I’ve spent much of this week on Speyside in the fresh, clear air of the Highlands and it’s given me a fresh, clear view of what is happening in the Lowlands. So as I came rattling down on the train through the Pass of Killiecrankie I discovered that much had changed: Glasgow had re-branded itself, those bridge stumps in the Forth were to be called the Queensferry Crossing, the Chancellor had been swinging his axe again and Edinburgh was on its summer holidays.
Councillor Gordon Matheson, Leader of Glasgow City Council launches Glasgow’s new slogan
Glasgow City Council has decided to spruce up its image ahead of next year’s Commonwealth Games and it has come up with a new slogan: “People Make Glasgow”. I’m not sure what to make of this. It could equally work the other way round, Glasgow Makes People. But which ever way round it is, the focus on people is a clever way of Glasgow telling its modern-day story.
The old city of engineering works and shipyards has gone, to be replaced with the life sciences, the call centres, the financial services, the colleges and universities, the arts and crafts. But there is also the less wholesome side of Glasgow – the sick city of Europe, stricken with unemployment, poverty, alcoholism, drug abuse, heart disease, cancer, obesity, and violent crime. Back in the 1980s, Glasgow came up with the slogan “Glasgow’s Smiles Better” which washed away the old gangland image of No Mean City. I sincerely hope the new promotion campaign – on which the council is to spend £500,000 – will spruce up the ugly side of Glasgow as much as its good side. It’s a big ask, but as the slogan says, it’s up to “People.”
Queensferry Crossing
Meanwhile over in the east, as my train slid gently across the Forth Bridge, we could see the piers of the new £1.6bn bridge rising from the water. It’s to be called the Queensferry Crossing – not a bridge but a more bureaucratic “crossing”. In fact four of the five choices offered to the public, only one was a bridge, the Caledonia Bridge and it was defeated by 12,000 votes to 10,000. Whether the official name will stick remains to be seen, but we will cross that crossing when we come to it.
As I said, Edinburgh seemed to be on holiday by the time I returned from the Highlands. The place was thronging with visitors, the sun was out, the wind was mild, and the hen-party ladies were unusually flamboyant – one party with a Wizard of Oz theme, another a fairy-tale theme. The schools have broken up for the summer. Parliament has had its final tea-party.
The politicians have been digesting the Chancellor’s latest spending plans – or rather spitting out his cuts, depending on which politicians we are talking about. For Scotland, the spending review means a reduction of £400m in the Scottish government’s annual budget in 2015 but, confusingly, an increase in its one-off capital budget of £300m.
John Swinney MSP
Finance Secretary
This switch from current spending to capital spending is supposed to kick-start the economic recovery. How this works I’m not sure, since in the process another 144,000 public sector jobs across Britain ( presumably about 14,000 of them in Scotland) will go, thus reducing the demand for the products of the said economic recovery.
John Swinney, the Scottish finance secretary, was also unconvinced of the Chancellor’s wisdom. He hinted that he would not be joining him in banning automatic pay rises for public sector workers, though he gave no guarantee on jobs. Everyone it seems is still keen on austerity.
One group of public sector workers who have been complaining this week about the tough times in which we live are the doctors.
Bruce Statue at Bannockburn
The annual conference of the British Medical Association in Edinburgh has been discussing the increasing problem of “doctors’ burn-out” with patient consultation times becoming ever shorter, quicker and more bureaucratic. On the other hand, a Scottish Parliament committee has published a report saying that public sector workers “lack an appetite for change” and it urges them to be more innovative in how they tackle their increasing workload.
Finally, I was amazed to read that volunteers from the National Trust have been digging up people’s gardens in the Bannockburn area looking for the site of the famous skirmish that took place there earlier this week…..in 1314. I thought we knew all about Bannockburn but apparently the exact site is in dispute. We’d better nail this down before the big 700th anniversary “celebrations” next year or we Scots may be accused of making the whole thing up.