Day Queensferry Crossing became the people’s bridge
TENS of thousands of people yesterday walked over the Queensferry Crossing in a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunity to cross the new Forth bridge on foot.
The £1.35 billion structure was opened to pedestrians for the weekend ahead of tomorrow’s official opening by the Queen.
Over the weekend, 50,000 people lucky enough to secure tickets in a public ballot will stroll across the 1.7-mile bridge. The first walkers set off under blue skies at 9am. Morgan Lewis-Wilson, 16, one of three generations of his family from East Lothian taking part, said: ‘I ran the second half and I was one of the first people to finish north to south. It was a really amazing atmosphere.’
Shauna Killen, 45, from Anstruther, Fife, said: ‘It was amazing to watch it being built over the last few years. To be part of it today was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.’
Sue Logan-Bury, 70, from Cupar, Fife, said: ‘The atmosphere was very upbeat, everybody talking to everybody else.’
Local schools will be allowed on to the bridge on Tuesday before it closes to pedestrians. The crossing will remain closed to traffic until Thursday.
HER Majesty will tomorrow open the Queensferry Crossing. Just as she did last week. The only difference will be, this time, the bridge will be graced by the presence of the Queen. However long it took to build the bridge, however delayed it was, opening it has packed a week in our gracious First Minister’s life.
Nicola Sturgeon is correct to say this is truly a historic moment. Never before has an inanimate object been so intensely milked.
‘I can’t tell you how emotional it feels to be standing on this stunning Queensferry Crossing,’ she said as she turned the lights on last Monday. ‘This bridge is the greatest bridge in the world.’
The only thing missing was Miss Sturgeon and her husband Peter Murrell standing, DiCaprio and Winslet-like, doing their Titanic pose.
WHAT I cannot work out is if she really believes this new bridge is truly an expression of Scottishness – as if the next stage of nationalism has gone from genuflecting to the Saltire, to worshipping concrete and steel.
If it is, with respect, her majesty should know that the latter is as fraudulent as the former.
Spectacular as it may be, the Queensferry Crossing is not a symbol of Scottish achievement.
A Spanish-dominated consortium including Americans, Germans, even a British firm, ran the project. The steel came from China – even if the Chinese ship that brought it flew a Saltire.
As the writer George Rosie pointed out last week, British steel manufacturers referred to that moment as an ‘outrage’ and that it represented taxpayers’ cash flooding out of the country.
Scotland did not build this bridge. Scotland bought it.
Now, I believe that, as First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon should have a chauffeur-driven car. But if she were to use taxpayers’ cash to buy herself an Italian Ferrari to be ferried about in, or a German Porsche, or a US Cadillac, I wouldn’t see that as a great Scottish achievement.
‘I can’t explain how emotional it feels to be sitting in the back seat of a Ferrari,’ she might say in such a moment, but it wouldn’t be a sign of national progress.
Perhaps the Scottish Government has done the right thing in how it went about procuring this bridge. Perhaps paying other countries to build our infrastructure is just the way of the modern world.
But wouldn’t it be much better if the Queensferry Crossing was a monument to Scottish design, Scottish engineering and Scottish steelmaking?
What is particularly distressing is that we cannot even have a debate about that in Nicola Sturgeon’s Scotland. To raise a single question is to ‘talk Scotland down’. The First Ministerial jaw squares, the head twitches as if to say, ‘can you not be happy, just the once?’
She does not see the irony of her giving a speech about Scotland’s place in the global economy – a potpourri of vague assertion – in the same week we celebrate that we cannot compete with foreign countries to build our infrastructure.
But don’t look at the economy – or our schools, or our hospitals – look at the bridge. Keep your eyes on the shiny, shiny foreign-built bridge. It symbolises Scotland.
In that sense, for the First Minister, the Scots who walked across it this weekend are just like the people walking round Mecca – religious pilgrims.
That journey was described by the First Minister as a ‘once in a lifetime experience’, presumably meaning the chance to walk over the Queensferry Crossing a second time will be in the next SNP manifesto.
THERE are people, like me, who did feel proud of the bridge as we watched it being built. I am sure driving across it could have inspired pride. But, call me thrawn if you like, it is difficult to rustle up genuine pride when your government tells you it’s your patriotic duty to feel proud.
I truly hope this is a cynical public relations strategy by the First Minister. A plea to her party’s faithful. For this reason.
When he was US President, Ronald Reagan gave a speech as he awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour. He said that he had read though a number of citations of previous recipients. One was of a US bomber commander who had flown many missions over Germany.
On his last one, he had a rear gunner, for whom it was his first experience of combat. The bomber was hit and the commander ordered everyone to bail out.
The rear gunner told him he couldn’t get out because he had also been hit and wounded.
‘OK, kid,’ the commander said. ‘This is one trip we’ll take together.’ He went down with his plane, both men were killed and the commander was honoured for his bravery.
The only problem with that story was that no such citation could be found. However, it does bear a remarkable resemblance to the ending of a black and white war movie starring Dana Andrews.
With rumours that the President was suffering ill health, a psychologist was asked if he thought Reagan believed the story to be real or had just made it up.
The psychologist simply replied: ‘Which is worse?’
Does the First Minister really believe buying a bridge is a sign of Scotland’s greatness or is she just trying to fool us all?
Which is worse?