Letter from Scotland

The end of term comes quickly in Scotland.

Schools, universities, sports clubs, music societies are holding their final events before the long summer holidays. For those in employment, it’s time to wind up business before they take annual leave.  And it’s a moment too to review the balance between work and non-work.

This has been Volunteers’ Week in which the contribution of volunteering is being celebrated. In my own community centre, Bridgend Farmhouse in Edinburgh, all volunteers were treated to a free barbeque and a certificate of thanks. According to Volunteer Scotland, half the adult population volunteer, in some form or other, working some 300 million hours each year and contributing £5.3 billion to the economy, more than the arts, entertainment and recreation industries put together.

Volunteering is the unseen gravitational force that keeps society together. Think of people who litter-pick in their local park, help out at a sports club or a club for the disabled, crew our lifeboats, fundraise for a hospice, even work for a political party.  The are building a strong community spirit at the same time as expanding their own horizons. An opinion poll out this week from Oxfam found that 82 per cent of Scots believe that society is becoming more fragmented and 60 per cent said they would like to feel closer to a community or interest group.    

There’s been talk of a lost generation of young people, with 13 per cent of 16-24 year olds across the UK not in employment or education (the figure is 11.8 per cent in Scotland).  Volunteering is a way for them to re-enter society and gain work experience. The Milburn Report last week pointed to a host of factors which cause disengagement: among them a sluggish economy, an inactive welfare system and a preference for university education over vocational training.

And it’s not just that too many young people are not working, there’s a constant chant that Britain, including Scotland, is not working. It’s not just felt by Reform voters. The SNP blame Westminster for not working. Labour and the Conservatives blame the SNP for the poor state of the NHS, the  universities, the schools, the roads, the ferries etc.  Indeed politics as whole appears to be not working. 

It has not been helped by the Murrell scandal, which has undermined confidence in our political system.  Peter Murrell himself appeared in court from his prison cell on Tuesday to hear the farcical details of his £400,000 embezzlement of SNP funds. We heard how the chief executive of the SNP falsified receipts and made false entries in the account books as he went on his bizarre spending spree…..a motorhome, a Jaguar car, expensive jewellery.  

There are increasing calls for a parliamentary inquiry into how it all went undetected for 12 years.  His estranged wife, Nicola Sturgeon, was reduced to appearing on television to say she’s serving a sentence in the court of public opinion for crimes she did not commit.

The arguments will go on as we face two by-elections on 18 June. They are being held in Aberdeen South, and Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, to replace MPs who have now been elected to The Scottish Parliament. The Aberdeen contest has opened up the fraught issue of North Sea oil and gas.  To drill or not to drill. Labour at UK level is against new oil and gas exploration.  Labour at Scottish level is not so sure. The SNP have also trimmed their position and now will assess each drilling application on its environmental merits. The loser in all this is our ever-warming planet, another example of our politics not working.   

This week our brave boys set out on their working holiday to the World Cup. As they boarded the plane for America, the hopes of the nation go with them, as well as a 10,000-strong Tartan Army of supporters. They play their first match against Haiti in Boston on Sunday 14^th June.

Football, like so many other things, runs the line between work and non-work.  While some people are struggling with too much work, others have too little. Getting the balance right has never been easy. Even in Shakespeare’s day, people were saying: “If all the year were playing holiday, to sport would be as tedious as to work.”