Search continues for six presumed dead in bridge collapse
Scottish employers and Scottish workers”. Mmmm. I wonder which party stood in the way of devolving real economic powers in 1997.
It’s not fair to expect sweeping economic change from a fiercely constrained devolved parliament – but life’s not fair. And Scots don’t just expect it – they are craving it.
Can the Scottish Parliament get Scotland out of the British economic rut or is Holyrood only able to mitigate the cruellest benefit “reforms” and legislate for behavioural change?
Andrew Tickell analysed this conundrum in an excellent Sunday National article pegged to news that Holyrood plans to outlaw pet abduction.“Increasingly, the limits of devolution seem to be channelling proposals like this through parliament – not necessarily because they reflect real priorities and economic injustices, but because they happen to fall within legislative competence.”.
Is it fair to think one man in one year could stretch, outflank or just plain ignore the legislative competence of devolution to create an economically interventionist Scottish Parliament?
Well, I think two expectations are reasonable.
One is demanding more powers from Westminster pronto. Tommy Sheppard’s amendment at the SNP conference in November committed the party to demand the permanent transfer of referendum powers to the Scottish Parliament, control over employment rights, the living wage, windfall taxation, regulation, pricing and production of energy sources, employment visas for overseas workers and new borrowing powers
The First Minister needs to talk about indy
to invest a just transition – in the next General Election campaign.
Yip – this bundle does not constitute independence. But it does tackle and showcase the weakness of a 1999 devolution deal designed to make the Scottish Parliament and any First Minister look economically weak – and that’s important.
Sturgeon unaccountably “owned” issues like the attainment gap – impossible to solve in Scotland without the powers to tackle generational poverty and hopelessness. It’s time to explain what Scotland is missing.
SECONDLY, Humza must get bold on energy. We need to see Holyrood “own” the renewables revolution and pump-prime industrial recovery by an immediate rollout of district heating across Scotland.
The Green heating strategy is currently so hesitant, piecemeal and under-advertised as to be nonexistent. Alex Salmond pushed the rollout of wind farms in Scotland using just planning law while energy remained reserved to Westminster.
I expect something far bolder in the wholly devolved area of heating.
Yes, Holyrood’s borrowing powers are zilch. But let’s be clear about that problem, devise a crafty solution and above all, start.
Third, and most obvious, the First Minister needs to talk about independence. With all due respect, that cause is more popular than himself, the SNP, Greens and Alba put together, but regularly disappears off the agenda.
So Humza, let yourself off the leash, speak out, aim high and your anniversary might be memorable yet.
RECOVERY efforts resumed yesterday over six construction workers who are presumed dead after a cargo ship hit a pillar of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, causing the structure to collapse.
The collision occurred in the early hours of Tuesday after the ship lost its steering capability before it hit a pillar of the US city’s Francis Scott Key Bridge.
The bridge is an important link in the region’s transportation infrastructure, and its collapse is expected to snarl commuter traffic and disrupt a vital shipping port for some time.
Audio from first responders revealed a scramble to halt traffic just before the crash.
Within 90 seconds of a dispatcher’s 12-second warning over the radio on Tuesday, police officers responded that they had managed to stop vehicle traffic over the Baltimore bridge in both directions. One said he was about to drive onto the bridge to alert a construction crew. But it was too late. Powerless and laden with huge containers, the vessel smashed into a support pillar.
“The whole bridge just fell down,” a frantic officer said. “Start, start whoever, everybody ... the whole bridge just collapsed.”
When the container ship Dali slammed into the pillar at around 1.30am on Tuesday (5.30am GMT), it caused a long span of the bridge, a major link in the region’s transport networks, to crumple into the Patapsco River.
At least eight people went into the water. Two were rescued but the other six, part of a construction crew that had been filling potholes on the bridge, are missing and presumed dead. A search for their bodies was under way yesterday morning, said Maryland State Police spokesperson Elena Russo.
Among the missing were people from Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, according to diplomats from those countries. The Honduran man was identified as Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval.
Federal and state officials said the crash appeared to be an accident. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating, and ship traffic entering and leaving the Port of Baltimore has been suspended indefinitely.
Captain Michael Burns Jr of the Maritime Centre for Responsible Energy said bringing a ship into or out of ports in restricted waters with limited room to manoeuvre is “one of the most technically challenging and demanding things that we do”.
“So there really is few things that are scarier than a loss of power in restricted waters,” Burns added.
Video showed the ship moving at what Maryland governor Wes Moore (pictured) said was about 9mph toward the 1.6-mile bridge. Traffic was still moving across the span, and some vehicles appeared to escape disaster with only seconds to spare.
The crash caused the span to break and fall into the water within seconds, and jagged remnants were left jutting up from the water.
Police said there is no evidence anyone went into the water other than the workers, though they had not discounted the possibility.
US transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg said it was too soon to give a time frame for clearing the channel, which is about 50 feet deep, while president Joe Biden said he planned to travel to Baltimore soon and expects the federal government to pay the entire cost of rebuilding.
Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott called it “an unthinkable tragedy”, while Moore said that “all of our hearts are broken for the victims and their families”.