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Niall Ferguson: Diary of a Flying Scotsman

Diary of a Flying Scotsman Graphic
Thought Leader: Niall Ferguson
December 30, 2024
Source: Substack
Written by: Niall Ferguson

This piece is by WWSG exclusive thought leader, Niall Ferguson.

If you were wondering why I chose the name “Flying Scotsman” for my diary, here’s the answer. In 2024, by my own calculations, I took a total of 135 flights, mostly international, not to mention 11 Eurostar trips between Paris and London.

The curse of the Flying Dutchman is that he must sail forever, never making landfall. The legend originated in the late 18th century, but in 1803 John Leyden gave it the form later immortalized by Wagner:

It is a common superstition of mariners, that, in the high southern latitudes on the coast of Africa, hurricanes are frequently ushered in by the appearance of a spectre-ship, denominated the Flying Dutchman … The crew of this vessel are supposed to have been guilty of some dreadful crime, in the infancy of navigation; and to have been stricken with pestilence … and are ordained still to traverse the ocean on which they perished, till the period of their penance expire.

I am not sure of what crime I am guilty, but it must be dreadful indeed to necessitate getting on a plane more frequently than, on average, once every three days.

The related joke at my own expense is my Twitter tag, adapted from Austin Powers: the “international man of history.” I occasionally console my comparably peripatetic partners at Greenmantle with words from The Godfather: “This the life we chose.” Except that I really do not remember making such a choice.

I plead guilty to initiating my innocent children into this accursed lifestyle. My two eldest long ago revolted against incessant peregrination and live settled lives in London. My third has inherited the curse and now knows only too well the via dolorosa between Brooklyn and John F. Kennedy airport. This week, my two youngsters joined me in an act of festive bravado that will appall all the decent, godly, and climate-change-fearing folk who read this diary.

It began as an argument about Christmas presents. I have long maintained that experiences are superior to things; I much prefer to give my children the former as gifts. Like all newly minted teenagers, however, my son Thomas craves a smartphone. He cannot be made to believe that pocket-sized computers are the work of Satan and a significant cause of mental ill health amongst young people (Jonathan Haidt has the data). Peer group pressure overrides such concerns. But “I’ll be the last person in my class to have one!” is an argument that carries little weight in the Ferguson household.

Knowing my son’s enthusiasm for basketball—to my eyes, netball played by gangsters—I countered with an experience: the chance to see his heroes, the Golden State Warriors. The catch was that, as a result of an earlier deal along similar lines, I had already acquired tickets to see our favorite football team, Arsenal, playing Ipswich at the Emirates Stadium in North London on the night of Friday, December 27th. There were indeed a few tickets available to see the Warriors take on the Phoenix Suns. But the game was in San Francisco the following evening, Saturday 28th.

No Flying Scotsman worth his salt could duck such a challenge. And so we saw Arsenal scrape an inglorious 1-0 win over second-from-bottom Ipswich, grabbed a few hours’ sleep, flew from Heathrow to San Francisco, and were in our seats in time to see the poker-faced wizard Steph Curry shoot his first three-pointer. To my sons’ delight, the Warriors eked out a thrilling victory.

This lunatic attempt to be spectators at two consecutive sporting events separated by 5,500 miles and eight time-zones provided us with a perfect opportunity to compare and contrast the British and American ways of playing with a round ball and two nets. Apart from the obvious difference between the two forms of game—in one of which the use of hands is prohibited, in the other, the use of feet—three contrasts stood out.

First, the British spectator is as spontaneously active as the American spectator is passive. Football fans around the world all have their chants—there is even an app that collects them in their tens of thousands from all the corners of the globe—but few can match a Premier League crowd for rowdy and often funny improvisation.

A good example is the anthem Arsenal fans belt out whenever a goal is scored by their German striker Kai Havertz, once criticized as an over-priced underperformer. Based on Shakira’s song “Waka Waka,” it goes like this:

Waka waka, eh, eh,

£60 million down the drain,

Kai Havertz scores again.

American spectators are too busy stuffing their faces to have time to sing. The pre-game “Star-Spangled Banner” is performed for them, on this occasion by a local choir. The most the fans can manage is to shout “De-Fense!” when their team is under pressure, but even this has to be led by the announcer and accompanied by a Wurlitzer. The noise is unceasing at a basketball game, but most of it comes not from the crowd but from the sound system—above all the monotonous, menacing drone of rap music, the sport’s semi-official soundtrack.

Second, the British spectator doesn’t feel shortchanged by seeing only a single goal, so long as his team wins. But the song “One-Nil to the Arsenal!” could have no American counterpart. The final score at the Chase Center on Saturday night was 109-105. Like the fried chicken tenders we guzzled from our laps, the points are served in super-size portions.

Finally, there are the cheerleaders, scantily clad nubile young women—as rampantly feminine and mostly white as the players are dauntingly virile and mostly black—who dash on to gyrate whenever there is one of those tedious “time outs” that American coaches require to remind their players what they are supposed to be doing.

One day someone will explain to me how on earth cheerleaders survived the age of radical feminism and “Me Too,” especially in Woke-ifornia. In the meantime, I shall know it’s all over with Great Britain when I see cheerleaders prancing onto the pitch at the Emirates.

Come to think of it, as long as Arsenal are sponsored by the Gulfies, the risk of that should remain quite low.

Forget about the Clan Ferguson’s vast carbon footprint. Those planes would have flown without us, too. In any case, it turns out that global coal demand surged to an all-time high of 8,771 million metric tons this year and is forecast by the International Energy Agency to keep rising over the next three years. China accounted for more than half the world’s coal demand in 2024, burning 29% more coal than the rest of the world out put together.

I have been arguing for years that China’s much-vaunted investment in “green” technology is the biggest bait-and-switch in economic history, for any environmental benefits accrued by the Chinese flooding global markets with cheap electric vehicles, batteries, and solar cells are negated if these things are manufactured with electricity generated by burning coal.

Every time I make this point, I am reassured that China’s CO2 emissions are going to plateau in the near future, a future that somehow never arrives. (See here for an example from earlier this year.) When we do finally reach this plateau, it will not be the result of Oriental altruism. It will be because China’s economic growth rate has slumped to low single digits and its population is plummeting.

Having said all that, I am determined to make my New Year’s resolution stick this year: The Flying Scotsman really must fly less. The tragedy is that I resolved the very same thing a year ago—and somehow achieved just the opposite.

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