Autumn is supposed to be a peaceful time, a season of mists and fruitfulness. But as I write, we are battening down for the first storm of the season, Storm Amy.
Heavy rain and winds of 60-70mph are forecast for most of Scotland. And with the leaves still on the trees, the storm damage is expected to be severe. Hundreds of electricity workers have been put on standby and many rail and ferry services have been cancelled.
We don’t usually get storms this early, or this ferocious. Just as we don’t usually get such dry summers and mild autumns, or the rise and fall (mostly fall) in our wildlife populations. And yet there are still people who deny climate change and a growing number who feel it’s too hard to do anything about it. A government survey published earlier this year found that 72 per cent of the population regard climate change as an urgent problem but only 46 per cent are worried about it.
I suppose we have more immediate problems to worry about. This week it’s been the state of our 24 vocational colleges. Their funding has been cut by 20 per cent over the last five years, according to a report from Audit Scotland. Staff numbers have been cut by seven per cent in the last year and there are 30,000 fewer students. Another report last week from the government’s own College Funding Council warned that the present system of vocational training is not sustainable.
The Higher Education Minister, Ben Macpherson, didn’t seem to have any answers when he appeared in front of a parliamentary committee this week.‘Tis strange indeed that training young people for the workforce is being cut when the government’s first priority is supposed to be economic growth.
Someone who has been looking after her own economic growth is Michelle Mone. This highly successful businesswoman from Glasgow made her fortune and her fame from selling women’s underwear, sometimes modelled by herself. But she and her husband Doug Barrowman have landed themselves in trouble over their role in the PPE scandal, the protective equipment they manufactured – but which was largely unusable – during the Covid pandemic. A court has ordered their company to repay £122million to the government because the equipment they provided did not meet the standards required. The couple deny they made any errors and were simply trying to help the country out during an emergency. Earlier in the week the company, PPE Medpro Limited filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators. This protects it for 10 days against action by creditors to wind it up.
Arran Ferry
The long-suffering islanders of Arran have given a collective sigh of relief to see their favourite ferry appear over the horizon after an absence, in various dockyards, for the last 20 months. The 32-year-old Caledonian Isles had to have her engines removed to repair corroded parts of the hull. But, somehow, the propeller shaft was not replaced properly so there were further delays while “twisting” of the vessel was corrected. There was another sigh of relief at Cal Mac headquarters when news came through from Turkey that the new Isle of Islay ferry will be ready for service by Christmas, after “only” a year’s delay.
It’s long been noticed that there are very few statues of women in Edinburgh, compared with all the male soldiers, clerics and scientists that stand proudly in our streets. In fact there are only eight: three of them are of Queen Victoria, two are Mary Queen of Scots, there are the two Margarets (St Margaret and Margaret Tudor), and finally in 2014 we got around to a small statue of Helen Crummy, MBE, who founded the Craigmillar Festival.
This week councillors, after years of dithering and controversy, have finally agreed to a statue of Elsie Inglis being erected in the Royal Mile. She was a pioneering doctor in the 1880s and 90s and a suffragette, the founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, ending up running several hospitals in the battle-fields of the First World War. The statue has been created by the well-known Scottish sculptor Alex Stoddart and shows Dr Inglis in her medical uniform which Dr Clea Thomson her great, great, great niece explained to The Edinburgh Reporter was her own design of which she was “very proud”. Not everyone likes the design but, after all, she was a battler against the prejudices of her times.
While Elsie is my woman of the week, my man of the week is Aden Thurlow from Angus. Actually, he’s a boy, aged 12, who has become the youngest person to lead a climb of the terrifying sea stack, the Old Man of Hoy, in Orkney. Other boys have climbed the 137m stack but Aden is the first to have led the climb all the way, dragging his father Alan and a climbing instructor Jim Miller behind him. Brave lad.
