It’s August, so Edinburgh is packed with six noisy festivals and twice as many people as in peace time.
There’s the official International Festival with 147 performances of music, theatre and dance. This is dwarfed by the Festival Fringe with 53,000 performances of everything you can imagine, but includes a great deal of comedy and theatre. Then there’s the Book Festival, the Film Festival, the Arts Festival and the Military Tattoo.
The opening concert on Saturday in the Usher Hall is already sold out. It features Wynton Marsalis’s 12 movement symphony “All Rise” with 200 performers on stage. And this is no random choice. Marsallis is married to the festival director, the Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti, and it’s her love of jazz and America that led her to marry a jazz trumpeter from New York. Marsalis is a world renowned trumpet player and founder of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra who are in the capital for a residency at the Usher Hall.
Ms Benedetti’s festival theme this year is the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence. It’s a strange theme, in view of the troubled and troubling state of Trump’s America today. She acknowledges this in her introduction to the official programme where she talks of the “wild, abrasive, exuberant” country she has discovered but also its “cruelty, prejudice and hypocrisy.” The slogan “All Rise” is an invitation for us all to rise above our differences and take flight in the free space of the arts.
Coming to Edinburgh at this busy time of the year is not easy. It’s crowded. Accommodation is expensive and a new five per cent tourist tax has just been introduced. There are calls from the arts agencies for some of the £50m raised to be ploughed back into the arts. Then there’s the fire which has closed Princes Street, disrupting the buses and trams. And finally, there’s the whimsical weather. But hey ho the wind and the rain will not put the festival-goers off and the £500m clamjamfrie will roll on for the next three weeks.
Pupils, teachers and staff at Broughton High School were joined by Education Secretary Màiri McAllan to celebrate as they receive their exam results.
The Education Secretary will congratulate pupils receiving their results and hear about their next steps. This is the first set of results since Qualifications Scotland was established.
Broughton High School offers lots of different options to support pupils from S3-S6 pursue their interests and aspirations during the senior phase. As well as strong academic and successful school-college partnerships, Broughton runs targeted programmes to help pupils plan for their futures, which cover areas including work skills, music, dance and sport. PHOTO Alan Simpson
For our school pupils it’s not such a jolly time. The autumn term starts again next week. This year’s 148,000 exam-sitters have just had their results. Most have passed, indeed more than ever before. The Higher pass rate has gone up from 76.1 per cent to 76.7 and there are more students than ever going to university. And more of them are from deprived backgrounds. However the “attainment gap” between those from rich areas and those from poor areas remains much the same, at 15.9 per cent at Higher level, despite £2bn extra being spent on schools in deprived areas over the last ten years.
It’s not such a happy time either for the 1,100 oil workers employed by BP in the North Sea. The company has announced it’s selling its five oil fields in British waters after 60 years of production. It says it’s part of a slimming down operation to concentrate on larger fields elsewhere. Oil industry leaders say BP’s decision is due to the windfall tax on profits and the government’s uncertainty over new drilling licences. But I see it as confirmation that the oil and gas industry is dying in Scotland and we ought to be transitioning more quickly towards renewables.
Nor is it a jolly time for the Scottish Labour Party. It’s involved in a tricky leadership contest after Amar Sawar’s sudden departure to the House of Lords. There are three runners in the race so far: Michael Marra, the continuity candidate; Jo Fagan a new MSP, bustling in after leading his local council in South Lanarkshire; and, entering from the left, Monica Lennon who has already complained about the party “reeking of misogyny and male entitlement.” We’ve not seen much discussion of policy so far and the job itself will be something of a challenge, leading a rump of just 17 MSP in parliament and a party down at 20 per cent in the opinion polls.
We’ve been shocked this week by two suspected murder cases. One is of an Edinburgh woman who volunteered for a Christian refugee project in Greece. The body of Elisabeth Jane Ross (38) was found in a suitcase in an abandoned building in Athens. An Afghan boxing champion has been charged with her murder. The second case involves a 9 year-old girl from West Yorkshire found injured in a tent in Arbroath. She died later in hospital in Dundee. Her father has appeared in court on a charge of murder. The police have been quick to arrest the suspects in each case and the stories have dominated the news.
Last Sunday the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow took place. Scotland came away with 39 medals, in fifth place after Australia, England, Canada and India. The 11 days of sport have been counted a success with more than 600,000 tickets sold. Glasgow stepped in at the last minute to rescue the games after the State of Victoria in Australia dropped out due to rising costs. The next brave city to stage the games will be Ahmedabad in India in 2030 where Amdavad 2030 will be held – the 100th Commonwealth Games.
Like Glasgow and Edinburgh, Ahmedabad will have to face up to the challenge of hosting a world event – the crowds, the transport and accommodation problems, and the judgement of those who make the pilgrimage and those who already live there.
