Festive Days

Loch Katrine

Christmas and the festive season were looming in December and I had mixed feelings. Aileen always loved Christmas and took great joy in preparing meals, decorating the house, buying presents for loved ones and organising visits from friends and family. I loved being part of this but also saw it as a time to forget work and get out into the hills for a couple of days. This year I was going to my son's new house for Christmas Day with the family. It was dull and wet but I bubbled through, the champagne probably helped. Gregor and Emily announced their engagement and we celebrated with some of her family.

Boxing Day was winter at its best and we had a long walk along the shore of Loch Katrine, the glorious Victorian construct to provide Glasgow with drinking water and the rest of the world with the product of innovative engineering and a model for municipal well-being. 

After two more dull wet days, there was a brief flash of sunshine at the end of the week. I took the opportunity to have a long walk over Lime Craig and a run down along the forest trails. The next day brought a steady snowfall,  I was on my own drifting towards Hogmanay. I had no plans and contented myself with a walk around my old running routes along the River Forth and into Easter Park. I had intended to run 8km but with the temperature at -4°C, it was too cold to keep going for long. It prompted me to resolve to get back into some running in the New Year.

Lime Craig

Snowfall

River Forth at Braeval

Old running route

Easter Park

 

That was the Year that was

2023 is over, let it go, as Millicent Martin used to sing. I would have to describe it as my annus horribilis. The most significant event in this year, or any other year, was the loss of Aileen on January 13. a few months after being diagnosed with Type 4 cancer. She had been stoic to the very end. For the family, it was heartbreaking to see her daily decline and eventual admission to the hospice when her medication and functions could no longer be supported at home. We greatly appreciated the kindness from the wider family, friends and colleagues and the funeral reminded us of the selfless devotion that she had shown to them all. So many people highlighted her sense of humour and her unassuming knowledge of so many issues that she dispensed with a modesty that defined her personality. 

The early part of the year was taken up closing her accounts and dealing with companies and financial institutions that seemed determined to make logging off a perpetual exercise in beating their logarithms. It was easier in the analogue days when phone calls and visits to local branch offices were possible. The honourable exceptions to this were the Council, Nationwide Building Society and, surprisingly, the Department of Works and Pensions.

As the year progressed, I tried to re-enter the wider world that I had abandoned whilst visiting and caring for Aileen over the previous 20 weeks. It was not a happy return. Apart from the yawning rise in the cost of living, my energy provider increased my bills because I had the heating on full and there was a constant stream of family visitors during Aileen's illness. They wouldn't take this into account so I switched and saved £700. I soon discovered that the UK was in meltdown and the world was out of order. 

The full impact of Brexit and the disastrous management of the Covid pandemic confirmed that the UK government was corrupt, self-absorbed and remorseless. It was incapable of managing the NHS, transport, public services, the economy, migration, housing, water companies, and the environment. It showed no inclination to take any remedial actions to prevent climate change. Meanwhile, the Scottish Government has imploded. It is evident that not only have the NHS, Education and Calmac Ferries collapsed but also local public services have been strangled. The SNP government has sought to stave off its dire performance blaming Westminster whilst contradicting the premise of devolution by centralising many services and obfuscating the poor performance of the services that it is now responsible for. We know that the UK government is broken, but that's no excuse for the Scottish Government to emulate Westminster.

On the worldwide stage, we had Putin continue his brutal assault on Ukraine, fired on by the declining support from the USA and Europe, the neutrality of China and the Brick countries and the inability of the UN to take stronger action without the backing of the security council that includes vetos from Russia and China. The Israeli - Gaza conflict exploded after the Hamas incursion killing 1200 people but the devastating response by Israel, killing over 20,000 Palestinians and reducing Gaza to rubble, exceeds any definition of a humanitarian defence. It has undermined international support for Israel in the long term as well as pushing the world nearer to a wider Middle East conflict. Elsewhere the conflicts in Yemen and Sudan continue, many African countries have given up on democracy, Argentina has elected a crazy populist as President and Donald Trump is still standing.

Even more important than all of these threats to humanity is the rolling danger of climate change that can be measured by 2023 having the fastest-ever increase in temperature and the Antarctic losing 1 million km2 of sea ice, the size of France and Germany combined. The floods, droughts, and fires with resultant famine, migration and conflict across the world are confirmation of the catastrophe ahead. Rishi Sunak confirmed his disinterest by giving the green light to further coal and oil extraction, refusing to provide support for insulation or funding for new green initiatives and having a carbon footprint that exceeds any rational justification. COP 28 in Dubai was an exercise in greenwashing when the oil-producing countries first refused and then recused an agreement for the phasing out of carbon fuels. 2023 is probably the most disastrous year for the world since 1939. 

I have kept my peace by thinking of Aileen.

Wet Christmas in Glasgow

Wet Christmas

I made a rare sortie into Glasgow for a Christmas lunch with old work colleagues. It was wet, wet, wet but the streets were buzzing in a way that I had not seen since the pre-Covid era. Tills were ringing, Apple Pay was buzzing and the pedestrianised areas were festooned with Deliveroo electric bikes creating more mayhem than Imelda May. The back streets were acting as emergency urinals. The meal in the Merchant City was surprisingly good and the patter even better as half a dozen retired denizens of past Glasgow glory days regaled each other with tales that had grown legs. 

We had finished by 4 p.m. so I took the opportunity to buy some presents and saunter around the streets that were alive with revellers on their way to after-work parties. Do they know it's Christmas? You bet. The streets were humming with Wham and Kirsty McColl. Climate Change means Bing Crosby is no longer crooning White Christmas as umbrellas have replaced gloves and hats. It was a feelgood couple of hours before I had to catch the electric bus home. The journey home allowed me to reflect on my time in Glasgow.

Christmas has changed over the years. At my first Christmas in Glasgow in 1973, we were allowed to leave work at 2:30 p.m. after a Christmas lunch in a local pub. After spending a couple of hours doing all my Christmas shopping in Sauchiehall Street, I drove down the old A74 to Lancashire in my ageing Morris Minor for Christmas Day at my parent's house. I drove back to Glasgow late on Christmas Day. Boxing Day was not a public holiday in those days. Christmas was not so much a festive season, more a day trip back then. 

Glasgow was my home and place of work for 18 years, during which time I witnessed its dramatic decline and depopulation in the early 1970s and was involved in the regeneration from the mid-1970s through the 1980s. A revival had occurred as Housing Associations refurbished the tenements, investment in transport and public services flourished and the city centre was revitalised with commercial, cultural and event venues together with housing investment. It attracted the Garden Festival and became the Europen City of Culture in 1990. Education facilities improved from schools to Colleges and Universities and new businesses and community involvement gathered pace. Since the emergence of the Scottish Parliament, it has become a poor relation to Edinburgh, which has soaked up an ever-increasing share of Scotland's public and private investment. Glasgow's renaissance appears to have lost its momentum, it's maybe why the regeneration of Dr Who from the Tardis in Buchanan Street emerged as a Bear, not a Bull.

It has hosted events like the Commonwealth Games in 2014, the European Cycling Championships in 2018, COP 26 in 2021 and most recently the World Cycling Championships. They have largely succeeded because the people of Glasgow love a party and always provide a warm welcome to competitors and fans. On the other hand, the city has suffered from a decade or more of collapsing public services as government grants have been reduced, council tax frozen and its major new hospital, the Queen Elizabeth has staggered from crisis to crisis, a hospital too big to succeed despite its enormous cost. The city centre has lost many of its retail outlets as the car-based shopping centres at Braehead, Silverburn, Clyde, The Forge and Fort do not have the extortionate parking charges of the city centre and are blessed with public toilets and pedestrianised malls. 

Glasgow has allowed its public domain to deteriorate as roads and pavements become dangerous and many of its buildings fall into disrepair. Recycling and cleansing have never been a strong suit and the streets are littered with overflowing wheelie bins. The city is held together by the vitality and humour of its people as its fabric rots. In the past year, even public transport has become more of a lottery offering. 

It irks me that the liveliest of cities has suffered in this way. The brief encounter on a wet Christmas evening gave me some confidence that the underlying spirit of Glaswegians will prevail. The Scottish Government and the City Fathers must grapple with the fundamental problem and give wings to municipal enterprise and innovation that is essential to provide succour for its people and businesses to restore justice and pride to the dear green place.

Glasgow's version of a regenerated Dr Who 

Going Home for Christmas

The Hypocrisy of Rwanda

A £290m handshake

It is hard to believe that even this most pig-headed government persists with the Rwanda Agreement. The fact that the Permanent Secretary of the Home Office has been called to explain the recklessness and escalating cost of the operation to the Accounts Committee suggests that the game's a bogey. 

If expulsion to Rwanda is a deterrent to asylum seekers making boat crossings then it implies that the fear of being sent to Rwanda is greater than a life-threatening crossing of the channel. However, the government intends to declare Rwanda a safe country so, ipso facto, it will no longer be a deterrent. The UK government has spent the last few years figuring out how to square the circle on many issues. It has failed miserably on almost all of them. Just examine the Tory political slogans in recent General Elections and the EU Referendum.

2015 Strong Leadership, A Clear Economic Plan, A Brighter and More Secure Future

2016  Let's Take Back Control

2017 Forward Together, Strong and Stable

2019 Get Brexit Done, Unleash Britain's Potential

They have been pointless, the only soundbite that has a ring of truth is from the other 2019 Conservative General Election playbook: Britain Deserves Better.

So why have the government committed to spending £290m to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda? 'Stop the Boats' is yet another dysfunctional soundbite looking for a realistic solution. Certainly not the Rwanda Agreement which is only to provide 100 places initially. Really, that's a cost of £2.9m per person and then there are the annual living costs to pay! 47,000 asylum seekers were living in hotels in March 2023, and the agreement would take 0.021% of them. Is the Rwanda Agreement sheer incompetence, crass stupidity or misplaced populist propaganda? Even the good citizens of Petersfield, one of England's strongest Tory voting constituencies, could only muster one person in the sizeable audience on Question Time to support the policy. He explained his reasoning as "nothing else seems to have worked". He could have been describing the last 13 years of government policy promises. 

Rishi Sunak gave an impromptu defence of his policy on Thursday following the resignation of his Immigration Minister, Robert Jenrik. He finished every sentence with the word 'right' as if that settled the argument but in truth a filler word from a filler PM. He must know that his time is up, there is hardly time to deport any asylum seekers to Rwanda before the next election. And Keir Starmer is more likely to go there as an Arsenal supporter than to implement the scheme. Rather than funding injustice for asylum seekers surely it would be better to allocate the £290m for the injustice to families of the 26,800 people who were given contaminated blood transfusions and are still waiting for compensation. Put that question to a focus group.