It’s May 5th and you have to wonder if the world has gone mad, that it is snowing outside and that April has managed to be both largely cold and unusually dry is just a tiny part of it.
In Brexit Britain we have a proven liar as PM (sacked twice for the offense) who is asking for sympathy, and charity, because he cannot possibly manage on £150,000 per annum (a mere £95,000 after tax but then he has around £25,000 per annum from book royalties plus usually receiving around £28,000 of gifts, including that £15,000 trip to Mustique courtesy of the guy who owns the Carphone Warehouse – obviously no expectations there then – and he gets a free flat with £30,000 towards decorating it plus the use of grace and favour country house at our expense). But with all this the poor man just cannot manage.
Recently, obviously to his great surprise, Sunak discovered that his multi-millionaire wife’s building firm could also magic up things the government needed and that she had added ‘Medical’ to the name of her company so that Hancock surely just had to buy from her, and his mate down the pub, instead of the NHS’ usual suppliers. Plus the non-existent Dyson ventilators when a British based company that makes ventilators, with ventilators available for supply could not get a reply from the Department of Health because they were too busy dealing with the ‘VIP’ (I.E. Tory donors, family and friends) supply channel.
To be fair I was thinking of ‘phoning young Matt and saying that if he put a few billion my way I get could get an order for PPE from the China based Ali BaBa and let the NHS have them for only ten times the amount I paid as I really need to build a home never mind decorate it.
The ghouls crying out for Sturgeon to resign because she was suspected of breaking the ministerial code have been strangely quiet all along regarding Patel who was proven to have broken the ministerial code.
However the Patel issue did provide the opportunity to further cow an overstretched and stressed Civil Service already being reduced to apparatchiks ticking boxes in line with the ‘regulations’ and on their way to becoming, ‘mindless myrmidons’. It might be possible to do a great deal of the work civil servants do via AI and algorithms but machines would probably be more difficult to corrupt via fear, bullying or favours, e.g. private sector work or honours etc.
As for Johnson’s lies just read Oborne’s book ‘The Assault on Truth’. So an entirely self-serving lying liar and his cabinet of the entitled but talentless (I know that is not entirely fair as they all have a great talent for enriching themselves and avoiding responsibility, and being ‘economical with the truth’) are running the country apparently to the delight of those without any critical faculties or moral compass. The obvious misbehaviour being excused by the cynical and untrue litany of ‘they’re all the same’ in regard to politicians of all stripes.
Unfortunately Oborne is slightly compromised by his cleverly worded assertion: ‘Like a majority of the British people I voted for Brexit’. In the Brexit referendum approximately 70% of the people entitled to vote actually voted. Of these a majority of voters, in the main English people not all of whom were resident in England at the time, voted for Brexit. This was 36% of the total British electorate but the people with most investment in the future, teenagers between fifteen and eighteen, were not allowed any say in their future whilst those Brexit was least likely to affect were the most likely to vote. By using ‘a majority’ instead of ‘the majority’ Oborne manages to misrepresent actuality without actually lying. A neat piece of reality construction. Arguably Johnson’s incompetently told bald lies are less subtle and possibly less likely to mislead all except the most prejudiced and wilfully stupid.
The little cabal of the entitled obviously hold the public in contempt telling lie after lie. Bercow’s interview on LBC, available on Youtube, provides some illustrations for those who cannot be bothered to make the effort to read Oborne’s otherwise brilliant little book.
Then there is the big fat lie that Britain is a meritocracy where people really do get what they deserve. Of course Prince Charles is likely to become King because he has studied and worked so hard to learn the relevant knowledge and skills, working his way up from the bottom, and his Kingship will have nothing at all to do with who his parents were! We are about an age so in meritocratic Britain if I had only worked hard enough at the right things I could have been King. (See ‘Snakes and Ladders, The Great British Social Mobility Myth’.)
Of course the entitled and completely shameless Old Etonians (see the book ‘One of Them’ written by the Old Etonian Musa Okwonga) who are the establishment and who benefit most from the system and run the country along with their greedy mates push the lie very strongly.
Their wealth, privilege and their connections, plus a healthy if sick sociopathy, have nothing to do with their success. It is all because of their great talent, an inherent talent that usually precludes them actually working hard for anything. They are there ‘because they’re worth it’, as if! It is partly down also to a tacit acceptance of a brainless concept of Darwinism related to ‘breeding’ in the context of the pathetically deferent British class system.
This is an interesting concept since on William and Harry’s mother’s side of the family they are descended from two prostitutes, sorry ‘courtesans’, who each had a kid by Charles II. (So, a bit of consanguinity thrown into the mix.) All the same how does this imply ‘superior blood’? Noting that with all her advantages poor Princess Diana could apparently only manage a few GCSEs, bless her.
Thus it is that the average to intellectually sub-average are ‘crammed’ for and supported through exams and ‘connected’ to the ‘well-connected’ in private schools and come out with not only a sense of shameless entitlement but also with a misplaced sense of confidence that borders on, or frankly is, arrogance and a pecuniary attitude to life that seems to regard compassion and altruism as a form of character flaw. The moral rightness of self-interest being a concept central to the neo-liberal inequality promoting agenda (explicit in ‘The Sovereign Individual’ and implicit in ‘Britannia Unchained’).
Yet the great British public seemed determinedly happy to be ruled by Forrest Gump’s totally incompetent evil twin and his equally narcissistic and morally challenged cronies!
It cannot be for reasons of patriotism because these people avoid paying taxes where they can, stash money amongst the money launderers in offshore accounts and move as much of their businesses abroad as they can, Dyson and Rees-Mogg spring to mind, (and what about Landrover?), and prefer to employ almost anyone rather than British people as the latter might have some kind of protection against ruthless employers. Although ‘fire and re-hire’ and exploiting ‘zero hours’ contracts is all the rage and how dare Amazon employees ever need the toilet or garment makers expect to get the legal minimum wage?
A real patriot cares for their country and all the people in it and seeks to serve the country and make it a fairer and overall better place for every citizen to live within.
Sorry, apparently a real patriot stands in front of one or more big flags, hates anyone not quite like them, wants to say exactly what they want but block anyone criticising the status quo – the latter in the name of ‘free speech’! They also see nothing wrong at all in lying to and ripping off their fellow citizens.
Johnson is also indecisive and incompetent, see the book ‘Failure of State’ for details of just how incompetent he and his government have actually been in managing Covid. For example spending £37 billion (the equivalent of 12 new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers) on a test and trace system that is far less effective than the German test and trace system that came in at around one and a half billion pounds, noting that Germany has a bigger population! According to the public accounts committee ‘Harding’s folly’ has been a complete waste of money, your money.
Both Leicester and Newham local authorities with the NHS have created much more effective local test and trace systems that are cheaper than and, as effective as the German system. No wealthy people or overpaid ‘consultants’ have made a load of money from Leicester and Newham like they have from the government’s test and trace system. As for the vaccine roll out the Tory government were rescued by the NHS, a socialist project created by a Labour government, which the Tories have tried to run down and have underfunded for over a decade. Indeed from when Thatcher became Prime Minister if not before. Yet Johnson tries to claim credit for other people’s hard work, something that has nothing to do with him! Worse, people apparently believe this gross misrepresentation!
Now this is where I own up to some wrong-thinking. This is about being British.
Admittedly Murray Pittock is all over the place about the Celts who are strangely considered as the original Britons without actually leaving any distinctive genetic marker. Indeed there are no distinctive ‘Celtic’ traits from a genetic perspective: e.g. there are more people with the gene for red hair in Yorkshire than in the whole of Ireland, with a Germano-Scandinavian link presumably. Both Welsh (Brythonic) and Gaelic (Goidelic) seem to stem from the Spanish ‘Tartessian’ language according to Koch and were probably an Atlantic zone ‘trade language’ in the early Bronze Age before splitting to become Welsh/Brythonic and Gaelic/Goidelic. They were called ‘Celtic’ in the early 18th Century by a Welsh man who had a political agenda and who thought that the better alternative ‘Gallic’ sounded too French. (Those ‘Frogs’ were supporting the ‘Pretender’ after all.)
I consider that where Murray Pittock is closer to being 100% correct is in his characterisation of what is actually meant by the term ‘British’.
When I was a lad (I know, ‘a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away’) ‘English’ and ‘British’ were synonyms with ‘English’ being associated with the ‘received pronunciation’ epitomised by the BBC announcers of the time. The Scots, Welsh and Irish were kind of exotic, cut me a break it was 1950’s/60’s Barnsley, but attitudes were best summed up by Flanders and Swann’s sung lampoon of English exceptionalism, ‘The English are best’, and by George Mikes book, ‘How To Be Inimitable’.
As Murray Pittock notes in this context being ‘British’ was really some fantasy of a middle aged, public school educated, decent ‘Tom Brown’ type of chap who lived in the ‘Home Counties’ and reflected all that person’s assumptions and prejudices but, at least, was possessed of ‘British Values’.
I remember, on a beach in Spain in the 1970’s, a rather posh sounding southern English man explaining to a Spaniard about the realities of Yorkshiremen not, it transpired, that the English bloke had ever been to Yorkshire. Apparently all Yorkshiremen lived down to the stereotype. They did all wear flat caps, race pigeons and/or whippets, they had a definite tendency for mindless violence (which is why he wouldn’t go to Yorkshire on principle) they were rather lazy, rather stupid and most of them sponged off nationalised industries, especially mining. Mining, it seemed, was now completely safe, at least as safe as working in an office (pneumoconiosis being some sort of mass hysteria apparently) and it was mainly done by machines with the miners having little to do but drink out of their pint enamelled tin tea mugs, thus the miners were definitely overpaid. They were also politically suspect as they were virtually all as bad as Communists. In Franco’s Spain this was damning stuff indeed.
As such, people from Yorkshire did not really meet the criteria for being truly British as they were not quite English enough and had a funny accent. In that man’s world I think that people living beyond Yorkshire hardly met his criteria for being truly human.
I have heard similar, if more coded and less extreme, self-serving fantasies, usually related to class and education, from some supposedly well-educated but snobbish people even in fairly recent years. Or otherwise expressed in action, by commission or omission, even by some status-conscious ‘caring professionals’, rather than merely being articulated in words.
As for the much vaunted ‘British Values’ what exactly are they? We might refer back to fiction, ‘Tom Brown’s School Days’, perhaps some of Kipling, possibly H. Rider Haggard and even some of Bulwer Lytton. The writers of a kind of aspirational heroic fiction and ‘ripping yarns’.
As an aspiration then ‘British Values’ begin with:
Honesty, especially Veracity and telling truth to power,
Courtesy along with Chivalry, extended to enemies as well as friends and especially women – see the film ‘The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp’. Being a ‘gentleman’ or a woman of high moral fortitude.
Stoicism and calmness, being phlegmatic especially in a crisis.
Fairness with a very strong sense of justice.
Loyalty, not least to ‘British Values, to one’s country, both land and people and to one’s family and friends. This includes being absolutely trustworthy and ‘above board’ in all your dealings with other people.
A casual, if deep-seated, contempt for the avaricious, the greedy and anyone primarily focused on making money.
Being self-deprecating and modest, never being boastful.
A sense of ‘fair play’ and ‘playing with a straight bat’, never ever even approximating cheating. Gallant sportsmanship being more important than winning at any costs, that kind of ruthlessly caddish behaviour was for lesser peoples such as Americans, Australians and other foreigners.
A strong sense of duty to the collective and putting the collective before oneself, ‘I may be some time’, ‘women and children first’ etc. To the point of self-immolation. Especially ‘noblesse oblige’, that sense of duty to those in any way weaker or less fortunate than oneself. This includes the duty to be compassionate even at one’s own expense. A lovely nostalgic and light-hearted, if touching example of this is given in the film ‘Genevieve’ when the key protagonists get trapped in conversation with an elderly man at traffic lights.
Respecting others in thought, language and action.
‘Sprezzatura’, being the excellent amateur and ‘all-rounder’. The amateur who gets professional when they need to.
Neither being a bully nor tolerating bullies or bullying.
Being quietly and casually/light-heartedly courageous, exemplifying courage by one’s actions, a ‘British Value’ lampooned in the ‘Flashman’ series of books. (‘Flashman’ being a kind of English ‘Justine’ (de Sade) and a model for Johnson, but with more of a heart than the latter.)
A commitment to doing ‘the right thing’ and taking the moral high ground in all circumstances.
Taking full responsibility for oneself and the consequences of one’s actions. N.B. Conrad’s story ‘Lord Jim’.
Taking pride in living up to ‘British Values’, whatever the cost, as the very essence of being British.
All the above may be a total fantasy in reality but the above indicates the romantic aspiration implicit in ‘British Values’. Obviously anyone who has even briefly looked at Victorian and Edwardian society and any honest history of the British Empire will recognise this as complete tosh. Britain or the UK was never really a shining beacon to the world but, at least the aspirational, and almost never realised, ‘British Values’ were a wonderful fantasy that attempted to combine the best of Christian and Classical thought, possibly with a minor influence from the further reaches of the Empire via the ‘Orientalists’.
But seeing these ‘British Values’ written makes you think and immediately begs the question, are Johnson and his crew of chancers, all like Del Boy without a heart, really British?
Obviously their behaviour, as exemplified by their leader, demonstrates almost the exact opposite of ‘British Values’.
This begs the next question, can the Tory party membership that voted for a man like Johnson and have lauded his cabinet, (or have pretended that they were somehow beyond criticism, almost as a patriotic duty) truly be British as they too have lost sight of ‘British Values’?
It would appear that, as a general rule and with a few honourable exceptions, the Tory party from top to bottom have nothing but a pragmatic and avaricious contempt for ‘British Values’, sacrificing any pretension to such values on the altar of short-term self-interest and opportunism. This includes a total readiness to lie and cheat and to embrace the worst prejudices of populism, inclusive of xenophobia and racism, in a race for the moral low ground, anything to win.
This surely says something about the people who vote for them and the people who are disgusted by and vote against them.
The fact that the mainstream media is run by billionaires with the agenda of making the world ever better for billionaires and stuff the rest of us (once again see ‘The Sovereign Individual’ and also ‘Heroic Failure’, ‘Stolen’ and ‘The Establishment and How They Get Away With It’) and thus assuming that most of the people are blinded by clever propaganda, bless them, is both condescending and wearing a bit thin.
There is obviously a significant element of British society with contempt for the truth, and with distrust and dislike for deeply educated and dedicated, hardworking professionals. People who think that the way they feel is more important than facts. People with enough self-contempt to keep electing an elite of public-school educated though, taken all round, sub-standard human beings who quite obviously have nothing but contempt for their social and material/financial ‘inferiors’. I do not think that this is merely masochism or being lost amongst myths and lies regarding ‘Empire’. Although this may play a part, see the book ‘Rule Britannia’ by Dorling and Tomlinson.
Perhaps when the mythical ‘man in the street’ sees the likes of Johnson and Co, in power the casual arrogant selfishness and stupidity, the incompetence and sociopathic cunning they demonstrate gives the average person a sense of moral equivalence if not superiority.
‘They have had that expensive education and all the advantages of being a scion of the rich but look what idiots they are, and how lacking a moral compass. No matter how awful and unpleasant, how selfish and callous I am I will not be worse than them. They provide a kind of excuse for my worst side and my failings. They do not merit their positions, they were just lucky in the lottery of life, so maybe I will win the lottery, hopefully the Euromillions, after all.’
Since a narrow majority, at least of people prepared to vote and, implicitly of the people who cannot be bothered to vote, obviously perceive ‘British Values’ as totally irrelevant to modern life, to being ‘British’ even, then the honest thing to do would be to never mention ‘British Values’ again. Especially when using the concept of ‘British Values’ to verbally beat up anyone perceived as ‘other’. But perhaps it is already too late to expect honesty.
I suspect that those least likely to even attempt to live up to ‘British Values’ are the ones most likely to talk about them. Indeed it is obvious that the right wing of the Tory party, in particular, see espousing and attempting to live by ‘British Values’, especially compassion, as character flaws that might prevent you, as an individual without real social responsibilities, maximising your wealth, status and power.
As a person born and bred in Yorkshire, Scando-Irish in my origins (my mother’s ‘maiden name’ has a Norse root and my father’s has an Irish root) and as I am now living in the Highlands of Scotland I feel completely alienated from the Tory Home Counties idea of what it is to be British (but living without any practical reference to ‘British Values’ of course).
Fortunately I have a clear alternative. The original name of the mainland of these isles was Pretan. The Roman’s misspelled it hence Britain. Of course the slavish, the cowardly and the natural serfs amongst the tribes went along with the wealthy and powerful as they always do to this day. Thus Pretan became Britain. Therefore, with reference to one half of my roots at least, I can claim to being, ‘Pretanni’ (I ditched ‘Pretish’ from the start.)
Obviously in a purely tribal Pretan the name meant little at the time, people recognised themselves as their tribe and there were no nations, nothing beyond the wider kindred of the extended tribe. (Noting that nations were fictions created to justify centralising power in the hands of land-grabbing kings and their wars.) Just as obviously this tribal-mindedness lasted the longest, for whatever reasons, amongst the ‘Erse’, who included the Highland Clans. This was finally crystallised in Scotland by the romantic fiction of Scott, the fraud that was the poetry of Ossian and the further fantastical activities of the Allen brothers, the English con-men who posed as the Sobieski-Stuarts and created the first book of supposedly ‘traditional’ clan tartans for a Victorian audience long after the success of ‘The Kings Jaunt’ (Prebble). This tribalism may, in general, have usually included a strong sense of ‘place’, at least amongst ordinary Highland clan members. (See the book ‘Scottland’ also Pittock’s ‘The Invention of Scotland’.)
With reference to ‘Celtic from the West’ (Volume One) I have as much right to claim a ‘Celtic identity’ as anyone else in Pretan. As a Scottish citizen I doubly have no loyalty to a UK that is disloyal to its own values, with a ruling elite indifferent to those poorer and/or less privileged than themselves, ruthless shysters with a sense of entitlement and a misplaced notion of their own value, abilities and importance. A UK that increasingly disdains education and facts, that has no regard for truth or justice and that puts prejudice and, increasingly, jingoistic English nationalism above all else.
I realise that in general terms nationalism and a ‘my country right or wrong’/’our nation is superior’ or represents a ‘superior breed’ is intrinsically ridiculous, narrow minded if not fundamentally racist. Indeed it is destructive for one human race on one planet where we are facing the existential threat of an ever-increasing multi-faceted environmental crisis. Climate change being just one element of this environmental crisis. Individual nations looking for some form of advantage, claiming some form of exceptionalism and focusing on economic competition with socio-economic policies long past their ‘sell-by’ date will merely ensure that the human race is likely to be flushed down the toilet of evolution.
Having said that, increasing sustainable regionalisation in a context of re-distributive international cooperation could be a key component of the remedy to the environmental crisis and the increasing inequality and other ills resulting from the current neo-liberal socio-economic orthodoxy. This is not merely the old cry of ‘power to the people’ rather it is a concept of the ‘responsibility of the people’ wherein there are no rights without obligations, without responsibilities. Basically an intention to create greater self-sufficiency in localised terms with ‘the nation’ being just one element in an interlinked, if not interdependent, tiered structure of functional syndicates. In business the analogue is ‘lean thinking’ structures. Basically ‘lean thinking’ is ‘anarcho-syndicalism’ as a structured system of cooperation to meet needs that are beyond the resources and abilities of any one individual.
The aim being to provide a just society and a just socio-economic system with rewards corresponding with the value of the individual to society overall. This would mean that ‘essential workers’ would no longer be usually amongst the worst paid. A society where people are respected and rewarded for their contribution to the commonwealth rather than for their sociopathic ability to extract money from others without any consideration for the ultimate outcomes and without taking responsibility for those outcomes.
Everyone behaving responsibly in the context of a just society, would that really be so bad?
The idea of Scottish independence must be considered in this light, in terms of localised sovereignty and responsibility. If such arguments were at all valid in regard to Brexit, where the UK remained a sovereign nation within the EU in actuality, then they are even more valid for Scotland. A Scotland completely curtailed and with comparably very limited sovereignty. A Scotland ultimately ruled by an explicitly English nationalist right wing Tory party in the context of a ‘first past the post’ system where every vote does not count, a voting system that undermines true democracy at anything other than a committee level.
The support of the Union is based, at a fundamental level, on the myth that Scotland is an inferior and dependent colony of England. Underpinned by attitudes not so far from those expressed by that southern English bloke on that beach at Tarragona in regard to Yorkshiremen nearly fifty years ago. At best it harks back to ‘Burt’s Letters’ in the early 18th Century where the Highlanders are perceived as impoverished, if proud, beggars in need of aid and helpful instruction from a far richer and superior culture. Scotland as the Englishman’s burden.
Surely Scotland can do much better than that?
An independent Scotland with its own currency and national Central Bank that was a member of the EFTA, and the Customs Union would have more cards in its hand in relation to the shrunken UK than the current ‘third country’ UK has in relation to the EU. Admittedly that would not be too difficult.
Scotland has 85% of the UK’s fresh water, the majority of the UK’s overall fishing grounds, will soon be producing sustainable energy in excess of current needs, plus other natural resources with the potential, via additional ‘agri-environmental’ focused land reform, to become self-sufficient regarding basic food production in terms of a healthy diet. Also, it has the UK over a barrel regarding Trident, as long as the realists keep their eyes on the prize and do not allow the purists to have their way too soon.
Just as the UK seems to be determined to be the money-laundering capital and dodgy money centre of the world, making extensive use of ‘protectorates’ etc. a hard border ‘twixt Scotland and England may make smuggling a great career option for Borderers. This should please the Rees-Moggs and their ilk as it would be taking us back to the sixteenth century if we add in a bit of reiving!
Further de-regulation and the proposed erosion of many standards (‘Britannia Unchained’) with trade deals dictated to the UK by India and the US (for example), paralleling the one the UK has recently made with Japan giving away advantages to Japan, will be finalised over the next decade. These will be largely disadvantageous overall for the UK, especially for lower paid UK workers, and will not compensate for not being in the EFTA and CU.
Brexit is, apparently, set to bite deepest in about five years and in the meantime there is a bonfire of Small to Medium Enterprises that have dealt with the rest of Europe prior to Brexit getting done. To be fair Brexit is apparently making multinational corporations and very big business even more profitable and is set to make the rich even richer whilst increasing inequalities. As foretold in William Rees-Mogg’s ‘The Sovereign Individual’, amongst other books, see ‘Heroic Failure’.
An independent Scotland as a member of the EFTA and the CU will be a magnet to small scale entrepreneurs who want to trade with Europe, the kind of capitalists beloved of Adam Smith. Remember he disliked and prescribed high levels of regulation and taxation for ‘rentier capitalists’. The best Adam Smith read, as seems to be the consensus, is Jesse Norman’s excellent ‘Adam Smith, What He Said and Why It Matters’.
Small to Medium Enterprises contribute most to the communities in which they are based and help to create a dynamic and creative local economy. Furthermore developing infrastructure, from the large scale such as extending the Scottish rail network, to the electronic via an improved and faster broadband network has the potential to bring young families into the Highlands, returning the school rolls to something closer to their nineteenth century levels and preserving, enhancing and developing currently dying communities.
The potential is there for creating a Highlands for people to live in rather than for a mix of the wonderfully community minded, the misanthropic who moved to the Highlands for the increasing emptiness and to get away from people, and the tourists or those holiday home owners with no commitment to, or real concern for, the communities their houses are in. To note that this is not all tourists or holiday home owners but the Covid pandemic has highlighted the vulnerability of a Highland economy largely dependent on state subsidised agriculture, tourism and the gradually disappearing ‘baby-boomer’ ‘grey pound’.
Of course it means that a visit to relatives south of a hard border with England/rump UK may mean checks for contraband, such as breathable air, but surely it will be worth the price?
In real terms a vote for the Tories is a vote to reject ‘British Values’ in pursuit of more of the same only worse. A vote to preserve the Union is surely along the same lines, as well as preserving the English indifference to, and casual denigration of Scotland, Wales and Ireland. The rubbish and, all too literally shit thrown out by, mainly English, camper vans as they travelled the Highlands last summer is surely indicative of real underpinning attitudes. It is not revealing of even bad intent but rather more subtle assumptions regarding the worth of the local people and their environment.
Obviously there would be ‘teething problems’ caused by Scottish Independence, but the Scottish government has learnt lessons from both Brexit and Covid and will not be repeating the mistakes made by the hard line English nationalist and right wing Tory government and would make good use of any transition period to fully prepare.
It may be unfair to call the current government English nationalists as, in reality they have no regard for even the English nation as represented by the real interests of the majority of the people living within its borders.
Obviously if you want to be a disregarded serf in an increasingly feudal economy, if you actually believe that some people are born to be your superiors and that you should know your place. If you believe that ‘success’ in life and as a human being is having more than the rest of your family, than your friends and neighbours then voting Tory is for you.
If you actually think that the economy is more real and more important than the natural environment and if you are status conscious then voting Tory is for you.
If you are in truth opposed to acting on the hopeful pretensions of ‘British Values’ because they are romantic, unrealistic and not pragmatic then voting Tory is for you.
If you don’t give a damn for the long term future and think that nothing matters after you are dead, including the environment for your children and grandchildren, so long as your financial situation is ok while you are alive, then voting Tory is for you.
The great irony for me is that the SNP Manifesto has greater aspirations in terms of supposed ‘British Values’ than anything the Tories have done since the 1960’s!
Makes you think.
Vote for Forest Gump’s evil twin or wee Krankie? One is in a permanently dangerous state and the other is a stateswoman.
No contest really.
(Editor’s note: all linked book titles are purely for educational purposes, buying them through the links supports independent book shops and we receive no financial gain from promoting them)
6th May
The rain is lashing down upon the yurt. I have just been to vote and, with reference to Heinlein’s ‘Starship Troopers’ exercised the force I can exert as a citizen in a democracy. It feels good to have done so, it is a responsibility and an obligation and surely an essential part of the social contract. My great grandfather’s generation fought for universal suffrage, my grandfather’s generation fought class prejudice and the attempts of employers to prevent working men and women from becoming engaged in politics. These recent struggles and the vulnerability of our democracy seems forgotten on a rising tide of consumerism, magical thinking and prejudice, sadly across the political spectrum but especially the right.
In terms of geologic time and evolution all the above is less than a storm in a teacup. The rain, I have to say, is better than snow at this time of the year, noting that snow has been forecast for the Highlands today. I am glad for the rain. A few days ago I planted fifteen downy birch and fifteen blackthorn. The rain will both water them and feed the water turbine providing us with electricity so that I can write this.
Overall and over the last five years we have planted over one thousand and three hundred trees and bushes across our wee croft inbye land. Seventy to eighty per cent of these have survived. Added to this about three hundred rowan and goat willow have simply sprung from the ground. Some of the plants, the few aspen, the blackthorn and the alder, will sucker and ‘spread like weeds’ once they are well-established.
We have also planted some herbs and some other edible plants, like the rhubarb, but mainly fruit trees, currently only apple has survived, and bushes such as blueberries, gooseberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants and more. Many of the ‘arboreal infrastructure’, like the rowan, the blackthorn and the juniper also produce useful fruit. Once the house is built we will plant more apples and fruiting cherry. Eventually our whole croft will largely disappear into the tree-scape, especially our wood-clad, turf-roofed house. We will become woodlanders, aging amongst new growth and natural glory.
After planting I walked up and around our inbye land, savouring the views. Eventually I sat upon the section of a tree trunk, amongst a future circle of mighty oaks, beneath a future great ash tree and besides the small god of things. Alex made a wee joke offering of a hand-made bead necklace to the ‘god’ the other day and later the same day found that she had had a small windfall!
Wyrd bith ful araed, as we say. I sat there in woolly Viking style britches I made myself from an old blanket some years before, wearing layers of similarly themed clothing, albeit with modern working boots, and with Star the dog cuddled up to me, looking down on the future, seeing the trees grown in my mind’s eye with words curling like smoke about my brain.
The digger was there excavating and clearing for the foundations of the house, built and solid in that same imagined world to come.
I looked out in space and forward in time. The dog looked up at the crazy Michael Lothbrok both sitting there and wandering lost in my imagination. How good it is to have a dream and to build towards it through the storms and tempests and buoyed by all around, quite often by the kindness of strangers as a happily unexploited Blanche Dubois. One day the hawthorn, blackthorn and cherry blossoms will actually make these largely ‘white woods’, with touches of pink and red, yellow and meadow flowers amongst green richness. One day.
Eventually the words began to coalesce and I returned from my briefly sunlit uplands to the yurt, to my laptop and, for what they are worth, I let the words flow from my fingertips.
I will finish this by submitting these poor lines in the hope that you, the reader, can find something of some worth within them.
Love to you all, each and every one, including Tiny Tim.
GARDENER
You have to look with future eyes,
Looking through the time of trees.
Not even the time of birch and willow,
But the time of oak and yew,
The undying time of the aspen
Whose ever-budding roots strive
To live the ten thousand years.
There, above the fallen fank,
Will be a fruitful fruiting bower
As yet unplanted, apple and berry
Enfolded by birch, alder, blackthorn,
Crab apple, bird cherry, sallow, willow
Above and around in saving screens.
There will we make love under
The summer sun and dappled light,
I even whiter and greyer, my skin
Creased, battered, cratered, eon
Weathered as the moon. Yet, an ever
Spring sun will light promise from our eyes,
Of what was that never leaves,
Of what is and what can be, will be.
Here is the smallest of the pine,
Brave Scots in a hard place scarce
As high as my knee. Here alder,
Hawthorn, blackthorn, wild rowan,
A few holly, dog rose, and goat willow
Growing thick as weeds, thick with bees.
Ash, alone or within the circle of oak,
One day to be a living henge, to have its
Moment about a towering Yggdrasil.
I sit on a slice of log, next to the crudely
Carved small god of things, made more
Precious by your wry offering. Facing the
Direction of the winter sunrise, my back to
The summer sunset. Looking down upon
What is to become. The earth that will be
Our nestling home, there, but disappearing
Into the landscape, to be hidden by a slope and
Fruiting cherry, blossom whispering ‘transience’,
All too few breaths ‘twixt birth and death,
A short time only we can bless with meaning.
We will sit on our veranda and I will
Remember, and remembering gaze upon thee,
Lovingly to quote the lines:
‘A loaf of bread beneath the bough,
A jug of wine, a book of verse and thou,
Besides me, singing in the wilderness,
And wilderness would be paradise enow.’
Never forgetting the tree that shaded
The poet in his garden. I age and will
Not sit beneath the shade of almost
All of the trees I am now planting,
That is for my son in his grey years,
And others not yet known beyond him.
I am but an unskilled hopeful gardener,
With, perhaps, one little talent,
Recognising the garden as unfinished,
Forever unfinished in its growing.
Thus I look with future eyes.
Mick Skelly
lochofathousandwinds 