Thank God its almost March

Joan Eardley - Glasgow Children

Things change and never more than in the last couple of years. After retiring I found February one of the best of months: cold sunny days, no longer the annual nightmare of budget meetings, winter hillwalking and the prospect of Spring. This year has been the worst of months: climate change resulting in perpetual wet grey days, three named storms bringing gale-force winds, never-ending changes to COVID restrictions, a failed charlatan as PM and now the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The sense of pending doom has never been so apparent.

Apart from the odd visit to the supermarket, my first visit to a barber for 2 years and a dozen early morning jaunts up my local hill, nothing has happened. I have watched the daily litany of obfuscations from the PM, the dismissal of the Met Chief Constable, the unbelievable incompetence of Liz Truss and the inhumanity of Priti Patel with ever-increasing anger. Some good TV, notably 'This is going to hurt', the Winter Olympics and some football games have lifted the spirits. Wordle and a daily Sudoku exercise the grey matter. 

The last few days of February provided a dump of snow, a trip to Perth and then to Falkirk to watch Gregor compete in the National XC championships. Four inches of snow added 4 minutes to my regular walk-up Lime Craig. I was pleased that the ugly telephone mast erected at the exposed summit last autumn was felled by Storm Dudley, the mast is irreparable. The power for the mast was provided by two solar panels but as the sun became a reluctant source of energy a diesel generator had been installed. A 4x4 truck was driven up the track to refuel the generator a couple of times a week and in the process created a mudslide on the track. It resulted in a nasty fall as I was running down in December. I was sent for an X-ray on my arm, it was not broken but the rotator cuff tear has made sleeping a challenge for the past three months.

We went to Perth for an outing and visited the Joan Eardley exhibition in the excellent Museum and Art Gallery. Her portraits of children from Townhead in Glasgow captured the reality of child poverty in the 1950s. Her seascapes and landscapes of Catterline on the Angus coast were painted on board and the oils were mixed with mud, grass and ship's paint. There were a significant array of these impressionistic paintings on display, she had harvested the wild winter landscapes and seascapes with cold hands and stiff brushes giving the pictures a rustic reality.

Perth town centre was much the same as Stirling, largely empty of people although traffic volumes seemed back to normal. The loss of department stores like Debenhams in both towns has left physical and expenditure voids. Together with the loss of smaller shops, there is a sense that town centres will struggle to regain footfall although this has been amplified by a large proportion of office workers still working from home. Public transport has been reduced as there is a reluctance to use the bus by many folks. Car trips are taking precedence as people head to out of town retail parks and refrain from crowded transport modes.

It is over thirty years since I last competed in the National Cross Country championships. It was usually a slog in cold weather over muddy ground whether in Irvine or Falkirk. When I began to cut back on racing, cross country races were abandoned for hill races, the longer format and more relaxed atmosphere was far more enjoyable. However, the National is still a tremendous spectacle with 650 runners competing this year. The collective energy and competitive spirit between the clubs create an atmosphere that bonds the participants into the mutual friendship of the running community. 

Lime Craig - mast destroyed

What's On - Joan Eardley

Landscape Catterline - Joan Eardley

Start of the 2022 National XC Championships

 

Sue Gray's Update

Sue Gray's Update - Main Findings

• Some behaviour at the gatherings is "difficult to justify" given the public was being asked to "accept far-reaching restrictions on their lives"

• Some of the events represent a "serious failure to observe" standards for government and those expected of the public at the time

• At times it seems there was "too little thought" given to what was going on in the country, the risk to public health, and how the events might appear to the public

• There were "failures of leadership and judgement" by different parts of No 10 and the Cabinet Office at different times

• Some of the events "should not have been allowed to take place". Other events "should not have been allowed to develop as they did" 

• There should be "easier ways for staff to raise... concerns informally, outside of the line-management chain"

• The "excessive consumption of alcohol is not appropriate in a professional workplace at any time" 

We had been waiting for weeks for Sue Gray's report into events in 10 Downing Street that had flouted the government's Covid guidelines. It had been delayed by the late intervention by the Met Police the week before when they saw the evidence that Sue Gray had uncovered, which could be a criminal offence. Why the Met had not instigated such an enquiry months ago is anyone's guess, they have many officers on duty at all times and enough CCTV footage to have copped the number 10 miscreants months ago. The Met is probably aware that most of its inquiries either result in cover-ups or self-inflicted evidence to add to its already rock-bottom reputation. 

Having looked at Sue Gray's draft report, they identified 12 occasions when events took place that could have breached regulations. Together with 500 pages of evidence and 300 photographs passed to them by the Cabinet Office, they realised that they had to act. In doing so they would not allow Sue Gray to submit her full report, all details of the 12 events had to be deleted so the report became an update of her investigation. Not to be denied some retribution on the PM, who seemed determined to delay, obfuscate and "inadvertently lie" to parliament about events, she highlighted some of the key conclusions of her findings that have been sufficiently caustic to prevent Johnson's claims of innocence having any traction. 

The PM, in an unusually contrite opening statement, made an apology and said he would be taking action to reform the number 10 culture, presumably by sacking civil servants and that he would Fix It like that bloke who used to be on TV. We were then treated to some House of Commons theatre that ultimately proved that the House of Commons is no more fit for purpose than the PM and his cabinet acolytes. Keir Starmer did not hold back in a forensic dismissal of the PM's ever-changing denials of being the principal party wallah. Theresa May and Andrew Mitchell showed their utter disdain for the PM and Ian Blackford, the SNP leader accused the PM of being a serial liar, refused a request by the Speaker to use the adjective 'inadvertent', and walked out before being dismissed from the chamber. 

The PM resorted to a series of unjustifiable attacks on Keir Starmer who he claimed had failed to nail Jimmy Saville when he was Director of Public Prosecutions. He summarily dismissed all questions from opposition members by saying that they would have to wait for the Met to report and smirked his way through question time by repeating many of his usual childish insults. He even refused to answer questions of whether he had been in his flat on the evening of one party that the Met was investigating. 

His defence that he was getting on with the things that mattered to the British public including the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine was another own goal when it was discovered that he had called off his phone call to President Putin following the publication of Sue Gray's report. He also claimed he was focusing on levelling up, another untruth that became apparent the next day when no extra resources were made available. How he has the nerve and impunity to deliver so many untruths and be allowed to continue as Prime Minister is a sad indictment of how far our democracy has been corrupted over the past decade. 

The fact that the Conservatives allowed him to undermine both David Cameron and Theresa May during their time as PM and then to hustle through a Brexit that is more 'raw' than 'well done' is a stain on the credibility of the Tory Party. It is also an indictment of the inept leadership of the Labour Party and the Lib Dems by conceding a General Election in 2019 when his hard Brexit negotiations were on the ropes and then performing lamentably in the said election. 

Despite the subsequent victory, Johnson performed no better than Theresa May had done in 2017, they both gained the votes of just 29% of the total electorate. The vicissitudes of the first past the post electoral system translated this into an 80-seat majority for Johnson whereas for Mrs May they gave a bare majority. The fact that less than 30% of the electorate voted for Johnson suggests that the public has always been aware of his foolishness and lack of gravitas; so have the Tory MPs, but they hide behind the fiction that he is a vote winner.