The 23rd Commonwealth Games began its 10 day run on Thursday evening in the Glasgow Hydro with a kaleidoscopic opening ceremony.
The King and Queen arrived in Dr Who’s Tardis and soon we found ourselves swimming on a big screen with the Loch Ness monster.
Then a company of strangely dressed dancers took us through the history of Glasgow, ending with the Proclaimers “500 Miles”, sung ever so sweetly by a ladies’ choir. There was the traditional parade of glistening athletes and the handing-over of the King’s baton.
It’s a much smaller Games than usual and was put together at the last minute by Glasgow after the State of Victoria in Australia backed out when it discovered how much the event would cost. Even the compensation it paid to Glasgow amounted to £100 million. So there are just 10 sports represented: including athletics, gymnastics, swimming, track cycling and bowls (if you can call this pastime a sport). But there will be no team sports and no road events. Even so, 3,000 athletes from 74 countries and territories are taking part and there is a strong para-sport programme.
The Glasgow Games are being seen as a life-saver for the Commonwealth Games and indeed for the Commonwealth itself. Without the spectacle of the Games, the rest of the organisation’s work – international conferences and education programmes – might not survive.
Of course, new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, had to be there, his first trip to Scotland since he staged his coup against Sir Keir Starmer. He told John Swinney that discussion of a further referendum on independence was “off limits”.
The shocking political news this week is that the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Anas Sarwar, has resigned. He’s been appointed by Burnham to the House of Lords and to a ministerial post in his new government. Some are seeing it as a betrayal, since only a few months ago Sarwar was promising to lead Labour out of its defeat at the Scottish elections in May and, by the way, railing against the unelected House of Lords. Others think he had to go, after those poor election results. Labour fell from 22 MSPs to 17, equal with Reform.
So after turmoil in the Labour Party at Westminster we now have turmoil in the Labour Party in Scotland. Will the party turn left or right? How can it win back its traditional voters from the SNP? Will it be more “Scottish”, dropping, its opposition to an independence referendum? What will it do about the challenge from Reform?
While the thrill of the Games, and the political games, has been setting the heather on fire metaphorically, the heather has literally been set on fire over 200 times since the beginning of this dry year. In the last 10 days, a large fire in the Cairngorms has been burning across 4 sq km of moorland and forest around Nethy Bridge. And even here in Edinburgh, there’s been a dramatic fire on Arthur’s Seat.
There have been unfortunate building fires too, not caused by climate change but by other forms of human neglect. Princes Street in Edinburgh is closed because of a fire in the former Debenhams department store.
In Glasgow the streets around Central Station have only just re-opened after a fire in a Victorian building nearby. And, while we are talking about fires, there’s been anguished discussion this week about the restoration of the Glasgow School of Art which was destroyed by fire in 2018. It’s turned out that the insurance money will not cover the cost of a full restoration and there are fears that Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterpiece will be lost for ever.
Finally, I have been given hope of a better future by the announcement from Loganair that it will begin regular flights to the Scottish islands by electric planes in 2029. It’s ordered a fleet of 5 small electric planes carrying 5 passengers on short distance flights between islands and the mainland.
Here comes the low-carbon future, if only we can produce enough electricity from the wind or the sunlight or the sea or the tamed atom.
