Pictures: Stuart McMahon on Flikr
It came roaring out of the north west, the first real storm of the winter. Cycling to work early on Thursday morning was like sailing a windjammer in a North Atlantic gale….and this was in town ! Out in the wild west, winds were reaching 100mph, power lines were being brought down, roads disrupted, trains halted, ferries cancelled, schools closed.
At the height of the storm, winds reached 140mph on Aonach Mor near Fort William. In Glenogle in Stirlingshire gusts of 106mph were recorded, and even in Edinburgh and Glasgow we were struggling against gusts of 60mph. A lorry diver was killed when his vehicle was blown over near Bathgate. More than 100,000 homes were without electricity for a time and all trains were cancelled. Over 200 schools were closed and, later in the day, low lying areas of the east coast were flooded by heavy rain and high tides.
The Clutha Tragedy
But that was not all that came out of a clear cold sky this week. The helicopter accident in Glasgow last Friday night has plunged the country into national mourning. Nine people were killed when a police helicopter dropped suddenly from the sky and crashed through the roof of The Clutha bar in Stockwell Street in the city centre. The pilot and two police officers on board the aircraft died, along with six customers who were drinking in the bar at the time.
There’s been much praise for the local people who rushed to the scene to help – though the first emergency services arrived within a minute. It took two days to search the building for survivors because of the fear of further collapse. And it was several more days before the helicopter could be safely lifted out. A week later, we still don’t know the cause of the accident. And, foolhardy as it may seem, other helicopters of the same type, Eurocopter EC135s, have not been taken out of service.
‘Cold comfort’ from the Chancellor
There was further cold comfort on the economic front this week. The Chancellor’s “autumn statement” contained the chilling news that the austerity programme is to continue, with a further £3bn cut in government spending over the next three years. The Scottish government’s block grant will fall by £308m or 0.2 per cent. George Osborne told MPs that “the job of recovery has not yet been done.”
He did however predict that the UK economy would grow by an optimistic 2.4 per cent next year. And he had a few sweeteners for Scotland – £250m in cheap loans for Scotland’s struggling local authorities, £10m to ease Shetland Island Council’s housing debt and £10m for the new Higgs physics centre at Edinburgh University.
The Royal Bank of Scotland has suffered another embarrassing week. Its computers went down again, during the big spending spree on Monday, and customers were left unable to pay by credit card or to draw money for automatic teller machines. The bank’s new chief executive Ross McEwan admitted the bank had not been investing enough in its computer systems for years. Then on Thursday it was fined £325m for fixing interest rates in Europe and Japan.
But if the top bankers have disgraced us yet again, then one man who can restore our national pride is Denis Rutovitz. After a life-time helping people in poor countries, the Edinburgh academic has set out – at the age of 85 – to climb Mt Kenya (17,057ft) and visit an AIDS orphanage his charity, Edinburgh Direct Aid, has been helping to fund. His climb recreates his first ascent 50 years ago, when, as a young mathematics lecturer in the country, he joined a climbing party to raise the Kenyan national flag on the summit of the mountain on independence day, 11th December 1963.
The Edinburgh Tram enters Princes Street for the first time
If that doesn’t restore some pride, then consider this: trams have been seen running on Princes Street in Edinburgh for the first time for 50 years. But only men in yellow jackets saw them. It was a test run for the long-awaited new tram system which will take its first fare-paying passengers in May next year. The test seems to have gone successfully, and, given the somewhat chequered career of the tram project so far, it was perhaps thought wise, that the trams should make their first appearance on Princes Street in the middle of the night and in the middle of the first storm of the winter.
PS. As I write, news has just come in of the death of Nelson Mandela. He was, of course, one of the global heroes of our time. He was also one of Scotland’s heroes. “Free Nelson Mandela” was the war-cry of the left when I was young and we all went on many an anti-apartheid march. Glasgow was the first place in Britain to offer him the Freedom of the City. This was in 1981when Mandela was a “terrorist” languishing in prison on Robben Island. Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh soon followed suit. In 1993, just before he became President of the new South Africa, Mandela visited Glasgow to thank the city for its support at that crucial moment when the world was only just waking up to the injustices of the apartheid system. It was Scotland’s part in one of the 20th century’s greatest stories.