Circus time in politics, but a dram fine whisky industry

By Mike Lowson

Published:

THIS week, I am sympathising with millions in the UK capital who are awaking to their first full week of being governed by a new mayor who, prior to assuming this high-profile political office, was arguably best known for his bumblingly comic appearances on the TV show, Have I Got News For You. While I am trying to sympathise, however, I have no sympathy for the 65% of Londoners who didn’t vote last Thursday but who now have to live with the choice of the 45% who did. That’s democracy, after all.

That Boris Johnson is now London mayor is akin to Kate Moss becoming the promotional face of a haggis maker or the Queen joining FatBoy Slim on stage at next month’s Rock Ness to spin a few of her favourite big-beat tracks. It’s incredible.

The newly-elected mayor once said that the prospect of him ever becoming leader of the Conservative Party was as likely as him being locked in a disused fridge. Well, stranger things happen at sea. As for that fridge, it seems it’s Gordon Brown who is now in danger of being frozen out instead.

Still, I’m sure Boris’s diary is full of formal engagements from now until the next mayoral election, just prior to the 2012 London Olympics, but if he does secure a second of secluded sanity at City Hall to slurp a quick latte and scan his P&J, I would like to invite him to jump on a plane to Aberdeen soon. There is much he could share with those in power in the Granite City, I reckon. For example, Boris was once a reasonably well-respected journalist, rising to edit one of the country’s best-known political magazines. Sadly, he is now seen by many – rightly or wrongly – as a fluffy, accident-prone, benign, bumbling buffoon.

It’s similar for Aberdeen’s elected members. For centuries, they were seen as figures of respect, but now they are sliding speedily into a self-dug cesspit of stinking incompetence, from which there seems to be no quick exit.

London’s international image over the next four years will be linked inextricably with its mop-haired old-Etonian mayor. That might arguably be preferable to Aberdeen’s worldwide image being linked with cloth-eared clowns who have been putting their size-nine wellies in it for years while claiming that the muddy footprints belong to someone else.

As their sombre political responsibilities are becoming a laughing stock, I suggest we adopt a new generic term for Aberdeen’s elected members – city clowncillors.

It might be easy to poke fun, but the considerable problems facing Aberdeen, or London for that matter, need real-life solutions, not political pontificators.

That is why the city clowncillors responsible for the north-east mess should resign en-masse and be replaced, I suggest, by representatives of the Scotch Whisky Association. While Aberdeen’s hopeless financial management over recent years – revealed in shocking detail this past week by an Audit Scotland report – makes rogue trader Nick Leeson look like a miserly meanie in comparison, the whisky folk are getting on with the business of keeping Scotland’s international reputation on the top line with a first-class product. Thank goodness.

Despite the world economic crisis and complex regional challenges in many of its international markets, new figures show that our national drink is generating £90 in exports for the UK economy every second. That’s a fabulous effort.

The whisky business and Aberdeen have much in common, in fact. Both utilise the best of our natural resources and combine them into an experience revered the world over. For whisky, it is water and barley; for Aberdeen, it is the sea and the granite cityscape. For both, it is the people who make the difference.

In the whisky industry, the natural ingredients are taken by quiet, skilled, dedicated, experienced people and transformed, by an alchemy that defies simple explanation, into the famous final product which is comparable to the nectar of the gods.

In Aberdeen, its considerable natural advantages and its fine, generous, humorous folk make a combination that was once envied across the world, too. Until, that is, those city clowncillors got hold of it and turned it instead into a sick joke.

The whisky industry is expanding apace in locations such as Glenglassaugh distillery, near Portsoy, the revitalised stillhouse at The Macallan distillery, Speyside, the reopening of Braeval and the extension of Glenlivet, a new distillery at Roseisle and even plans for Shetland’s first distillery.

All the Granite City can manage, however, is to lock the doors of key leisure facilities, a children’s farm and, soon, some of its precious primary schools, too. If the city clowncillors were in charge of whisky, they would likely flog it for 35p a bottle then blame everyone else when they went bust. So come on, Boris, head up for a chinwag at the town house and compare notes on how to turn a crisis into a drama. You are made for each other. Whisky folk, on the other hand, please continue quietly making a splendid dram out of a crisis.

Finally to my heroes of the week, and well done to Eastern Airways and Elgin-based fuels supplier Gleaner Oils for agreeing to sponsor the visit of two very special aircraft to Inverness on Thursday.

The rare de Havilland Dragon Rapide and DH.60 Moth aircraft will help celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Inverness-Orkney commercial air service, pioneered by the famed Captain Ted Fresson.

Fresson’s Highland Airways scored many firsts in British commercial aviation despite the momentous challenges he and his staff faced in the often hostile terrain of the Highlands and islands. His fabulous legacy continues to this day.

He was a true visionary, prepared to back his judgment with determination, courage, skill and intuition, and he well deserves this anniversary recognition.

Sadly, these qualities seem to be lacking in those clowncillors who, if they tried to fly an aircraft, would likely struggle to stay on the straight and level and probably dive vertically into the drink instead.

Then they would blame the co-pilot. It’s pathetic.