Good Reads 2021

2021 was the year when time was on our side as we drifted in and out of lockdown, restricted by travel bans and through the adoption of many other self-regulated constraints. Reading and gardening should have been the beneficiaries. The days of reading 20 or so books a year are challenged by reading all sorts of articles, news items and blogs online as well as curating masses of emails, many of which serve no useful purpose. 

I have resisted Twitter, Instagram and given up on Facebook and that probably reduces the angst that they generate. I only buy a Sunday newspaper but spend an hour or so each day reading articles online. I have taken to reading Private Eye for the excellent MD pages that provide a Doctor's insiders perspective on how we have coped, or not coped, with Covid. Elsewhere in the Eye, the peal of revelations about the corrupt practices of MPs, companies and public agencies simply adds fuel to the imperative for a radical overhaul of the UK's constitution, if not the existence of the UK. 

And so to books. For the first time since I started counting in 1988, I have not reached double figures. The fiction category provided nothing worth recommending, perhaps a result of finding it too difficult to select worthy novels from the avalanche of new publications or the dozens of older books that stare at me from groaning bookshelves. 

Non-fiction was different, Gavin Esler, the BBC journalist provided an insightful book, How Britain Ends. It charts the growth of English Nationalism as the justification for a written constitution with the devolved nations and English regions taking responsibility for the majority of functions that Westminster struggles to manage. Whilst repetitive at times, it is a well-judged addition to the debate that should be far more prominent as we suffer the consequences of austerity, an ever-increasing control by the UK government, the damage of Brexit and the disastrous handling of the Covid pandemic. The primacy of London and the South East has been an abiding contagion for the other English Regions as well as the devolved nations. 

I was mesmerised by James Rebanks book English Pastoral which reflects on his journey as an upland farmer in the Lake District. It is a humble story of coming to terms with what has gone wrong with modern farming and the need for regenerative agriculture. He references the experiences of three generations of his family as hill farmers. Whilst he is critical of modern methods of monoculture that have stripped out hedges, removed wetlands and made extensive use of chemicals, he is also dismissive of large scale rewilding. He describes the importance of soil management by rotating crops and the benefit of grazing by cattle and sheep. It is a nuanced argument that gains merit by his open admission to past mistakes driven by fertilizers and an obsession with economies of scale. It is also a plea for diversity in the way we manage land and by referencing Jane Jacobs, who in the 1960s had argued for the diversity of land uses in the city, he provides a powerful reminder of the need for systems thinking. The whole book was laced with descriptions of places and activities in the Lake District that I am familiar with and made the book doubly powerful.

Finally, I am well immersed in the book After the Virus by Hilary Cooper and Simon Szreter of Cambridge University. It is a powerful critique of the UK's response to the pandemic but set in a historical context. It argues that Britain has had two periods, the Elizabethan Poor Laws and the creation of the Welfare State after WWII when pandemics and food shortages have been overcome by collectivist measures. Conversely, the neoliberal policies of the past forty years have undermined the social fabric of the country and left the most vulnerable exposed to delayed and flawed decisions. The authors go as far as suggesting the principles that are necessary to restore a nurturing state. It is a book that could have been more tightly edited but through its historical perspective goes further than the excellent critiques of UK policy by the BMJ and Professor Devi Sridhar at the beginning of the year. 

Needless to say, we are still awaiting the government's own inquiry of its performance during the pandemic. The evidence is already available from many trustworthy sources so why would we believe an inquiry from a government that routinely misrepresents facts and was led by such luminaries as Boris Johnson, Matt  Hancock, Rishi Sunak, and Dido Harding. I suspect we will have a new PM long before the government inquiry ever sees the light of day.

Loch Venachar Redux

Loch Venachar and Ben Ledi mirror images

 Loch Venechar has been a constant presence since 1978 when I began to visit Aileen's parent's cottage on its northern shore. The remote cottage had been the gamekeeper's cottage for the Duke of Montrose. It was largely unmodernised with water abstracted from the Milton burn and heating from a log fire. Its simplicity, peaty water, smokey fire and minimal appliances gave it a timeless rustic charm. We used it at weekends until her parent's retired, renovated and moved in permanently. 

The cottage then became a regular cosy retreat from city life with our growing family. It had riparian rights on Loch Venechar by virtue of a couple of hundred metres of shoreline. I bought a small dinghy so that I could sail on the Loch.  We visited from Glasgow at least once a month, I would be dropped off at Aberfoyle and run over the forest trails and along Loch Venachar to reach the cottage; a 17 kilometre run via Brig o' Turk, or 22-kilometre run if I did a circuit of the Loch including the road on the south side. In later years after moving to Aberfoyle, I would run over fairly regularly for Sunday Lunch, it was the perfect way to exercise and then enjoy a hearty meal with the family

Today Gregor wanted to run the complete circuit of Loch Venachar including the new path to the north of Loch Venachar built by the Woodland Trust. We decided to walk the south road and rekindle old memories. The single-track road has been recently resurfaced and it is far more popular with visitors than back in the 1980s when people and traffic were a rare occurrence. We captured the last parking place by the dam and began the walk on a surprisingly mild day with patches of blue sky and near-perfect visibility. There had been a lot of damage from the storms in December and the roadside was littered with fallen trees. A short way along the Loch some wild swimmers were about to take the plunge with dogs and safety dinghy following. 

The Sailing Club had far more boats in the yard than had been the case. The Ripple Retreat Centre for families of young cancer parents was unoccupied as was the Scout Camp. A number of odd-looking visitor cabins have been erected in the old forest along the shore at Dullatur. It reminded us that this is the dark side of the Loch with great views to Ben Ledi compensating for the lack of winter sun. Our memories of the cottage on the north side are that we were always bathed in good light, unlike Dullatur. Scanning the opposite shore for the cottage today we realised that it was concealed by trees that we had helped plant some forty years ago. Not that they would affect the cottage which was higher up the slopes and in full sun.

After 45 minutes of walking, we returned along the road, passing the rough track that goes over the Menteith Hills to Aberfoyle, watching the lone fisherman casting for information from his mobile phone, passing a dozen walkers and even more cars. Arriving back at the car we were asked if we were leaving by three young women who wanted a parking place so they could go wild swimming. We were waiting for Gregor to return so gave them our space and double-parked whilst waiting for him to return. To our surprise, they had no wet suits, just swimsuits, a Santa hat and a lot of gumption as they waded out and on the count of three launched themselves into the cold waters. They gave Gregor a loud cheer as he finished his 20-kilometre run. Loch Venachar had given us another set of fine images to pack into the memory box.

The view west from the dam

Stuc Odhar and Ben Ledi 

Ripple Retreat

View from Dullatur

Geese at the Scout Camp

The view northwards to the cottage

Lone fishing

Walk over

Wild swimmers

Jon Snow

 

I guess like many others last night, my eyes watered as I watched Jon Snow sign off during his last day as the Channel 4 News presenter. For over 30years he has provided leadership to a news programme that has had the audacity to challenge governments, global companies and regimes that have abused their power. He has encouraged the journalists to express opinions formed by knowledge acquired by a thorough investigation. Channel 4 News gives short shrift to the cult of celebrity that is cosseted by other news programmes and the press. In recent years I have given up any regular watching of other news programmes including the BBC as they have lost their incisiveness and dumbed down as they regurgitate the press releases and shibboleths issued by governments, celebrities and companies.

Jon Snow always sought to recruit journalists from diverse backgrounds and imbued them with a sense of respect to their interviewees whilst they held them to account by inquisitive challenges. Several fine young journalists have been nurtured in a culture that eschews hierarchy and ensures a collective purpose and energy. I saw this last year when I met some of the crew making a programme on the Covid response in Scotland on the day we were first allowed to travel more than 5 miles from home. Jon Snow had earned their huge respect by watching their backs, giving them space to develop and providing a template of how to garner news and inject some ethics and morality into interviews and reports.

I had met Jon at Liverpool University, where he was a friend of a flatmate. He persuaded me to take part in a sleep-in at the University Senate building, an anti-apartheid protest against the University investments in South Africa. He was a campaigner and networker even at that stage of life and it resulted in the university expelling him without a degree. As his reputation soared, they had the grace to present him with an honorary degree in 2011, by which time anti-apartheid values had been normalised and Jon had been lionised. This was all but confirmed in 2017 when Tory control freaks, Grant Shapps and Andrew Budgen, challenged his neutrality and called for his resignation for his extreme views. 

Jon Snow was immune from such attacks, his impeccable record of seeking the truth and his widespread respect had been assured by the length of his tenure and the multiple awards for journalism that had been bestowed on him. It has meant that Channel 4 News has been able to give us an hour of peak-time viewing that is free of interference from both the government and media moguls.

Whittyspeak and Johnson Gestures

Oh, what a mess we are in. The latest Covid Press Conference on 15 December from the lavishly refurbished conference room at 10 Downing Street was to clarify how we are to respond to the insurgent Omicron variant of Covid. There were 78,610 new cases of Covid yesterday, the highest ever figures since the outbreak of Covid. The dynamic between the PM, Boris Johnson, and his Medical and Science advisers has always been sticky. On this occasion, Chris Whitty was the PMs minder. The mantra used by the PM and the late unlamented Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, to describe the government's decision making was always, "we follow the Science". When examining the actions made and contracts handed out by government, they probably meant 'Scientology',  a religion that operates as a cult and has been described as a manipulative profit-making business, 

Chris Whitty is well aware that the underlying values of the medical and scientific community are diametrically opposed to the freedom-loving chancer PM. Whitty, along with the pride of professors from Oxford and Cambridge, who dominate the airwaves, has adopted an alternative language, let's call it Whittyspeak, that gently contradicts the messaging of the PM. Johnson wants people to get boosted, go to work, eat out, have parties, albeit following the guidance, and to book holidays, fly, commute and if they can afford it, go into space.

Whittyspeak is a bit like Esperanto, it works fine if people understand it. His advice yesterday to de-prioritise some of your events, take sensible precautions, wear a mask, and avoid unnecessary contacts are all indisputable but not a direct contradiction of the PM's determination to impose no more restrictions. The inevitable outcome is that people can choose which sets of guidance chime best with their own intentions. It is no surprise that the hospitality sector, the aviation and tourism industries, the high street retailers and young people wanting to enjoy themselves will interpret the PM's messaging to suit their desires. Similarly, older people, families with children at school, those with health problems and people more concerned about the global implications of the pandemic will be inclined to follow some Whittyspeak.

Standing at the Downing Street podium, Johnson is on his best behaviour, keeping to script with his comments short and generally non-controversial. He knows that his wingmen and women will not contradict him and that their comments will not rock the boat too much. It is a different story when he appears at the despatch box in the House of Commons and is speared by opposition MPs and now his own backbenchers on all cabals in the Tory collective. His trademark smart but grungy appearance and bullish statements no longer cut the mustard, if they ever did. 

Any suggestion by his opposition questioners that he is winging it or deceiving the public prompts an immediate flounce. He retaliates with mad gesturing and vicious trolling of Keir Starmer and Ian Blackford repeating old, but no longer funny, insults. He then tries to conduct Conservative MPs to outshout the opposition, twisting round and flailing his arms to his benches in a pale imitation of Jurgen Klopp getting the Kop choir to another rousing rendition of "You'll Never Walk Alone". And what does he hear 'Hello darkness my old friend,....the Sound of Silence'. He is what he is, a busted flush.

Ben Vorlich (Loch Lomond)

Ben Vorlich Trig Point, not the summit

Thursday 9 December 2021

Ascent:      1037 metres 
Distance:   18 kilometres
Time:         5 hours 54 minutes

Ben Vorlich    943m     3 hrs 10 mins

Winter conditions had arrived and John had come to stay for a few days.  We planned to walk on Friday but high winds, poor visibility and snow showers are not high on our wish list any longer. There would be a few hours of dry clear weather on Thursday so we decided to take advantage of this weather window. It would be claggy until 11am so there was no need to start early. We parked at the Sloy Power Station at Inveruglas, the car park was being gritted and it was a bit icy underfoot. It is about a kilometre walk south alongside the main road on a gravel path before the track to the Sloy dam takes you through a gate and under the railway line. A truck adapted to run on the rails raced past as we began the steady climb towards the significant engineering works being carried out on the Sloy power station transformer replacement project to build a new substation, replace the transformers, and upgrade or remove sections of overhead lines (OHL).

We veered off to the Sloy dam at the junction with the track that continues up the Glen that leads to the steep path up Ben Vane. It was just over 4 kilometres to the start of the very steep path alongside a burn that spirals upwards to Ben Vorlich. In its lower reaches, the path is a well-constructed staircase made from large rocks. The views over the Sloy dam were impressive but this would be the best of the weather for the day. We reached the snow level at 400 metres and it became increasingly deep as the path disappeared from view. 

There were some day-old footprints that might or might not have followed the path. Walking poles were needed to judge the depth of the snow as we occasionally fell into pockets of recent snow. By the time we reached 600 metres, it became harder as rock bands covered in snow had to be negotiated. I fell down a cleft in the rocks and it took me 5 minutes to dig myself out. By 750 metres, the gradient lessened and the ridge to the summit became apparent. The winds had blown away some of the snow so we could move more quickly on shallower snow or occasional icy patches. 

A young woman walker caught up with us and thanked us for kicking steps for her to follow and asked if she could tag along with us. We discovered later that we both had thoughts of calling it a day as we were behind our hoped-for schedule of reaching the summit by 1:00pm. The brief interlude of sunshine had given way to cloud and limited visibility ahead and there was no discernable path. Typically, neither of us had expressed any doubts about turning back, it has never been in our nature, and now we had a determined young walker to lead to the summit as well.

We had broken the most difficult section and we chatted as we progressed to the trig point and explained to our new walking colleague, Kirsty, that the real summit was another 150 metres along the ridge. It was not visible in the cloud but took no time to find. We stopped for some food, drink and photos and it was well after 2:00pm when we began the descent. There was a brief respite as the clouds dispersed as we reached the trig point on the return and we managed some photos before beginning the long descent through the snow. I suggested a more direct route down by dropping to Coire nan Baintighearna and then finessing our way through the crags to the southeast. The ground looked less tricky and it was less distance. 

However, Kirsty had a bike at the foot of the path so we decided to return by the ascent route following our foot holes. It proved to be a reasonable decision after we bypassed a couple of the difficult snow-covered rocky sections from our ascent. Kirsty shared her quest to climb all the Munros, she had become smitten as Covid had changed lifestyles, socialising was difficult and her time off as a pharmacist had been diverted to enthusiasm for hill walking. She intended to climb the Munros in ten years and had managed 64 this year. Watching her progress today, I doubt it would take that long to finish, she has the determination, energy and fitness for it to be just the starter for a lifetime of adventures in the great outdoors.

We were down to the track by 3:40pm, it was already dark and the promised rain had started. Kirsty collected her bike and disappeared down the track under the influence of gravity. It took us over an hour to walk out to the car. Two walkers who had been ahead of us stopped about halfway down and were looking at their map and seemed perplexed. They wanted to get to Arrochar but had missed the turning and would have to climb back up the track for a mile or so before following the Cowal Way down Glen Loin to Arrochar, it would be a long slog, a couple of hours in the heavy rain and sleet

As we approached the railway a freight train of oil tankers rattled through on its way to Fort William or Oban. It was a long final kilometre back to the car park opposite the Sloy Power Station. It usually has the look of a drab industrial relic but was ablaze with light and looked inviting in the dark although it was only 4:30pm. Certainly, the power station was a more comforting image than the fossil fuel freight train that had just reminded us that the COP 26 decision to phase down fossil fuels needed to start biting soon.

Junction of track to Ben Vane

Track to Sloy Dam 

Corbie

Sloy Dam from path

Approaching summit ridge at 750metres

Cold comfort at the summit

Descent from summit

Sloy Power Station at nightfall

Identity, Entitlement and Immigration

French Identity Card

 

British Identity Card

Finnish all-in-one Identity Card

Typical UK commercial Identity Card

Almost everyone in the UK has a wallet or purse full of cards, or maybe these are now contained on their mobile phones. We seem to accept that our details can be captured by banks, retailers, travel companies, insurers, clubs, charities and betting companies. For the most part, our personal information is protected but there are spillages such as the one from TalkTalk where 4 million customers had to be informed that their personal information may have been compromised. It is also fairly apparent from rogue emails that quite a few retailers and companies are happy to sell our data to others. Facebook is the best example but with so many transient companies there must be an active trade in selling our details and it is not always easy to despatch persistent intrusive company emails to the trash bin.

Meanwhile, in the UK the government has an aversion to issuing a generic digital identity card. We have to go back to the years after World War 2 to find a British Identity Card, it was very necessary to collect the weekly rations including orange juice and cod liver oil for the post-war baby boomers. Although we have a driving license and a passport, they are requirements that entitle us to drive and travel and are necessary to access more enlightened countries. 

Identity cards are far more liberating than this, there are other entitlements like education, health care, bus or train travel, usage of local facilities such as libraries, sports centres and local or age-related discounts that can be included in an entitlement identity card. Identity Cards are now universal in almost all European countries. 28 countries in the European Economic Area have introduced digital-identity-id-cards that are card readable. Only the UK, Denmark and Iceland have refrained from issuing identity cards, Across the world, there are 70 nations in a similar position and this is increasing rapidly as their benefits become essential in the digital age. The UK government merely sees identity cards as a loss of freedom and goes to inordinate lengths to devise alternative schemes that are both less comprehensive, expensive and seldom very effective. Witness the test and trace application.

This new generation of computerized national identity cards provides the best identity theft protection. They also enable governments to implement online applications such as eGovernment solutions giving citizens access to public services with the reassurance of robust security.​​​ These government-issued IDs mean a single card is able to offer a wide range of services from acting as a driver's license, enabling the user to file their taxes, confirming voting rights and giving access to employment and state benefits.

The UK could have been in the vanguard of countries developing smart national identity cards. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, proposed a British Identity Card and a National Identity Register (NIR) that would hold biometric information such as fingerprints, a face scan and iris scan that would be indexed to other databases such as a resident's address register. After much debate, the UK government passed The National Identity Card Act 2006 to introduce such a card and NIR, this also stressed its importance as an entitlement card. This would have simplified and made secure many transactions with local and national governments as well the NHS and other government agencies. 

During its introduction, there were some concerns and amendments were made as the proposals were developed. Cards became available on a voluntary basis in 2008 for foreign nationals and for UK citizens in 2009. They would also replace passports and act as ID cards for young people to prove their age. Opposition from the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives as well as human rights groups and security experts continued after their introduction. It led the new Conservative/ Liberal Democratic Coalition government in 2010 to scrap identity cards and the NIR as one of their first acts. Austerity, Brexit and a failure to introduce ID Cards should be bracketed together as the major follies that have damaged public services and reduced the life chances of far too many UK citizens. They also explain why, along with our incompetent and disrespectful ministers, the UK has lost any respect in its dealings with other nations.

In Scotland, there was parallel progress in developing an entitlement card and it was ready to roll by 2007. It had a strong emphasis on linking a register of citizens with a unique property register in order to provide better information sharing between key services such as Education, Social Work, Health and Police. This was considered vital to protect vulnerable children and the elderly. However, the new Scottish Government rejected these proposals when the SNP. Conservatives and Liberal Democrats all voted against the proposals in 2008.

Asylum Seekers

Nowhere is the damage to the UK's reputation more apparent than in the scandal of the lost lives of asylum seekers as they strive to rejoin families or claim asylum in the UK by crossing the Channel from France. It is not that the UK has many asylum seekers compared to most European countries. In 2020, Germany had the highest number of asylum applicants in the EU (122,015 applicants), while France had 93,475 applicants. The UK received the 5th largest number of applicants (36,041) when compared with countries in the EU ( 7% of the total). This represents the 17th largest intake when measured per head of population, according to UN Refugee Agency.

Many migrants choose to make an asylum claim in the first country they arrive in - such as Greece or Turkey - and only a minority choose to travel on to the UK. At the end of 2020, Turkey hosted some 3.65 million Syrians under temporary protection (90.6% of the total refugee population) and 322,000 international protection applicants, mainly from Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.

By the end of February 2021, the UK had resettled 20,319 refugees from Syria under the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme. The overall number of arrivals is still relatively modest, certainly when compared with the number 20 years ago, when UK asylum applications reached 84,132. Nevertheless, the numbers attempting to cross the English Channel have increased dramatically. More than 23,000 people have arrived in the UK this year in small boats, almost three times 2020’s total of about 8,500.

The home secretary, Priti Patel, claims that 70% of small boat arrivals “are not genuine asylum seekers”. This is contrary to the Home Office data shows that nearly two-thirds of people who cross the Channel in small boats are judged to be genuine refugees.  Eventually after inordinate delays they are allowed to remain but not allowed to work. Without some form of identification card system, there would be no way of ensuring their whereabouts or their entitlements which is the norm in most other developed countries.

The government's claim that the UK is a popular destination with strong ‘pull factors’ for asylum seekers and economic migrants is misleading, an unedifying attempt to justify its harsh policies to reduce the UK's obligations to asylum seekers. People who are fleeing persecution or conflict don’t need any further incentive to look for safety. Previous Home Office research into asylum seekers’ decision-making appears to undermine the pull factor argument for harsher policies. It says: “Asylum seekers are guided more by agents, the presence or absence of family and friends, language, and perceived cultural affinities than by scrutiny of asylum policies or rational evaluation of the welfare benefits on offer.”

In this respect, the French, who take almost three times as many asylum seekers as the UK, are correct when they argue that it is the UK, by preventing flights and ferry entry to the UK, that is the root of the problem. They also point out that the absence of identity cards in the UK makes it more likely that there is a chance to find jobs and live illegally in the UK. It is a country that fails to keep a register of its citizens, a digital identity, for protecting the right to work, keeping a record of Covid vaccinations, for services or voting or to provide the entitlements that the mother of parliaments likes to pretend to exist. C'est la vie en Angleterre.