With less than 100 days to go before Glasgow hosts the Cop26 UN Climate Change Conference, many business leaders, heads of commerce, and politicians are getting hot under the collar that our Covid-blighted city is nowhere near ready. The city will face huge logistical demands and challenges in the lead-up to this, the most significant climate event since the 2015 Paris Agreement, and the biggest global summit the UK has ever seen.

The concern is that the Scottish Government and the leadership of Glasgow City Council need to show more guile and urgency to get the city back up to speed, looking good and fully reopened if this pivotal global showcase – or in the words of council leader Susan Aitken “generational event” – is to be remembered as a Scottish triumph and Glasgow’s green legacy assured. There will be an estimated 30,000 delegates arriving from nearly 200 countries which includes heads of state, NGOs, UN negotiators, business envoys, faith leaders and sponsors. More worryingly, there will also be 25,000 climate change protestors

Now that the vaccine has broken the back of the virus, and mortality rates are tumbling, more resources must immediately be poured in to jump start the economy of this once bustling metropolis, ironically now a film set for dystopian superhero movies. Our “Dear Green Place” whose forlorn empty streets are now littered with boarded-up shops and locked-up offices, could wither on the vine and die, and leave our nation red faced with embarrassment when this important global showcase event rolls into town in November.

No mean feat for no mean city, but one that many of our city foot soldiers involved in the planning, execution and delivery of the summit believe they can pull off with aplomb if more financial resource and support is forthcoming – concerns that Deputy First Minister and Covid recovery minister John Swinney acknowledged and took on board at a recent Glasgow Business Resilience Council meeting.

In what was a vital £11bn boost to Scotland’s flagging economy, the Scottish Government announced that from Monday, in-bound tourism would restart for double-jabbed foreign visitors from the US and Europe, without the need for them to quarantine. It is fantastic news for Glasgow’s Covid-ravaged hospitality, tourism, and aviation sectors, which have been decimated by the pandemic. Sadly, it has come too late to save the jobs of over a third of the 7,000-plus employees at Glasgow Airports, whose passenger numbers have almost disappeared.

There is also the hope that hotel occupancy rates, which are currently hovering around the very bleak 15% mark, will improve, although, again, time is not on their side. The rest of the hospitality sector, particularly the night-time economy, for which Glasgow was once a world leader, also waits in trepidation for Tuesday's announcement from the First Minister to see if she will finally remove her government's business and job-bursting shackles and move the country beyond level zero and back to some form of normality.

City centre footfall has recovered slightly – it is now 43% of pre-pandemic levels – but retail shopping is still on its knees, and struggling to survive, down in some areas by a depressing 50%. So, there is a huge amount of work to be done and to be concerned about if Glasgow is to recover and be up and ready to host and welcome Cop26.

No such worries for Police Scotland, in what they have said is the most complex and complicated event ever staged in Scotland. They are well ahead of the curve with their planning and resource management. They have had years to meticulously prepare for the security concerns and headaches, and a huge operation which will involve officers from each of Scotland's 13 divisions and specialist resources, such as firearms officers and dog handlers.

As Assistant Chief Constable Bernard Higgins points out, the summit which will have US President Joe Biden and Pope Francis in attendance, will see "the greatest mass mobilisation of police officers from across the UK" with up to 10,000 officers deployed each day over a three-week period. The cops, it seems, are ready for Cop26 even if many others aren’t.

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