An unusual number of people have said to me recently that they cannot bear to follow the news any more, it’s full of disaster and despair. Instead they turn to the pleasure of watching nature unfolding its wings and flowers as spring arrives and gives life on earth another chance.
We’ve just had a week of sunshine and the first butterflies have begun to appear. There’s birdsong from every tree and hedge and the sound of grass being mowed fills the city air. On my excursions into the countryside I’ve seen lambs and hares and smiling frogs. And I’ve tried to find the twittering skylarks hovering somewhere above me in the blue sky. It’s turning wet again now and, no doubt, there will be April showers and rainbows as the clocks go forward this weekend and we move from the equinox towards mid-summer.
My escape into timeless pleasure at the equinox itself was to listen to the St Margaret Singers give a concert “to celebrate the arrival of spring” in the ancient setting of the 14th century Roslin Chapel. John Rutter’s “For the beauty of the earth” took our breath away. You didn’t have to be religious to be moved. In fact it was better not to be, because moments like these go beyond formal religions and plunge into the deep pool of spirituality within us all.
However………..my friends are quite wrong in turning away from the News, however horrible it may be. As John Dunne remarked: “No man is an island…everyman’s death diminishes me, because I am part of mankind. Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”
This week there has been quite a bit of horrible News to face up to. On the international front, Putin’s war continues, Netanyahu’s war continues, Trump’s trade war continues, Turkey slides towards dictatorship, the backsliding on climate change goes on and sets the forests of South Korea ablaze.
Here at home, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced £5bn of welfare cuts to balance her budget (although that figure has been reduced by the Office of Budget Responsibility the OBR). She’s also threatening to cut the number of civil service jobs by 10,000 with voluntary redundancies. How this is supposed to help meet her overall aim of increasing economic growth is not clear to me, or to the OBR which has downgraded its growth forecast from 2 per cent this year to 1 per cent and only a slight improvement the years ahead.
A rather stressed-looking Rachel Reeves has tried to blame the international uncertainty of Trump’s shambolic administration, but most of her difficulties, in my view, arise from the Labour party’s reckless promise not to increase major taxes for the duration of this parliament. We will only get economic growth if the public services can be restored to good health and we invest more in training and public infrastructure.
How all this affects Scotland has still not been worked out, though in straight money terms the Fraser of Allander Institute estimates it will mean an annual £900m cut to the Scottish government’s grant by 2030. The finance secretary Shona Robison says she will try to mitigate the welfare cuts, perhaps by increasing the Scottish Child Payment (£26 a week) which has reduced the child poverty rate from 26 per last year to a still-disgraceful 22 per cerntthis year. But the new restrictions on who is entitled to Universal Credit and the Personal Independence Payments for disabled people are a UK matter.
It was rather a shock to me to discover that a quarter of the working age population are unable to work. And it’s even more alarming for our future to learn that one in six young people in Scotland are left idle, neither in education, training nor work. So Keir Starmer is right in saying the welfare system is broken and needs reform.
But moving people from welfare into work will not be easy and cannot be achieved by cuts alone. Everything is connected to everything else, so improvements to care services, would free-up hospitals to get people back to work quicker. More funding for training colleges and universities would get more young people into work. More funding for house building or the arts or sport would create jobs.
Rachel Reeves’ new austerity will see none of this. It also leaves the Scottish government struggling to find answers to the cries this week for more money for the police, for universities and for GP services. It’s all so depressing.
So perhaps my friends are half right. I should be looking beyond our newsworthy problems and at those sunny, showery, daffodil days of April when birds are nesting, fields are green and the squirrels and crows outside my kitchen window are sharing out the worms in good-natured negotiations.
