Labour's Proposal to Abolish Private Schooling in the UK

I was born poor, but smart. I was lucky. I was educated in a grammar school. I won a scholarship to Oxford. Two scholarships actually, since I won a commercial one as well as the college one.

After ill health obliged me to leave the Diplomatic Service I ended up as a teacher, first in state schools, then in a private school. I took this last job because I needed the money, but I soon discovered I had little chance of returning to the state system, since my qualifications had been negated by my willingness to take a job in the private sector.

The prejudice I encountered in the employment market is the same that fuels this policy of state monopoly. It is a policy that has already destroyed the ladder I climbed and would like to tear down alternative ladders as well.

The children in private schools are children. They are lucky children, as I was, but they are still children. They are not suitable for use as political footballs.

In my judgement, we should not be asking ‘Why should some children have good education and not others?’. We should be asking ‘Why should not all children have good education?’

Sheffield Wednesday 0: Manchester City 1 (FA Cup 5th Round 2020)

I'm pretty old. I remember some real glory days and wonderful Wednesday teams. And if we were still the force we once were in English football we would, of course, have played a completely different game to the one we played last night.

But at the end of this game, I felt proud of being a Sheffield Wednesday supporter again. Here’s our team on a desperate run of form, shipping goals against weak opponents as though defence had gone out of fashion. And along comes one of the world’s best teams, turning out pretty much a full strength side that has, this season, put 8 past Watford, 6 past Villa and 5 past West Ham. Plus they’ve done the double over Sheffield United this season. Plus they’d scored 4 in each of the previous Cup rounds. On Owlstalk, a supporters' forum, I’m reading predictions of double figure disasters.

And we witness a team performance in which absolutely every one of our players ran his guts out and gave it his best shot.

Look, no-one can do better than their best, whatever level that happens to be. If we had a world-beating team today we wouldn’t be half-way down the Championship. But on occasions a whole team can lift each other to something way beyond what we thought was possible.

Was it perfect? Of course not. Did everyone play like Messi? Of course not. But was there anyone out there not playing as hard as he was able for the honour of Sheffield Wednesday? Absolutely not.

It makes me sad today that such negative suggestions are even being made, let alone insisted upon.

There are many, many criticisms that can be made these days about Wednesday. I respectfully suggest that last night’s efforts did not deserve to be included among them.

Scottish independence: the question of currency

Strictly speaking, a country only has rights over its currency within its own boundaries. Any country may use as its own currency a portion of any other country’s money supply that is available externally. Panama, for example, uses the US dollar, as did Zimbabwe for some years.

There is, therefore, nothing to stop an independent Scotland using the pound sterling, the yen or the Zambian kwacha except the difficulty of getting hold of enough money supply to serve all her economic needs.

However, a problem that arises for countries without their own currency is that they cannot create additional money supply for themselves and so they must run a balance of payments surplus (acquire more money supply) before they can expand their economies other than by the short term expedient of running down their foreign currency reserves.

In passing, it should be noted that Scottish banks already need to back their note issue with sterling on a 1:1 basis, but it is unlikely that this licensing arrangement would survive independence, so all notes circulating thereafter in a Scotland still using sterling would probably have to be Bank of England notes. Of course, the great bulk of money supply is not notes anyway, but bank deposits, etc. The principle is essentially the same.

A second problem is that there is absolutely no obligation on the country of origin of the currency to take account of the needs of the unofficial user when setting its own monetary policy. This effectively enforces fiscal rectitude on the secondary user, which cannot simply ‘print’ money, unlike a country that has its own currency. Quite often this is the reason for using a foreign currency: a country which, for political reasons, finds it hard to control its spending and thus risks severe inflation can force itself to ration the available money supply if it can’t make any more.

So, whilst no-one could force an independent Scotland to abandon sterling, a consequence of retaining it would be allowing monetary policy to be dictated by the UK government and restricting fiscal deficits to the size of available new sterling supplies. That’s not very independent, frankly. In fact, it’s probably less independent than the present degree of Scottish devolution.

On the other hand, starting a new currency involves a lot of irrecoverable sunk costs. These may be one-off, but they still need to be financed. And borrowing in the new currency would initially have to be very cautious, because otherwise its forex value could be volatile.

I don’t want to get started on the consequences of adopting the Euro. No, seriously, don’t ask.

Why are we still talking about a 'no-deal' Brexit?

I find it interesting how the term ‘no-deal Brexit’ is being redefined. It originally meant the UK leaving the EU without a leaving deal.

Now that we have a leaving deal, this apparently does not count as a deal and the definition of ‘no deal’ has been switched to refer to a trade deal.

It is worth pointing out that the UK leaves the EU on January 31st. Despite arguably flouting the wording of Lisbon Article 50 by so doing, the EU declined to discuss trade relationships before the UK left. Therefore, under the trade agreement definition of ‘no-deal’, there was never any prospect of the UK leaving the EU any other way.

We are not leaving the EU on December 31st. This is the date of the expiry of the transition period, a euphemism for a period when, although outside the EU, the UK continues to observe all EU rules.

This period was originally scheduled to run from April 2018. The various parliamentary delays prevented the UK leaving the EU on schedule in March 2018, but did not extend the transition period. Hence there is less time for trade negotiations than was intended. This is arguably a good thing, but that’s beside the point.

Brexit means leaving the EU. It does not mean subsequently securing a trade deal with the EU. The UK cannot change its mind about leaving if a trade deal fails to materialise by December 31st because we shall by that time have been out of the EU for 11 months.

So whatever happens in December, it will not be a ‘no-deal Brexit’.

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.