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A moment of politics
Jul. 1st, 2024 06:52 amWe walked to Ravencraig from the house, and from there to town for a Sunday lunch, then back home. Came to about and 11 and a half kms. Not bad! And very beautiful too, surrounded by umbels of cow parsley and clouds of flox and trefoil, swallows playing overhead. I was very happy. If it was entirely safe (strange things still happen in the hills) I would do it more often. It's slightly irritating that one has to take care, but eh.
Meanwhile, people remain odd. An acquaintance via FB whose thoughts on art challenge my own has been sounding about the Biden/Trump debate. He's in his late 70s, I think, but his views are strangely child-like:
I think President Biden won the debate and Trump lost. Because substance matters in a debate, not outward appearance that suggests Biden might be "slipping." I would rather have a comatose leader who is not evil than one who can still swing a golf club approaching 80 but is evil.
He and I have clashed on issues of art before, because he is very into formalism, and believes that the millions who enjoy art with a narrative are Doing Art Wrong*. When it comes to the US general election, I am not an American citizen so it's not really my business, but just as a matter of reality, however one defines good and evil has nothing to do with performance. If it was simply a state of saying this person wins everything because I like them, we wouldn't bother with public debates. It's curiously infantile for a man of his education. To my unpractised eye, Trump did not necessarily win so much as Biden lost, and one's preference cannot dictate the judgment on that.
Churchill was in many ways an utterly dreadful person, a racist imperialistic cultural supremacist bloodhungry gloryhound etc etc. The reason he gets lauded as our best was because he was the right man with the right qualities at the right time, and without those qualities we wouldn't be here. The key is in recognising the exigencies of one's time and formulating an efficient response to them; Churchill could do it, Attlee could do it. I am not in a position to understand if either Trump or Biden can do it, but that debate wouldn't inspire me with hope.
The GE here proves to be interesting. I think it is likely that the SNP will hold on by the skin of its teeth, and that's unfortunate. I'm not the most impartial observer, having always felt that the United Kingdom is stronger staying that way, but I can totally understand if Scotland wants to be independent of the clowns who forced the whole country against its will into Brexit and then compounded this with a procession of ninny leaders who couldn't run a bath.
The problem is that the SNP can't actually govern. It has a single idea at the core of its ideology and beyond that, no administrative ability. There's been EU underspend (around £350 million) there's been the disastrous deposit/recycling scheme which has cost £86 million so far, there's at least one law suit ensuing from that in which Waste Services giant BIFFA is suing the Scottish government for something like £200 million, there's the ferries debacle in which the combined cost of these was meant to be £97 million and has risen to an estimated £240 million... they just cannot do the money. Westminster funding sources did not allow for inflation but that's happening everywhere. It was the Scottish government who made the call to cut the affordable housing budget by £193 million, and were warned of the consequences this would have; sure enough, here we are with a housing emergency in Scotland. So what do they do? They let private developers run rampant on the understanding that of the vast estates these build to be sold, some housing will go to associations for rental. I've been told that the agreement is often one in ten, so less well-intentioned developers get round that by building in blocks of nine. Then, with planning departments under pressure to agree, the developers cram as many buildings as they can into one area, and local medical and school services, already crammed to bursting, begin to seriously fail: Creak, crack, crash! It's endless. And Mel Gibson inspired dreams of woad and claymores will not do a damned thing to help.
What Scotland needs is an independence party that can count and think. And what everywhere needs is voters who can do the same.
* I try to be gentle but he seriously needs a little mockery.
Meanwhile, people remain odd. An acquaintance via FB whose thoughts on art challenge my own has been sounding about the Biden/Trump debate. He's in his late 70s, I think, but his views are strangely child-like:
I think President Biden won the debate and Trump lost. Because substance matters in a debate, not outward appearance that suggests Biden might be "slipping." I would rather have a comatose leader who is not evil than one who can still swing a golf club approaching 80 but is evil.
He and I have clashed on issues of art before, because he is very into formalism, and believes that the millions who enjoy art with a narrative are Doing Art Wrong*. When it comes to the US general election, I am not an American citizen so it's not really my business, but just as a matter of reality, however one defines good and evil has nothing to do with performance. If it was simply a state of saying this person wins everything because I like them, we wouldn't bother with public debates. It's curiously infantile for a man of his education. To my unpractised eye, Trump did not necessarily win so much as Biden lost, and one's preference cannot dictate the judgment on that.
Churchill was in many ways an utterly dreadful person, a racist imperialistic cultural supremacist bloodhungry gloryhound etc etc. The reason he gets lauded as our best was because he was the right man with the right qualities at the right time, and without those qualities we wouldn't be here. The key is in recognising the exigencies of one's time and formulating an efficient response to them; Churchill could do it, Attlee could do it. I am not in a position to understand if either Trump or Biden can do it, but that debate wouldn't inspire me with hope.
The GE here proves to be interesting. I think it is likely that the SNP will hold on by the skin of its teeth, and that's unfortunate. I'm not the most impartial observer, having always felt that the United Kingdom is stronger staying that way, but I can totally understand if Scotland wants to be independent of the clowns who forced the whole country against its will into Brexit and then compounded this with a procession of ninny leaders who couldn't run a bath.
The problem is that the SNP can't actually govern. It has a single idea at the core of its ideology and beyond that, no administrative ability. There's been EU underspend (around £350 million) there's been the disastrous deposit/recycling scheme which has cost £86 million so far, there's at least one law suit ensuing from that in which Waste Services giant BIFFA is suing the Scottish government for something like £200 million, there's the ferries debacle in which the combined cost of these was meant to be £97 million and has risen to an estimated £240 million... they just cannot do the money. Westminster funding sources did not allow for inflation but that's happening everywhere. It was the Scottish government who made the call to cut the affordable housing budget by £193 million, and were warned of the consequences this would have; sure enough, here we are with a housing emergency in Scotland. So what do they do? They let private developers run rampant on the understanding that of the vast estates these build to be sold, some housing will go to associations for rental. I've been told that the agreement is often one in ten, so less well-intentioned developers get round that by building in blocks of nine. Then, with planning departments under pressure to agree, the developers cram as many buildings as they can into one area, and local medical and school services, already crammed to bursting, begin to seriously fail: Creak, crack, crash! It's endless. And Mel Gibson inspired dreams of woad and claymores will not do a damned thing to help.
What Scotland needs is an independence party that can count and think. And what everywhere needs is voters who can do the same.
* I try to be gentle but he seriously needs a little mockery.
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