The last week of May has set more climate change records. Scotland may have been 10 degrees cooler than England but 26.7°C in Charterhall in the Borders was a record high for the month of May.
Here in Edinburgh, we’ve had our first fire of the season, on Arthur’s Seat. The fire service has issued a general warning of forest fires across much of Scotland. It follows last year’s devastating fire season which saw 120 wildfires, including Scotland’s largest ever forest fire, on Dava Moor in the Highlands, which left 12,000 hectares of forest destroyed.
Farmers are also feeling the heat and not just because of the weather. The National Farmers Union of Scotland this week warned that the government’s latest attempt to tackle the cost of living threatens the future of the farming industry. Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney was the first to suggest capping the prices of basic food items in the supermarkets. The UK Government has now taken up the idea as a voluntary scheme, combined with reducing tariffs on imported food.
But the NFU says the idea of “cheap food” is short-sighted and will lead to the decline and fall of the home agricultural industry. It’s also, if I may say so, a very blunt instrument for easing the cost-of-living crisis, since it benefits the rich as well as the poor.
The SNP are also feeling the searing heat of betrayal by its former chief executive Peter Murrell. On Monday he shocked the political world by pleading guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 of party funds. It follows five years of police investigations and five years of embarrassment for the SNP.
People are now asking a list of angry questions. Why didn’t anyone notice…. the party treasurer perhaps, or Murrell’s wife, the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon? Were any whistle-blowers silenced? What about the timing of the police actions and the court case, handily after the Holyrood elections? Why didn’t John Swinney, and other senior party figures, not insist that Murrell could not be the party’s chief executive at the same time as his wife was party leader and first minister? And why would a man dedicated to making his country better want to splash party-members’ money on items like a top-of-the-range campervan, a Jaguar car, games consoles, expensive watches and a £1,000 telescope?
Murrell is now in jail, awaiting sentence and hopefully coming to terms with his madness. He should also be working out how he can repay the £400,000 which will be recovered under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
The whole affair has damaged the independence movement, just when the Scottish parliament this week passed a motion, by 72 to 55 votes, calling on the UK government to allow another independence referendum. The Starmer government will say what it always says; “Not now.” The issue is then, “If not now, then when?” I suspect the answer is when the opinion polls are showing a substantial majority for independence and any current stalemate has been broken.
With Tony Blair calling for every last drop of oil to be pumped out of the North Sea, the heat is on the UK government to grant a drilling licence for the Rosebank oil field off Shetland and the Jackdaw gas field off Aberdeen. The Conservative and Reform MSPs agreed with him during a debate in the Scottish Parliament on Thursday. Labour’s official position is that there should be no new licences for drilling and it will be interesting to see if the energy secretary Ed Milliband can hold the line. The SNP used to have a presumption against new drilling but this has now changed to a “balance” between climate compatibility and energy security. And in any case, the decision should rest with the Scottish government not Westminster.
Finally, you may remember the appearance of a “gannet” on the platform at the Edinburgh Central election count earlier this month. He (candidate Rob Pownall photographed below) was calling for an end to the Guga Hunt on the island of Sula Sgeir, 40 miles off the north coast of Lewis in the Hebrides.
This week an application was lodged with Nature Scot for another licence for ten men from Lewis to go the cliffs of Sula Sgeir in August and take 500 young gannets for food, as part of a 500 year old tradition. So the heat is on The Scottish Government for yet another controversial decision.
In such a season for hot weather and hot topics, can anyone keep their cool?
