It’s been a rude awakening after the slumbers of the festive season.
The first week of the year has brought heavy snow to the north (30cm) and freezing temperatures across Scotland (minus 6°C at night). And as I write, the first storm of the new year, Storm Goretti, is sweeping in from the Arctic, though the forecasters say it’s likely to leave most of its snow in Wales and the south of England.
Across the Highlands and the North East, drifting snow closed roads, railway lines, some 300 schools and left isolated villages completely cut off from the outside world. Some folks said it was the worst snowfall they could remember. There have been the usual pictures of snow-ploughs, farmers using their tractors, car owners digging out their vehicles, children enjoying the sledging. Snowdrifts were sometimes over a metre deep and needed clearing several times over the four days of icy blasts.
Here in the Lowlands, it’s been cold but snow-free, except for a dusting on the hills. So the normal slow march back to school and to work has begun. In our hospitals, they are still coping with the winter flu upsurge but there is also the prospect of a four-day strike next week by resident/junior doctors. Talks have been going on between the British Medical Association and The Scottish Government but, as I write, there has been no breakthrough. It would be the first time the doctors have ever gone in strike in Scotland – unlike in England.
The pressure is on the government to improve its offer of a 4.24 per cent pay rise, the same as for the nurses and other NHS workers. The doctors say they were promised that their pay would be restored to 2008 levels and the current offer still leaves them 17 per cent behind. A newly qualified doctor earns £35,000 a year which rises to £75,000 after ten years.
Politicians are quite skilled at finding compromises in such situations and with the overall Scottish budget to be announced on the same day as the doctors’ strike is due to begin, I would be surprised if there isn’t a deal in the days or hours before then.
The politicians have already been out on the stump this year, if not in cold market squares, at least in warm press conferences, making their predictions about the Scottish parliamentary election on 7 May. John Swinney has said he’s confident of winning at least 65 seats at Holyrood, a majority similar to the SNP’s win in 2011 which persuaded the Cameron government to agree to a referendum on independence.
Labour’s Anas Sarwar has predicted he will be the next First Minister, despite the shaky start to Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government in London. The Conservative leader, Russell Findlay, daren’t make a prediction at all, after his party’s collapse in the 2024 general election. The Greens and the Liberal Democrats have great expectations. And looming beneath them all is the white whale of Reform.
The only predictions which matter at the moment are the opinion polls. They put the SNP well ahead on 31 per cent, Labour 22 per cent, Reform 16 per cent, Conservatives 12 per cent, Liberal Democrats 8 per cent and the Greens 5 per cent. How this breaks down in numbers of seats however is an excitement reserved to the morning after the election.
What was noticeable in all the optimistic New Year speeches was the absence of specific policies. Everyone wants economic growth, better public services, more houses, less child poverty, but no one is spelling out how to achieve them. I could make an exception for Reform and the Conservatives – they advocate cutting taxes on the wealthy – but I fail to see how that vague promise would address any of the objectives above.
I hesitate to make any predictions for the year ahead, given my poor record in previous years. But I suppose we can expect more storms, more summer heat waves, more tragic accidents, more lucky escapes, more political uncertainty. Luckily, we are far away from the wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan, but even the slight backwashes are alarming. Only this week we have been given the prospect of Scottish soldiers on the ground in Ukraine, and have seen our airports used to support the American action against one of Putin’s “shadow fleet” of oil tankers in the North Atlantic.
In all this we can rely on sport to cheer us up. We have an unusually open men’s football league. The Commonwealth Games comes to Glasgow in July and our World Cup campaign kicks off in June. We’ve even been promised an official holiday the day after our first match against Haiti on 15 June.
A day of triumph or disaster ? Let’s try to treat those two imposters just the same.
