started these Scotland Decides sessions during the 2003 Holyrood campaign, we have been joined in this latest set of encounters with the four main party leaders by sponsors, the Scottish Chambers of Commerce.

In preparation for the Goldie hour I spent a chunk of Tuesday evening reading the Conservatives' manifesto from cover to cover. Very few people would dream of doing that, I suspect. But it's a process which helps me crystallise thoughts and questions about how each party's policy ideas are evolving.

For all who grew up thinking of the Tories as the party of the small state, the party of business, the right-of-centre force in British politics which aspires to low taxes and the ability of individuals to control as much as possible of their own lives, there are reassuring words in the early chapters of this manifesto.

Politicians must be more realistic, it cautions. The First Minister doesn't shape our country. Political parties don't control our destiny. Government is generally not good at running things. The job of the state is as facilitator. Fine as far as it goes.

But then you hit the inevitable trade-offs, inconsistencies and compromises which, I suspect, will pepper all the party manifestoes when they appear. For instance, in the Tories' section on crime, there's the promise to recruit 1500 more police officers. "But we don't want them sitting behind a desk filling out forms," it continues.

Then in the very next paragraph, the party pledges: "Under our system local police will be expected to publish regular crime statistics, community by community " And that will be done without anyone having to sit behind a desk filling out forms, will it?

But it was when I got round to the section about how the Scottish Conservatives would go about "creating a prosperous Scottish economy", that my doubts crystallised. There was nothing, given the Tories' traditional ideological instincts, about using the existing tartan tax power to cut the basic rate of income tax by 3p in the pound, nothing about demanding greater fiscal autonomy for the devolved Scottish government to make it more accountable to taxpayers for every penny it spends.

Instead, the headline pledge is to offer "half-price council tax" to everyone over 65, regardless of means. I asked Annabel Goldie about the economic rationale for adopting such a priority, on top of free bus travel, free personal care and all the other fiscal incentives directed at people like me who are fast approaching that age group.

I'm not sure I heard a convincing answer. There may be a case for such measures in terms of ensuring dignity in old age. Such moves obviously leave all who are over 65, regardless of income or wealth, more prosperous. Whether that's a good thing in terms of inter-generational equity is debatable. What it's got to do with the prosperity of the Scottish economy is anyone's guess.

But the item in the economy section of the Tory manifesto which leaves me perplexed and bemused is the pledge to abolish Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE). Annabel Goldie has been a stern and relentless critic of Scottish Enterprise, especially since its well-publicised budgetary problems a year ago.

The manifesto takes up that theme with gusto, accusing SE of being "mired in internal bureaucracy which wastes much of its half-billion pound taxpayer-funded budget". Scottish Enterprise, the party concludes, "is currently not fit for purpose". So it proposes cutting SE down to a quarter of its current budget (£130m a year), creating a new Scottish Skills Agency and completely abolishing the Local Enterprise Company network.

Other parties are also looking to inflict major surgery on SE. But the Scottish Conservatives want to go further. Almost as an after-thought, they plan to abolish HIE as well. Councils in the north, we are told, will "deliver a much more localised service".

One wonders if Annabel Goldie or any of the authors of this manifesto have spent more than five minutes reviewing the role of HIE and its predecessor body, the Highlands and Islands Development Board, in reviving the economic prospects of northern Scotland. It's one of Scotland's best-kept secrets - how multi-agency and public-private collaboration has transformed prospects in one of Scotland's most fragile regions.

HIE is already a highly devolved operation, both through its LEC network and a conscious strategy to push more of its operations out to the periphery.

If it were to be shut down and its functions passed to local government, most would end up with just one body - Highland Council.

I have yet to hear any significant voices in the north calling for such radical surgery. If the Scottish Conservatives want to rehabilitate their electoral presence north of the Great Glen, they would do well to kick this daft idea out of the park right now.