Aberfoyle Deluge

Bank corner -  synchronised wading

Flood Sale

Flood and Rescue

Loch below the Covenanters, but the eyesore of the Covenanters remains

Coop closed

Another holiday for the school

Water sports centre, Lochard Road

This is the worst flood since 1950 said the man in waders climbing the steep path behind the school to access the Duke's pass in order to march right back down to the village. And so it was, the water had reached the bottom of the drive at Menteith House and was waist deep along Lochard Road. The school playground was flooded and the Main Street was knee deep with a strong current clearing the pavement of street furniture and almost floating the post vans. The roads service and the Fire (or should that be Flood) and Rescue service were distributing sandbags to the already flooded shops and urging shoppers and voyeurs to get back.

It is not unusual to have floods in November but the rains of last week had swollen the rivers, saturated the ground and a night of continuous heavy rain coupled with a high tide conspired to create a local harbinger of global warming. The minister was moving out today to her new parish in Perthshire, or at least hoping to, but god moves in mysterious ways. Hopefully she will not need to wait 40 days before the removal men arrive. The man in the waders regaled me with stories of the rowing boat that had acted as a ferry in 1950 between the Baillie Nichol Jarvie and Menteith House. A young woman reminded me about the time I dragged her and her brother through the flood in a rubber dinghy and then speculated on whether there would be a real flood sale at Guyana.

Meanwhile, several houses that had never been flooded before were sand bagging furiously as the water lapped up the garden paths in search of thresholds to cross. The early van drivers had been trapped and sat in their cabs, the post did not get through, the children had another day off school. Friends have been calling to check the flood levels. When will they build that levee that was proposed all those years ago?

Jimmy Quinn takes charge

November Nihilism

Blue skies and bare branches - a model for corporate tax evasion

 Commissioner policing - a single strand of democracy

Dying public services swallowed up by sphagnum outsourcing   

November is my least favourite month as the light fades, the leaves fall and the dreich damp days get even shorter. This autumn it seems that representative democracy is also dying. In recent weeks we have watched large corporations, which have cheated governments of taxes for years become global pariahs in the eyes of an increasingly energised electorate. The same electorate that has chosen not to exercise its right to vote for police commissioners or for the government for that matter, the Tories received votes from only 30% of the electorate in the last election.  

Elsewhere there are multiple stirrings of employees and customers demonstrating their opposition to the government contracting out services to global companies who reward executives and exploit workers in an exhibition of corporate greed. They bring along a rope of professionals who feed on the ever more lucrative processes of outsourcing and procurement. The time is ripe for a mass outbreak of nihilism against both corporate and political governance. Don't expect any outcomes!

It is hard to find a newspaper or a senior politician that is not appalled at the level and extent of corporate tax evasion. The same newspapers that have carried adverts to invest offshore, and the same politicians of all parties who have refused or turned a blind eye to the long-running scam of tax dodging. Amazon, Starbucks and Google may be getting the headlines for tax evasion but there is much evidence that the majority of FTSE 100 companies have engaged in the same ploys to reduce corporate taxes. Although the generally recognised ethical businesses like John Lewis, the Coop and even some of the big companies like BP have a more honourable track record. In the latter case profits, and with them go taxes, are needed if they are to pay dividends to sustain our pensions.

Despite attempts by several newspapers to expose the scale of the problem, it is difficult to unravel what is the level of the unpaid tax. In total it is generally reckoned to be of the order of £125bn per annum.  More than enough to refire the economy and protect many public services which are being devastated in all sorts of ways that are not yet understood. It would help if the Inland Revenue would cooperate to make the scale of the evasion (legal or not) more transparent so that there could be greater scrutiny by the army of investigative citizen sleuths. One thing is becoming quite clear, the public is seething and wants to use their wallets and their credit to punish the miscreants. Even the Chancellor seems to realise that the public has knocked down the door of corporate tax evasion and he would be foolish not to seize the day and rattle the cages of the global corporate offenders.

I watched the first Police Commissioner being interviewed after his election by the rag, tag and bobtail of electors that had bothered to turn out. "I will do everything possible to reduce crime", he said, "but it is not just a job for the Police, we must involve local councils and the public". Exactly, which is why the local police were established by and responsible to the municipalities in the first place. As they merged they became Joint Boards and the chairs became puppets of the Chief Constables whose ever-increasing operational responsibilities disallowed any interference from elected representatives. In the top-down budgeting regime of Cameron's Britain, it is asking too much of lone commissioners to understand let alone challenge massive police forces. They have become more insular to protect their budgets instead of collaborating with other services that are equally important in the drive to reduce crime.  The danger is that the commissioners will soon be house trained to voice the demands of Chief Constables.  

If success is measured in crime rates and clear-up rates then it is the smaller more localised police forces that are the most successful. They usually work closely with the local council at a community level. The Metropolitan Police is hardly a model for the rest of the country with a track record of institutional corruption and racism that is well documented and unenvied by the rest of the Police authorities. I have worked with well-governed police forces where informed and knowledgeable councillors encourage corporate working, community involvement and accountability in ways which the police commissioners will have great difficulty replicating. Perhaps the electorate intuitively felt this and refused to be conned by politicians who failed to make any case for this new form of autocratic governance.

The third strand of nihilism concerns the increasing scepticism of the benefits of outsourcing public services. The well-documented failures of G4S during the Olympics highlighted this but there are similar examples across a multitude of services from care homes to rail franchise operators. The police, NHS, further education and local government are being forced to transfer services to scavenging outsourcing companies, it is usually accompanied by rising costs and loss of local ownership. Localism is being sacrificed on the altar of mythical efficiencies. The sense of indignation by communities and their local representatives of all political parties is an anger that will not be easily assuaged. They did not want this but it was imposed by successive governments who have been too easily swayed by the vast array of lobbyists and professional service companies who have sponsored their way into the inner sanctums of central government. A central government that lacks any procurement savvy but also believes that their big-ticket procurement failures are endemic across all other public services. This is not usually the case with localised and competitive procurement, although there are some exceptions.

At the local level, local companies have lost business to national or global providers who are better equipped to play the complex procurement games invented by some of their numbers who have been seconded to the government and devise the rules of engagement. This is despite the fact that local companies usually have good relations with public services, they are likely to go the extra mile to deliver services in their own patch and unlikely to demand additional payments for unspecified activities. But this is the root of the issue, governments of all persuasions have hocked themselves to the outsourcing companies rather than trusting in localism with its values of community, trust and respect. The outcome is not just the loss of small local businesses with altruistic motives and good customer care,  but ultimately the long term cost of the service. To paraphrase Mrs T, this government is not for learning.

News International versus BBC

So Prime Minister Cameron has questioned the size of George Entwhistle's pay off from the BBC at the same time as claiming that the government would have a "hands-off approach" to the BBC, which must resolve its own difficulties. A year's salary for being encouraged to resign from an organisation that he had worked for 26 years and a job he had held for 8 weeks is maybe generous but no more than sacking him would have cost. He has also lost his career and reputation and all for displaying integrity and openness that was perhaps a bit naive in the cynical world of the media.

Meanwhile, over at News International just three weeks ago, the Telegraph announced that Rebekah Brookes had received a £7m pay off after displaying little integrity and no transparency after her 10 years as editor of the Sun and the News of the World and then as Chief Executive of News International. Currently awaiting trial for her role in the phone-hacking debacle, she was also responsible for commissioning and publishing stories that have damaged hundreds of lives. Did the Prime Minister pass any comment? It may be that integrity and transparency are debased values in Murdoch's world. It may also be that private sector payoffs running at more than 15 times the rate for public broadcasters is what the posh boys consider reasonable. It is after all pretty well the ratio of top salaries in the private sector compared to the public sector in the UK.

The reason that we instinctively trust the BBC is that it acknowledges its mistakes and has been its own fiercest critic in the last month. But most of all because it produces programmes on radio and TV as well as films and documentaries that are cherished for their quality and objectivity. It has a real-time website that is the first point of call for many of us during the day as we seek to keep abreast of world, national or local news. Yes, it is a loosely integrated operation with a lot of responsibility devolved to programme-makers who are expected to operate to the highest ethical standards. (Is this not the model that is  extolled for the successful digital age company?) When they get it wrong, as they do from time to time, they are ruthless in reporting the criticism made of the BBC, even if at the same time they defend themselves as they did with the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Thames Pageant which was celebrity-driven drivel in the rain.

All the BBC services together: radio, tv, film and media cost no more than £12 a month, an absolute snip compared to News Corporation's part-owned Sky packages that are three times as high at typically £37 -£41 a month with no radio, media or educational content, let alone a world service. Sky is also largely dependent on off the shelf programmes bought from more creative broadcasters like the BBC.

So why is George trounced whilst Rebekah gets texted lol from the PM whilst taking home fifteen times as much? The News International stable has seized the opportunity to trash the BBC as have the government.  Is it just because the BBC is more progressive, ethical, transparent and egalitarian in its outlook? Or is it because News International and the government are fundamentally opaque, patronising, regressive, elitist and tolerate inequality in all its many guises?

Cycling Cornucopia

Sometimes you enter a world and you wonder whether it is real. It happened today; on the advice of  a couple of cycling friends I had taken four wheels to be trued or rebuilt. Wheelcraft is a remarkable cycle repair shop in the attractive hamlet of Campsie Glen and hosted by a master wheel builder - Big Al. It was like entering a tardis. I was sent through from the front of the shop which was looked after by three bustling mechanics to the 'workshop' behind where Big Al was sitting in the window spinning wheels and telling stories as off centre as the wheels he was truing. He was surrounded by a cast of customers and enough wheels and cornucopia of cycle components to save the world.

Customers are friends and friends are customers in what is really a front parlour. The patter was eclectic covering favourite routes, worst roads, characters, bike components and everyday life. Nothing was hurried and after he found my wheels he began to true the last one. Requests for sprockets, chain wheels, brakes, spokes were all met positively and usually found eventually which is more a testimony to Big Al's memory than his storage system. Coffee was made and drunk, metric diced with imperial measurements and the world was trashed and then saved. We were informed that one cubic metre of sea water can provide enough magnesium to build a bottom bracket.

The audience rotated as more friends arrived on bikes to request an improbable bike part, drink free coffee and listen to the stories. This was a real coffee shop collective with no tables or staff but a lot more guffaws. It was like a cyclists edition of QI with Big Al directing affairs in the manner of Stephen Fry. Just don't tell him he's a national treasure.

American Presidents and One Thousand Miles

14th Best President...so far

When I woke up at 5am, I decided to get up and check the American Presidential election result. I switched on just as the news agencies call for Obama passed the magical 270 mark. It was a relief, like most Europeans I have been concerned about the outcome of the Presidential elections. The optimism following the end of George. W. Bush's (Dubya) second term in office was infectious. This time we have watched two candidates spend the GDP of a medium-sized African nation mainly in trying to destroy their opponent. The American Dream that had inveigled our lives had been savaged by Dubya and further destroyed by the Tea Party and GOP's lurch to the extreme right. Best summed up in this authentic Dubya quote:

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

Romney's concession speech was gracious, he wished Obama and his family well and called for all the American people to work together. Obama took time to prepare his response and then gave his supporters and the watching world 25 minutes of rising rhetoric. Starting with an ode to Michelle, whom he claimed everyone loves and including a positive response to Romney's proposal to work together. Although the event did not have the epoch-making significance of 2008 it appeared, as if unleashed from having to consider how to achieve another term, that Obama was determined to tackle some of the wicked domestic and world issues. He even mentioned the devastation of global warming, the first time I had heard this recognised during the time and money-wasting months of the campaign.

He would be wise to stick to his promise to focus on rescuing the fragile economy. I have lived through twelve presidents and their legacies are often not worth more than a hill of beans.

• Truman ended the Second World War with atomic bombs but helped create the United Nations and gave us the Marshall Plan
• Eisenhower stopped France and Britain from behaving badly over Suez and put an end to McCarthyism
• Kennedy gave us the Cuban missile crisis
• Johnson prolonged the Vietnam War but started the journey toward equal rights
• Nixon was tricky and impeached
• Ford was not Nixon and could not chew gum and walk at the same time
• Carter was honest but damaged by the Iran hostages and a collapsing economy
• Reagan reduced taxes, introduced Star Wars and ended the Cold War although this legacy was mainly down to Gorbachev
• George Bush gave us the first Iraq war and the economy collapsed
• Clinton said it was the economy but was then diverted by interns
• Dubya gave us the second Iraq war and engendered disbelief in the American Dream
• and so far Obama has given Americans universal healthcare and shot Bin Laden

It is not a peaceful list of achievements and no President has allowed the United Nations to play its full part in peacekeeping either. They have used the World Bank and IMF to extend 'freedom' but really to allow American companies to invade many emerging countries in Central and South America, Africa and Asia to reduce budget deficits by outsourcing many public services. And yet as the exit polls showed yesterday, 60% of voters think the economy is the top issue, followed by healthcare. Only 4% now believe that foreign policy is the top issue. Since FDR Presidents seem to have swallowed the American Dream whole, Obama should perhaps take on the  challenge of Don DeLillo's observation in Americana that:

“It is so much simpler to bury reality than it is to dispose of dreams” 

After watching the results I decided to go for an early morning run in the steady drizzle. For the first time in months, I took the iPod with a playlist of running tunes. I passed the 1000 miles for the year during the run, the first time since 1994, and I was elated. It also may have been the drizzle, the iPod or the relief at the election result but I reached the 3-mile point a minute ahead of my PB and, by the top of the hill at 4 miles, I was 2 minutes ahead. I was on fire.

The iPod was on shuffle and by coincidence on came Bruce Springsteen.  Maybe it was because I had seen him with Obama the day before, but 'I'm on Fire' sounded like an abridged pastiche of Obama's victory speech as he emerged sweating and relieved from the stress of the election.

'At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
And a freight train running through the
Middle of my head
Only you can cool my desire
I'm on fire
whoohoo I'm on fire.'

He's on Fire

Well, Mr President let's hope if you are on fire that this benefits the whole world and not just Michelle.  In the Historical rankings of Presidents of the United States, based upon the opinions of political scientists and academics,  President Obama currently lies 14th equal, the highest placing of any President since John F. Kennedy. He now has 52 months to make a difference and resurrect a nation in turmoil. Those ahead of him are:

1.  Abraham Lincoln           1861 - 1865
2.  Franklin D. Roosevelt    1933 - 1945
3.  George Washington       1789 - 1797
4.  Thomas Jefferson          1801 - 1809
5.  Theodore Roosevelt      1901 - 1909
6.  Woodrow Wilson           1913 - 1921
7.  Harry Truman                 1945 - 1953
8= Dwight D. Eisenhower    1953 - 1961
8= Andrew Jackson             1829 - 1837
10. James K. Polk                1845 - 1849
11. John F. Kennedy            1961 - 1963
12. John Adams                    1797 - 1801
13. James Madison               1809 - 1817
14= Barack Obama                2009 -

If he makes the top ten even Republicans may believe he was born in the USA.  On current evidence, it is certainly difficult to see the Republicans ever regaining the progressive policies of Theodore Roosevelt.

Rob Roy Way: Pitlochry to Aberfeldy

Pitlochry - River Tummel from suspension bridge

Fonab Wood

Leaving the forest, Strathtay  ahead

Descending to Strathtay

Grazing

Beached sheep

Beech woods

Tay at Grandtulley

Tay towards Edradynate 

Tay by Aberfeldy

Pitlochry to Strathtay/Grandtully         8km       2hrs 25mins
Grandtully to Aberfeldy                        7km       1 hr 40mins

The Rob Roy Way is one of a dozen or so long distance walks in Scotland that have been developed in recent years. Jacquetta Megarry was the driving force behind establishing the walk which traverses the Central Highlands from Drymen to Pitlochry. It is 77 miles long and, as well as crossing the Highland Boundary Fault, it passes through some of the territories that Rob Roy patrolled. I was invited to the official opening of the walk about ten years ago but forgot about it and went out hillwalking instead. Earlier this year it was accepted as one of Scotland's Great Trails following some much-needed waymarking. Today I decided to make my peace with the Rob Roy Way and headed up to Pitlochry so we could walk it north to south over six days in winter months.

The early morning frost and mists disappeared as we travelled up to Loch Tay and the hills were capped in a good layer of snow down to 650 metres. We parked at Aberfeldy but by this time the mists had descended and the cold air did not auger well. We caught a bus to Pitlochry via Ballinluig and prepared ourselves for a day in the clouds but the sun reappeared as we arrived in Pitlochry. We started out immediately dropping from the main street and crossing the river Tummel on the suspension bridge. Crossing the A9 is probably the most dangerous part of the walk with vehicles nose to tail at 70mph on a non-dualled part of this veritable death trap.  The traffic noise is soon left behind on the waymarked path to Strathtay. The path climbs through well-tended farmland and through the Fonab Woods to Fonab Hill with spectacular views back to Pitlochry and beyond that to the snow-capped Ben Vrackie.

There was a lot of harvesting of timber taking place and the tracks were heavily churned so we were pleased to exit the wood after crossing the ridge and gaze down into Strathtay with the mist still girdling the broad sweeps of the river. The descent over open moorland was a real treat, the slopes were festooned with pheasants, dotted with grazing sheep, traversed by rippling burns and lower down copses of copper coloured beech were enclosed by dry stone walls clothed in moss and lichen. 

In Strathtay we sauntered through the old village with its graceful stone houses; red squirrels were putting on aerobatic displays in the gardens. We crossed the Tay which was gurgling with a fast current through the rapids. Grandtully is a centre of canoeing and the reasons were self-evident. A stop for some soup at the enticingly named Chocolate Shop was probably a mistake, it is better to keep moving on long walks. It was cold and dank as we set out again just after 2pm, although the sun soon returned to warm the spirits.  Finding the railway cutting was not as simple as it should have been but once on the old track, the route to Aberfeldy was easy going. It overlooks the river and the specimen trees on the banks made it a delightful walk. Again we disturbed pheasants along the railway cutting and all along the trail the colours of the trees displayed their many hues.

Eventually, the path leaves the old railway embankment which veers to the south and follows the banks of the Tay. The Tay was a menacing sight, the current moving and eddying swiftly with a colour defying description. Dark but not brown or blue or green and not quite black either; not opaque but not transparent either.  We disturbed ducks and swans as we followed the path until reaching the cemetery at Aberfeldy where we had a brief altercation with some dogs before hitting the road. We were not tempted by Dewars 'world of whisky' as we entered the town. I was pleased to see that the cinema was undergoing a refurbishment following a grant from the Big Lottery to the community. This saga had been going on for years and the sense you get in Aberfeldy is that it is a once-solid market town that has lost its purpose. The cinema, the development of adventure sports in the quite outstanding surrounding countryside and maybe some Harry Potter wizardry from a local resident is needed to restore the fantasy realm of Strathtay.

It had been a good and easy start to the Rob Roy Way and arriving in Aberfeldy before 4pm allowed us to be home before nightfall. The next two stages may prove a little more difficult to execute unless we can find a B&B to split the walk between Aberfeldy and Glen Ogle.

Manchester revisited

Town Hall: Gothic splendour

Abraham Lincoln statue in memory of abolition of  slavery

 Arndale Centre but could be any city

I made a long overdue visit to Manchester on my way to Sheffield for a training event. My grandmother and father had been born here and it was the only city that I regularly visited as a boy. My great-grandmother's terraced house in Ardwick had been destroyed during the Second World War a few days before Christmas 1940. My father, 18 at the time, travelled 35 miles to rescue his grandmother and mother's sister. He found them in a street of rubble, they had taken refuge under the kitchen table. Manchester seemed a grey dour place in the 1950's although this may have been the journey through Salford and the depressing digs where my great aunt lived. She compensated for this by having an optimistic and positive outlook on life that rubbed off on everyone and she further endeared herself to everyone by knitting jumpers for all the family. 

I was offered a place at Manchester University, which considered itself the best of the red bricks (Birmingham,  Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield) but I went to Sheffield instead. It seemed less austere, more vibrant and was further away from home. I did live in Manchester, staying with a friend for a few weeks during the four-week Easter break before finals but it seemed perpetually dull and wet. 

The vibrancy of the city only shone through as I visited its football grounds by virtue of having flatmates who supported Manchester City and Manchester United. I watched most of the Manchester United games as they progressed to the  European Cup Final in 1968 and saw them defeated 6-3 at the Hawthorns just a few weeks before the European victory. Despite all the eulogising of Best, Law and Charlton, I thought that the outstanding player of the era was Colin Bell of Manchester City. He had the complete set of skills and the energy and professionalism to display them in every game. On other occasions on travels to and from Sheffield, I used to stop off at Old Trafford to watch County Cricket with my friend Phil Ellitson whose father was on the Board and got us in to watch the wonderful team when Lancashire had Clive Lloyd in his pomp even seeing him him field was to appreciate a wonderful skill.

It is over twenty years since I spent any time in Manchester when speaking at a conference on regeneration at a time when Manchester was down on its heels(1988). Since then it has blossomed and the numerous new developments along the canals near Salford where the BBC has relocated seem to bear this out. Whatever happened to the Salford of Don Whillans?

I got off the train at Deansgate so that I could walk across the city.  Deansgate is the sort of shopping street I like and that is a rarity: specialised shops with outdoor shops well represented and a smattering of old-style shops like newsagents and tobacconists. I happened upon a splendid statue of Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln Square, commissioned as a result of the support of Lancashire cotton workers for the abolition of slavery in the United States. I walked through the lanes between Deansgate and Albert Square, the setting for the magnificent Gothic Town Hall. The Manchester of the Victorian era produced some splendid buildings that gave the city centre civic dignity and the feel of a big city. This and the arrival of the BBC are playing well as other contenders for second city such as Birmingham seem to have lost impetus as the economy continues to decline and city budgets are slashed. 

And then into the modern shopping centre which was flush with shoppers even on a day when Manchester was under a canopy of dark grey, nothing had changed there. Piccadilly Gardens and the Arndale Centre were a bit naff after Deansgate and the Town Hall so I continued to Piccadilly station. It is not one of Manchester's finest walks and the station is a hotchpotch of different styles without any of the magnificence of terminus city stations. Manchester had disappointed me although I had only observed a cross-section of the city centre. As a venue for events, it seems to have it all, but is it as much fun as it was in the days of going to the fairground, the zoo or watching stock car racing at Belle Vue.

When I arrived in Sheffield, the water features, Andrew Motion's poem on the high-rise building in Sheaf Square and the welcoming Millennium Museum did more to lift my spirits in an hour than Manchester had managed in over three hours. I spent 20 minutes at the John Ruskin exhibition which had a fine display of paintings of Venice and American birds as well as more recent additions in the eclectic Ruskin Collection which was established for the education and to nurture the creative juices of the Sheffield metal workers. I treated myself to an hour in a bookshop, something that eludes me nowadays with the Kindle by passing the tactile temptation of books.

From Piccadilly

Belle Vue Dodgems - Ena and Minnie