{"id":1050674,"date":"2026-06-26T05:20:23","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T05:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1050674\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T05:20:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T05:20:23","slug":"letter-from-scotland-the-edinburgh-reporter-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1050674\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter from Scotland – The Edinburgh Reporter"},"content":{"rendered":"

How hot does it need to get before we do something about climate change?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been through a week of torrid weather. Thursday was the hottest June day since 1893. In Threave in Dumfries and Galloway the temperature reached 31\u00b0C. Tarmac roads in the Borders had to be gritted with sand to prevent them melting.<\/p>\n

Yet Scotland is on the cool edge of Europe, where temperatures have been in the 40\u00b0C, and cooler than those World Cup venues where the beleaguered Tartan Army is roasting in defeat and uncertainty.<\/p>\n

\"\"Lazing on a sunny afternoon. The Meadows, Edinburgh.<\/p>\n

It was always a bad idea to hold the World Cup in three hot countries in the middle of summer. I feel sorry for the 10,000 Scottish fans who travelled to the Americas on a wave of euphoria and unrealistic expectations. We now have to come to terms with reality. We lost 1-0 to Morocco and 3-0 to Brazil. Our team is just not good enough to qualify for the later stages of the competition\u2026even though we may scrape through due to some inscrutable mathematics.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo Scotland, no party\u201d, the song by the Kilmarnock postman Nick Morgan, must now become a lament and not the triumphant anthem which so endeared the citizens of Boston and Miami to our well-behaved blue army.<\/p>\n

So the week that began in sunshine is now breaking down into showers and even thunderstorms.\u00a0 All over the world there are clear signs that the planet is angry with us. Unusual weather, storms, droughts and floods, are trying to tell us that something is wrong, yet we continue pumping carbon dioxide into the air with a kind of defiant abandon.<\/p>\n

For instance, voters in the Aberdeen South by-election last week elected a Conservative MP on the slogan \u201cDrill baby drill\u201d, demanding to open up more oil and gas fields in the North Sea. It will be interesting to see if Andy Burnham sticks to Labour\u2019s pledge to stop issuing new drilling licences.<\/p>\n

\"\"Andy Burnham MP (Makerfield)<\/p>\n

And while on the subject of Mr Burnham, the question being asked here is what will he ever do for Scotland? \u00a0Will he really end government austerity by raising taxes on the rich? \u00a0Will he grant Scotland more devolution? Or even agree to a second independence referendum? Will he restore Labour\u2019s fortunes in Scotland? \u00a0<\/p>\n

The first minister, John Swinney\u2019s, answers to these questions will be \u201cNo.\u201d \u00a0But so far he\u2019s confined himself to deploring Labour\u2019s internal chaos in \u00a0forcing the seventh prime minister on Britain in the last 10 years. \u00a0The SNP is quoting an Ipsos Mori opinion poll which found that 50 per cent of the public believe Britain is ungovernable in its present form.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the first person to call for Sir Keir Starmer to resign was the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, back in February. He saw that Starmer \u00a0was not popular in Scotland and that he had to distance Scottish Labour from the mistakes of Labour at Westminster. \u00a0Sarwar\u2019s move backfired because no one else followed him over the top and it failed to protect Labour from its disastrous showing in the Holyrood elections in May \u2013 down from 22 MSPs to 17, equal with Reform. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Anas Sarwar. Labour Election Launch. \u00a9 2026 Martin McAdam<\/p>\n

The problem for Labour, both north and south of the border, is that they cannot fulfil their promise of \u201cchange\u201d without breaking their commitment not to increase the main taxes. I wonder how Burnham can get out of the cage the party has put itself in.\u00a0 And I wonder too if Britain can stop the slide to presidential democracy in which everything seems to depend on the prime minister rather than a governing team.<\/p>\n

The school term has come to a sweltering end in Scotland. Even MSPs are going on holiday. John Swinney made two brief announcements \u2013 on re-training for North Sea workers and a new First Homes Fund \u2013 and then left for the hills to try to forget for a while NHS waiting times, economic growth, independence referendums, Scotland\u2019s footballing future and prison overcrowding.<\/p>\n

\"\"23\/6\/2026<\/p>\n

Peter Murrell arrives at Edinburgh High Court for Sentencing on embezzlement charges. Picture Alan Simpson <\/p>\n

I mention prison overcrowding because Mr Swinney\u2019s friend, and former SNP chief executive, Peter Murrell, was sentenced<\/a> this week to 5 years in prison for embezzling more than \u00a3400,000 of party funds. The money will be repaid, according to his lawyers, and Murrell has been punished by his disgrace, so I wonder why the judge had to impose such a lengthy sentence.\u00a0 It\u2019s just such sentences which are over-crowding our prisons in the first place.<\/p>\n

Finally, the warm weather has brought the usual warnings about starting forest fires and swimming or boating in open water. In Skye at the weekend, two foolish men took a small inflatable boat out in Broadford Bay at 9 o\u2019clock at night. <\/p>\n

They were spotted drifting out to sea by 15 year old Archie Law who promptly went out to rescue them in his own proper boat. They arrived back at the pier, wet and cold, just as the lifeboat from Kyle appeared. The RNLI skipper has praised Archie for averting a much more serious situation and reminded the two foolish men in question that \u201cblow-up inflatable toys should be kept for use in swimming pools not open water.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"24\/6\/2026 Portobello Beach Edinburgh PHOTO Alan Simpson<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How hot does it need to get before we do something about climate change?\u00a0 We\u2019ve been through a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1050675,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8816],"tags":[31136,8916,748,1102,4155,4884,712,16,15],"class_list":["post-1050674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edinburgh","tag-anas-sarwar","tag-andy-burnham","tag-britain","tag-edinburgh","tag-edinburgh-news","tag-great-britain","tag-scotland","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116814730507673970","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1050674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1050675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1050674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1050674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1050674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}