28 October 2020

Fatcher Strikes Again

by J. R. Thomas

Only a few more days and Glasgow will have its moment in the sun.  Nobody who has been awake for the last few weeks can have missed that Glasgow is the United Kingdom’s choice for hosting the CoP26 conference where the nations of the world (not, at the moment of writing, including India, China, or Russia) will meet to discuss international policing matters. No, just joking.  It is of course to discuss the environmental crisis and what can be done about it.  These junkets, sorry, summits, have been wildly successful in the past in reducing the earth’s carbon emissions by, well, nothing.  Indeed, the global output of CO2 has gone up, much of it from those supernations who are not attending.  But let us hope that this time it will be different, that those present will agree to cut emissions.

There is not much doubt that they will, though some less developed countries may understandably want a carve out to reflect that they have much economic growth to achieve to catch up with the post industrialised west, and that will require some latitude on their carbon outputs.

There is also little doubt that, having agreed all this, the global leaders and their entourages will get aboard their private jets and return home to their stretched limos and do very little to bring about the global revolutions in behaviour and in technology which they so earnestly signed off on.  But maybe it will just push things a little bit the right way to a cleaner cooler world, to the extent that Russia, once it has exhausted its oil and gas, and China, once it has run through its remaining coal reserves, and India which does have a lot of people living in poverty, will start to become more careful about carbon outputs.  Maybe, just maybe, at Cop27 (Egypt, next year) the nations of the world will start to discuss how on earth the planet will deal with projected population growth, what we might call the elephant in the room – except there will be no elephants left, given the space and resource requirement for a projected 10 billion people by 2050.     

But, to return to the mundane, Glasgow has a little problem all of its own. Two in fact.  First, the city is run by the Scottish National Party, led by the redoubtable Nicola Sturgeon.  It is her chance to make a great showing for the cause of Scottish independence on the world stage.  But it is a chance she has not yet worked out how to seize. The problem is that this is a conference for the leaders of the world’s nations and Scotland is not yet, legally, a nation.  So there is no role for her as First Minister to take part in the proceedings, either on an official basis or an unofficial one.

It has been suggested that Glasgow was chosen by Westminster as the host city for this momentous event to show the advantages of a united United Kingdom.  Here are the Brits in their diversity and the Scots get a fair share of the limelight, as the world can see.  And as Scottish voters can see.  This opportunity would not happen so much if Scotland was a small nation out of the sun (though it will be out of the sun, it’s November).  And think of the expense if Scotland had to pay for this.  There are 25,000 persons attending and whilst they do have to pay their own hotel and food bills, the security and infrastructure bills are paid by the host nation.  To Boris such bills are small change, not worth a thought, but to a country of only 4,500,000 people these things are more of a burden.

Boris may though have had a deeper motive for his delight in going to Glasgow.  It reminds the world he is Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and it makes clear that Ms Sturgeon is merely leader of a devolved parliament with little power and no representation on the world stage that she is so keen to stride across.  Even better, for Boris, is that it reminds Ms S of that too.  Payback perhaps, for all the rudenesses and snubs to Mr Johnson.  Let’s us see how she deals with that.

But the SNP has a second problem.  Glasgow has recovered from its economic troubles of the 1960’s and 1970’s to be a restored rebuilt bustling city.  But you might not realise it as you travel around.  As we said, the SNP run the city council, but the council is in deep financial doo-doo.  It has been busy doing all the things that councils do to try to make ends meet – cut services, raise local taxes and charges, impose wage freezes, reduce rubbish collections to once every three weeks instead of every two.  The Glaswegian citizen does not take kindly to getting less for more.  When the bin is full he and she do not carefully pack the rotting remains in sealed bags in a corner of their tenement.  Generally, they dump it in plastic bags next to the bins on the street.  Left there in rain and fondled by rats for a couple of weeks the results can be imagined.

Even worse though, Glasgow’s refuse disposal operatives are not happy with the new arrangements and frozen pay.  Many of them are on strike.  The city is not presenting its best appearance just now.  Nor is it any use delegates of a delicate or sensitive nature going to stay in Edinburgh (45 minutes by train).  Many delegates will have to do just that anyway, as Glasgow does not have enough hotel beds for 25,000 persons.  But many railway workers are also threatening to strike next week for higher pay – taking advantage of the government owned railway’s embarrassment at this time, no doubt, but what else is a negotiator to do?     

 It’s obvious, actually, and the leader of Glasgow City Council, Susan Aitkin, reached into her bag of leftie excuses and produced the best of all.  She blamed Margaret Thatcher for all this trouble.  Those of you struggling to recall when Mrs Thatcher was leader of Glasgow City Council, or First Minister of Scotland, or checking that she really did step down from her role as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1990, should stop all that.  It is all the Blessed Margaret’s fault.  Ms Atkins confirmed it.  “The Thatcher government walked away and abandoned, and left in neglect, communities right across the city [Glasgow]”.  Never mind that this allegation makes no sense at all, that Glasgow’s revival occurred as a result of the tough but successful policies applied to post industrial economies across the UK.  It was Fatcher’s fault, everything bad is Fatcher’s fault. 

Your correspondent will be in Scotland next week.  The forecast is for heavy rain. That of course will be Fatcher’s fault; but if does not rain, then the deficiencies of the weather forecasting system will be blamed on her instead.  So much easier than facing reality.  

  Tile photo by Svetozar Cenisev on Unsplash