The Sunday Songbook

A borrowed piece today:

A Pict Song
Rudyard Kipling

Rome never looks where she treads.
Always her heavy hooves fall
On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads;
And Rome never heeds when we bawl.
Her sentries pass on—that is all,
And we gather behind them in hordes,
And plot to reconquer the Wall,
With only our tongues for our swords.

We are the Little Folk—we!
Too little to love or to hate.
Leave us alone and you’ll see
How we can drag down the State!
We are the worm in the wood!
We are the rot at the root!
We are the taint in the blood!
We are the thorn in the foot!

Mistletoe killing an oak—
Rats gnawing cables in two—
Moths making holes in a cloak—
How they must love what they do!
Yes—and we Little Folk too,
We are busy as they—
Working our works out of view—
Watch, and you’ll see it some day!

No indeed! We are not strong,
But we know Peoples that are.
Yes, and we’ll guide them along
To smash and destroy you in War!
We shall be slaves just the same?
Yes, we have always been slaves,
But you—you will die of the shame,
And then we shall dance on your graves!


And,in case you thought it was fanciful to connect it with modern politics...
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(link here)

Independent minds

So it's 'better together'; the people have spoken.

It had been suggested in several quarters that the wording of the ballot incorporated an element of pro-Nationalist bias - it's been shown to be much easier, said the commentators, to campaign with a positive outlook and generate forward-looking enthusiasm when you are asking people to vote "Yes!".

Personally, I'm not so sure. I have a feeling that the theories are based on the emotion-fest that is American politics, where optimistic euphoria is the essential driving force behind electoral success, and may not translate so easily to this side of the Pond.

Scots are, by and large, made of sterner stuff. This is, after all, the country where my my primary school blazer badge bore the words 'Do or Die', a motto which, with hindsight, seems a rather uncompromising mission statement for a class of mixed infants.

Scotland has a rich and diverse musical heritage but it is somehow typical that, even before the purpose-built anthem 'Flower of Scotland' made its appearance in 1967, many of the traditional songs harked back to ancient battles and days of glory - or crushing defeat and the need for vengeance.

And, while I doubt many English schoolchildren in the 1960s could have rattled off a marching song from the Napoleonic wars or, once the progressives got at education, even a verse or two of  'The British Grenadiers', their Scottish counterparts were learning 'All the Blue Bonnets are bound for the border' or Burns' oft-misquoted rallying-cry*.

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled,
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led;
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to victory!

The struggle in question is, naturally, against the English and, although it is as obsolete as the notorious reciprocal line in 'God Save the Queen', the continued popularity of the song serves to illustrate that this is a nation which admires and celebrates defiance:

Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Liberty's in every blow!—
Let us do or die!

It's hard to imagine a generation reared on those words succumbing to the Pollyanna Principle and gravitating unthinkingly towards consent. While Salmond & Co may have envisaged a great leap forward on a wave of sentiment, it seems that his compatriots are for the most part, creditably immune to positive bias.


*I am pedantic enough to be deeply irritated by the misuse of the opening words as if they constituted a meaningless, self-contained shout of enthusiasm, usually by the same people who insist on holding hands throughout 'Auld Lang Syne'. 

'Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!'

It seems that optimism reigns supreme north of the Border, where Alex Salmond has apparently claimed that an independent Scotland would be an 'economic powerhouse':

The First Minister said Scotland would rebalance the “economic centre of gravity of these islands” by becoming a “Northern light” that would act as a counterpoint to London’s “dark star”.

Since, according to the Telegraph, experts have warned that the fledgling state would start life deep in the red and that he has massively overestimated oil revenues, you have to wonder where he is getting his figures.

Oddly enough, I have something in the archives from last year that might give some indication of what happens when politics and mathematics collide...

     ************

According to a decidedly excitable headline today at the Scottish Daily Record:

Margaret Thatcher snatched £130bn of Scottish wealth as she axed 250,000 of our jobs

Mrs Thatcher, it proclaims, 'reaped a massive Scottish tax windfall' and 'squandered North Sea oil cash on her destructive policies', which, I think, roughly translates as "Let's all share a highly enjoyable outburst of righteous indignation".

Having obligingly done so, the readers will have probably gone off the boil rather by the time they reach the explanation that:

Extra Scottish revenues handed to the UK Treasury during the Iron Lady’s 1980s heyday would be worth a staggering £130billion at today’s prices.

So the figure has been adjusted. Never mind the intervening quarter of a century and the misleading 'as' suggesting contemporaneous events; what matters is that the journalist has an attention-grabbing figure to crown a collection of loaded phrases straight out of the rabble-rouser's handbook.

But wait a minute; what's this?

Finance Secretary John Swinney claimed the figures proved that Scotland’s oil wealth had been wasted by the Thatcher government. 

He said: “The additional revenue paid by Scotland totalled £130billion during the 1980s – or an average of £2541 per person each and every year."

So which is it? £130 billion then or now? Oil revenues are a complicated question at the best of times but understanding can hardly be helped by such apparent political sleight-of-hand.

When it comes to political speeches, most people don't listen out for the metaphorical small print; they just join in when they like the tune. Look at the crowds of under-30s out on the streets celebrating the death of Margaret Thatcher and you'll see exactly what I mean.

We've become so accustomed to misdirection from our political masters on both sides of the border that
 it hardly seem worth remarking these days, but a combination of disinformation and opportunistic demagoguery cannot but harm the democratic process.

The Scottish people deserve better than this.

Under Siege...

...or how I nearly made a starring appearance in Mark Wadsworth's blog.

"I know you're in there..."

The remote and beautiful glen where Clan Macheath take their holidays – reputedly once the hiding place of Bonnie Prince Charlie* – has changed little in the past thirty years, save for the recent introduction of a herd of cows.

In the best Highland fashion, the beasties roam free throughout the glen, grazing on the hillsides, wading picturesquely in the river and, when the mood takes them, completely blocking the single-track winding road.

And last week their lives were brightened by the arrival of a large bull (pictured above).

Since we had no plans to go out by car, the fact that the cows and their calves had taken up residence on the track leading to our rented cottage was not a major problem. By the second morning, however, they had surrounded the building, lining up around the perimeter and searching for weak points.

At this point, they were joined by the bull, who was clearly spoiling for a fight. They pushed at the gate, barged up against the garden fence and finally knocked the telephone pole askew, disconnecting our only link to the outside world.

So there we were, in the best tradition of horror films, totally isolated and the object of overwhelming interest to a herd of increasingly insistent cattle. And there we might be still, had we not discovered the reason for this unwanted attention sitting next to an open upstairs window.

Cattle are naturally curious and might well inspect any newcomers to the glen, but we had inadvertently provided an added attraction in the shape of the Urchin’s malfunctioning laptop. The fan had inexplicably begun to make an intermittent low-frequency noise uncannily similar in pitch to the bull’s testosterone-laden bellowing.

Essentially we had introduced to the glen the bovine equivalent of Tom Jones in his heyday, causing no small flutter among the cows. And naturally the bull was jealous. Since the wrath of an Urchin sans laptop is as nothing to the undivided attention of an angry bull, the problem was easily solved, but it provided us with a salutary lesson in the unpredictable clash of technology and animal instincts.

The Scottish establishment has backed the re-introduction of free-roaming cattle to the Highland Glens as a return to the traditional farming methods of a previous golden age. However, these cows are not the photogenic, plodding shaggy beasties of old but purpose-bred hybrid beef cattle crossed with an Iberian mountain strain – bigger, heavier, grumpier and far quicker on their feet.

This same herd had, it turned out, already brought the local village to a standstill more than once, bypassing a cattle grid, scrambling down a steep bank and walking down of the glen to block the road completely and deprive the village shop and tea-room of custom for several hours.

The locals we met told us that this summer has seen a sad dearth of tourists away from the major attractions. If Scottish landowners want to encourage visitors to explore the Highlands and Islands and bring a much-needed boost to the local economy, they will need to ensure that, at least in the breeding season, tourists and cattle are kept safely apart.

*Although if the legends are to be believed, during his 72 days on the run he managed to hide in practically every cave, bothy and farmhouse in the Western Highlands.

The tracks on the tank go round and round...

From the Telegraph Scottish edition:

Armed forces chiefs angrily denied SNP claims last night that they are dispatching soldiers into primary schools and nurseries to "soften up" children for recruitment.

Christine Grahame, a senior MSP [...] suggested a desperate MoD is deliberately targeting young children in an attempt to boost its "flagging recruitment targets".

It seems that, like vampires, the armed forces have to be invited over the threshold if they are to enter schools to talk to pupils. Miss Grahame claims that if no written invitation can be produced, the forces must have approached the school uninvited as 'part of a drip, dip, drip approach to securing more recruits'.

One wonders what her response would be should, say, the coastguard or the local council offer to talk to pupils about the work they do. Meanwhile, she's been a very busy body indeed, tabling Freedom of Information requests to Scotland's 32 councils.

Extracts from the documents, provided by Miss Grahame, appear to show the Army invited Scottish Borders Council to send pupils to attend a work experience programme.

Oh noes! And that's not all: a submariner married to a member of staff visited a nursery along with other parents who came in to talk to children about their jobs. Foolishly, he did so on a verbal invitation and so is unable to present an authorisation in triplicate to the redoubtable Miss Grahame.

"These latest documents show that not only is the recruitment strategy aimed at children in primary schools, but that representatives of the armed forces are now regularly going into nursery schools too."

Quick! We must stop this underhand recruitment process before the nation's four-year-olds take the Queens's shilling and march away!

Will Moat make a break for the border?

'This has gone too far' - the words of Paul Stobbart, father of Raoul Moat's former partner.

And he's right in so many ways - do we really need this constant media frenzy dropping gobbets of pointless information into the public's gaping maw? At least the BBC have removed from their news website the invitation to 'Watch the hunt for Moat LIVE'.

Oddly enough, the BBC files this story and the police operation exclusively under the heading 'England News'. If the Met are involved - as last night's reports said - then is there any help coming from Lothian and Borders?

Rothbury is only about 12 miles from the Scottish border as the crow flies, yet while Northumbria Police's website carries live updates of the manhunt and contact phone numbers, Lothian and Borders' homepage has only a warning to watch out for a festival tickets scam.

Once upon a time, the forces cooperated fully; in the 1980's, when a child went missing from Cornhill, a village close to the border, search parties were immediately organised to cover both sides of the Tweed in a joint operation coordinated by radio and telephone.

But thing have changed since then, as residents of Carham, Northumberland have found to their cost. The nearest ambulance is based 6 miles up the road in Kelso, but that's in Scotland - anyone falling ill in Carham must wait for an English ambulance to come from Berwick, 17 miles - 27 minutes - away.

With ambulances, traffic news, flood alerts and local information all on different websites, computers have ensured that the geographical line dividing England and Scotland is more solid now than it has ever been before.

One just has to hope that, should Moat decide to make a break for the Border, it doesn't work to his advantage.

Aye, they'd none of them be missed...

Wait a minute - we're supposed to haggle!

Here’s some unexpectedly positive news about cuts for a change – instead of the expected shroud waving, Scotland’s Health Boards have cheerfully admitted to Holyrood’s Health and Sport Committee that staff numbers can be ‘cheaply and painlessly reduced’.

The boards told the committee they could cut job numbers with ease. One board was already close to its target of reducing staffing levels in all corporate departments by 10 per cent; according to the Committee, “the impression given is that this is all very straightforward and achieved with a minimum of fuss or bother”.

Not unreasonably, the report then went on to ask, “Why were these staff needed in the first place if they can be dispensed with painlessly?”

It’s all a bit embarrassing for Nicola Sturgeon, who has previously boasted that the number of NHS staff has increased by 10,000 since the SNP came to power in 2007. So, as the report describes “substantial unaddressed inefficiencies” and little increase in productivity, what are all these extra people doing?

Well, I’ve never been to a really top-notch restaurant, but I’m told that, when you arrive, a flunkey escorts you from the car to the door, another meets you and takes you over to the Maitre d’ and he then summons the waiter to show you to your table.

That’s pretty much what you get these days at the ------ General, with the added refinement of several people filling in a form at each stage. Then there are the myriad receptionists who phone you to tell you something completely irrelevant and call again five minutes later to tell you to ignore the last call.

I’ve detailed all this bureaucratic inefficiency elsewhere (10 ways the NHS is killing people) so I shan’t go through it again. It’s refreshing to hear that the dead wood will be trimmed away, not to say reassuring for those who have already experienced these "inefficiencies".

Not everyone’s convinced though: Nicola Sturgeon said the number of operations carried out annually by NHS Scotland had increased by 40,000 since 2006-07, the equivalent of four per extra staff member*. But she may have some questions to answer herself: as the report says,
“If this is the case, it begs the question as to why the staff were appointed in the first place.”


*An odd way to put it if you ask me: “Kirsty, put the tea-urn down – you’ll be doing your four operations today!”.