Letter from Scotland

The great wheel of time has ticked over another year.  Even through the happy veil of Christmas, looking back on 2025 is a worrying experience.

The world seems a more fragile place – more climate emergencies, uneasy ceasefires, economic uncertainty, more risks from social media and AI. Of course, normal, unreported human life goes on, in all its joys and sorrows, and we can but hope that the sum total comes out positive.   

Looking back though my diary of the year, the events fall into four categories.  Let’s start with climate change. 2025 looks like being the second or third warmest year since records began 176 years ago. Global warming has now exceeded the UN’s 1.5°C warning.  Scotland had its sunniest year since 1955. It’s also been drier than average. And we’ve been battered by storms Eowyn, Floris, Amy and Bram. 

Abroad, we’ve seen devastating floods in Indonesia, the Philippians and China and forest fires in California, Australia and Spain. The Caribbean has had a dreadful season of hurricanes.   And yet, the political world is in retreat on its net-zero commitments, not least in Britain and in Scotland.

A lot of the news has been dominated by wars.  The head of MI6 has warned we are in “a space between peace and war.”  And although Scotland is a long way from Ukraine, or Gaza or Sudan, we have felt the reverberations. Our defence spending has had to increase to 3.5 per cent of GDP at a cost to other public services.  We’re building a fleet of new frigates on the Clyde.

Israel’s reprisal against the Palestinians in Gaza has provoked a rise in anti-Semitism. We haven’t had any outright attacks such as Manchester or Bondi Beach but security has had to be stepped up at synagogues here.      

Wars in places like Sudan, Yemen and the Congo have added to the numbers of refugees and economic migrants who land up in European countries, among them Scotland. While Scotland needs immigrants – our population would be declining without them – there has been protests  outside asylum-seekers hotels and a provocative display of Saltire flags.    

It’s not been a good year for the economy. Growth has remained near zero.  The “cost of living crisis” continues and the food banks are as desperate as ever. The Starmer government, hung up by its own petard of not raising the main taxes, has struggled to find other taxes to fulfil its promise to end “Tory austerity”.  There have been several u-turns and gaffs and arguments with The Scottish Government over spending.  

One of the u-turns welcomed in Scotland is the scrapping of the two-child limit on child benefit which will lift 95,000 children out of poverty.  And just this week, the UK government agreed a £120m package to save 500 jobs at the Ineos ethylene plant in Grangemouth.  But there’s been no big increases in spending on the NHS or care services, or education or the justice system which would have led to economic growth and answered the daily drip of news stories about failing public services.

The fourth category of news stories concerns “hate.”   It started on 20 January with the inauguration of President Trump who has made hate speech acceptable and even popular. It continued with the rise of right-wing political parties in Europe and Reform in Britain (27 per cent support in England and 20 per cent in Scotland, according to the opinion polls).  

The general addiction to social media has encouraged free-and-easy speech which has often crossed the line into abuse.  It’s made us think we are living in a more dangerous world. Young people have been driven to suicide. Middle aged men like Celtic’s chairman Peter Lawwell have been forced to quit their jobs.  And in its extreme form, it has shown itself in madmen attacks on innocent people in German markets, Australian beaches and English dance classes.

It would be wrong to conclude from all of the above that 2025 has been an “annus horribilis”.   At least attempts are being made to end the wars, ironically by the king of hate Donald Trump. There have been important medical breakthroughs, particularly in gene editing. More than half of the world’s electricity now comes from renewable sources.  

And there have been individual triumphs.  I’d like to mention two from my own city of Edinburgh. Explorer Alex Morrison has just completed her solo walk across Saudi Arabia. And the Maclean brothers, Ewan, Jamie and Lachlan, rowed 9,000 across the Pacific Ocean to raise money for water projects in Madagascar.

Paisley also deserves a mention as Scotland’s Town of the Year, having pulled itself out of its post-industrial doldrums.  It’s also the home of giant-killers St Mirren who beat Celtic 3-1 to win the Scottish League Cup.

And the Scottish news year doesn’t get better then Scotland’s men’s football team winning a place in the finals of the World Cup.  2025 has not been played in vain.