Friday 28 December 2018

New House



Welcoming Skies
Ben Ledi from the kitchen

In late February 2017, we looked at a building plot that was about to become available. It had been an ambition for a couple of years to build a house but where? We had spent almost 30 years in the family home. It had unbeatable access to walks and cycle routes in the Trossachs and direct access to Craig Mor through the back gate but the stone-built house was over a hundred years old and not easy to keep warm in winter as heating, electrics, and tradesmen maintenance costs were increasing faster than inflation. The rainfall average in the village was 75 inches a year with the road flooded two or three times a year and from late May to September the midges kept us inside in the evenings. We also needed to have a clear out of possessions that cluttered the house and garage.

The plot was on the site of a farm where a cluster of barns was to be demolished. On a cold damp day in February 2017, the attractions of the site, which was littered with rubble and farm detritus were dubious. It was only 12 minutes away from Stirling, there was a good local pub that we frequented and there were two or three families whom we knew, There were 8 plots, one already sold and under construction, We were able to buy a large plot next to a burn and with views that were astonishing, We would have a clear view of the Campsies over Flanders Moss to the south. Ben Lomond, Ben Ledi, Ben Vorlich and Stuc a' Chroin were all in sight to the west and north, although these views would diminish as other houses were built on the site.

We also had the opportunity to specify our own house. It took nine months to design the house, obtain detailed planning permission, negotiate a price for the construction and acquire the site. It was February 2018 before the work began. We considered pulling out on several occasions as costs were rising, many of the fixtures came from Europe and the £ was plummeting. We had been unsuccessful in selling our existing property before construction started and this required us to obtain a bridging loan to pay for the construction. These are not easily available and together with architect fees, structural engineering fees, planning permissions and building warrants added to the mounting costs. The property market had stalled as a result of the Scottish government introducing a Land and Buildings Property Tax of 10% on larger houses and the uncertainty caused by Brexit. However, we figured if we didn't make the move now, it would be too late to enjoy the benefits of a new house.

We marked out the site with the builder in early February. Within a fortnight we had run into a major problem as the slab for the foundations extended to a steep slope down to a burn that was part of the plot. The additional concrete that had to be poured to secure the foundations wiped out all of our £25k contingency. The upside was the glorious weather, by July the house was well ahead of schedule. We visited the site about twice a week throughout the construction and progress continued apace until mid-summer, when the house was 4 weeks ahead of schedule. We had managed to sell the existing house a couple of weeks after securing the bridging loan and moved into a temporary flat in Glasgow for 6 months.

The summer holidays meant that some of the tradesmen were on holiday when they were scheduled to complete their work. The kitchen fitters were late and then had to reorder parts from Germany and suddenly we had lost all early gains in the construction schedule. The biggest problem was the failure of the vendor of the serviced plot to commission the provision of water, electricity or drainage. Together these issues delayed the final completion by 4 weeks and the supply of water was a quick fix that was not resolved for another 6 months, delaying the completion certificate on the house.

We eventually moved in early December on a rain-filled day, it was a struggle to get the large removal lorry to the front door and an eight-hour job to unload the vehicle that had to make two trips from the storage depot. We managed to sort out much of the chaos by Christmas and are now into the snagging, the broadband connection has still to be provided and meanwhile we still have a couple of dozen boxes to unpack when our energy levels are restored and we have the inclination.


The plot on first viewing, some imagination needed here
Are we serious?
The pile of rubble is now the location of the house
Week 1 - Marking out the foundations
Week 2 - Groundworks
Week 6 - Pouring the concrete slab
Week 10 - Lifting on the roof trusses
 Week 10 - Roof 
Week 11 - Open plan upstairs 
Week 13 - Timber Kit complete
Week 16 - Slating the roof
Week 18 - The Shed/Garage

Week 18 - Perfect weather for the joiners

Week 18 - South elevation, solar panels installed

Week 18 - Stonework

Week 33 -  Shipping Container for garden stuff and bikes

Week 35 - interior fittings
Week 36 - Laying the slabs
Week 37 - Flooring
Week 40 - Sparkle clean
Week 40 - Fenced in
Christmas Eve with Kit 
Christmas Eve
The Campsies from the living room
Looking west to Ben Lomond
Week 68 - Lawns greening
Campsies
Summertime 

Monday 17 December 2018

No internet

We moved to the new house on 7 December. We had booked for the installation of a telephone and broadband package from our providers, BT, and promptly received confirmation of our new telephone number and that it would be installed on the day of the move. We have since had three messages indicating that there will be delays and tonight we have been told that Openreach will not be able to connect the cables before January 7. So I will be offline until then.

This is what happens when infrastructure providers like BT, which provided the telephone and broadband network as well as being the main phone operating company, are split up into different operating units by the government. The dire lessons from the privatisation and separation of network rail from the franchised train operators is beyond the ken of this government.

Thursday 22 November 2018

Little England or Big Britain


As we drift into the debacle of Brexit decisions and frenzy of confusion that has been the soundtrack of the past 30 months, I am struck by the contrast between the cool countenance of the EU negotiators and leaders and the panic and confusion of the UK government and its negotiators. This is echoed in the reporting by the BBC. Katya Adler, the European editor, provides concise summaries of the position of the EU that invariably turn out to be accurate. Laura Kuensberg, the political editor, resorts to rambling speculation depending on who she has just spoken to and her comments are seldom worth a hill of beans.

I was a lukewarm remain supporter at the referendum and had voted against joining in 1975 because I thought the UK should redeem the Commonwealth countries after centuries of exploitation. However, in the 1980s the EU was the salvation of many declining communities that benefited from its investment in development areas and skill training. Since then the EU has pioneered important environmental legislation and employment rights during periods when the UK government was laggardly or obstructive. Most recently its ability to stand up for taxation of the global tech and social media behemoths has been exemplary compared to the frigid and yet to be implemented promises of the UK government. There are still many aspects of EU policy and the stance of some of the leaders of the 27 other members that concern me, but then the UK government has the monopoly when it comes to regressive policies and an unctuous self-righteousness

What is becoming very clear is that both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition are intransigent dinosaurs lacking both emotional and political intelligence. They appear to have no sense of the destruction caused by their inflexibility or recognition of the economic and social havoc that is being caused by Brexit. Their unwillingness to accept that democracy operates in real time is equally a measure of their unsuitability as leaders.

It is the non-parliamentarians: the political leaders in Scotland, Wales, the Republic of Ireland and the Mayors of the Metropolitan areas who are far more attuned to the economic and social issues and far more cogent in articulating the real world truths. They speak not just for their bailiwicks but for Britain as a whole in a way that escapes May and Corbyn. Could it be that their experience of executive responsibility for public services gives them an insight that seems impossible for MPs to have in the vortex of legislative indecision that masquerades as parliament? Mrs May and far too many of her MPs behave and act as Little Englanders. When she declares that her Brexit deal will safeguard the union, she really has lost all credibility.

Wednesday 14 November 2018

Imperial War Museum



Portico of Imperial War Museum
Weeping Window of Ceramic Poppies at IWM

It was Remembrance Day and after the cold morning showers had passed we headed to the Imperial War Museum with the grandchildren. We arrived just as the service was finishing. Crowds had gathered to admire the cascade of ceramic poppies that draped the north facing portico of the building. It was my first visit to the museum.

I was pleasantly surprised that the exhibits included sections showing the living conditions in Britain during the dark days of World War II. The Anderson shelter reminded me of the one in my Great Aunt Doris's back garden that I used to paint every few years to earn some pocket money. There were exhibits of terraced houses in south London that had suffered regular bombing raids. The sleeping arrangements required the upstairs bedrooms to be abandoned. It took me back to stories about my father's grandmother and his mother's sister who survived a direct hit to their house in Manchester by sheltering under the heavy kitchen table that protcted them from the falling rubble.

As well as the exhibits of fighter planes, tanks, and small boats, there were examples of vehicles used in the North African campaign. These included a Chevrolet 30cwt truck used by the Desert Rats in the battles against Rommel. My father had been driving one of these at El Alamein and had been blown up by a landmine. He lost all his teeth but returned to active service within a month to complete the war in the Greek and Italian campaigns with the Eighth Army. He spent four years from the age of 19 to 23 as a soldier on the frontline but like so many others seldom talked about it until in his sixties when he and my mother began to make trips abroad for the first time in their lives. They revisited parts of Italy and Greece where he had fought in the war. Chios became their regular holiday haunt after he made contact with some of the local Greeks who had welcomed the British Army when they landed to free the island in 1943.

There was so much more to see but time was limited. On remembrance day we were made to think of  the devastation to families of the 450,000 UK citizens who were killed in WW2. Similar numbers were lost in France and Italy. What surprised me from the exhibits was that this paled in comparison to Germany with 7 million, Poland with 6 million and well over 20 million Russians.

The most dangerous looking UK exhibit was the Spitting Image puppet of Mrs. Thatcher looking bellicose and obviously taking no prisoners. Her hawkish economic policies in the !980s had led to the collapse of traditional industries and seen unemployment rise to over 3 million or 12.5% of the workforce. The impact on families and communities is still evident in many old mining and manufacturing communities. Unlike the period after WW2 when there was a commitment to rebuilding the public realm and investing in education, housing, and health by governments of both main parties; there was no such public investment in the 1980s and many regions of the UK have still not recovered from the civil trauma caused by her pursuit of neoliberal economic policies.

As on all visits, the children demanded to explore the adjacent playground facilities. The blue skies, autumn leaves, ceramic poppies and the massive presence of 15-inch guns from dreadnought battleships provided a peaceful location for the playground equipment. It was miraculous the way that the freedom of the playpark rejuvenated tired children as they climbed the equipment commando style.  Nearby the sinister spike of the Shard dominated the skyline and cast doubt on the sanity of having a capital city that sucks the wealth and investment out of the rest of the country.



Spitfire and Harrier Jet in Main Hall
Chevrolet WB 30cwt truck used by Long Range Desert Group
Willys Jeep

Commando training
Most bellicose exhibit

Tuesday 30 October 2018

New Lanark

His mission statement

It seemed an apposite time to make a visit to New Lanark, where former cotton mills powered by water from the River Clyde have been restored by a local Trust. It was a working community of 2500 people in the early nineteenth century when it was managed by Robert Owen, the son in law of David Dale who had built the community. Robert Owen created a more inclusive form of industrialisation based on the pursuit of individual happiness and collective endeavour. A local shop was provided by Robert Owen to sell good quality items at a cheaper price than shops in the nearby town of Lanark. It returned a profit that was returned to the community by way of building a nursery for infants who could walk and providing one of the first schools, which was free for all children until the age of ten. Owen also created an Institute for the Formation of Character, where music, dance, mathematics, geography and history were taught to adults, a prototype for a local college of education. This form of local shop was effectively owned by its customers and provided the template for the creation of the cooperative movement by the Rochdale pioneers.

Robert Owen was in the vanguard of social reformers and created a village that was one of the earliest examples of urban planning. This was recognised by the New Lanark Trust when it acquired and began the restoration of the site in the 1980's. The Royal Town Planning Institute was very much to the fore in bringing this to fruition and it benefited greatly from the European Union, which funded much of the work and subsequently enabled New Lanark to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The former Director of Planning of Lanark, Graham U'ren, set out the reasons for the siting of New Lanark in the 2018 Commemorative Lecture.

New Lanark impresses you first by its physical appearance, a fine assemblage of sandstone buildings nestling in a gorge at the foot of the falls of Clyde. The inventor of the water frame for spinning yarn, Richard Arkwright of Preston, described the site at New Lanark thus: "There is no place I have ever seen which affords better situations or more ample streams for cotton machinery.” It is estimated that the river Clyde provides the greatest volume of running water anywhere in Britain.

Its setting is within a magnificent wooded valley of native trees along the sandstone gorge. Unfortunately, the site has been somewhat blighted by an unsightly coniferous plantation above the west bank. As well as an industrial museum in one of the old mills, the other buildings have been put to good use for housing, a hotel, youth hostel, wildlife display, and separate museums in the former school, shop and Robert Owen's house. Then there are the inevitable tourism shops, cafes and the usual not very relevant clutter of promotion banners from the tourist board. On the day it was virtually devoid of visitors and we spent over 3 hours absorbing the chance to enjoy the inheritance traits of a social reformer.

It was the day that Chancellor Philip Hammond set his budget. He acknowledged the gross unfairness of many aspects of global capitalism as did the free press mainly because they had some celebrity entrepreneurs like Philip Green to blame. It occurred to us that David Dale and Robert Owen seemed more relevant than ever.  Hammond finally found the nerve to introduce some extra tax on global digital companies and to claim the end of austerity (its fake news folk), but there was no attempt to regulate the short-term vandalism by hedge funds and the financial markets that have destroyed much of British industry and the retail sector in recent years; Evans bikes being the latest casualty sold by a hedge fund to Mike Ashley who is to close half the stores. The Chancellor would have done better by firing up a DeLorean to go forward to the past and adopt some of Robert Owen's ideas, he was a man well ahead of his time.



Looking down to New Lanark

Spinning wool 

New buildings, the mill workers houses

Robert Owen's house

Houses and the nursery

Who needs bitcoins?

Housing Association houses

The counting house and Caithness Row

The water lade next to the Institute for the Formation of Character

Workers cottages

The Clyde barrage to divert water