A Resolution Budget Solution?

Just Read It

One of the great disappointments of Starmer's Labour Government is the way it has tackled its budget. If growth were the prime objective, then there have been too many ill-conceived decisions by the Chancellor. Rachel Reeves has a tendency to follow treasury orthodoxy and an unwillingness to devolve decisions to departments or localities, who have a far better knowledge of what works. The chancellor, like Gordon Brown, seems to believe that leadership is about making decisions herself. She has an autocratic leadership style that is inflexible and has resulted in heavy criticism from not only the right-wing press but also businesses and many Labour MPs. Too many decisions are constraining other key objectives of the government, such as child poverty, climate action, international aid and employment growth. 

Existing taxation regimes are made ever more complex when what is needed is simplification. A decluttering of the stupidity of many VAT rules and the regressive outcome of the dual impact of income tax and national insurance systems, which should be integrated. Thousands of accountancy firms exist to find loopholes for the better off in a taxation system that is far from progressive even before the annual dance off between HMRC and the said accountancy firms. 

So I was greatly encouraged when Torsten Bell was recruited to work with the Treasury team on economic policy. Torsten Bell had worked with Alistair Darling during the last Labour Government when he made significant progress on firing up the economy after the 2008 Financial Crisis. His initiatives were scrapped by George Osborne when he introduced his austerity measures. Bell subsequently worked successfully as the CEO of the Resolution Foundation until being elected as an MP for Swansea. He published a book last year, Great Britain? How we get our Future back. that set out his views on what we needed to do to get Broken Britain moving again. His chapters on taxation, housing, benefits, decentralising power and increasing public investment are particularly apposite, but not aligned with Rachel Reeves' playlist of actions. It will be a real boost for Labour's so-called agenda for 'change' if Torsten Bell can convince the inflexible chancellor to do just that.

Time to reset the United Nations

When we hear the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, say he is horrified about what is happening in Gaza, we realise that the UK is a busted flush. He has been uttering similar sentiments for quite a while, but he has not even had the temerity to stop the sale of weapons to Israel or to call out the Israeli Government for genocide. Unlike the former Supreme Court Judge, Lord Sumption, who made a methodical justification of Genocide in Gaza or the International Association of Genocide Scholars, who state that the death of 65,000 people during the 22-month-long war meets the legal definition laid out in the UN Convention on genocide. This follows similar statements by two Israeli human rights organisations.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which has 15,000 staff in Palestine, has been prevented from providing humanitarian aid to Gaza, including medicines, since the second of March 2025. The Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Gutierrez, has made it clear that Israel is acting beyond its powers and that this is the first occasion that any country has suspended operations of the United Nations organisations. This raises the wider question about how the United Nations is able to make decisions and how it is perceived in the world in 2025. Things have changed dramatically since the arrival of Donald Trump as the President for his second term. He clearly has no time for the United Nations and has made it evident that he is the supreme power in determining what action should be taken in the world's trouble spots. 

This is made possible by the constitution of the United Nations, which established the Council of the United States, Russia, Great Britain, France and China as the permanent members of the Supreme Council. They have veto rights to prevent UN actions. This may have been appropriate at the end of the Second World War when the United Nations was formed, but with 193 countries signed up to the United Nations charter (see below) and the growth of member nations over the years, the question has to be asked: why do these five countries have the ability to prevent actions from being taken? This has been to Israel's benefit, which is a member of the United Nations and receives unbridled support from the United States. Unlike Palestine, which has been refused entry, whose delegates are allowed only as observers. The United States is now refusing to let them enter the country, which is the administrative HQ of the UN. 

This is the second occasion that the United States has scuppered a worldwide peacekeeping organisation. Previously, it was largely responsible for the demise of the League of Nations, which was established in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles following the First World War. Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, was a key player in its formation but failed to gain ratification from the Republicans in the Senate. The thirty-two nations that joined the League of Nations, which was headquartered in Geneva, depended on member states to provide peacekeeping forces. These were difficult to mobilise without the resources of the United States, whilst Great Britain and France were struggling to recover from the Great War. As a result, the League of Nations was unable to prevent the violation of its rules by fascist regimes in Japan and Italy, which invaded Manchuria and Ethiopia, respectively. Hitler's Germany invaded over twenty countries, and the  USSR invaded Finland.  The major powers did not have the inclination to challenge these violations and instead began to rearm as the  Second World War became inevitable.

It would appear that President Trump has no desire for the United States to facilitate action by the United Nations and has used its veto with increasing impunity. It has withdrawn from the World Health Organisation, the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and reduced foreign aid to UN agencies on the assertion that they are not in the United States' national interest.

Equally, Russia and China have used their veto to prevent UN interventions in countries that could be considered their satellites. Great Britain and France are there for their historical reasons, and until recently have tended to support the United States' lead. The United Nations has not reviewed its charter since 1973, since when the world has changed dramatically. There are currently 61 active conflicts, the most since 1946 and over 60,000 peacekeepers are deployed from 115 member states. In light of current conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine and the withdrawal of involvement by the United States, several questions must be asked:

• Why is the United Nations still located in the United States? 
• Should it not be located in a more neutral and stable country, which is less concerned about its own power and more concerned about securing peace across the world? 
• Why should five countries have a veto? 
• Should it not be for the Security Council, currently 15 countries, to pass motions with a two-thirds majority?
• Should the composition of the Security Council be expanded to ten permanent members, with the additional 5 representations coming from South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania? Together with ten rotating members, this would create a Security Council of 20 members.
• Is there any reason to exclude Palestine from membership?

The Purposes of the United Nations are:

1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;
3. To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and
4. To be a centre for harmonising the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

Fisherfield: Gregor's Big Adventure

Shenavall Bothy on arrival at sunset 

Beinn Dearg Mhor, my favourite Corbett

Fisherfield Five(Six) Route

Monday, 18 August 2025

I received a phone call at 7am. Gregor had spent the night in the Shenaval Bothy, in Fisherfield, after driving up on Sunday afternoon. He had run the Scottish Half Marathon in Musselburgh, coming third in a respectable 1 hour 9 minutes, and then driven 225 miles to Dundonnell, where he walked into Shenavall. He wanted to know the best way up Beinn a' Chlaidheimh, the recently deleted Munro that was the first of the six Fisherfield Mountains to be climbed today. I had told him that it was a better route than the direct slog up to Am Briseadh. Beinn a' Chlaidheimh is a wonderful viewpoint, although it requires navigating some crags first. He had got that far but had not downloaded a route for the Fisherfield round. Could I send him one? Nowhere entices me more than Fisherfield, so I plotted a route from my memory of five previous rounds of these spectacular mountains and sent it via WhatsApp.

I had hoped to reprise the walk earlier this year with John, but the aches in my hips and legs had made even my daily local hills a struggle, so I had to pass. Fisherfield had been the first two-day expedition during my first Munro round in 1990. On a glorious May Bank holiday, we had driven up, climbed An Teallach, slept in the Shenavall Bothy and then climbed the six hills that Gregor was doing today. They took 12 hours, including the walk out to Corrie Hallie and on to  Dundonnell. All food had been sold in the hotel, but they made some sandwiches for us whilst we rehydrated with some beers. We camped on the way to Braemore in my old Good Companions Tent, and climbed A' Chailleach and Sgurr Breac the next morning before heading north.

John and I repeated the jaunt in May 1995, along with Keith for the first day. We climbed An Teallach from Dundonnell and dropped down to Shenavall. I had met W.H. Murray, the celebrated mountaineer and author, the night before at the premiere of the film Rob Roy that he had scripted. He signed his book for me and, on hearing I was going to Fisherfield, urged me to climb Beinn Dearg Mhor as the finest of the Corbetts. We did, along with Beinn Dearg Beag, topping out at 10 pm on a glorious May evening.  We camped on the descent by Loch Beinn Dearg and then climbed the Fisherfield Six in an anti-clockwise round on another perfect day.

In 2001, Gregor was nearing the end of his Munro round, and the two of us went up in August, climbed An Teallach on a dull, windy day. We started the Fisherfield round, getting as far as the bealach between A' Mhaighdean and Ruadh Stac Mor, where we slept in a cave; the wind was too strong to erect the tent. It rained all night and most of the next day; we thought of bailing out, but after climbing A' A'Mhaighdean and Ruadh Stac Mor the next morning, we decided to give it a go and managed to complete the round in dire conditions before going to the Sail Mor bunkhouse to recover.

gI was with Mark and John in May 2005 on a week when we climbed 28 Munros. We drove up and climbed An Teallach in the afternoon and camped by Lochan na Brathan below Sail Liath. We started the Fisherfield round at 6 am, the next morning, in sparkling conditions that continued until we were on the ascent towards A' Mhaighdean. We arrived at the summit as the heavens opened, and it continued nonstop as we went over Ruadh Stac Mor and took the excellent stalker's path back to Shenavall in a thunderstorm.  The tents had been washed out by the fierce rain, and our sleeping bags had operated like blotting paper. We bundled them up and retreated to the Sail Mor bunkhouse, where a group of French walkers kindly shared their pasta with us.

My most recent foray was in 2013 from Poolewe. I had wanted to climb three corbetts as well, so Keith and I started late afternoon, climbed Beinn Airigh Charr on the way to a camp at Carnmore and then made a clockwise circuit of the Fisherfield Munros and Beinn a' Chaisgein Mor in conditions that were better than perfect. A' Mhaighdean was absolutely stunning in the early morning and late evening light, and Beinn Dearg Mhor looked magnificent, a peak to remember for W.H. Murray.  Beinn Lair was in the spotlight of the setting sun and sorely tempting, but it was 10 pm by the time I arrived back at the tent. We had planned to climb it the next day, but heavy rain and low cloud made it seem a sacrilege to climb. We spent the morning walking out in a downpour,  and my desire to revisit these magnificent mountains was undiminished. Gregor's adventure today became my virtual round of Fisherfield as I plotted the route and raided my memory bank.

Shenavall

Beinn Dearg Mor and An Teallach from Am Briseadh

Slioch

Fionn Loch from A'Mhaighdean

Dubh Loch and Fionn Loch

Fuar Loch Mor from Ruadh Stac Mor

Ptarmigan on Ruadh Stac Mor