Leader comment: New pride of the Clyde

The Glasgow Coat of Arms, featuring the lesser-spotted salmon.

The fish is often said to be a salmon in the story of St Mungo, who sent a monk to catch a fish in the Clyde. As every Glaswegian knows, the fish the monk took home contained a gold ring in its stomach – happily, the ring that the King of Strathclyde had given to his wife, but had then been lost.

Sadly, the fish has not been prominent in Glasgow life since that historic intervention. The Clyde became too polluted on the arrival of the industrial revolution for the salmon to survive in such conditions.

But today, we report the good news that the river is now clean enough for salmon to be reintroduced. It would be nice to think that our new-found environmentally-friendly ways have made this possible, but it may be an inconvenient truth that the demise of heavy industry, a heavy polluter, is responsible.

Whatever the reason, a cleaner Clyde can only benefit the city it runs through. Let Glasgow flourish.