On Sunday evening I had the privilege of singing Verdi’s Requiem in the Usher Hall. It is more of an opera than a funeral mass. It’s the story of man’s encounter with sin and death and the power of the human spirit to come through it all and triumph. And the wonderful thing about the experience was that I was not alone. I was one of 180 singers in the choir, over a hundred players in the orchestra, four brilliant soloists and an audience of 1300 people. We were all in this story together.
And so it has been with this week. The Latin mass of the Requiem formed an ironic setting for the almost unprecedented retirement of Pope Benedict and the shock resignation of Cardinal Keith O’Brien (left). Here was a man at the pinnacle of his career, the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland and Britain’s only cardinal, about to set off for Rome to cast his vote in the conclave to elect a new pope, when he is suddenly grounded by a newspaper story about alleged “inappropriate behaviour” involving four priests 30 years ago.
We don’t know the details, or even the nature, of the allegations. The Cardinal himself is to “contest” them. But one of the mighty has fallen, a hero brought down – justifiably or unjustifiably. And in recent weeks we have seen so many heroes fall…Oscar Pistorius, Lance Armstrong, Jimmy Savile, Chris Huhne whose successor Mike Thornton was elected in the Eastleigh by-election yesterday. Each thud shakes our belief in human nature.
And it is not just individuals who are tumbling to the ground. This week the once mighty Royal Bank of Scotland announced another massive loss, of £5 billion for last year. Much of it was due to its sins of misselling payment protection insurance and rate fixing but a lot was also due to its mistakes in the general banking collapse in 2008. The fact that it has continued to pay out bonuses – of over £600m last year – has rightly outraged the owners of the bank, you and me.
Another public institution, the NHS has also been letting us down. Figures out this week show that a record number of patients are having to wait more than 12 hours to get treatment in accident and emergency departments. The number of patients treated within the target time of four hours has dropped to 90 per cent. 
The health secretary Alex Neil (left) has blamed the winter vomiting virus which has caused a rush of cases being sent to hospital and he’s allocated an extra £50m to help the health service cope. This was the row that dominated first minister’s question time at Holyrood, with parties trading figures over who could protect the NHS from the Westminster cuts.
But for me what was much more exciting at first minister’s question time was the victory for the Raasay islanders. Regular readers may recall that only last week I mentioned that they lost out in the official bidding process to lease the shooting and fishing rights on their island. Even before the first question in parliament, Alex Salmond announced that the bidding process was being reviewed and the stalking firm from Ayrshire which won the contract had withdrawn its offer. Perhaps those upstairs are reading this column after all and we are moving towards a fairer world.
In fact Scotland this week became only the second country in the world to achieve Fair Trade status….after our fellow Celts, the Welsh. It means that each of our cities, more than half our local councils and 60 per cent of our higher education establishments have an active fair trading policy and buy their supplies from accredited fair trade companies.
We are also moving towards a fairer legal system. This week the government published its plans for the reform of the civil courts. It follows a report by our most senior judge Lord Gill who found that the present system was “Victorian…slow, inefficient and expensive.” In future, all minor civil cases will be heard by a “summary sheriff” leaving the Court of Session to concentrate on the more serious cases. There will be a separate personal injury court. There will be more use of written statements rather than oral evidence and procedural issues will resolved by exchanges of e-mails rather than long arguments in court.
And finally, there has been good news for motorists this week. The tanker driver dispute at BP in Grangemouth has been settled, with what looks like a victory for the strikers over pay and pensions. The load of glue which spilled from a lorry onto the A76 at Sanquhar has been cleared up. And soon, drivers coming into Scotland at Gretna will be welcomed by a huge new sculpture, the Star of Caledonia, which has just been given planning permission. The star will be 180ft tall and will glow in the dark. It is said to have been inspired by a local hero, the electro-physicist James Clark Maxell.
So not all our heroes have fallen and in among the requiem masses this week there have been flashes of a brighter human spirit. Life goes on.