I’ve just returned from a cycling holiday on Deeside and for the whole week it didn’t rain!
For someone like me, brought up the North East, this is astonishing. And it’s the second dry spell of the summer. As I write, the fire service is damping down a forest fire in the Cairngorms. A line of fire three miles long has destroyed a thousand acres of grassland, moor and forest and caused campers and householders in the Nethy Bridge area to leave their homes. Fire warnings have been issued for other parts of the country for the next few days.
Scotland is fortunate in being on the edge of the tinderbox that stretches across Europe. We’ve been watching as 11 wildfires have broken out in various parts of England. There’s been little rainfall and temperatures have soared to new records over the last month. Scotland had it’s warmest June day for 20 years (31°C). We need to take climate change a lot more seriously. Perhaps it’s so big a challenge that we just lie down before it and despair, or madder still, we deny it exists.
Take the voters of Aberdeen South, for instance. In a by-election earlier this month they elected a Conservative candidate who wants to open up new oil and gas fields in the North Sea and west of Shetland. Hardly a day goes by but the oil companies issue alarmist warnings that Britain will suffer winter fuel shortages unless they are given licences to drill in the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields.
They are watching to see if the new Labour government under Andy Burnham will change its policy of no new oil or gas fields. It’s been a principled stand, led by Ed Miliband (who, some said up to now, would be the new Chancellor), to show the world that Britain is taking the transition to renewables seriously, even if it causes the price of oil to rise.
North Sea oil is not the only issue where Scotland is waiting to see what the Burnham government will do. Will his promise of more devolution from Westminster include more powers for the Scottish parliament ? Or will it mean more direct UK funding for cities like Dundee and Glasgow? On immigration, the SNP want Labour’s new 10 year wait for citizenship to be cut back to five years. The Scottish Government is also waiting to see what Burnham does on welfare benefits and whether it needs to continue with a special Scottish child benefit.
Two of Burnham’s big tests will be: can he carry out his long-held ambition to introduce a retirement levy to pay for social care? And will he abandon Labour’s unnecessary manifesto promise not to increase the three major taxes? If he doesn’t do so, I wonder how he will end the austerity which still shackles public services.
I still find it shocking that Labour MPs turned on Sir Keir Starmer so soon after his landslide election victory. And why they had to go for an outsider to replace him. Starmer may not have had a radical plan for a new Labour government but he could easily have been persuaded to adopt one. They also seem to have forgotten his success in foreign policy: edging closer to the EU, leading the “coalition of the willing” on Ukraine and keeping us out of the Middle East war.
The explanation might be that Labour MPs are terrified of losing their seats to Reform. They believe Burnham is better than Starmer at appealing to working class voters. Certainly Starmer was not seen as a vote winner in Scotland, but Burnham’s “Manchesterism” might not appeal here either. In any case, I think it’s all a panic reaction to a passing fad for anti-politics.
Scotland can now sympathise with England in its disappointment in the football World Cup. We know what it feels like. There are however a few curmudgeonly Scots who never wished England well. Spain and Argentina are both worthy finalists and we’ll see who wins on Sunday. At least Scotland and England have taken part in this absurd, but at times thrilling, tournament.
Scotland’s next sporting challenge is to stage the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. The King’s “Baton”, promoting the Games, has been touring the 74 countries taking part. In the last few weeks it has been paraded at 60 events throughout Scotland in a build-up to the opening on Thursday. It’s a scaled-back Games this year with only 10 sports involved. But 3,000 athletes are expected to compete and tickets are said to be selling “strongly” at £17-£26.
I’m surprised at people’s perseverance, because when I tried, twice, to buy tickets I was defeated by the computer system. It might just be me, but I found the web site confusing, clunky to use and the payment system a merry-go-round of failed email messages.
Perhaps one should just turn up at the gate but remember, there are no athletic events in the afternoons. Can this be due to the heat? Maybe someone is taking climate change seriously after all.
