George Kerevan

These days the Scots feel as proud of their banks as they once did of the Clyde shipyards — a macho symbol of economic prowess. This explains why the future of Scotland’s financial sector under a possible SNP government has become a hot issue in the forthcoming Scottish Parliament elections on 3 May. The Scottish Nationalists, led by ex-Royal Bank economist Alex Salmond, have maintained a lead in the opinion polls for over five months and are currently on course to displace Labour as the largest party at Holyrood. Top of the agenda if the SNP forms the next Scottish Executive is a referendum on quitting the United Kingdom in order to (in nationalist parlance) ‘rejoin the world’.

Glaswegians are secretly proud of their new, four-lane bridge across the River Clyde, the first crossing to be built in over 30 years. Seen from either end, it looks like half of a McDonald’s ‘Golden Arches’ sign. The city’s spin-doctors insist on calling it the ‘Clyde Arc’ but locals have christened it the ‘Squinty Bridge’, because of the dizzying way the steel support crosses from one side of the road to the other. The Squinty Bridge is important because it marks a return to the city’s Clydeside roots. ‘The Clyde made Glasgow and Glasgow made the Clyde’, runs the old saying. But the city turned its back on the Clyde 50 years ago.