'Climate inaction will increase costs for Glasgow's households'
The smallest grassy patches can make a difference by providing food for bees and butterflies.
Efforts to help improve local biodiversity and support the natural environment are more important than ever.
To stop catastrophic climate change, we must take action to give nature the home it requires.
We still need to support our nature reserves across the city.
With high temperatures and the risk of water shortages, we have to protect wildlife habitats and extend nature networks in response to changing climate conditions.
We are facing increasing threats from climate breakdown.
The latest warnings on water scarcity show the urgent need to reduce our carbon emissions.
We have to raise awareness about the current and future impacts of climate change on Scotland's water.
It is important to acknowledge that climate change is a water crisis.
We can feel the impact of changing weather through worsening floods, rising sea levels, wildfires and droughts.
There is a need to reduce our water usage and support the adaptation of our water supply and wastewater services to help tackle the impacts of climate change.
Climate inaction will increase costs for Glasgow's households and the economy unless big polluters are made to pay.
Research by Global Witness has revealed that the costs of climate breakdown in the UK amount to an estimated £3,000 per household over the course of 2025.
The cost of wildfires, flooding, crop losses, and droughts means higher bills for households, such as insurance and everyday essentials, warns Tax Justice UK.
Unless polluters pay through a windfall tax, communities will be worse off and the super-rich will keep getting richer.
The UK Climate Change Committee has published expert advice on what the Scottish Government must do to meet its ambitious 2045 net-zero targets.
This committee is clear that the 2045 target is achievable, but only if the Scottish Government takes decisive and rapid action to reduce emissions from transport, home heating, and land use.
Scottish Greens are also calling for the UK Government to listen to climate experts, take urgent action to fix the broken energy market, and end the artificial high price for clean green electricity, which is cheap to generate but expensive to consume.
This comes following the publication of new monthly figures from the Office for National Statistics showing that inflation has jumped to 3.5 per cent in April, the highest level since February last year.
Independent climate advisers have advised that the UK Government must act urgently to make electricity cheaper, through rebalancing prices to remove policy levies from electricity bills.
We desperately need to fix the broken energy market that is plunging people into poverty all the while keeping our reliance on climate-wrecking fossil fuels.
We're in a climate emergency.
We need significant effort to be made to switch our homes to clean heat, and to protect our city from catastrophic damage.
Delaying climate action actually costs a lot more in the long run.
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The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
Not a shot that's been fired across SNP's bows, it's a cruise missile
It's a totemic place for the SNP. In 1967, Winnie Ewing's by-election success in Hamilton shifted the SNP from the periphery of politics. Today, however, the town is less hallowed ground for Scottish nationalists and more field of woe. The story which should be taken from the Hamilton result isn't of Labour's win, but of SNP defeat. A shot hasn't just been fired across the SNP's bows, it's a cruise missile. This was the SNP's battle to lose and lose they did. John Swinney talked up a two-horse race between his party and Reform, dismissing the notion of a Labour win. He looks pretty foolish today. That the SNP could go down so badly to a Labour Party which has riled and alienated voters since Keir Starmer took office is remarkable. Labour won the general election with 34%. Today, that's down across Britain to about 23%. In Hamilton, however, Labour secured almost 32% – barely a change since Starmer took power. The SNP fell nearly 17%, losing a seat previously held on a majority of 4582. These are catastrophic figures for the SNP. Even Reform's rise – it came third on 26% – isn't as significant. Reform's vote in Hamilton broadly replicates its UK-wide support. So what's happened to the SNP? Well, first of all the nationalists are nowhere near as smart as they think they are. For a long time, luck was on their side. Tony Blair's administration was tarnished with war, Gordon Brown was done in by the financial crash, and years of Tory misrule played into nationalist hands. Read more: The SNP could pose as the sane opposition to London. You don't need world-class strategy and policy if your opponents are doing all the hard work for you. Claims that the SNP ran the greatest electoral machine or had the cleverest advisors were guff. However, when you've been in power nearly 20 years you can no longer pretend to be the opposition. That outsider status is working well for Reform, but the SNP are now more status quo than either Labour or Conservatives. They're an enduring symbol now of all the mistakes that the political world has wrought on citizens in recent years. The SNP has never recovered from alienating many of its progressive supporters in the wake of Nicola Sturgeon's resignation. The ensuing leadership contest revealed a level of social conservatism which shocked leftwing voters who had once backed Labour but shifted to the SNP. That – and the poison of multiple scandals – is why the SNP got hammered at the general election. Those voters haven't returned. And nor will they, for what does the SNP offer? There's been failure after failure. The word 'independence' was barely uttered during the recent campaign. If the SNP is scared to speak about independence, what's its purpose? Independence has decoupled from the SNP. The party can no longer rely on Yes voters backing nationalists. Voters long ago saw behind the Wizard of Oz curtain. The SNP managed for years to talk the talk when it came to government – with great rhetoric on climate change, child poverty, education, health and policing – but it never walked the walk. There's only so long voters will tolerate being made to feel gullible. The SNP suffers from 'the boy who cried wolf' syndrome. No matter what it says now, it's just hot air as far as many voters are concerned. The leadership took the people for granted. Evidently, the SNP has tried over the years to mitigate the worst of Westminster's excesses with policies like the Scottish Child Payment, but you can't dine out on that forever. It's like a forgotten film star showing you cuttings of their glory days. What could be more sad? Then there's the boredom factor: the SNP has been in power so long that many fancy a change, just to move the furniture around. The party ran a campaign that focused on its opponents, not on what it could offer the people. Labour ran a highly-local campaign fixed on local concerns. The SNP hierarchy is also increasingly irritating. Angus Robertson's attitude on the BBC's live coverage of the by-election was a masterclass in patrician sneering. The party comes across as entitled and full of its own self-importance. Privilege is not a good look for politicians these days. A few more humble types in prominent positions might serve nationalists better. It's also become such a bloodless party. This isn't to suggest that the SNP embrace outright populism, but if Starmer's managerialism is off-putting, Swinney is close to funereal at times. If the SNP thinks it can hold on to Holyrood at next year's Scottish election by simply giving us more of the same, then Hamilton should be taken as necessary corrective medicine. Quite simply, the people want politicians to make their lives better and the SNP are not doing that. Indeed, the people seem to be saying that even the clunking, u-turning, impossible to like policies of Starmer are more in accord with them than the SNP. That is bad.
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Shaken by crises, Switzerland fetters UBS's global dream
BERN, June 6 (Reuters) - Switzerland announced reforms on Friday to make its biggest bank UBS (UBSG.S), opens new tab safer and avoid another crisis, hampering the global ambitions of a lender whose financial weight eclipses the country's economy. UBS emerged as Switzerland's sole global bank more than two years ago after the government hastily arranged its rescue of scandal-hit Credit Suisse to prevent a disorderly collapse. The demise of Credit Suisse, one of the world's biggest banks, rattled global markets and blindsided officials and regulators, whose struggle to steer the lender as it lurched from one scandal to the next underscored their weakness. On Friday, speaking from the same podium where she had announced the Credit Suisse rescue in 2023 as finance minister, Switzerland's president Karin Keller-Sutter delivered a firm message. The country would not be wrongfooted again. "I don't believe that the competitiveness will be impaired, but it is true that growth abroad will become more expensive," Keller-Sutter said of UBS. "We've had two crises. 2008 and 2023," she said. "If you see something that is broken, you have to fix it." During the global financial crisis of 2008, UBS was hit by a losses in subprime debt, as a disastrous expansion into riskier investment banking forced it to write down tens of billions of dollars and ultimately turn to the state for help. Memories of that crisis also linger, reinforcing the government's resolve after the collapse of Credit Suisse. For UBS, which has a financial balance sheet of around $1.7 trillion, far bigger than the Swiss economy, the implications of the reforms proposed on Friday are clear. Switzerland no longer wants to back its international growth. "Bottom line: who is carrying the risk for growth abroad?" said Keller-Sutter. "The bank, its owners or the state?" The rules the government proposed demand that UBS in Switzerland holds more capital to cover risks in its foreign operations. That move, one of the most important steps taken by the Swiss in a series of otherwise piecemeal measures, will make UBS's businesses abroad more expensive to run for one of the globe's largest banks for millionaires and billionaires. Following publication of the reform plans, UBS Chairman Colm Kelleher and CEO Sergio Ermotti said in an internal memo that if fully implemented, they would undermine the bank's "global competitive footprint" and hurt the Swiss economy. The reform would require UBS to hold as much as $26 billion in extra capital. Some believe the demands may alter the bank's course. "It could be that UBS has to change its strategy of growth in the United States and Asia," said Andreas Venditti, an analyst at Vontobel. "It's not just growing. It makes the existing business more expensive. It is an incentive to get smaller and this will most likely happen." Credit Suisse's demise exploded the myth of invincibility of one of the wealthiest countries in the world, home to a global reserve currency, and proved as unworkable a central reform of the financial crisis to prevent state bailouts. For many in Switzerland, the government's reforms are long overdue. "The bank is bigger than the entire Swiss economy. It makes sense that it should not grow even bigger," said Andreas Missbach of Alliance Sud, a group that campaigns for transparency. "It is good that the government did not give in to lobbying by UBS. The question is whether it is enough. We have a banking crisis roughly every 12 years. So I'm not really put at ease." UBS CEO Ermotti had lobbied against the reforms, arguing that a heavy capital burden would put the bank on the back foot with rivals. The world's second-largest wealth manager after Morgan Stanley is dwarfed by its U.S. peer. Morgan Stanley shares value the firm at twice its book value, compared with UBS's 20% premium to book. On Friday, the bank reiterated this message, saying that it strongly disagreed with the "extreme" increase in capital. But others are sceptical that the government has done enough. Hans Gersbach, a professor at ETH Zurich, said there was still no proper plan to cope should UBS run into trouble. "The credibility of the too big to fail regime remains in question."
The National
an hour ago
- The National
Don't believe the spin – Davy Russell suffered no 'classism'
DAVY Russell came blinking into the sunlight, wiping soot from his sleeves on Friday morning. As he emerged from Lanarkshire's last remaining coal pit, the injuries of having suffered through 'classist' abuse during the Hamilton by-election campaign were nothing compared with the honour that awaited him above ground. He, Davy Russell, was to become a member of the Scottish Parliament. His heart quickened at the thought of Edinburgh's bright lights. Auld Reekie! Would the empty suits understand a bowls-playing, karaoke-crooning, shandy-sipping, authentic, real-deal guy such as he? I could go on. This is the story that Scottish Labour and some dewy-eyed commentators would have you believe. But Russell is no working-class hero. By all accounts, he is a pillar of the community in his new constituency of Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse. This does not make him Keir Hardie reincarnate, leading the charge against the condescension of the Holyrood elite. (Image: Craig Foy - SNS Group) Russell had a long career as a top bureaucrat in local government, becoming chums with the Glasgow Labour old boys during their time at the top in Scotland's biggest city. He used to run a business with former Rangers captain Barry Ferguson (above) and Asim Sarwar, brother of Anas. His style seems more wining and dining in the Ibrox directors' box than watching the dog racing before a few pints and a punch up down the local, or whatever similarly patronising image of 'working-class leisure pursuits' Anas Sarwar has in mind. Most pundits, myself included, had their arses handed to them on Friday morning after calling the Hamilton by-election badly wrong. READ MORE: How did Labour win the Hamilton by-election with an 'invisible man' candidate? But this was an SNP loss, with their vote halving, not a Labour victory, given they were down 3620 votes on their losing score in 2021. Russell's was a local campaign for local people, though the high drama of an unpredictable campaign – in Morgan McSweeney's back garden – set tongues wagging in Westminster, too. Scottish Secretary Ian Murray (below) and the Prime Minister both made election pitches on the floor of the House of Commons on Wednesday, each warning about the SNP's plans to downgrade the Wishaw neonatal unit. Labour's spin machine has it that it is this focus on local issues – apparently Russell spent the night before the vote addressing the Hamilton Accies Supporters Association – wot won it. If that's the case, then McSweeney's strategy which took Labour to victory on the tightest vote efficiency ever last year is very much still in play. It's less that Russell won people around to Labour; more that he managed to get most of the people who backed them last time around to do so again while SNP support collapsed. Scottish Labour are of course perfectly entitled to make the argument that voters rejected the SNP – they did – but not to try to silence their critics by accusing them of 'classism', as Sarwar did at the count in Hamilton. Criticism was levelled at Russell in the first instance because he ducked media scrutiny and because videos posted by Scottish Labour gave the impression he could barely say his own name without difficulty. It is not 'elitist' or 'classist' to point out that having some rhetorical skill may be an advantage to an aspiring politician. It is elitist to suggest that the reason someone comes across as thick is because they are from a working-class town in Scotland. And that's the argument that Hutchesons'-educated Sarwar went with. You can get the Worst of Westminster delivered straight to you email inbox every Friday at 6pm for FREE by clicking here.
