(Pic: from Twitter)
The devastating typhoon in the Philippines has sent a wave of sympathy around the world. It has reached Scotland, with £1.3 million donated to the aid agencies in the first day of the official appeal. Ordinary Scots gave £760,000 to the Disasters Emergency Committee and the Scottish government pledged a further £600,000. The DEC says it’s the biggest response to any of its appeals so far.
Jobs are going at the two shipyards on the Clyde
And this is at a time when we ourselves are in the economic doldrums. It appears that the poorer we get, the more generous we become. Oh, I know the Governor of the Bank of England has said the recovery has “taken hold.” But there’s not much sign of it in Scotland.
This week we are trying to come to terms with over 800 jobs losses in the shipyards. Unemployment has gone up again to 7.2 per cent. House prices are still falling. The debt charity Step Change says one in five of those taking out a pay-day loan have trouble repaying it. This morning the minister of a poor parish in Edinburgh told me her people are really suffering from low wages, or no wages at all, and the tough new welfare rules.
Never mind, all will be well – or at least better – when Scotland becomes independent, say the SNP. Its referendum bill passed its final stage in parliament this week, so we are all set for the big vote on 18th September next year. At first minister’s question time, Alex Salmond confidently batted away suggestions that an independent Scotland might not be able to join the Sterling zone and that he “sent to the gulag” any economists who disagreed with him.
I wonder what fate awaits the dissidents inside Audit Scotland, the parliamentary watchdog on public spending. It had the nerve to publish a report critical of the way Scotland’s eight police forces have been centralised into just one national agency. “Planning for reform has been affected by poor relationships at senior level….” the report says. There is a lack of base-line information. Achieving the expected savings will be “challenging” and targets on voluntary redundancy have so far not been met. But we have not to worry. Police Scotland say “the process of change is only just beginning.”
Sir Ian Wood
Better news for the SNP came from the Aberdeen oil tycoon, Sir Ian Wood. He’s been leading a major review of the North Sea oil and gas industry. He concludes that there’s plenty of oil left, another 12 to 24 billion barrels (worth £200bn), compared to the 42 billion we’ve already used up. But to extract that remaining oil and gas will require huge new investment from the oil companies – Sir Ian doesn’t say how much exactly. He suggests a new regulator should be set up to co-ordinate such work and persuade companies to share the unused oil fields they are currently sitting on.
A strange new creature appeared in our newspapers this week. Was it a man or was it a fish ? It was the wet-suited Viking from Cheltenham, Sean Conway (32). He emerged out of the sea at John O’Groats on Monday having become the first person to swim the 900 miles of coastline from Lands End. His Neptune adventure took him 136 days, up the Irish Sea and along west coast of Scotland, and saw him having to contend with strong winds, sea-sickness and jelly-fish stings. “ I did it to prove that anyone can do anything if they put their mind to it,” he told reporters on the beach at John O’Groats. “ I have proved a lot of doubters wrong – though I’m not sorry it’s over.”
Finally, Glasgow is to keep its cheeky traffic cone on the head of the Duke of Wellington. City planners had suggested raising the plinth under the Duke and his horse to deter students, and other naughty boys, from climbing up the statue to place a red and white traffic cone on his head. Apparently the cone is taken down a hundred times every year but it keeps reappearing. The planners said it amounted to vandalism and presented “a depressing image” of Glasgow but the political bosses overruled them after a mass demonstration in favour of the cone – on Twitter of course, the modern revolutionary’s weapon of choice. Where would we be without Glasgow’s humour and its enjoyment of the ridiculous ?