Is the rise of ‘English nationalism’ in part down to the Scottish independence demands of the SNP? (Quora)

Any state larger than a few square miles is likely to have richer areas and poorer areas. In a single economy using a single currency, this will necessitate fiscal transfers from richer to poorer so as to mitigate the inevitable tendency to higher unemployment in, and internal migration away from, the latter. As long as a single community spirit pervades the state, the richer areas will accept the need for this and it will appear so normal as to be unworthy of notice.

The reluctance of Germany to make such transfers to Greece exemplifies how far the EU has still to travel to become a unified polity. The willingness of richer US states to see federal redistribution to poorer ones is something of a bellwether for community spirit in the US.

The rich south of England has long been accustomed to make such transfers to all the relatively poorer areas of the UK, including Scotland. Very briefly, during the North Sea oil boom of the 1980s, this flow reversed.

A feature of this brief period was the rise of a sense of grievance among a minority of Scots that ‘their’ windfall was being squandered. This sentiment was a major contributor to the rise of Scottish nationalism, which came to see the relationship with England as an oppressive one.

A more accurate interpretation of history would probably have been that the rich of the UK have a history of exploiting the poor of the UK (including both English and Scottish poor) until relatively recent times.

The politicisation of this sense of grievance included the invention of the concept of ‘Westminster’ which has, in current mythology, become a foreign occupying force instead of the legitimate government of the whole of the UK.

The UK has, after all, had a disproportionate tendency to appoint Scots to the highest offices in the land, which makes it difficult to complain about ‘English’ exploitation of Scotland. Given the relative populations of England and Scotland, it is inevitable that total English representation in parliament will be larger, but it was always possible for Scots to obtain English seats in parliament because Scots historically tended to be more politically active and the English didn’t mind voting for them.

Unfortunately, the complaints, which culminated in the referendum of 2014, attracted attention to the financial flows from England to Scotland under the Barnett Formula. Prior to this, I suspect few had actually heard of this arcane feature of our system. Now, nobody likes to see something that can be interpreted as their generosity (even if they had no choice) flung back in their face, and it generates resentment against the complainant. Hence, to a small extent, the SNP has provoked an anti-Scottish feeling in England.

However, I agree with those suggesting that a far larger influence on English nationalism has been the denigration of patriotism by modern political correctness. There is, in working class communities (and I come from one myself) a not unreasonable pride in one’s country and a determination to defend its interests against assaults from whomsoever, internally or externally. This was hailed by Gilbert and Sullivan in the song ‘He is an Englishman’, by Flanders and Swan in ‘The English are Best’, and today the English working class cares nothing for skin colour or religion but cares a whole lot about whether a person is loyal to his country. Someone who isn’t loyal is contemptible.

It seems to me that much so-called English nationalism is no more nor less than patriotism. In some ‘progressive’ circles patriotism is very unfashionable.

But I’ll be obliged if you don’t run down my country in my hearing, and I suspect a lot of the folk whence I came feel the same.

Detective Mysteries

 The new Flame Tree anthology 'Detective Mysteries includes my story 'No Head for Figures',  the second of what has now become four adventures for my Victorian sleuths MacAndrew and Smithers.

The Scottish sergeant, known as the Old Red Fox of Scotland Yard, and his English constable, first appeared in 'The Man on the Church Street Omnibus' in the inaugural edition of The Sockdolager.

In this new story, the two policemen are presented with a bodyless head and a headless body. Unfortunately, the two don't belong together.

These lovely hardbacks from flame Tree make good Christmas presents, so if you're still looking....

The Family Demon Review Copies

For the next month, I have some free copies of The Family Demon to distribute to those willing to write a review on Goodreads or the site of your preferred bookseller. Reviews need not be lengthy.


If you are such a person, please contact me for details.

Detective Mysteries

I'm delighted to say that my story 'No Head for Figures' features in the new Flame Tree Publishing anthology Detective Mysteries.

For those who remember 'The Man on the Church Street Omnibus", this is the second tale of my Victorian detectives MacAndrew and Smithers, who are developing something of a talent for encountering the weird and wonderful. This case, however, is more supernatural than scientific.

The contemporary authors featured in this anthology are: Daniel Brock, Elliott Capon, Philip Brian Hall, Tina L. Jens, Tom Mead, Marshall J. Moore, Pat Morris, Amelia Dee Mueller, Trixie Nisbet, Patsy Pratt-Herzog, Michele Bazan Reed, Lesley L. Smith and Cameron Trost.

Classic authors include Margery Allingham, Robert Barr, Anthony Berkeley, Matthias McDonnell Bodkin, William Evans Burton, G.K. Chesterton, Carroll John Daly, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Eustace and Edgar Jepson, J.S. Fletcher, R. Austin Freeman, Jacques Futrelle, Susan Glaspell, Anna Katharine Green, Thomas W. Hanshew, E. and H. Heron, Herbert Jenkins, Maurice Leblanc, L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace, Arthur Morrison, Baroness Orczy, Catherine Louisa Pirkis, Melville Davisson Post, Edgar Wallace, Hugh C. Weir, Mrs Henry Wood.

Scotland, the pound and the euro

Tobermory, Mull, Scotland

After independence, either of these options effectively involves Scotland using a foreign currency as the domestic currency.

Europhiles will tell you that the Euro is the domestic currency of all its members. This is theoretically true and for all practical purposes absurd. In practice, the Euro is a DMark-lite and the German economy is hugely more influential in determining its Forex value, monetary policy and ultimately fiscal policy than any other member.

A country that uses a foreign currency as its domestic currency forfeits the right to determine its own monetary policy. It is not possible to set a monetary policy for several countries at once unless those countries form an Optimum Currency Area (OCA). This means (inter alia) that there must be no significant obstacles to labour and capital mobility between the members, there should be wage flexibility between the members, and the members have more or less synchronised business cycles. Where these conditions do not obtain, there will be a need for a mechanism of fiscal transfers between the members to mitigate the damage that an inappropriate exchange rate and monetary policy will do to the weaker economies.

At present, the Eurozone lacks a number of features that enable an OCA to function effectively. Hence every few years we have a Eurozone crisis from which one or more weaker economies emerge worse off.

Scotland could be considered to be more of an OCA with the rest of the UK than with the EU. Language is always an important barrier to labour mobility; another is the portability of pension rights. Currently, Scotland has both of these links with the UK, with which it also does almost four times as much trade as it does with the EU. The UK business cycle is regularly out of step with the EU business cycle because, unlike almost all other EU member states, the UK does more trade outside the EU than within it.

As a member of the UK, Scotland has been marginally disadvantaged by using the same currency as the rest of the UK but has received compensating fiscal transfers. This has avoided excessive unemployment or depression of wages compared to the richer south.

(To forestall political objections to the foregoing sentence, let me point out the simple fact that it is less cost-efficient to buy and sell in low population densities, which is much more typical of Scotland than England).

Luxembourg

Once it is a non-member of the UK, such fiscal flows to Scotland would presumably cease, unless a transitional agreement with the UK were to be negotiated. Moreover, there would be no obligation upon the UK to consider the impact of its monetary policy upon Scotland. Continuing to use the pound after independence in these circumstances (without the above mitigations) would probably lead to additional downward pressure on Scottish wages and employment, but not so great as the impact of joining the Euro. (Consider the impact of the latter upon Greece, Italy, and Spain for example.)

I have suggested elsewhere that the UK single market could survive Scottish independence. This would be to Scotland’s considerable advantage. However, the UK single market could not survive Scottish membership of the EU single market, which requires ring-fencing. In the latter circumstance, Scotland, like any new EU member (not to be confused with existing members who have exemptions) would be required to join the Euro. So not only would there be a hard border with England, but there would also be a change of currency at the border. This is a really bad idea unless you want Scotland to be poor.

The Family Demon - Ebook now on sale!

The Family Demon e-book is now on sale.

Here's a small sample:

“Fred, I’m sorry to hear about her loss,” I interjected, “And I’m even sorrier to hear how badly it’s affected her. But not only is there no case here requiring my so-called special talent, there’s no case here at all. Death by natural causes followed by hysterical depression on the part of a thirty-two-year-old woman who thought she’d been rescued from the shelf only to have happiness snatched away. Tragic but nothing requiring investigation. I’ll lay odds the police closed the case the instant they received the autopsy report.”

“They did,” Fred confirmed.

“So? What makes you think there’s anything I can usefully contribute?”

“Perhaps the fact,” he said slowly, “that this is the seventh time something like this has happened.”

“I suspect it’s more common than that,” I replied. “I don’t know whether anyone keeps statistics on honeymoon fatalities but you do read about them from time to time in the tabloids. Human interest stories, you know. Bridegroom dies in earthquake; new bride eaten by shark, that kind of thing. Heart attacks on the wedding night can’t be that rare.”

“No, you misunderstand me,” Fred was speaking even more slowly as though explaining to a child. “This is the seventh time something like this has happened to Sarah.”

A Taste of The Family Demon

I’m attracted to older women. Young women, like young wine, are fruity but unsophisticated. They may quench my thirst or accompany a meal, but I’d never think of opening a bottle at the end of a hard day just for the pleasure of drinking it.

Sammie Chalmers wasn’t really an exception to my rule. Though she'd been only twenty years of age in her latest incarnation, she’d aggregated around three thousand years inclusive of all her past lives. Now she was dead and gone, at least from the present one. It took me a couple of years to accept what had happened.

Maybe that explains why I like my women to be older. After a few lifetimes, you’re instinctively tired of going back to adolescent immaturity and starting again, even if you can’t actually remember doing it before.

The Family Demon on Amazon

The Family Demon - paperback

For those reluctant to wait three more weeks for the ebook, or who prefer paperbacks anyway, I can announce that the paper version of The Family Demon is already on sale on Amazon.

Philip Brian Hall's new novel 'The Family Demon'

In Philip Brian Hall’s second Toby Le Tocq novel, the reincarnation of Solomon looks into the disturbing case of his business partner’s niece. Seven successive boyfriends have died suddenly, the most recent on their wedding night. After a nervous breakdown, the young woman is confined to a mental hospital. A number of seemingly-ordinary local residents, led by a powerful witch, take violent exception to Toby's investigations, and before long he finds himself framed for murder. Along with his allies Judith and Asa, Toby plunges into the frightening shadow world of vengeful demons and their human acolytes.

THE FAMILY DEMON

The Family Demon is now on pre-order and you can download a 20% sample absolutely free!!

In Philip Brian Hall’s second Toby Le Tocq novel, the reincarnation of Solomon looks into the disturbing case of his business partner’s niece. Seven successive boyfriends have died suddenly, the most recent on their wedding night. After a nervous breakdown, the young woman is confined to a mental hospital. A number of seemingly-ordinary local residents, led by a powerful witch, take violent exception to Toby's investigations, and before long he finds himself framed for murder. Along with his allies Judith and Asa, Toby plunges into the frightening shadow world of vengeful demons and their human acolytes. 

Smashwords ISBN: 9780463526187

Brexit, Democracy, and Casablanca

Our scene - outside some bar or other in London:

Police Chief: What in Heaven’s name brought you to the UK?

Rick: My politics. I came to the UK for the democracy.

Police Chief: The democracy? What democracy? We’re in an elitist oligarchy.

Rick: I was misinformed.

There you are. I always knew that piece of dialogue would come in useful someday. All right, I modified it. Just a little.

But today in the UK a lot of people feel just like Rick. We’ve always been told we live in a democracy. Not just any democracy, but one of the oldest and finest in the world.

Except it turns out that we don’t.

You want to know more? You’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.

But I’ve got a job to do.

Scratch the surface and the very same attitudes that resisted the widening of the franchise and the elimination of the property qualification for voting back in the nineteenth century are alive and well today. There are still bien-pensants aplenty who think that ordinary people don’t really understand the issues, are insufficiently well informed, are stupid, racist and in fact thoroughly unpleasant. In an ideal world, such people wouldn’t be allowed to exist. But somebody has to do the manual work, I suppose.

For a while, you can get away with lying to the people. You see, they’re so ignorant that the idea of their social betters lying to them just never crosses their minds.

“There are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears, I need hardly say, are completely unjustified.” - Prime Minister Edward Heath, January 1973.

Oh, yes. Remember that one?

Not an easy day to forget.

Only now we can read the memo that was sent to Heath about it. The one where he was warned of “the ultimate creation of a European federal state, with a single currency. All the basic instruments of national economic management (fiscal, monetary, incomes and regional policies) would ultimately be handed over to the central federal authorities.”

That’s all right, the top men said, just as long as the plebs never find out. Don’t worry, guys, we’ll tell them it’s just a free trade area.

I’m shocked! Shocked to find that lying was going on here in the UK!

Now, of course, all this was more than forty years ago. Surely, it’s not relevant today?

Oh no. Of course it isn’t.

Look, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

Remember Maastricht? It’s okay, we’ve got opt-outs; none of this EU integration stuff will ever affect the UK. Text? What text?

Remember Lisbon? So embarrassingly similar to the rejected EU Constitution on which we’d been promised a referendum that the UK PM had to turn up a day late and sign when hardly anyone was looking?

And remember how, before the referendum, the UK PM was going to negotiate a reformed EU where everything would be hunky-dory? Except it turns out the EU doesn’t want to reform because it thinks everything’s hunky-dory already, exactly on track.

Oh, well. Round up the usual suspects. Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Italy, Portugal- all you disorganised, hopeless countries with your hopeless levels of youth unemployment. Yes, and all you Eastern European states that don’t fancy freedom of movement for the vast number of refugees/immigrants admitted by Germany. It’s all going well, do you hear?

But do you want to know what’s really funny?

These days the plebs have figured it out. These days the plebs know they’re being lied to and have been lied to for decades. These days the so-called ignorant are the ones who actually realise what’s going on.

And who is it who now believes the propaganda that the powers-that-be have been spouting for fifty years?

Oh. You spoiled my surprise. You guessed it. It’s the bien-pensants of course. The smart people. The trendy classes who think there really is a pot of international brotherly love at the end of the EU rainbow.

Well, here’s looking at you, kids. You know how you sound? Like someone who’s trying to convince himself of something he doesn’t believe in his heart.

So to all my dispirited friends, watching the news, reading the papers and feeling more and more depressed, I say - Welcome back to the fight. This time I know our side will win.

The Family Demon

Preparations for the launch of the new Toby Le Tocq novel are proceeding well. Beta-reading and proof-reading are in hand and the e-book version at least should be ready in the not too far distant future.


Since I hope you, my readers, will be buying it, I'd like to consult you on the draft cover, which has gone through a variety of stage of mock-up and development and has now arrived at the design on the left. If you'd like to tell me what you think of it before we finally decide, now's your chance.

Now the context is a bride who's been driven mad by the death of her husband on their wedding night and imagines herself fleeing in terror across a trackless waste.

The lady turns out to be the niece of Toby's partner Fred, who persuades the reincarnated Solomon to take up yet another pro-bono case.

Nope. They don't seem to have learned their lesson last time!

Has Representative Democracy Failed In The UK?

I was recently asked this interesting question of Quora. Here's my answer:

Logically, in order to establish the success or failure of any system, we must first discover its intended objective and then the time frame over which we shall measure.

For representative democracy, there may not even be a universally accepted objective. Different people or different cultures, at different times, in different circumstances may seek different outcomes.

Abraham Lincoln famously defined democracy as government of the people, by the people, for the people.

A century and a half later, there are still many who believe his middle phrase to be a step too far. Some issues, they will tell you, are just too complex for the people to grasp; such decisions should be left in the hands of those who know what’s good for the people, by which term they mean, of course, people like themselves.

On the other side of the argument are ranged democrats who believe that everyone is the world’s leading expert in how things affect themselves. One does not need to be able to explain why rain falls in order to know that when rain falls one’s roof leaks. However, if the government is made up entirely of well-off people who don’t have leaky roofs then this problem is unlikely to be considered, let alone solved.

So now let’s extend the problem to cover not just leaky roofs but homelessness, substandard housing, overcrowding and so on. Do the people who suffer from these, and other social evils, have a right to be heard and to participate in the examination and solution of their problems, or should a paternalistic ruling class decide and administer what they consider to be in the poor’s best interests? Seems easy enough?

But before we run away with the idea that democracy solves everything, let’s consider the problem of hard choices. In the NHS, for example, everyone considers that their own needs should be attended to, but when we add up the implied expenditure from attending to everyone’s needs, we find we have a sum much larger than we are collectively willing to pay for the NHS.

The concept of representative democracy is supposed to provide a forum within which competing needs and wants of individuals in society can be prioritised in a rational way. In principle, we enjoy competition for power between different philosophies with different priorities, of which two important ones are wealth creation and wealth distribution. Usually, in order to win and hold power, some sort of centrist compromise has had to emerge.

The problem we face today is that, over time, the political parties embodying these philosophies have become transformed from organic plants, growing in the soil of local communities and nourished by local culture and information, into hothouse blooms that can only exist under London glass. Our nominal representatives have less and less genuine interaction with us, the people they supposedly represent. Not many of them are genuinely local people; they are career politicians who have climbed the greasy pole until they have been allocated a winnable seat. They are supposed to be the honourable member for Suchandsuchtown, but they possibly never heard of the place until they attended their selection meeting.

It seems to me that many of today’s MPs represent primarily themselves and their own ideas and careers, then the party to which they owe their elevation, and only as an afterthought the people who elected them. This does not necessarily make them bad people; many, I am sure, are honest, decent folk, doing what they believe to be best. But were their priorities not as I suggest above, you could not possibly have well over 400 Remainer MPs in a country where over 400 of 650 constituencies voted to leave the EU.

There. I arrived in the end at the issue which probably gave rise to your question. I tend to agree that hard cases make bad law, but the complete disconnect that has now arisen between representatives and represented is not, in my view, a sustainable situation.

I don’t think this is the same as saying that representative democracy has failed. In its relatively short history, it has done much to advance society. However, when citizens of the information age are still quoting an eighteenth-century, pre-democratic age political philosopher (Edmund Burke) in order to explain why parliament is not delivering what the electorate voted for, I suspect we have arrived at an era in which substantial reform is required for our system to continue (or perhaps recommence) effective functioning.

Bury F C

Man is a tribal animal, and as Desmond Morris tells us, (“The Soccer Tribe”), football is an expression of that tribalism. I am quite old, but I can still remember my Dad taking me to Hillsborough when I was very young. I expect a great many football supporters all over the country have similar fond memories. It’s part of who we are.

I remember being among a crowd of people who all identified with their local football club in the way that any tribe, anywhere identifies with an outward and visible totem: we all need a symbol that says, ‘This is who we are, and we are proud of it and it’s something that can’t be taken away from us.’ I didn’t know the people among whom I stood and cheered, but they all belonged to the same tribe as me, and that meant they were not strangers.

We were a community; a community that supported each other as much as it supported a football team; a community that permitted rare moments of aspiration to ordinary people who had recently come through very dark times and whose daily lives mostly involved a lot of hard work, few luxuries and not much prospect that things would ever be any different. Traditionally that was what football clubs did. They were the tribal totems that lay at the heart of working-class communities, the intangible social glue that bound people together.

Now I am not foolish enough to believe the world could have stayed the same, or even naive enough, looking back more than half a century with obviously rose-tinted spectacles, even to wish things had stayed the same. But though TV cash and the internationalisation of playing squads have altered both the nature of football clubs and the nature of the game, I do still believe that for those born to membership of a particular football tribe, the tribal totem is still something priceless. These are not mercenary fans who follow big-name teams that are always at the top; these are ordinary people with their hearts invested in their local clubs.

As it happens, the President of Bury FC (NB not the owner) is a recently-made friend of mine. I met this fine gentleman on holiday this year, and even  then he expressed great concern for the future of his club due to forces outside his community’s control. When I last saw him we still hoped that our cup match would be played. This week I sadly had to write to him offering my sympathy and hopes that his club could be rebuilt as others have been.

Like a pit village when its coal mine closes, more so perhaps, because people rarely loved the coal mine they just valued it, the loss of a community football club is a huge psychological blow to a town or city. Those responsible have sacrificed much more than just livelihoods, important though these are. They have undermined a tribal identity that means so much to its members.

What About This EU Leaving Fee?

There are several ways of looking at the so-called EU divorce bill or leaving fee but, firstly, we should note that the sum of £39 billion was predicated upon a March departure. Since the UK is still paying its regular membership dues until October 31st, the residue will be about £33 billion (give or take a little for exchange rate variation).

The Lisbon Treaty says EU law ceases to apply to a leaving state on the day of its departure. A House of Lords report has suggested that on this basis the UK’s residual liability could be zero unless there is an agreement.

However, Mrs. May unilaterally guaranteed the UK’s annual contributions to the EU up to the end of the latter’s current financial planning period (2014-2020). The amount remaining to be paid under this heading as of 31 October will be around £12 billion (net). This sum would also be paid in the event of the UK remaining in the EU. It is less clear whether it has to be paid if the UK leaves without a deal.

I don’t know whether Mrs. May intended her guarantee to cover the anticipated transition period, when for all practical purposes the UK would have remained a non-voting member of the EU. Some people argue that if we leave without an agreement and hence without a transition period this amount is not payable. Other people say we should pay it anyway ex gratia. I expect the latter as the most likely outcome.

The remaining £20 billion mostly represents reste à liquider, which doesn't seem to translate very well into English. It is an amorphous block of EU undertakings, some of which may not even have started yet, and it is a controversial amount, not least because it represents an attempt to load part of the liabilities of a continuing organisation on to a departing member which is receiving no comparable share of the organisation’s assets and which is already being denied a share in various benefits acquired by use of these assets.

Now, rather in the sense that someday the national debt may theoretically be paid off, likewise someday the EU debt may theoretically be paid off, but nobody is expecting it any day soon. So it is not the case that most of this sum would have to be paid (at least in the foreseeable future) if the UK remained in the EU. To that extent, requiring a leaving member to pay what a remaining member would not pay may, I think, be considered a leaving fee.

It must be dubious whether there is any court in the world in which the EU could pursue a claim for this, although they might make a financial settlement a condition of any future trade deal. As I recall, it was only agreed in the first place in order to open up discussion of a trade deal that never happened because a separate leaving deal could not be agreed, so perhaps we shall eventually come full circle.

Aonach Mòr

Going towards Victoria View 

A bus from Fort William deposited us at the base station of the Nevis Range Gondola. From the upper station at a height of 2100 feet, we turned left and walked along the ridge to the Victoria View Point.

Westward you look towards Loch Eil and Glenfinnan. Northwards lie Spean Bridge and Loch Lochy. Towards the north-east rises the bulk of The Grey Corries while the 4,000-foot summit of Aonach Mòr itself blocks the view east and south towards Aonach Beag and Ben Nevis.

The views are spectacular.

Loch Eil from Victoria View Point on Aonach Mor

Looking north towards Spean Bridge

Ben Nevis from Torlundy

Although we were nowhere near the top and hadn’t climbed much anyway, it felt like a worthwhile achievement and a suitable high point (pun intended) of our cruise aboard Hebridean Princess.

Tobermory

Tobermory Distillery

Tobermory waterfront, Hebridean Princess in port

The town of Tobermory is really famous for being famous. Founded as a fishing port as late as 1788, it has latterly become very well known for its picturesque waterfront, with a rainbow miscellany of buildings looking out over the bay. I have a sneaking suspicion this variety of colour schemes is not accidental!

Nevertheless, it makes an idyllic location for film sets, television series and the like, as well as being a comfortable base from which to explore the fascinating islands of the Inner Hebrides.


After the destruction of the Armada in 1588, one of the surviving galleons anchored in Tobermory Bay to repair and provision. (There was no town on the shore at the time). The San Juan de Sicilia carried troops, though, of course, later tradition has made her a treasure ship.

Tobermory waterfront after dark

The soldiers on board served as mercenaries for Lachlan Mór Maclean of Duart in his feud with the local MacDonalds of Eigg, Muck, Rhum and Canna. Having no local connections and being frustrated of their true purpose (invading England), they apparently behaved very cruelly during this campaign.

However the MacDonalds were aiding Irish rebels at the time, whilst The Maclean was in league with Elizabeth I. With his local enemies smashed, Maclean had no further use for the ship, which conveniently blew up and sank, leaving fifty soldiers who were ashore at the time to serve him for another year, just to be on the safe side.

Salvage attempts have never found any treasure, probably because there wasn’t any, but the legend of sunken gold is always more fun than a wrecked troopship. It all adds to the romance of Tobermory.

Coll

Coll beach

I think I know where the Elysian Fields are.


Coll was our only beach landing during Hebridean Princess’ cruises of the inner isles. The passengers were all issued with wellingtons because even the little boats couldn’t get close enough to the shore and we needed to wade through about a foot of water. By the time we left, however, the state of the tide enabled us to re-embark dry-shod.

Coll machair

The island seems to have its own microclimate. 

While we were there, the sun shone, the sky and the sea were blue, the empty, golden beach stretched away into the distance and the whole prospect was quite blissful. 

Early Marsh Orchid

Having walked out along the beach, we returned by way of the machair, the endless fields of wildflowers that fringe the shore. We were greeted by the first lapwing I’ve seen in a long time. Common Blue butterflies, Small Heath, Meadow Brown and a variety of moths including Six-spot Burnets flutter about amongst the swathes of wild geranium, orchids, and several plants I’ve yet to identify. 

You do have to be wary of drifting away from the beach, towards the centre of the island when distracted by the wildlife, but it’s very nice when the crew has set up a mini-restaurant on the sand to welcome you back!

Iona

Common Seal off Iona

Like the originally Graupian, now Grampian, Mountains, the isle of Iona owes its modern name to a transcription mistake dating from the pre-printing age when manuscripts were copied by hand. It seems the name was once Ivova, Latinised as Ioua, meaning a place where yew trees grow.

During our visit, it rained quite a lot, which probably did not create the best impression. We were not inclined to venture out into the hinterland in search of the fabled corncrake, and even though dolphins did frolic around our boat as we went ashore, I couldn’t get any decent photographs.

Iona Abbey

Iona Abbey Cloister

It was one of those days for photographing things that stand still, and better yet for photographing buildings from the inside, though the common seals abounding on offshore rocks obligingly did the former and hence feature in this log.

Iona Nunnery

The main building is, of course, the Abbey, restored in the last century from a state of ruin to become the working centre of an ecumenical community. In the cloister, I was impressed by the care and subtlety with which new stone has been integrated with surviving elements. Although Samuel Johnson found his piety grow warmer amid the ruins of his day, I personally found the restoration less evocative of the past than redolent of a present quest for a lost spirituality. A medieval abbey, for me, does not evoke the 6th century but the popularity of pilgrimages eight or nine hundred years later.

If you want to find links with the earlier period, the mound upon which Columba’s study hut once stood perhaps serves better, and the Abbey museum better still.

The ruined nunnery is also worth a visit; you can pass through its grounds on your way from the port to the Abbey.

Staffa

Staffa

The phenomenal success of the works of Ossian, supposedly a poet of the early Dark Ages, translations of whose alleged works were published by the Scottish poet James Macpherson in the 1760’s, is hard to comprehend in retrospect. Though Macpherson was denounced as a forger by Samuel Johnson, the works inspired, among others, Napoleon, Diderot, Ingres, Jefferson, Scott, Goethe, and of course Mendelssohn, whose Hebrides Overture is popularly known as Fingal’s Cave.

Fingal's Cave

I suppose the magic of the cave would be enhanced by an even greyer, mistier atmosphere and stormier seas than those we encountered, though in such case I should probably have been too sick to appreciate it. As it was, we perhaps got our best view of the cave from the sea, since although we made our way along the rocky causeway to its mouth, the ground at the entrance was under repair and it was quite hard to get a good view into the interior. I was however pleased to see my first rock pipit.

Puffin

Considerably easier to see are the puffins, whose colony is along the coast in the opposite direction from the landing stage. It seems the presence of human visitors reassures the puffins that they can land in front of their burrows without being in danger from skuas or other predators, so if you wait there they simply come to you. 

Similarly unconcerned by visitors was a trio of black guillemots, a third new species to me in a single visit.

Fortunately we arrived early. A couple of other boatloads were disgorged from tourist craft a little later, and like all such fascinating wild places, the wonder of Staffa’s wilderness is a fragile mental construct that is always in danger of being dispelled by excessive numbers of one’s own species.

But not this time. It was marvellous!

Finlaggan

Eilean Mor - ruins of the great hall

All right, the history of the isles is less transparent than is suggested by the Finlaggan visitor centre and a great deal less clear than was described by Scots novelist Nigel Tranter in his justly celebrated Bruce trilogy.

Nevertheless, there are reasonable grounds for believing that the figure of Angus Og MacDonald bestrides the pages of Scottish history like a Colossus as the 13th-century gives way to the 14th.

A consummate politician, Angus Og nominally supported the English king Edward I as long as it allowed him an excuse to make war on the rival Clan MacDougall, but after the deposition of John Balliol and the murder of the Red Comyn, when the nominal King Robert Bruce was hunted like an outlaw through the western highlands by Lame John MacDougall of Lorne, The MacDonald seems to have changed sides.

causeway to Eilean Mor

It is thought, but not absolutely certain that Angus sheltered Bruce at Finlaggan, which was more of a ceremonial centre for the clan than a fortress. There were neighbouring MacDonald castles on Islay that might have served better for defensive purposes. However, standing on the grass of Eilean Mòr, somehow aware of the ghostly presence of a man who scarcely acknowledged the overlordship of any ruler, Scots or English, you feel the two of them were probably both here back then.

Angus Og’s clan of Viking descendants had thrown off the Norwegian yoke and saw no reason to subject themselves to another – and anyone who thought differently was welcome to try sailing his own ships past the Corryvreckan whirlpool to challenge the best galley fleet in the British Isles!

Eilean na Comhairle (council isle), from Eilean Mor

Though Angus Og seems to have waited for confirmation that Bruce could establish himself again on the latter’s return to Scotland, once his man was clearly king again, it was clearly in The MacDonald’s interest to have the mainland divided between Scots and English rather than allow an English hegemony which could threaten the Isles. I think the presence of the Islemen may very well have been decisive for the under-strength Scottish army at Bannockburn, however bad the generalship of Edward II may have been.


It does appear the Bruce thought so too, for Angus Og was well rewarded for his help. It appears he may also have supported Edward Bruce’s ill-fated Irish expedition, and may even have died there. All we know for sure is, he was no longer the Clan Chief in 1330 and that his son John became the first to claim the title ‘Lord of the Isles’.

Laphroaig Distillery, Islay

The stills

Apparently, Laphroaig is very controversial. You might, I suppose, call it the Marmite of whiskies, since people either love it or hate it. However, as the tasting, at the end of our visit, revealed, you don’t necessarily have to have the smoky, peaty variant since they do have others. For my taste the basic 10-year-old single malt is admirable and the Lore blend very nice indeed.

My favourite incident from the distillery’s two hundred year history does not concern its long-running, on again-off again, love-hate relationship with neighbouring Lagavulin, but the remarkable coup of persuading US Customs during the Prohibition era that the contents of the bottles was not whisky but ‘medicinal spirit’. Now that’s what I call marketing! Granted, for a coastal distillery there is always going to be a whiff of seaweed in the air that gives a hint of iodine to the drying barley, but even so…

Barley drying

And it’s English barley! Oh dear, I don’t think they should publicise that too prominently. It appears Scottish barley grows in latitudes too cool and northerly to deliver the required yield. (I write this on the hottest day of the year so far, with temperatures even in Islay expected to reach 30 degrees Celsius). Maybe by the time global warming means I am growing grapes on Sliabh Mannan rather than making hedgerow wines, Scottish arable farmers will be able to open up a new market?

Laphroaig is apparently the only Islay distillery still cutting the peat for its smoking oven by hand. I don’t know how much difference that makes to the whisky, but it does suggest a respect for the old ways that is important to some customers.

I’m told HRH The Prince of Wales is a fan, so I’m in good company.

Jura

Hebridean Princess off Jura

The first port of call for Hebridean Princess's (left) July Cruise of the Inner Hebrides was Jura.

I must confess to knowing little of Jura before visiting it. Perhaps I shouldn’t claim that a single morning, featuring a stroll up the hill behind the largest settlement, Craighouse, and a wander back along the shoreline to our boat landing stage, makes me any kind of expert. However, in that short time, I found enough of interest to persuade me that I would welcome the opportunity to spend more time on this fascinating island.

The name Jura is derived from the old Norse for ‘Deer Island’ and today 5,000 red deer outnumber the inhabitants by around twenty-five to one. The island was home to George Orwell in his last years and can claim to be the birthplace of ‘1984’, though anywhere less resembling Winston Smith’s dystopian environment would be hard to find. Its three mountains, ‘The Paps’, are visible from a great distance, including from other, more low-lying islands in the inner Hebrides.

Standing stone & puffer, Craighouse

Jura was an early centre of the Scottish colonisation of Alba, and the shore of the mainland beyond it came to be known as Argyle (The Gallic Coast). Over the years it was important in disputes between the kings of Norway and Scotland and between various clans and factions in the isles. However the population was sharply reduced in the Clearances and now the local economy relies primarily on whisky, sporting estates and tourism. The ferry from the mainland runs only in summer and during the rest of the year access is only via the neighbouring island of Isla.

Rosy Starling

Our very alert local minibus driver spotted a pair of sea-otters out on a rocky islet; I would certainly have missed them. Sadly they came no closer, but on the way back I was lucky enough to see another celebrated visitor in the shape of a rosy starling. “You don’t just come across a rare bird sitting on a housetop,” I thought. But it seems on Jura you do, and since there are so few people there, I was able to observe it without a crowd of twitchers snapping away beside me.

Speckled Wood

A single red deer looked out of the long grass beside the road, a procession of oystercatchers sauntered by along the seaweed and rocks of the shore, a solitary grey heron maintained its statuesque fishing pose, and on the hill behind the village, I saw my first ever Speckled Wood butterfly (right) ...

Sedge Warbler

... while my first sedge warbler (left) popped up in the reed bed beside the shore.

Unfortunately, we’d sailed past the fabled whirlpool of Corryvreckan during dinner the previous evening, so all I saw of it was a large area of disturbed water visible through the dining room windows.

That’s on my bucket list for next time, along with a visit to the mountainous areas and an opportunity, perhaps, to see some of the local eagles, deer, and seals.

Should anyone be undecided about a visit to Jura, I'd recommend it. And if you're lucky you won't encounter any lesser-spotted former PMs.

No Head for Figures

I'm very happy to report that my story 'No Head for Figures' has been accepted for the forthcoming Flame Tree Publishing anthology 'Detective Mysteries', due out in November.

Readers with long memories may recall a previous outing for my two Victorian detectives, MacAndrew and Smithers, in the inaugural edition of The Sockdolager way back in Spring 2015.

'The Man on the Church Street Omnibus' saw our two intrepid sleuths on the trail of strange goings-on in a Kensington churchyard.

This time they encounter a nasty case of decapitation in Whitechapel. What do you do when a head turns up with no body?  Well, you'll have to read the story to find out.

This will be the fourth of my stories to be published by Flame Tree. They do produce lovely hardbacks, which make first-class Christmas presents. So, please remember when you're stuck for a gift for the person who has everything- this year they haven't got a copy of 'Detective Mysteries'  and they obviously need one.

Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

Established by the bequest of artist Thomas Stuart Smith (1815-69) the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum is an eclectic treasure trove. I have selected just a few things that I found of particular interest, but other people may find other items of fascination among the cornucopia.

Bayne Long Case

As it happens, I love long-case clocks. I have an unpretentious eighteenth-century country piece at home. You can tell the earlier examples by their plain metal faces – usually brass – whilst nineteenth-century clocks often had elaborately painted designs. Here (left) however is a real beauty. Made in Stirling by John Bayne in 1780, the engraving on the silvered face features an escapee ox being pursued by a butcher with an axe.

The Pipe of Freedom

T S Smith’s painting ‘The Pipe of Freedom’ showing a freed slave in front of the proclamation of emancipation, was declined by the Royal Academy exhibition of 1869 for being too political.

Romano-British pewter

The Neish Collection of historic pewter is of staggering quality. I was unaware of the existence of Romano-British pewter, for example, but not only have important items been excavated, some of the most significant are housed in the Smith Museum.

Highland Cattle

Highland Cattle by Joseph Denovan Adam (1841-1896) is quite simply one of the best livestock paintings I’ve ever seen. The beasts stare out of the painting at the visitor as though they were looking in through a window, wanting in out of the rain that’s coming up fast behind them.

Hot off the Press

I always love to receive a hard copy of an anthology that contains one of my stories. Here's Endgame from B-Cubed, the final episode of the Alternative Truths Trilogy.

This collection contains my story 'I, Apparatchik', the title of which, as you may guess, is a play on Asimov's 'I, Robot'.  It would be nice to see it do a fraction as well.

The story concerns members of a certain intelligence agency who are responsible for creating and maintaining robots to stand in for the president in various tricky situations. I hope you like it.

This is my third story in a B-Cubed publication. The previous two were 'Conspiracy of Silence' in 'More Alternative Truths'  and 'Devine Justice' in Alternative Theologies.

On the subject of the last of these, Bob Brown tells me that all copies of the anthology (and nothing else) were recently stolen from a convention in the USA. Apparently, the theft proved the old adage that all publicity is good publicity: sales promptly doubled.

Endgame is Out!

Alternative Truths III: Endgame 

The final volume in the best-selling Alternative Truths series from B Cubed Press. Edited by Bob Brown and Jess Faraday,

Endgame features 30 of today’s best writers and political thinkers taking a look forward at possible outcomes of our political decisions.

Humor and satire reign supreme in this collection. If you want to laugh, read Jim Wright’s "Bathroom Breakdown,” a side-splitting vision of Donald J. Trump at his best or follow the antics of a beleaguered Attorney General in Debora Godfrey’s work, “No Excuses” as he tries to convince the President that he has tried and convicted Hillary Clinton.

This collection has visions of a better world as well. In Paula Hammond’s “Fortunate Son,” we explore what kind of man Donald Trump might have become had he answered his country’s call and served alongside his fellow Americans in the Vietnam War.

Most of all Endgame will make you think, with thought-provoking essays by the likes of David Gerrold and Adam-Troy Castro as they seek to share their understanding of how this happened and what do will we do.


A significant portion of the proceeds of this book is donated to the ACLU of Washington to honor and support their unending quest for the freedom of the American people to express themselves.

The book is available in print and electronic media from Amazon.com.


ISBN-13: 978-1-949476-05-7

Electronic ISBN-13: 978-1-949476-06-4


The book is priced at $5.99 for ebook and $12.25 for print. The book is published by B Cubed Press and can be followed on Twitter @BCUBEDBOB.


Kindle Edition

Print Book

Contributors

Foreword, Becky McFarland Kyle


Bathroom Breakdown, Jim Wright


The First Lady is Missing, Louise Marley


Waiting for Gustavo, DB Lipton


Tyrannus ab ultima Epistulae, Frédéric J.A.M. Poirier


The Ballad of Cadet Bone Spurs, Larry Hodges


Politics As Usual, K.G. Anderson


Act Three, David Gerrold


Stupid?, Adam-Troy Castro


Fortunate Son, Paula Hammond


Final Tweet, Nathan Ockerman


Hell’s Angel, Robert Walton


What is Hate?, Joyce Frohn


Beautocracy, Natalie Zellat Dyen


Alien Tweetstorm Apocalypse, Kurt Newton


I, Apparatchik, Philip Brian Hall


Democralypse, Bruce Golden


Exit, Stage Right, Daniel M. Kimmel


No Excuse, Debora Godfrey


Last Interview, Melinda LaFevers


All the Prez’s Men, Liam Hogan


The Train, Annie Percik


Once You Start, Mike Morgan


Babble, Charles Walbridge


America Once Beautiful, Gregg Chamberlain


Women March, Gwyndyn T. Alexander


Skin in the Game, Harold Gross


Passing on Fire, Joyce Frohn


The Great White Wall, Larry Hodges


Mr. President’s No Good, Lousy Day, Stephanie L. Weippert


The Nature of the Problem, Thomas A. Easton


Sanctuary for Those on Simmer, Sarah Bigham


Gold and Ivory, Cobalt Jade