Just in case

you haven’t been to the cinema and missed those ads from Vote Nob Orders, and others, here’s what you’ve not been missing.  It’s just a wee short spoof of what might better have been said:

Whilst we’re on the subject of that new ‘grassroots’ campaign, and as we start the regulated period in advance of the vote, have a look at this fascinating insight into the fundraising of VNB.  And you know I like a good conspiracy theory, don’t you?

Enough of cinemas though, for it’s been fairly busy elsewhere of late.  We’ve been voting, and we touched on council election results down south last week.  But the European votes have been counted, members elected; and that brings us to UKIP.  Top of the heap down south, Wales too, at least the eastern half.  And a seat in Scotland.  Whit?  How did that happen.

Well it happened largely because the state-funded broadcaster gave the party that had no elected members more than four times the air time than it gave to the party with a landslide majority government.  And you paid for that.  Ultimately because these ultra-right wing loonies managed to get 140,000 people in Scotland to vote for them, more than one-third of the SNP vote and slightly higher than the Greens, we give them a seat, in our name, at Brussels.

They’ve given that mandate to a chap called David Coburn, who seems to manage, every time he opens his mouth, to make us wonder how that happened.  Why?

Especially when you remember what UKIP’s Scottish leader thinks of us all:

And that their preference for Scotland is for all decisions to be made in Westminster.  Still 10% of the vote here, and fourth place, is clear evidence that Scotland and England are poles apart.  However it may be folly to dismiss it as a protest in a Euro election with a paltry turnout.  But if that 30% UKIP vote south of the border really wants out the EU they have to vote Tory to be certain of the referendum that might make it happen.  And Scotland knows that.

I attended the local count the other night, a first for me.  Whilst marvelling at a smoothly managed process I was left wondering how they’ll cope counting three times as many papers in a few months time, even if they do only have to sort them into two piles.

The other thing this week has been the number crunching; who to believe.  Firstly don’t forget that if the No camp is right with their £1.5bn cost of Scottish freedom then that is less than we have already paid to apparently gain freedom for Iraq and Afghanistan.  Now there’s a thought isn’t it.  Is Scotland’s freedom worth more or less than Iraq’s?  Let’s leave it hanging for a moment.  For we may return to figures, and the input of Profs. Dunleavy and Young, another day.

And underlying it all is the promise of more powers.  It’s a failed promise that some of us remember from 1979.  Today it’s the LibDems that say they are the ones to trust with that one.  Oh yeah, here’s Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp over at BfS, reminding us of the LibDem manifesto.  Remember that one?

So that takes us back to UKIP.  Now with the council elections last week we were told that projections through to the Westminster election next May would give us no UKIP MPs – both from BBC and Sky.  Not so sure now though are we, with 30% of the Euro vote?  With the LibDems imploding by the day, decimated at the polls, where lies a coalition to give power to the party with the larger number of seats, assuming no majority?  Just imagine someone like Mr Farage, or the odious David Coburn for example, holding the balance of power, a seat in Cabinet even.  Unless all the UKIP voters give Cameron, or whoever is the blue tory leader at the time, an outright majority.

And think of that should Scotland  decline her opportunity.  No seriously, think about it.  No Barnett, No Powers, No Parliament.  That’s why Scotland will vote Yes.  That and all the positive reasons thrashed out before.  That and the desire to shape a better society, the opportunity to be better than we have become and possibly be shackled to Westminster’s corpse.

And finally, a word from across the water, the heartening tale of how others see us, in a Letter from America.

 

 

It hasn’t changed.

Not much anyway.  Just the swimming pool.  It’s now a haven for little boats.  No, no forget all that tinkling of metal on masts, these ones are all tied up, on trailers, on tarmac.  They filled in the swimming pool, covered it with tarmac, parking for dinghies.

Around these boats out of water still stand a few of the multi-coloured cubicle doors that once ringed the outdoor salt water pool at North Berwick.  Just walking across what used to be water I can see yet the floral caps of the synchronised swimming displays, lit from below, performing to music, in the chill night air.

Apart from that the town has changed little.  But for one fantastic audition.  For the pool area has been replaced by the Scottish Seabird Centre.  Out in the firth the isles of Fidra and Craigleith bask in the sun.  The Big Bass Rock draws every eye.  Sula still sails every day, round the isles.  And the Seabird Centre runs a big-engined beast round the waters now too.

We’d gone for a festival; but there was no beer, no books no jazz.  For this was Puffin Fest.  Whilst the Bass hosts the gannets, the rock white to the eye even from the shore, seven miles distant, as up to 150,000 yellow-necked and black-tipped marvels find a spot to sit on their egg, the other isles play host to kittiwakes, and eider, and puffins.

But before then we exchanged our f’s for our t’s and headed to the East Links, and the puttin’ green.  These are big, long holes, all hummocks and bumps and dips.  Not easy.  But the boys were comfortably in the lead as the last tee beckoned.  Hole-in-one buys the ice creams.  Oh how we laughed, as six folk stagger round 17 holes, barely scraping a 2 between them.  Then off she goes, a roll a bump, a trundle – that’s going in – and plunk, the ball disappears.  The Genealogist always was dangerous wielding a club, much like Wilma Flintstone some may say.  I couldn’t possibly comment.

And the ice cream.  Luca’s of Musselburgh, still there after all these years; same corporate colours; same original van styles, unlike any others you’ll find, anywhere.  Same ice cream too.  Good stuff, but not Equi’s.

I’m minded too that RLS holidayed by the same beaches, climbed the same rocks.  The prisons on the Bass, housing the covenanters from The Killing Times back home, holed up on the rock.  And RLS weaved it all into Catriona and Kidnapped, Treasure Island too.  There’s a lighthouse on the rock, Stevenson built of course.

And so to puffins.  The telescope deck has you mesmerised by diving gannets, plunging from huge heights into the depths – and if you take one of the boat trips and have them plummeting all around you, well that’s one of the sights of the seas.  There’s live web-cams, controllable to whatever you want to see; zoom in closer.  The puffins on Craigleith are having a rare squabble, ready to head into the burrows.  A shag sits on a chick, hatched a few hours earlier.

Then there was Tiffany’s, not quite breakfast, but soup and a toastie.  And we wonder why we don’t go to North Berwick more often, now that the synchronised swimmers have left town.  We’ve tended to head west for puffins, to Staffa, but a day in North Berwick, now that’s one to do again.

In less than a month

… midsummer will have come and gone.  Isn’t that an awful thought?

Not really, because what it means is that all around us life is happening. Although the house martins have found another nesting site this year (I hope), we have activity elsewhere, some of it more welcome than others.  The moles are making their presence felt, laughing at the efforts of the roller, doing their very best to ensure that there is enough fresh and dry soil to bed those mighty slabs that have to be moved.

The pair of collared doves have been joined by a third, spending time together on the bare trunks of the willow tree following the efforts of the surgeon and his team.  They seem to be enjoying the open views.

The goldfinches may have had their fill of the sunflower hearts, perhaps busy doing other things elsewhere as the spring air warms between the showers.  But the siskins, now there’s a treat.  And there’s lots of them.

Bouncing on a hollow dandelion stalk, dipping beak into the remnants of the seed head.  Or feasting in the husks and debris fallen from that sunflower feeder, now that there are no chickens down below, for the moment.

There is a new bird table too, beginning to get popular.  It is nestled against some thick conifers, sheltered from the winds.  Anywhere else and the stray cat leaps high enough to knock it over, bringing the goodies down to cat level; breaking the wood, my patience too.

It’s a good year for dandelions.  The little patch below the office window that is supposed to be a rockery is looking more like a dandelionery.  Slowly the garden machinery comes out to take the spring air, and the jungle.  The trimmer has had first the first couple of charges to the battery, and the hedge-trimmer is next.  There’s a new mower to put in the new dry shed, running in, every week now.

But such has been the sprouting and the budding and the spreading that we’ve had to resort to the trusty hoe, and the little fork, for some manual labour, and sweat and sore backs.  And that’s when you see the things you don’t notice walking behind petrol engines.  Butterflies are in plentiful supply, even before the buddleia bursts into bloom.  White wings flutter about, some spotted, some plain.  There are colours too, dabs of black on fields of orange.

And indoors there’s more fluttering, more cursing.  Bloody clothes moths.  We’re off on a larvae hunt, again.

All of a sudden it seems the lilac blooms, and runners that have spread are rising, bringing new flower heads where none were before.  The laburnum is threatening to have a good year, just as those on lower ground are fading away.

And midsummer will be with us soon.  Already plans are under way for the RSPB Big Wild Sleepout to have a couple of excited Urchins creeping around the garden at silly times.  A torchlight procession they want.  But the sun won’t be down till when?  Oh my goodness, after ten o’clock, then the dusk.  And they’ll be up for the dawn chorus when?  Half past what?  Four.  Too few sleeping hours, in a tent of giggling children.  They’ll be on their own I’m thinking.  Wonder what favourite uncle’s doing that night?  Sailing I’d guess, a subsequent engagement, once he hears of these plans.  Hmm, Big Wild Sleepout – how about a yacht in a bay somewhere; sans parents?

Here we go again

I know, I know, but it is important.  The English Vote.  We’re told we’re all doomed.

For those southerners who reside in these parts and have a vote are going to scupper the whole project.  It’s not what I hear on the streets, but it is peddled by our wonderful media.

We’ve read before some fine words from Mark Frankland.  Here’s his latest piece.  It’s really quite illuminating.  For it touches on the differences in society in different parts; and it does so with the help of a young immigrant, whilst using his own long experience of being an Englishman in Scotland.  Read it and weep.

Now what this says is that social attitudes change; some parts of the country different to others.  And it leads us on to folk choosing to settle in Scotland for any number of reasons, finding a different society and opting to stay.  And that leads on to the future and our hopes; our quest to make it better yet, far better.

So what do you think Mark and young Temi will do, and why?  I know my views.

Since setting these words down we’ve all been out to vote, or some of us have.  Hereabouts only one cross has been required; European elections.  But further south some of the local councils have been up for grabs, and that brings the most honoured guest on Question Time, the odious Mr Farage with his racist bile, to the fore, after endless publicity funded by you and I and brought to you by the state-sponsored broadcaster.

And as results filter through I’ve been astonished to find the BBC – oh them, anything but astonished then – taking local council results in parts of England and using them as the basis for how the entirety of these isles will return the next government to Westminster less than a year from now.  There are other options in other parts you know, and those other options take serious proportions of the vote.

In terms of the council results themselves Craig Murray spots the BBC tactics here, and elaborates.

In the next few days the European results will come in, and that may be more of an indicator than council results in one region.  Mind you we’ll have to wait until Monday to find out how UKIP have fared north of the Border.  For there is no count on Sundays in the Western Isles, and the whole of secular Europe will have to wait for the Wee Free enclave.  Oh well.  Still I’ll be doing a bit of graft at the local count on Sunday evening, hopefully returning at an hour reasonable enough to allow me to enjoy a planned wee trip on Monday.  Of which more later.

In the soup

We finally managed to spend a bit of time with that latest volume to find a space on the Kitchen Bookshelf.  And good time it was too, for we filled our soup pot from the melting pot of Jerusalem.  And this wasn’t just any old broth, this was a soup traditional of the Iranian Jewish community.  Allow me to give you:

Pistachio Soup

First the ingredients:

1/4 tsp saffron threads;  200g shelled unsalted pistachios;  30g unsalted butter;  4 shallots, peeled & finely chopped;  25g ginger, peeled & finely chopped;  1 leek, peeled & finely chopped;  2tsp ground cumin;  700ml chicken stock;  80ml freshly squeezed orange juice; 1 tbsp. lemon juice; salt & black pepper; soured cream, to serve

And then the guidance:

Pre-heat over, 180/gas 4.  Pour 2 tablespoons boiling water over saffron threads in a cup; leave to infuse for 30 minutes.

Blanch the pistachios in boiling water for 1 minute, strain and while hot remove skins by pressing between fingers – you’ll have gathered that you’ll already have spent time shelling the nuts, realising you need 300g to get a net 200g, but I digress.  Not all the skins will come off, but it won’t affect the soup.  Getting rid of as many skins as possible will improve the colour, making it a brighter green.  Spread the pistachios on a baking tray and roast in oven for 8 minutes.  Remove and leave to cool.

Heat the butter in a large pan and add the shallots, ginger, leek, (all duly prepared beforehand) cumin, 1/2 tsp salt and some black pepper.  Saute on medium heat for 10 minutes, stirring often, until shallots are completely soft.  Add the stock and half the saffron liquid.  Cover and reduce heat, simmering for 20 minutes.

Place all but one tablespoon of the pistachios in a large bowl along with half the soup.  Use a hand-held blender to blitz until smooth and return to pan.  Add the orange and lemon juice, reheat and season to taste.

To serve, roughly chop the reserved pistachios.  Transfer hot soup into bowls and top with a spoonful of soured cream.  Sprinkle with pistachios and drizzle with saffron liquid.

And the verdict  – more – all round.  And I will.  Delicious.  Go on dip some fresh baked bread drizzled with garlic or olive oil, both even.  You will enjoy.

Number Crunching

Firstly another five minute movie for you. You know you can spare a few, and it’s very worthwhile.

The man in question is John Jappy. Having penned a few articles for some of the political blogs he’s now set up his own outlet – Scotland Own Two Feet, bookmark it now, or follow if you’re the following kind.

John Jappy, in his previous life, may well have had an interest in these two chaps, though no doubt he’d have treated them both alike:

And whilst John’s going through the numbers of the past let’s have a look at some more recent figures. It’s those folks over at Vote No Borders under the spotlight again. Craig Murray’s been doing a bit of googling.

Just a pity that the BBC’s squads of investigative journalists couldn’t spend a couple of minutes doing the same before adding more of our money to VNB’s publicity stunts.

One of the comments I come often come across when blethering about our future is a certain antipathy, or loathing even, towards our First Minister and his Deputy, if not both.  But of course electing a government is something we’re not doing this year.  We’re getting the powers to re-shape our society, to pave the way for a better future.

And in May 2016 we set about electing the first government of an independent Scotland, voting for the candidates and the party of your choosing and knowing the powers that will be available.  The likelihood is that we’ll elect a coalition government, with the leading parties deciding who holds the top posts.  A majority administration probably will not happen again – remember it wasn’t supposed to be possible with our hybrid FPTP and PR voting system.

But thankfully it did, otherwise the collective naysayers would have continued to deny us the right to have our say at all, as they did when the previous session was administered in minority.  So the vote in four months time is a one off opportunity to say definitively whether we believe Scotland should or shouldn’t be an independent country.  Remember that the other parties didn’t want you to have the opportunity to express an opinion, which is why collectively we railed against them and broke the voting system, electing a government in majority that could give us that right.

It’s future powers that we need at the moment, definitive ones, total ones, not hope that we might be ‘granted’ something that remains unspecified and that can be changed as easily as the occupant of the No 10.  They tried that in 1979, and of new powers there came precisely none.  Don’t make that mistake again.  The office bearers don’t come into it.  Remember that please.

Oh before you go, let’s finish off with another truth exposed by Mr Jappy, a scary one this time, beyond the finacials.

 

Down on the Farm

This isn’t any old farm. It’s remote; a large peninsula.  There were soldiers on the street.  We need to cast our minds back twenty years.  A few years earlier there had been The Singing Revolution, and a human chain of two million people.  The Baltic States gained their independence from the Soviet Union.

Sigrid Rausing had left her native Sweden and was studying in London; anthropology.  She spent a year at Noarootsi, which was emerging from decades as a Soviet border protection zone.  Watchtowers stood derelict along the coastline.  There was little life across the across the acres of Lenin’s collective farms.  Everything is Wonderful is her account of those times.

Life, like the landscape, seemed grey, dull, and cold.  Occasionally the village water pipes ran with tepid water; rarely was there heating.  Currency was devalued.  Full employment was a thing of the past.

Rausing takes us further back, keen to explore her Swedish connections.  In the days of the gulags Swedish Estonians had been shipped off to Ukraine.  We are in a land where the people suffered, where Displaced Persons camps housed those they were told to house.  Across the water lies Sweden, and the ferries go back and forth.

A decade later Sigrid Rausing returned, with her new husband.  They walked through a  shiny new airport, picked up a mobile phone signal, which stayed loud and strong even across Noarootsi.  Pristine smooth roads were lined with advertising hoardings, of the goods and services that line every other European city, newly emerged or otherwise.

Cast your mind back and you might just remember a ferry sinking and 800 lives lost, on the waters between Estonia and Sweden.  It was the same vessel that carried Rausing into Tallinn and away again a year later

We are given a fascinating account, a snapshot in time that didn’t exist before and doesn’t exist now; a land and the experience of its people from Nazi occupation through Soviet collectivisation, and finally the road to a western economy.  It is a way of life that is no more.

The book is published by Grove Press, with unusually uncut pages, but that’s probably an American thing.  Sigrid Rausing is an interesting character, moved on from ethnography and anthropology, to being the publisher of Granta, and Portobello Books.  I see her family is not without substance, grandpa having invented Tetra-Pak.  In addition to her publishing and writing she also manages a significant charitable pot.  I’d certainly read more from her experiences, given the chance.

Is it a sign

… of a long, hot summer or of more wind and rain?  Or something more sinister perhaps.

We’ve had an eye on the sky for a few weeks now, since the swallows were swooping in Moffat.  Boy Urchin it was, first with the news.

Our house martins are back, quoth he excitedly.  I’d forgotten they were still here, The Urchins that is, for the school bus is later these days with the school in decant and working to a different clock.  There was I on the first scroll through the morning messages, lost in a different world, when the office door burst open.  They’re here.

Within the hour the cuckoo was around as well, the air warm and still after days of blackening skies and burns running over, fields flooding across roads.  The Urchins missed those two notes drifting over from the woods, safely off to school by then.

The joy here though is not in the arrival of our summer visitors, late as it may be, but in the realisation that it’s all beginning to sink in; The Urchins are soaking it up and noticing it all, without prompting.  The cycle of life, the awareness of it, in these lands of wide views and big skies, surrounded by nature in the raw, is slowly becoming a natural environment to them.

So far we’ve only a small advance party, one pair, surveying the debris of last year’s nests, wondering where Occupy The Towers can be based, passing the message back to the building squads yet to arrive.  There’s plenty of wet soil, they’ll have noticed.

So whilst I make a mental note that May 14th is the latest I’ve known for the house martins; and as I realise I hadn’t heard the cuckoo calling until now, it’s really the calls of the children, the excitement in their voices, the shining of the eyes.  That’s what makes springtime in the country.

Before long there will be a busy life, from fields to eaves, shadows catching the eye, drawing the gaze through the glass.  We’ll hear the chatter, from dawn till distant dusk.  Then there will be demands for food, and fledging, finally, before they’re all off again.

And one day Boy Urchin will be able to handle the mower as well, maybe even without nagging though that will only be to keep his footie patch down no doubt.

Conversely, whilst the birds arrived late this year, the mower was out early.  The mild and wet winter gave us green shoots and bursting buds, but what was going on far to the south that kept our visitors back?

But I may have spoken to soon.  For after that brief appearance midweek, the house martins have been notably absent.  Perhaps the word sent back to the construction squad was one of keep looking.  Or maybe not.  What’s doing with the house martins where you are?

P is for…

Well firstly let’s set the passion rolling – over to Derek Bateman.

Then we’ll get practical, with our population on the path to prosperity, and another fine piece from Business for Scotland.

And finally, we’ll do it with pounds in our pockets, as Scott Minto, for Wings, debunks the latest mince from the Chancellor.

Now, wonder how  the Prime Minister’s lectures to Scotland in the next couple of days will go down?

PS you need to click on the links

I make no apologies

… for returning once again to referendum matters.  With a little over four months to go before we all make our final decisions, it’s a reasonable time to compare and contrast the campaigns thus far.  The following short film does just that:

And that really mirrors what I have been finding in discussions; discussions through day to day life as well as on those rare occasions I have been able to free up time away from family commitments to join the campaign trail.

We’re now seeing people turn their attention to life after, to what happens from 19th September.  There are announcements imminent of those invited to join the negotiating team, from all sides; and proposals to heal our fractured society as the debate divides.  But this excellent article from Newsnet Scotland gives a much better picture of what lies in store, and what needs to be fixed.  I whole-heartedly agree.

We’re at a time too where campaign funding is scrutinised, shortly before the regulated period begins at the end of this month.  We’ve had the nonsense over the CBI’s campaign strategy, and the continuing furore over the role of CBI member, the BBC.

On funding Rev Stu gave us a superb summary of the grassroots impact beyond the official campaigns, all those hundreds of thousands raised through crowdfunding for various causes.  Note also the not-totally-tongue-in-cheek and astute Doug Daniel commenting on the funding we all are forced to give the No campaign – the BBC license fee.

But there’s a long way to go.  Last week I had grand blether with a friend, firmly in the No camp.  He recounted tales of naval service, India pre-partition, British not Scottish.  But it’s not about our identity, it’s about how to better shape our society for our future generations.  It matters not that Jim may detest both Mr Salmond and Ms Sturgeon, for we’re not voting in a government; and in 2016 when we do we’re not going to have the freak result that gave us a majority in parliament that evolved last time and paved the way for the opportunity we have now.

And of course in Bombay in 1947 what may have been grand in the last days of the Raj was the start of a new dawn, and both India and Pakistan were ‘granted’ then what we seek for Scotland today – the right to manage their own affairs and shape their societies in the direction they wished rather than the one Westminster required.  Scottish or British does not come into it; neither does fondness, or otherwise, for any one politician or other.

We can, and must do better.  The prize, as the Sunday Herald put it, is a better country.  It’s as simple as that.