Hamish Gobson’s diary: the view from across the Uisge
28 April 2023
IT IS CONSOLING to hear that the Scottish Government’s Climate Action Towns programme has a “data-driven approach” to selection. That is presumably why they have chosen Snorvaig, the Copenhagen of Great Todday, to be the symbolic Hebridean addition to the list of towns which are to be saved from irrelevance by being put on a Scottish Government list.
That is a sure sign of official status. Every town not lived in by a Former First Minister wants to be up there with the big smells on one list or another. Who wants to be Duddingston when you could be Uddingston? A more chinful First Minister than Humz ’n’ Yooster would have put a stop to all this posturing and expenditure, and used the savings to enable a reduction in the top rate of income tax. That in turn would provoke a different sort of action by stimulating the market in second-hand Ferraris.
I mention that because I saw in my Nomurrell newsfeed this morning that the first new Ferrari dealership in the United Kingdom for 15 years has just opened in Renfrew. Clearly there is a recognition in Maranello that the Cavallino is still in demand somewhere within the shattered ruins of our cerebrum-neutral economy. Not wishing to seem extravagant in these straightened times, I look through the “pre-owned” section on the Graypaul website and spot a Niesmann + Bischoff 296 GTB Coupe, complete with titanium wheel bolts and canary yellow brake callipers. But at a mere £325,000, Uddingston magpies are presumably an optional extra.
As the experienced environmentalist will immediately deduce from the designation “296”, it is a 2.9 litre V6 engine which runs on ordinary, unleaded windmill juice. Its acceleration is phenomenal above Force 3 on the Beaufort scale. And it would look good outside anyone’s mother’s house in Dunfermline.
It is obvious why the police like to confiscate such vehicles. The Super can take it for a spin while pretending to investigate financial crime. My approach to luxury car acquisition is subtler. By offering to buy one, I qualify for a “test drive” on the Ferrari track at Fiorano, where I hope to meet Niki Lauda, despite his recent death at the age of 70.
Some will ask how I can afford such a car. I refer all inquirers to the SNP balance sheet, as at 31 December 2021, and signed by Colin Beattie on 30 June 2022. The bottom line, or “Accumulated Fund at the End of the Year”, shows a positive balance of £610,765. That is almost enough to buy two second-hand Ferraris. One for the Super investigating the “Uddingston Two” and the other for me, whose humble aim is only to raise awareness of the climate emergency by driving around Great Todday in first gear.
I stress that I will not be driving a fast car, but “driving climate action”, as ScotGov’s press release, “Empowering Communities on Climate Action” puts it. This is part of “the Scottish government’s refreshed Energy Strategy”, we are told. The guff-wallah in charge of this limp, low-energy effort is somebody called Richard Lochhead, who styles himself “Just Transition Minister”.
Pic: A top-end mobile home in Uddingston purple
This is clearly a crib from Isla Bryson, who winked at the government when she signed herself into Cornton Vale prison saying, “Just Transitioned, Minister.” In fact, Lochhead is being modest. His title is longer than that. He is much too important for a three-worder. He is really Minister for Just Transition, Employment and Fair Work. It is the “fair work” bit that I want to consider.
It is, I presume, a reference to the Chinese coal miners whose jobs are to be made more secure by Snorvaig’s new status as a Climate Action Town with a positive Ferrari count. As is well known, China has, since 2000, built more coal-fired power stations than the rest of the world put together. If Richard Lochhead had more energy, he might try to follow Volodymyr Zelenskyy and arrange a phone call with President Xi. He could explain how Scotland has stopped producing both coal and cars, and that China ought to be grateful for our virtuous abstinence.
Lochhead could ask for money, like a simple beggar, or he could be more creative and offer Fife to the Chinese, on condition that they revive employment in all old coal-mines in the county—oh, and evict Gordon Brown while they’re at it. If everything works out, Lochhead could dangle the prospect of Ayr too, where serious coal-miners should have little difficulty finding new recoverable reserves, rather as they continually seem to do with oil in the “exhausted” North Sea. A “Gordon Brown clause” could be inserted to ensure Sturgeon keeps out of Dreghorn, from where, I gather, if the Super gets too close she plans to “go underground” disguised as a pit pony.
The Scottish executive’s plan to save the planet for the benefit of Chinese coal miners is data-driven, of course. So let me give some relevant data. At the height of production, in 1905, the United Kingdom mined about 235 million tonnes of coal a year, a total which was double Germany’s output, ten times that of France and more than twenty times that of Japan. It was exceeded only by the United States’s total of about 350 million tonnes.
Today, Chinese coal production is about 2.8 billion tonnes, or more than twelve times British output at its Edwardian peak. Beijing may be lost in smog, just as Glasgow used to be, but the upside is that five million Chinese have work in their coal industry. It is in order to protect their jobs that our compassionate government has introduced the Climate Action Towns plan.
As internationalists, it is out moral duty to help China by reducing pollution here so they can increase it there. It is a swings and roundabouts situation, a quid pro quo if you like. Any time you turn off an unneeded light bulb, or choose to make tea with cold water, you will be doing your tiny but important bit to help save Chinese miners’ jobs. We have had our day as polluters and must hand that baton on to those who are better equipped to run with it.
I think I’ll sell the Ferrari and escape to Portugal in an ex-Police motorhome. I hear one with shag-pile carpet on the ceiling (pictured above) might soon be going cheap, or so the Super says. Cash only.
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Hamish Gobson lives on the Hebridean isle of Great Todday (Todaidh Mór) and features in Nicola Sturgeon: the Years of Ascent (1970-2007) – A Citizen’s Biography of a Driven Woman in a Drifting Parliament (Ian Mitchell, 2022) – available on Amazon.co.uk and also reviewed here by Tom Gallagher.
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Photo of a Ferrari by Pascal Huot from Adobe stock
