Wednesday 31 August 2022

Next Please

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 in 2019 and that was despite being against much-ridiculed Jeremy Corbyn, who on his Brexit views 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. They have been 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 English councils, many of which failed to justify funding other than by having a Tory MP.  Scotland was allocated,£170m, Wales £129m and Northern Ireland £49m. Again these are trivial sums compared to the significant reductions of central government funding and a freezing of Council Tax by the Scottish Government.

This suggests that levelling up has provided less than 11% of the core funding taken away from English Councils over the period since 2010. The removal of core funding has also disproportionately impacted councils with the most deprived populations. 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 it will require a lot more than on offer to safeguard public services.  They have also 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 is part of their pledge to secure votes from their film flam electorate.

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 effectively expelled. There were some talented MPs who had served in the cabinet, politicians like David Gauke, Ken Clarke, Rory Stewart, Justine Greening, Dominic Grieve, Nicolas Soames, Alistair Burt, Oliver Letwin and even Philip Hammond had a greater commitment to fairness. 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 rightward 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 became 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 was an alien concept during Johnson's 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, with 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 her support in the Tory Party collapsing as opinion polls trace her plummeting popularity. Hopefully, her hasty removal from office by her party will force another General Election.

Sunak has the gravitas and the experience to perform the role of 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. His competence would appear to 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.

Friday 12 August 2022

Ben More/Stob Binnen

Ben More from Stob Binnein

Friday, 12 August 2022

Ascent:      1306 metres
Distance:   15 kilometres
Time:         4 hours 32 minutes

Ben More          1174m        1hr   51mins
Stob Binnein     1165m        2hrs 59mins

The fourth day of the August heatwave with near cloudless skies and excellent visibility persuaded me to tackle the two highest Munros in this part of the world. Despite, or perhaps because of their proximity, I had not climbed them for over 13 years. They dominate views from so many locations like a pair of salt and pepper pots often poking into the clouds when lesser hills are flaunting their peaks. I was away by 7am, this would hopefully avoid any traffic hold-ups and allow me to climb the steep northern slopes of Ben More whilst they were still in shadow. It was a good call and I was the second car to park by Ben More farm and begin the initial climb up the flip-flap track until it reaches the stairway that climbs relentlessly for the next 850 metres to the trig point of Ben More. Much of the path is man-made with large stones and provides a good footing at a gradient that never knowingly gives you a break.

I was right about being in the shadow but even in shorts and a T-shirt, the exercise was keeping the sweat glands active. I kept a surprisingly steady rhythm to the summit, stopping only once for some water and a few photos. Only in the last 50 metres of ascent did I emerge from the shadows and draw some energy from the sun to reach the summit cairn. The nearby trig point that looks like its foundations are being eroded. I had made better time than expected and decided to continue almost immediately after another drink and some photos. Stob Binnein was calling and, in the amazing clarity of the morning sun,it looked a mere shuffle away. 

As I began the descent, I passed a couple who had camped at the summit and we chatted for a few minutes as they eulogised about the experience. There are a couple of scrambles over some crags at the start of the descent and it was slower than I had expected. I remembered from eight previous walks on these hills that the climb to Stob Binnein was a lot longer than it looked. Once again I was surprised to find that I could keep a reasonable pace without the need for any rest. It was 303 metres of climbing and took just over 30 minutes. Another young couple was sitting by the summit, they had bivvied there and were in a state of excitement about the large red moon that had been bright enough to read a book at midnight. It was only 11:00am so we chatted for 45 minutes or so, they were already hooked on the great outdoors and I could discern from our conversation that they would have many years of adventures ahead in the hills.

They had ascended from Balquidder and had decided to give Ben More a miss and return by the south ridge. I wished them lots of days in the hills and set off in the opposite direction on the descent to the bealach below Ben More. It was a lot easier than the descent from Ben More. From the bealach, I took a traversing descent down to Benmore Glen. It was a narrow and at times boggy path, even in the heatwave conditions but quite hard on the feet with boulders and uneven drops. I reached the track within an hour from the summit and then it was just an easy tramp down the track to Ben More farm where the path to Ben More begins. There were still very few cars parked despite the perfect conditions. It was good to be down by lunchtime and I was home by 2pm after a jaunt on these tough hills that had been just about as pleasant as it is possible to get.

Temperature inversion over Glen Dochart at the start of the stairway

Crianlarich from Ben More

Ben More summit

Wobbly Trig Point

Stob Binnein from Ben More

Ben More from Stob Binnein

South ridge of Stob Binnein

Track along Ben More Glen




Tuesday 2 August 2022

An Argyll Refresher

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. 


Loch Crinan from the Hotel

Crinan Canal locks

Crinan Canal Basin

Tayvallich

Kilmartin Standing Stones

Ardfern Marina

Port Appin Hotel

The view across Loch Linnhe to Mull

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