Blue Origin

Blue Origin's Magnificent Seven Up

As if 2025 hadn't caused enough damage to the global commonweal, we have witnessed another utterly bizarre world event. Seven starry-eyed celebrities popped up into the higher layers of the atmosphere in a Jeff Bezos Blue Origin capsule fired from his Texas launchpad to claim that they were astronauts. It was like watching a social media revamp of Monsieur Hulot's Holiday. Unfortuanately, the dialogue of the hapless seven lacked either the intelligence or self awareness to make it a parody. M. Hulot created chaos by opening the hotel door to let in a stiff breeze, it was pity that the Jeff''s Angels didn't open the capsule door to get a better view of the moon and become the first space asylum seekers.

Blue Origin is an Amazon funded space tourism project that costs at least £150,000 for the ten-minute ride to 100km above the Earth and back. About the same time as you get on the Star Wars Hyperspace ride at Eurodisney, but without the queue. The impact of Blue Origin flights on the ozone layer by the creation of Nitrous Oxide in the atmosphere and the release of water vapour in the upper atmosphere is hugely damaging to mother Earth. But Bezos is a rocket billionaire, a philistine philanthropist who is fulfilling the destructive powers of Amazon.

The Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band sent up the space race so much better and cheaper in 1968 with their only hit single, "I'm the Urban Spaceman," on the Liberty label. They saw it as a Dadaist prank, a reference to the Apollo rocket launches. They even claimed the hit record was produced by Apollo C. Vermouth although it was produced by Paul McCartney. It was a spoof on the vacuous consumerism and space obsession in the summer of love. Even the lyrics say that the urban spaceman doesn't exist in real life. Unlike the urban spaceman, these celebrity wannabees exist, and with an elevated sense of entitlement. Letting them spaff their wealth and accelerate climate change on a glorified fairground ride is an Amazon Crime, yet another reason I am glad to have junked Amazon Prime.

Bye bye Mr Blue Sky

Morning is breaking 7 a.m.

After us two weeks of perpetual blue skies and excellent visibility, I awoke this morning to the same. I headed for an early walk on a local hill for only the third time in the last two months. It is only a 5-mile drive away, but the clouds were grumbling in from the northwest. The warm morning rays of the sun had been replaced by a nippy wind, and I was in shorts and a T-shirt. My normal 30-minute ascent took 12 minutes longer but that was 6 minutes faster than earlier in the week. On the descent, a brief hail shower passed through and prompted me to start running again.

I had not stopped on either the ascent or descent and I was feeling slightly better than I had for 7 weeks. Maybe the antibiotics prescribed by the GP for a viral infection and the steroids prescribed by the respiratory consultant after a CT scan, and various blood tests are beginning to work. Pity I have missed the good weather, including a much cherished trip to Fisherfield with John last week. 

Weather is breaking 8:30 a.m.

The National Portrait Gallery

Processional frieze in the Great Hall

After a long morning at Edinburgh University providing background material for a book on local government, and a Tapas lunch with Bill, I had the afternoon free. I took myself to the National Portrait Gallery, somewhere I had not visited since retirement and was keen to see the new exhibits. It was a revelation, defying its Victorian origins housed in its sombre Corsehill red sandstone neo-gothic building on Queen Street. The Gallery had been wonderfully renovated in 2011. The ambience on arrival, the welcome from the curators and the magical Great Hall were totally embracing. There were many visitors from around the world, it was not even Easter but Edinburgh was already buzzing as the Athens of the North.

My quest to see the new exhibits was delayed by the time required to admire the processional frieze and the colourful murals painted on the upper balcony of the Great Hall by William Hole. Such was the influence of the Scotsman Newspaper at the time the building was completed in 1889 that its proprietor, John Ritchie Findlay, was able to commission this work as well as the purpose designed Gallery to display Scottish heroes. I also spent even more time exploring the old portraits of Scottish Kings in the Reformation and Revolution Gallery and figures from the Scottish Enlightenment in the Globalisation galleries. 

Finally, I made it to the modern collection. Familiar figures came to life in paintings and photographs. A friend is writing a book on 100 Radical Scots and I had made a dozen or so suggestions to him for inclusion in the book including Sir Patrick Geddes and Tilda Swinton. They were both in the Gallery, a bust of Geddes and a frolicking painting of Swinton. I sent photos of them both to my friend and he confirmed that he had completed his biography of the radical Geddes. 

Other post-war legends, poets, musicians, sportspeople and artists were splayed across a gallery as diverse as its portraits. Amongst them, a photograph of Wai-Yin Hatton who had been the Chief Executive of Ayrshire Health Board stared out at me. She had asked to work shadow me about twenty years ago and this was reciprocated as we spent several days in each other's domains. It gave me an insight into the management culture in the Health Boards. The hospital consultants were ferocious in their bids for money and they treated primary care with a studied disdain. Wai-Yin was a formidable character and was greatly frustrated by this but the silos in the NHS were well entrenched and not easily controlled.

Mural of the Battle of Bannockburn

Poets' Pub

Sir Patrick Geddes

Tilda Swinton

Wai-Yin Hatton

The Devil's Apprentice

Cockwomble

Well, not content with providing the protection and weapons to allow Netanyahu to continue the killings in Gaza to exceed 50,000 and allowing Putin to continue the ruthless bombardment of Ukraine, Trump has now unilaterally inflicted the most crass (but beautiful) tariff policies on the world. In any edition of The Apprentice, he would have been evicted for any of these three monumental failures. It would be far better to fire him. Ideally into a perpetual orbit of the earth in one of Musk's SpaceX tin cans. 

What is particularly irksome is Trump's persistent claim that America has been "raped and pillaged" by the EU and other countries. The converse is nearer the truth. It was an American journalist, Ludwell Denny, who spoke the truth in 1930 when he said that the USA is "Too wise to govern the world, we shall merely own it." That is what they have done; American companies have built factories and employed cheap labour across the world. There are 280 American companies with factories in China alone and substantial numbers in Vietnam, Taiwan, Cambodia and the other countries that have been landed with the highest tariffs by Trump's government.  

The UK has become a Vassal State whereby America has bought out Britain.  Private equity companies have plundered the UK to take ownership of companies. In 2020, they took a revenue of $707bn from the UK, an average profit of £2500 from every UK household. HMRC have estimated that American companies underpaid tax by £5.6bn. It is time for the UK government to take back control, to weaponise our tax system and to regulate takeovers. The US government has seen the special relationship with the UK as a game of dancing with donkeys. America has become the dominant owner of almost half the FTSE shares, not to mention the ownership of the majority of premier league football clubs and many health and care providers. Trump has targeted the UK's very modest 2% Digital Services Tax on the big American tech companies to be eliminated as part of his game plan to reduce the 'rape and pillaging’ of the USA.

What Trump has done is give the UK and Europe a legitimate excuse to put an end to the plundering of their businesses. It means working more closely with Europe, which has been far more savvy in developing regulatory control of big tech and AI. It is essential to stop America from ‘merely owning the world.’ Hopefully, as the Trump game is played out, the rest of the world will be too wise to let this continue. Untrammelled private equity ownership and unregulated big tech, aided and abetted by successive American governments, have had the upper hand for too long. Trump has unwittingly paved the way to consigning his tariff policies to the dustbin of economic illiteracy. But that requires collaboration between Europe, the UK and other partners who are willing to confront the Devil's Apprentice.

Space X Control to Major Trump
Sitting in a tin can
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on
Planet Earth is Blue
And there's nothing you can do

 

Missing the Hills

Ben Ledi and the Blue Forgotten Hills

For the first time since early February, I started the day by climbing a local hill this morning. A viral infection when walking in the Lakes in February had given me chest pains and slowed me down. This was followed by feeling listless during a week in London. I decided to go to Istanbul to get some sunshine and explore the Bosphorus mega city. Again, I was feeling tired, and my limbs were aching, so I drained what was left of my stamina to haul myself around Istanbul. I returned to some glorious weather in Scotland. Normally, I would be up and out by 7:30am to climb my local micro hills on good days such as these. I could not summon up the energy and had to limit myself to the odd hour in the garden. Moreover, I was missing a few days in Fisherfield with Keith and John. Fisherfield has always been one of my favourite locations and, at this time of the year in these conditions. Wow.

This morning, the viral infection seemed to be on the wane, so I was out early on the perfect morning to climb Ben Gullipen. It is usually a sub-30-minute brisk walk once the snow and ice have departed, but today, I had already stopped five times before I was three-quarters of the way up. The man coming down was an acquaintance from Aberfoyle whom I had first met on Lime Craig on the day that Aileen had died when I was seeking solace. He had recently retired to the area and we bumped into each other on several subsequent occasions on Lime Craig when I recommended other local walks/runs to him including Ben Gullipen. Billy was as friendly as ever, and we blethered for half an hour on a quite sublime April morning. We talked about running, hills, and Pete Cartwright, now a world over 70 1500 metre champion, who had worked with Billy and whom I had often run with on the local trails around Aberfoyle and where we had both won the annual 10k trail race. Today, I was only able to recommend 'This City is Ours', the Liverpool drug crime drama on BBC to Billy. It was the only memorable event that I had enjoyed in the last few weeks as I moped about wondering why my energy had gone awol.

It had taken an hour to get to the summit but the hills to the north were enticing in the blue morning light. Ben Ledi was a mere stone's throw away, and Ben Vorlich and Stuc a' Chroin were beckoning. This was my playground, my backyard that had nurtured my determination to seek the more distant adventures to all of Scotland's mountains. I watched the young lambs prancing around the summit and resolved to phone the hospital when I got home to see if I could get an earlier appointment to sort out my problem. I was able to run some of the way down, and I was pleased that my legs were still in reasonable shape. The news on the way home was of the collapse of the financial markets worldwide. Trump, what a Cockwomble.

Stuc a' Chroin and Ben Vorlich

Spring

Loch Venachar

A distant Ben Lomond

Ben Gullipen

 

Today Refreshed

Anna Foster - Today Programme

I have been a less regular listener to the Today Programme since the start of the year. It seemed to have lost its vitality and focus since the loss of Mishal Husain. Her professionalism and sharp focus had kept other presenters on the ball. Her temporary replacements, Jonny Dymond, Simon Jack and Katya Adler, had kept things ticking over, but Emma Barnett did not seem to be a team player. She is a loose cannon, unaware of her brutal style that irks interviewees, her fellow interviewers and this listener. 

Nick Robinson and Amol Rajan were spending time on other projects, including their Today Podcast, which is usually very good but it did not please Justin Webb. He had been involved on occasion but was aggrieved that it trespassed on his Americast podcast with Sarah Smith. This is hardly surprising given that world news rotates around Planet Trump.

Then, the new presenter, Anna Foster, arrived on air.  She was in Thailand on her first day, covering the Myanmar earthquake. Her easy style brought out the best in the people she interviewed; she made a seamless connection with Nick Robinson in London, and they were immediately a working team. The Today Programme was back on track. Amol had already interviewed her on the Today podcast, and they had vowed to look forward to working together. Anna will no doubt rescue Justin from his grumpiness and cope with Emma, just as she does with everyone else in her fresh and positive manner. I wouldn't bet on Emma surviving the year though.