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Sadly Temporary PM as Beaker in the Muppets |
JM - "which of your mates gets the job, you promised a meritocracy?"
PM - "I can’t answer that Johnny."
KY is me and Q4 the period of my life to enjoy friendship, amazing places and to observe political and economic shenanigans
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Sadly Temporary PM as Beaker in the Muppets |
As we wait for 0.34% of the UK electorate, mainly senior citizens and fellow travellers from the bowels of the Conservative Party to decide who is the next Prime Minister, there is widespread cynicism from all quarters. Do we have any candidate who truly represents the views and values of the large majority of the UK? Boris Johnson's government only gained the vote of 29% of the electorate and that was despite being against much ridiculed Jeremy Corbyn, who on Europe contrived to deter voters even from his own party. Since then the Tory party has transgressed a long way towards a dark right-wing ideology and, hopefully, obscurity.
Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have been playing to the gallery of English Nationalism and vying to be the most committed to cutting taxes and attacking public services from the BBC and Channel 4 to the civil service and regulatory bodies. According to the Local Government Association, English Councils have already been emasculated losing £16bn of core funding from central government in the decade from 2010 to 2020. The first round of the levelling up funding in 2020 allocated £2bn to councils across the UK. £1.7bn was set aside for a group of to English councils, many of which hardly justified the funding other than having a Tory MP, £170m to Scotland, £129m to Wales and £49m to northern Ireland. In crude terms, this suggests that levelling up has provided less than 11% of the core funding taken away from English Councils. On top of this, the removal of core funding has disproportionately impacted the most deprived councils, the very areas where levelling up is required. Despite both Truss and Sunak vowing that they believe in levelling up, there is no acknowledgement that they will have to deliver a lot more to safeguard public services. But there again they have failed to give any assurance that they will tackle climate change, on the contrary, new drilling for oil, fracking and a distaste for onshore wind turbines and solar farms seem to curry favour.
Boris Johnson suspended 21 Conservative MPs who had voted for the EU Withdrawal Bill after he had attempted unsuccessfully to prorogue parliament in October 2019. Many were deselected from standing in the December 2019 general election. Only 3 were re-elected as MPs and none of these was included in his cabinet of wannabees. The experienced and principled 'One Nation' Tories were lost. There were some talented MPs who had served in the cabinet like David Gauke, Ken Clarke, Rory Stewart, Justine Greening, Dominic Grieve, Nicolas Soames, Alistair Burt, Oliver Letwin and even Philip Hammond. Many of them have gone public in their despondency about the shift towards populism, deregulation, and latent nationalism. Rory Stewart has been very vocal about the shift of the Tory Party and is scathing in his critique of Johnson and his cabinet of flunkeys in his excellent podcast with Alistair Campbell, The rest is politics, .
Boris Johnson has bequeathed his successor a country on the cusp of meltdown as he holidays and attempts to big up his legacy by claiming he has 'got things done'. The bigger the damage, the bigger the lie. His final flourish as the energy crisis becomes a catastrophe for millions of households and tens of thousands of businesses was to go nuclear and announce a £20bn project for Sizewell C on the Suffolk coast. It will not be completed for 15 years, that's even longer than the 40 hospitals that were promised during the life of the present administration but are still languishing on the trolley in the corridors of power. We know that delivery is an alien concept during his time as PM, which explains why his true legacy is being the worst post-war Prime Minister. It will be a difficult act to follow but the two candidates are well equipped to challenge him.
Truss is a flippity gibbet, has an ego big enough to support several moons but seems to lack any principles, or if she does they are likely to be jettisoned as soon as some more popular scam is brought to her attention. The electorate considered Boris Johnson to be a likeable rogue and therefore he was given enough rope to hang himself, Truss appears to have no such endearing qualities other than her chameleon-like values, She has shown in the low-key hustings that she will bend her comments to keep those who have a vote satisfied. She has avoided any direct interviews with the media for fear of her flimsy policies being shredded and her wooden delivery mocked. Her infantile diplomatic skills are legendary and, even in the campaign, she has insulted President Macron and Nicola Sturgeon, two of the leaders she will have to work closely with if she is elected. Her bellicose utterings as the Foreign secretary have offended many nations and her tendency to speak before she thinks could have dire consequences for the country and her longevity as PM. I cannot see her getting past the first few months without the mood of the country, the ire of the media and a collapse of her support in the Tory Party as opinion polls trace her popularity resulting in her removal from office and another General Election.
Sunak has the gravitas and the experience to perform the role as PM but is encumbered by his personal wealth and, possibly, some institutional racism amongst Tory Party members. He is instinctively a neo-liberal and would not be inclined to adopt interventionist policies to rescue the country from the cost of living crisis. Moral competence would be less of an issue but the dire state of the cost of living crisis, the bickering in the Tory Party and world events allied with his ideology would make it highly unlikely that he could survive. He has the advantage of the backing of more MPs than Truss but they don't decide who gets to be the leader of the party. The timeworn party members do that. It is the cluster of English Nationalists, neoliberals, and the wealthy in search of tax advantages who have been vested with the responsibility of deciding who is next in line to be deposed.
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Ben More from Stob Binnein |
Friday, 12 August 2022
Ascent: 1306 metres![]() |
Temperature inversion over Glen Dochart at the start of the stairway |
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Crianlarich from Ben More |
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Ben More summit |
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Wobbly Trig Point |
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Stob Binnein from Ben More |
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Ben More from Stob Binnein |
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South ridge of Stob Binnein |
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Track along Ben More Glen |
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Clyde Puffer at Crinan Basin |
July 31, 2022
Last year at this time, the roads to Argyll were bloated with staycation visitors and people escaping after eighteen months of lockdowns. We had a free Sunday and scanning the forecasts told me that Argyll offered the best of the weather. I had had a morning run so it was 10:30am before we set out with no particular destination in mind other than to go to the Argyll coast.
Despite it being a weekend at the height of the holiday season and the first decent day of the week, the traffic was light. It may have been the price of fuel, the desire of families to seek out warmer holiday destinations or just the pending recession. I turned off at Tyndrum on the Oban road, unusually as I am normally heading towards Fort William and the mountains of Glencoe, Glen Nevis, Knoydart, GlenShiel, Skye and Torridon. I had not used the minor road to the south of Loch Awe for several years, it is a 21-mile slow twisting single-track road through native forest. It took almost an hour with a couple of incidents with an impatient motorcyclist for whom I stopped to allow pass and then an oncoming Porsche driven aggressively by someone who thought he was entitled to have oncoming traffic reverse into a passing place despite being only a few yards past one himself. By the end of the drive we decided to head to the Crinan for some refreshments.
Crinan was quiet with the odd yacht returning after the Tobermory race a couple of weeks earlier. The hotel served mussels and had a canopy to protect us from the lunchtime sun. We pottered around the canal locks and the canal basin built by Thomas Telford. The basin had some large yachts, including Swedish and French yachts and a Puffer that provided some climate denying nostalgia with black smoke issuing from its funnel.
I suggested a drive to Tayvallich on Loch Sween, a place I had often visited at weekends in the 1970s to camp in the forest and sail my dinghy trailing a mackeral line in the hope of supper. Tayvallich had not changed much but the large caravan site and numerous holiday cottages confirmed that its charm had worked on many others. We walked along the front and had a coffee in the cafe by the pier. The proprietor told us that visitor numbers were well down this year, people were travelling abroad for holidays and weekends had been affected by fuel prices.
It was time to head north and we spent some time at Kilmartin in the afternoon sun to visit the prehistoric sites in the Glen including the Nether Largie standing stones and the burial chambers. We headed north and decided to visit the massive yacht marina at Ardfern, which is a reminder that Scotland has many wealthy residents. We went as far as the Galley of Lorne, a busy hotel and restaurant which Aileen had visited on a yacht holiday before returning to walk around the moorings and goggle at the yachts.
A little further south and we were at Loch Melford, the place where we stayed in 1982 for a glorious July week in a cottage by the pier. My parents came along and our two young children, 4 months and 2 years old spent most of the week in a paddling pool and we tried to learn to windsurf. The place was now awash with holiday properties that sullied the intrinsic natural beauty of the estate. I had wanted to stop at the old pier but private property notices prevented this and went against the spirit of the Access Scotland legislation.
We decided to head up to Oban and find somewhere to eat before heading back via Taynuilt. Alas, there had been a major accident and the road was closed so we were redirected via Glencoe. I was not too concerned despite the extra 50 miles, there would be a chance to travel through Glencoe on a perfect evening and, if lucky, find a place to eat at Port Appin. The Pier restaurant was fully booked but we found an outside table for a drink and the manager kindly found a slot to serve us a meal as we gazed out over Loch Linnhe towards Mull. It would be hard to find a better view at this time of day.
The waitress told us that there had been another accident on the Glencoe road, also involving a motorcycle and that this road was also closed. It is a regular occurrence on summer weekends when the bikers emerge in their hundreds to enjoy the outstanding scenery and overtake the snake of motorhomes, lorries, cars and cyclists. We had witnessed 50 or 60 of them in their unzipped leathers at the Green Welly in Tyndrum as we passed through in the morning. Guys who had probably owned a Honda 125cc in the 1980s and were now reliving their youth on a BMW 1250 or similar road weapon. The availability of money and speed are not well synchronised.
I asked the friendly waitress to check the road report as we were about to leave. The road had reopened and we were soon on the road to Ballachulish. It was 8:30pm as we reached Glencoe. The Pap of Glencoe was mesmeric, a hill that punishes me every time I pass. I am always on the way back from a walk and never have the time or energy to climb it. As we entered the mouth of Glencoe, Bidean nam Bian was tantalising with the route up the gulley to Dinnertime Buttress revealing every detail. The traffic was light, and the leather-bound bikers were long gone so we cruised along with no tailbacks just the best of Scotland displaying its wares.
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Loch Crinan from the Hotel |
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Ardfern Marina |
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Port Appin Hotel |
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The view across Loch Linnhe to Mull |
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Supper |
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Parler de la merde |
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Our place in the sun |
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Palais des Papes, Avignon |
When in France we normally head for the Ardeche but our late booking for flights required us to find alternative accommodation for the first week when our usual accommodation was already booked up. We decided on a gite about 15 kilometres from Avignon in the wine-growing area of the Rhone Valley. Leaving Nimes was not easy with the satnav on the car constantly calibrated to select the autoroute contrary to my instinct to find quieter routes through the glorious limestone country and perfect old Provencal villages. I switched off the satnav and we headed north to Usez and then meandered along roads that tunnelled through plane trees and were menaced by fast vans on narrow roads with precipitate edges. The landscapes were a melange of vineyards, forests and fruit trees with limestone escarpments providing the third dimension. The afternoon heat had soared to 38°C but it would get a lot hotter as the week progressed.
The gite in St Laurent des Arbres was in a village that boasted two boulangeries, two restaurants and a fortified church with a watchtower. It is situated amidst some attractive pine forests and vineyards. We had brought some food so settled down to enjoy the pool, the balmy evening and the chance to recharge our optimism after suffering Boris Johnson's largely successful attempt to convert the UK into a rogue state.
We indulged ourselves with some lazy days in the sun, reading, swimming, enjoying our daily bread, eating melons, apricots, peaches, salads, and cheeses and drinking litres of cold water as the mercury danced into the forties. We visited the village of Chateauneuf du Pape just across the Rhone. After lunch in the village, a climb to the castle gave a splendid view of Mont Ventoux. A well-presented tour of the wine museum explained the importance of soils, climate and the balancing of grape varieties. We went to Uzes on market day, and amidst the curios and antiques we heard a superb rendering of Summertime, but parking wasn't easy. On the hottest day, Bastille Day, a walk in the nearby pine forest was our morning exercise and after the heat began to subside we climbed to the Castello in the nearby village of Saint Victor da Cost which gave amazing views across the Gard and generated an appetite for an evening meal in the village square.
It was the Festival d' Avignon Festival in July, an Arts festival that began in 1947, the same year as Edinburgh. Avignon is a tourist hotspot at any time of the year but becomes even more so during the festival. There is a very efficient park and ride from a large free car park on an island in the river Rhone into the walled city. We arrived sufficiently early to enjoy time walking around the pedestrianised city and listening to some fine street musicians. We revisited the wonderful Palace des Papes which is a well-curated experience made even more so by a quite remarkable exhibition by the photographer Sebastiao Salgado that captures the landscapes and indigenous people of Amazonia. It worked as both a photographic experience and as irresistible evidence of the need for action to tackle climate change. We had some lunch and continued to soak up the atmosphere of street theatre, there were dozens of shows to see including a French take on Brexit. The street performers seemed more laid back and less aggressive than those that take over Edinburgh during its festival. There was a sense that the festival is better integrated into the community than occurs in Edinburgh.
We visited the quirky Chateau de Bosc, a wine estate near Pont du Gard that hosts a museum displaying an extensive collection of bikes, motorbikes and toys as well as having two retired fighter planes adorning the vineyard. The museums were a revelation with a Vincent Black Lightening motorbike that conjured up a favourite track by Richard Thompson. Even alongside some remarkable motorbikes from Germany, France, Italy and the United States, the Vincent looked to be the adonis of motorbikes.
The were numerous wooden bikes from the early nineteenth century and steel bikes from the early twentieth century on display but the star exhibit was Jaques Anquetil's bike from the 1963 Tour de France. I had been captivated by this race as a teenager when Anquetil began to go head to head with his great rival Raymond Poulidor in the days when French riders dominated Le Tour. I was desperately keen to have a racing bike with the components on Anquetil's bike: ten Campagnolo gears, Mafac brakes, Mavic wheels, Cinelli handlebars and Christoph pedal clips. They were fitted on racing bikes by Mercian, Holdsworth, Claud Butler and Bob Jackson that were readily available in the UK and common in the school bike shed. In those days the top cyclists were cycling on bikes that could be bought in local bike shops. Levelling up was innate in those halcyon days not a slogan in search of a solution.
We left the gite on a Saturday, thanking our host Charles, who had a great back story. He had been brought up in the Congo in Africa and after moving to France developed a successful textile company that exported to all parts of Europe and Africa. The arrival and domination of imports from India and China at the time of the banking crisis persuaded him to sell his business before it went bankrupt and move to the Gard where he ran a gite along with some rooms and enjoyed a less stressful life with a far smaller carbon footprint.
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St Laurent des Arbres watch tower |
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Street in Chateauneuf du Pape |
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Mont Ventoux from Chateauneuf du Pape |
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Remains of the Castle at Chateauneuf du Pape |
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Hats off to Avignon Festival |
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Palais des Papes theatre |
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Festival d'Avignon |
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Salgado Amazonia exhibition - people |
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Salgado Amazonia exhibition - mountains |
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Salgado Amazonia exhibition - trees |
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Morning walk in the forest |
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View from Castello at Saint Victor da Cost |
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Castello above Saint Victor da Cost |
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Cicada hitching a lift on Aileen's hat |
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Mig 17 fighter in Chateau de Bosc outoor museum |
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Vineyard at Chateau de Bosc |
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Jaques Anquetil's bike from winning the 1963 Tour de France |
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Triumph in Avignon |
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The Gite in St Laurent des Arbres |