Birthday Blues

Aileen's birthday today, she would have been 72. Missing You. x

The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore

Sunday Morning on the wee Ben

Stuc a' Chroin and Ben Vorlich

Loch Venachar and Ben Ledi

Ben Lomond capped in snow

Ben Ledi

The sky was a perfect blue but it was brutally cold and tomorrow would have been Aileen's birthday. I needed to avoid any Sunday Morning Blues.* For the first time in a week, I was on a foray up the wee Ben (Gullipen). No need to say how impressive it was, the photos do that. 

The Highland Cattle that graze on the track were absent so no nervousness about dodging between the horns of the heaving beasts as I was slipping and sliding on the descent down the muddy track from a month of rain. Compared to Sunday mornings of 50 years ago after a night at the student's union, today would not be a lost Sunday. What a way to start the day!

*Pentangle had summed up Sunday mornings in the late 1960s perfectly. "Sunday sunny morning, noises outside my head, creeping into consciousness, leave me to stay in bed, god, I wish that I was dead." 

And Sundays were dead, no sport, no shops, no transport, no money and few entertainments. Lots of reasons to spend Saturday nights innoculating ourselves from Sundays. 

 

The Crow Trap

It's that time of the year when the fifty or so crows nest in the half-dozen ash trees along the burn at the side of the house. They spend early March partnering up and building nests, there appear to be more crows than ever this year and the windy conditions have made construction difficult as the fragile trees sway wickedly and branches snap.

It was lunchtime and it sounded like someone was banging about upstairs or on the roof, I went to look but the sounds had stopped and there was certainly no one around. I had some lunch whilst watching the 1 o'clock news when a phone call made me mute the TV. The sounds had started again and came from the wood-burning flue pipe near the ceiling. It must be a bird, the sounds were like the beating of wings. It had already descended down the 6-inch twin-walled flue pipe through a couple of bends in the attic and the bedroom. I could tell from the sound of wings flapping on the side that it was a bigger bird than a chaffinch, robin or a great tit and assumed it must be a thrush or a blackbird. I opened the wood burner to create a draft and hopefully encourage the bird to take the plunge but it was either stuck or not wanting to drop into the unknown. I decided to try later.

I spent the afternoon in the garden with a friend who came to visit with her young children. It was almost 6pm when I returned to the room and from the sounds I knew that the bird had made it halfway down the flue but I could not entice it any further by tapping on the side. I decided to watch Aftersun, the award-winning 2022 film that my daughter had been involved in commissioning. It lasted 1 hour and 41 minutes during which the trapped bird was slowly descending the flue pipe and arriving at a holding position above the stove. I now figured that the bird must be the size of a jackdaw or a magpie. I paused the film, unless I disassembled the firebrick linings of the stove the bird would not survive and decompose in the flue. A YouTube video was useful and after 15 minutes of tricky manipulation I had all the fire linings out but the torch showed that there was a bar across the bottom of the flue and the bird had stopped moving. I closed the door in the room, left the door of the stove open and opened the window so that if the bird managed to extricate itself there was an escape route to the rain-washed world outside. 

The film was restarted and every so often the bird would make another attempt, I aimed the torch at the stove and this prompted more movement. The tension in the room matched the tension in the film as Paul Mercat and Frankie Corio act out the emotional anguish of estranged father and daughter. It was after 11pm before the film was finished and the credits read. I decided that I could do no more to release the bird so put in a small dish of water and some blueberries, just in case, before closing the door on the stove, the window and the room door and retiring to bed. 

At 3:30am I was awakened by the wind and went downstairs for a glass of water. I looked in the room to see if anything had happened. It had, there was a large crow trapped in the glass-fronted stove. I opened the window and having seen the size of the crow's beak, put on the fire gauntlets to lift out the bird. I opened the stove to grab the bird but no such luck, the crow was out and crashing from one end of the room to another, swishing past my head every couple of seconds, this was Hitchcockian. 

After it finally found a perch on the curtain rail I escaped to the kitchen and dining room in the hope that the bird would find the open window. It didn't, so I opened the patio doors of the dining area, the wind and rain were making whoopee. I stood at the back of the kitchen area in the dark and put the lights on by the patio doors. I opened the door to the other room and after a few minutes, the crow came crashing out, felt the cool air from outside and disappeared into the night. The sense of satisfaction and relief was immense, I could clear up in the morning.

Crow Trap top door

The Incorrigible Michael Gove

Gloria Gaynor's greatest hit?

Listening to the Today Programme this morning, I was surprised that even the assertive presenter Amol Rajan was flummoxed by the apparently reasonable and emollient phrases of Michael Gove. It was a live example of Gove’s innate ability to convince his colleagues and wider audiences, even the sceptics. He is the political version of the number 42.

 

It is becoming a common trope of journalists and commentators to rank the past five prime ministers, all of whom would be in the relegation zone of post-war prime ministers. They were seduced by Gove’s calm reasoning and they gave him various cabinet portfolios to play with. The exception was Liz Truss, Gove had endorsed Rishi Sunak, and Truss didn’t take prisoners.  Since May 2010, Gove has spent more years in the cabinet than any other MP. He is the master of survival. He had probably figured that Truss would not last long and sure enough, after 49 days of trashing the country, she was terminated. He would probably like to think the damage done in the days he wasn’t in office would prove that his sage guidance to the cabinet during his 14 years would be his enduring legacy, the halcyon days of the Cam-Sun governments.

 

Gove was resurrected and appointed Sunak’s Minister for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Minister for Intergovernmental Relations. He is the true Svengali of the Tory party, able to sweet talk other members of the party into taking what he presents as a modern reformist agenda and for others to take the fall when the policies fail to deliver. He managed to inveigle his way into key cabinet positions with four prime ministers and in the process managed to damage public services in a way that will take many decades to repair. Of course, he would never accept this. He averts any responsibility by referring to the failure of others or events dear boy and just occasionally gives a grovelling apology to prove that he is human and can make mistakes. 

 

His duplicity is legendary, it is in his DNA. Witness his betrayal of Boris Johnson on two occasions, although that could be construed as good judgment, but on both occasions it was after the damage had been done. Most recently during the Covid Inquiry, he criticised his government by saying that he thought the lockdown was far too late and that “we are fucking up as a government...and the whole situation is worse than you think”. At the same time, he was responsible as Minister for the cabinet office for setting up the PPE fast track for Ministers' friends and we know what damage that did. 

Whilst Education Minister in 2010, he abandoned the ‘Building Schools for the Future’ initiative which had been set up by the previous Labour Government and over 600 state schools lost out on capital building projects that were ready to roll so he could create Academies.  He scrapped the social housing regulator leaving tenants no longer protected. He played the key role in arguing for the UK to leave the European Union, ditching his friend David Cameron in the process and providing the intellectual heft for Boris Johnson to jump aboard the Brexit Express. So began the four years of Parliamentary chaos over Brexit. This also led to three prime ministers resigning whilst getting Brexit wrong. 

But Michael Gove had this enormous ability to survive when all others drop by the wayside. He has a tendency to appeal to the Conservative Party as a reformer and someone in touch with the zeitgeist. He is one nation, two nation, right-wing, progressive, zero carbon, or whatever other faction makes sense at any given time. His claim to be a reformer contradicts his underlying philosophical beliefs that people must be free to make money but that there must be redemption for lesser mortals. They have always been key values of the Conservative Party. 

Even watching him run, with the gait of an errant pony, could not better illustrate his tendency to wander. When we come to revisit the wasted years when the UK lost respect and influence, the five Prime Ministers will be in the dock. Johnson or Truss will be nominated as the worst Prime Minister and Gove will be a latter day Rasputin. 

 

Democracies at a Turning Point

Canon Kenyon Wright delivering the call for devolution

2024 will be a significant year of elections, as well as the UK parliamentary election, the United States, Russia, India, France and the EU also go to the polls. The campaigning will generate a razzamatazz of promises, as well as the trashing of opponents by tribalist politics that has been supercharged by social media and rampant populism. 

In the UK, the chaos of Brexit, the flawed response to the COVID pandemic, the failure to respond to scandals such as Grenfell Tower and Post Office Horizon IT and the sheer hypocrisy of the government's migration and asylum policies means that there is little to be cheerful about. The perpetual damage of long austerity and the rowing back on climate change policies have created a sense of despair among large sections of the electorate. Like other self-appointed big-ticket democracies, the UK no longer provides the gold standard of government that it likes to claim.  

2024 also marks 25 years of the Scottish Parliament but the next election for the Scottish Parliament is two years away. Freed from the alternative truths peddled during elections, Scotland has the opportunity to be more reflective and inclusive about how it should reset the governance of Scotland and create a more inclusive constitution that restores some trust in its democratic processes. It is time to acknowledge that Holyrood is not the only player in the democratic governance of Scotland.

The Scottish Government has delivered some significant improvements for the people of Scotland, for example, the creation of National Parks, the Outdoor Access Code, the banning of tobacco in public places, free prescription charges, and free travel for young people. But devolution's undeniable, negative feature has been a weakening of local democracy through the centralisation of power, functions and services. Despite a significant tranche of devolved powers from Westminster, not all of which have been exploited, there has been more enthusiasm by Holyrood for drawing up powers and funding streams from councils. This in turn has impacted adversely on the funding and further devolution of powers to local communities.

Is this what devolution was to be all about – creating an excessively centralised state? The Scottish Government has 111 quangos (quasi-autonomous non-governmental bodies). They are non-democratic bodies responsible for many public services, inspection agencies and advisory bodies. In recent years as the Scottish Government has reduced the share of public services that were locally accountable to democratically elected councils from 42% of the Scottish GDP to 29%, the ability to set local priorities and coordinate local services effectively has been vastly diminished.

It is time for Scotland to wake up from its drive to be the least democratic nation in Europe and to reset how it is governed. There is little evidence that the Scottish Parliament can be trusted with this task. It will require the collective will of civic society to reboot our democratic institutions in the way that the Scottish Constitutional Convention achieved in the 1990s. This led to the creation of a Scottish Parliament that, over the past 25 years, has grown too big for its boots. Simply suggesting the devolution of more functions and powers to be transferred from Westminster to Holyrood is the mantra of a failing state. Whilst in England there are several initiatives and dialogues taking place to devolve more powers to the regions and councils and this seems likely to take place after the next general election, there has been no such inclination in Scotland.

It is time to utilise the tools of conviviality to redesign the governance of Scotland to engage the wider knowledge and experience of Scottish citizens. Their understanding of local conditions along with their vision and ambitions are the tools to enrich the social, economic and environmental fabric of Scotland. To create a written constitution that embraces an inclusive network of democratic bodies at the national, local and community levels should be the goal of a properly functioning democracy. Unfortunately, there has been little debate in Scotland on the next stage of creating a modern, inclusive, devolved governance within Scotland. After 25 years of accumulating power, it is time for the Scottish Government to release innovative ideas, energy and enterprise of our local communities. Leadership is about allowing others the right to lead.

Desolation Democracy

Dundee Clown

Rishi is blaming the extreme mobs

They're ignoring the Brexit debacle

Covid was not their jobs

They paid their friends instead

The house speaker

They've got him in a trance

Democracy is in meltdown

Westminster is full of clowns

Boris is sowing seeds of his prowess

Liz just left a mess

St Theresa does not want to be elected

Lord Dave has been resurrected

George Osborne's great salvation

Austerity has wasted the nation

The bankers were blameless

All Gordon's fault said Osborne

Never a greater lie

Vince Cable called him Mr Bean

Tony believed that Iraq had nukes

Just another lie

John Major has disowned the Tories

Democracy is in Meltdown 

Westminster is full of clowns

George Galloway will fit in fine

He's going to the carnival

On Desolation Row

With apologies to Bob Dylan