Category: Fay Kinuise

Glasgow

Glasgow – going back last weekend to see the city remembered of auld lang syne. After all I have said about the city, with trepidation I stepped out at Glasgow Central – but as long as I was not recognised, it should be all right.

The city’s modern local sage once said that a difference between Edinburgh and Glasgow, is that in Edinburgh if you hear a gunshot, it means it’s one o’clock. By reputation, Glasgow – ye hae yersel’ gey wrang.

The train journey is  good one. I stood a while in Carlisle; Cumberland’s fortress city, where the army still guards the castle fortified by Good Queen Bess. It is a historical relic – the threat of war and invasion ended when Nicola Sturgeon was arrested.  From there the train surges north through a verdant dale, that stutters into rough moorland as it climbs. Then over the top a wee, sparkling burn joins, fresh from haunts of coot and hern, toying with the railway line, to left and then to right and back again. It swells slowly as the heather-clad muirland softens to green pasture until disappearing in the anonymous townscapes that besiege lower Lanarkshire.  Then slowly you draw into the city, and here that same stream is a fat, full-throated river – the Clyde – laced up with bridges as if to stop it getting away.

It is a pity that George Square is currently barred with hoardings, as it as it is the city’s heart. The Square as was had the City Chambers glowering over it disapprovingly, and  receiving a defiant gesture in return. We are promised a gleaming new George Square, which promises to be exactly the same as the old.

The Green meanwhile was fenced off last weekend for the climax of the International Piping Festival. It shows how Glasgow has changed: in the 1950s, Lord Carmont would hand out brutally long sentences for carrying an offensive weapon, but now the city welcomes bagpipes. Never have so many miles of tartan been seen together, nor so many men in skirts. The air was rent with skirling from competing bands. One American band had not quite got the message, and were playing in denim; the young women drumming and the young men piping, and doing ot very well for colonials. (You can see the occasional woman playing the pipes, if her lung capacity is enough to fill the bag – and a fearsome sight she is.)

There is a real city, away from the costumes and invented history. I strolled a long time down Buchanan Street – the city’s broad central shopping street. It is quite unlike London’s Oxford Street, because in Glasgow there are practical shops where you can buy real-life things. It is alive with activity, and much is out of the very joy of life, there in the sunshine, or so it seems. Then a short walk across to Nisbets – a head-spinning emporium for new kitchen equipment to help or puzzle our cook.

Even the City Chambers, behind boarded-up George Street, despite the foul dealings which go on behind the doors, can stand in Victorian grandeur, exuberant in a Gothic reading of the neo-Classical, as a promise of what Glasgow can be.

The Glorious Twelfth had recently been and gone when I arrived in the city.  For some, the date is a chance to to rise early in a guesthouse on a wind-scoured moor, to eat the first shot grouse of the season, warm from the dog’s mouth – vanity. Grouse is better when it has hung for a few days, and served hot in the comfort of a Glasgow restaurant, with no need to shiver on Rannoch.

The light fades. The city is still lit and never quite slumbering, even if I do. Soon enough it is time to rise and head for the station again. I have stayed all in the respectable part of Glasgow, thriving despite the best efforts of its Council and the Playtime Parliament, and I have an embarrassing confession – I actually love the ‘Dear Green Place’.

Dear Foreign Office; I was disappointed

– not to have heard from you on my proposal to take the Isle of Wight off your hands. Orkney however should be no problem, as you are handing island groups out like toffee to all who ask. It might not technically be a Foreign Office matter, but most of Whitehall has forgotten Scotland’s existence, and most of Scotland has forgotten Orkney’s, so those islands are effectively foreign and so disposable.

I am almost native: my mother was conceived in a field on South Ronaldsay, so she always considered herself Orcadian.

This should be cheaper than other recent giveaways since the naval base has closed, and so you would not even be paying me.  Scapa Flow will not go to waste: I have Chinese investors aboard who will open a naval base there, like those they will be building in the Solomon Islands and in the Salomon Islands.

I had hoped to bring aboard the Somalian maritime businessmen who contacted me about the Isle of Wight, but they are no longer interested as Peros Banhos has become available free of charge.

There is no need to involve the United Nations this time. Their demand for you to give up Orkney can be taken as read – anything to humiliate the old imperial power. The only concern I can see is Norway. They have never accepted the permanent cession of Orkney and Shetland to James III. If that is a worry for the Permanent Secretary, you can hand Shetland to the Norsemen as a sop. My Chinese investors will stop them from trying for Orkney as well.

The local people of course will be consulted just as much as they are consulted these days on matters affecting them, which is not at all. Under my hand, they can hardly do worse than under Whitehall and Holyrood.

If Parliament comes to  consider the matter, you will have to remind them that we are talking about a group of islands in the northern seas:  whenever I have mentioned Orkney to MPs at dinner parties, they nod and say they love The Lord of the Rings. The Commons have today listened to today’s Spending Review, and one Tolkeinesque fantasy is enough for a week.

I look forward to receiving your agreement, and in anticipation I have enclosed a Treaty for Mr Lamentable to sign.

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Not so smug now, are you Nigel?

So you thought it would be easy, but the established parties have clocked you long since, and you failed. Here you face the reckoning.

Yes, I know – you have almost single-handedly made your party the biggest force in British politics, and have turned swathes of the council landscape a fetching shade of turquoise, and put a boxer into office as another was turned out, and turned defecting Tories a whiter shade of blue, and all that. There is not a single deep blue county council left. Nigel, you can be measuring up the curtains for Number 10.

Except of course that it’s not your party now. One man on a megaphone is what you know, but suddenly you have all manner of men and women, dedicated people and fruitcakes and loonies, wearing your colours and speaking what they are pleased to call their minds, out of turn and out of control. You remember what happened to UKIP? It makes you wake with a sweat in the night still, doesn’t it.  Now they are in charge of actual things, given unwonted responsibility and left to fall into the inevitable pit of compromise, prevarication, dishonesty and trusting whatever the council officers tell them they have to do. They  are human, after all – they cannot be Nietzschean supermen like yourself. And they, Nigel, are the ones with the power and the voice now. It is not your party anymore.

Four years are yet to run until 2029. (That is, if Sir Keir allows us an election then.: his beloved European élites have shown you do not have to accept the popular choice. He is an experienced prosecutor, after all – he might have let Jimmy Savile off, but you and your people are in his sights for any wee infraction of the rules, even if the rules have to be made up.)

The path to Downing Street is no yellow-brick road but is a twisted woodland track, with tripping-roots and potholes hidden in the shadow. Footpad beggars, who were once potent men you cast out of their castles, lie in wait there.

But Nigel, enjoy your feigned triumph for the brief time you can, for when you look, you have failed in your bold attempt: there are still some Tory councillors left.

Your Davos sonsie face

The glistening, inviting Swiss slopes of Davos, and by the steps of the hotel sat a woman alone, crying, forlorn. I comforted her; “Cheer up, Rachel – at least Keir is standing by you.” She cried all the harder.

What were they really discussing in secret at the WEF as we mingled over supper and at the ski-runs? Well…

It was a large haggis last night. A proper Burns Night in Switzerland is unexpected, but this was done very well. I smirked to watch the utter puzzlement of the miscellany of foreign officials who received invitations and went for politeness. Pausing in terror of the blood-curdling screeching heard coming from the venue, they approached gingerly, to be engulfed in a whisky-fumed, tartan-clad, moneyed class version of Brigadoon. Then they sat in bewilderment, their refined palates shocked by good, wholesome food, and incomprehensible poetry. Thank goodness they got Scots to read the poems. An untutored Englishman should never  be allowed near Rabbie’s verse.

Forks dabbed uncertainly at the strange food on the plate – apart from the French of course who will eat anything with offal. Their cooks spend hours labouring with a cupboardful of ingredients, spices and wine, then wie;ly smother the result with mustard to hide the flavour.  It must have shocked then to find a simple haggis is better than that which all the kitchens of Paris can produce. As the Address was read in full flourish, the stony face of my Gallic neighbour at the table I attributed to his not understanding a word, rather than a reaction to the passage about French cooking.

The ‘Great Chieftain of the Pudding Race’, I explained, is not Scots for ‘President of the United States’.

These events should tease out the secrets, but the would-be cosmocrats were tight-lipped.  I had to tip whisky into their “Slovakian” aides to get anything about what was going on. Their reports to Putin will be very bland, alas. The politicians and wonks were tight-lipped out of embarrassment. As Rachel is finding out, politicians are not really in charge. When you meet them, you will be thankful for that. The power they have is to ruin things, but even then the wealth-generators can hide in Switzerland or America until the storm passes.

There are gorgeous hotels in Davos, which I would recommend to anyone who can get their taxpayers to pay for their holiday. Elegant gowns, sparkling jewelry  – anything donors can supply. We were warned to look out for thieves operating in the resort, but they are easily spotted as they wear badges labelled ‘Finance Minister’.

The weather chart showed clear skies ahead that should have invited delegates to the slopes, but at the edge loomed a worrying orange blob, who addressed the conference by video. He proclaimed a commitment to peace, to much approval, and then declared war on Canada, Denmark and Panama, causing outrage and a determination to protect those countries, apart from Panama. The most horrid thing, according to my sources (if I was understanding their slurred Russian) was the fear the plutocrats have that The Donald is right.

The skies are clear, the snow is smooth and deep, and there is a good hospital down in the town. The other important things I discovered over the week covering the World Economic Forum are that diplomats prefer to cower in heated hotels, that not all French officials are disgusting lechers – why tarnish all with the faults of a majority? – and that even an unlimited expense account can be pulled if abused. The same as last year then.

Some 2025 New Year’s re-illusions

Is it safe to come out from behind the sofa yet? I looked ahead at 2024 a year ago, but it seems longer. Dare I peep out to look again? What resolutions will be made in the next year?

January is Davos. All the famous faces gathered to play at being Bond villains for a week: ideal copy-fodder, and since they are meeting in private, it does not matter what I write – I cannot be proven wrong. It has the best expense account of the year, all to have a skiing holiday, phoning in occasional, pre-written copy. Bless you Klaus Schwab.

Think of poor Keir, opening the year with no good options. Over Christmas he munched a wilted stick of celery, all he can eat, and thought of his career. Over in the corner a shapeless sack of potatoes is slumped, and knows he still cannot sack Mr Lamentable. His wife appears, barely remembering his face, wearing a newly donated diamond ankle bracelet, and wishes Angela’s would stop beeping during cabinet meeting.  He resolves to show more spine and be effective, and will be as successful in that as he has in all his other endeavours.

Xi Jinping sits upon his purloined throne, dreaming of being waited upon by robed eunuchs: waking, he sees it is the British Ambassador, which is little different. How far such men have fallen, he thinks, since they marched to Peking and burnt the Summer Palace. He resolves to take some more islands, as a new years’s present to himself. He would resolve to humiliate Keir Starmer, but the man is beyond humiliation.

Rachel the Reaver resolves to learn a new skill. Having seen all those farmers talking about here for some reason she could take up sheep-shearing perhaps; but is convinced you have to skin the sheep.

Angela hears a knock at the door:  is it late carol singers, or a discarded man, or the police again? Some late visitor, this and nothing more – she hopes. She dreams and resolves to defend local democracy from populism, by cancelling elections and abolishing councils that refuse to vote Labour.

Boris looks out from his Berkshire mansion, in Colombey-les-deux-Villages, and resolves many things for the year – none of which will he follow through.

Vladka, in the Kremlin resolves, well, we know his resolution, as he orders from his chef a fresh Kiev.

In India, a group of entrepreneurs gather to welcome the New Year, looking over at Britain. They resolve to begin a fund so that, in a couple of years, when Starmer has done all he will being doing, they can step in and buy up whatever remains of Britain for scrap.

I too must make a New Year’s resolution. How though to leave the country? Many of my friends are packing up to go to Dubai, but that is no place for a civilised person. America has  become like broken Britain but with no culture, with gun battles, too many politicians, and a village Napoleon in every ‘HOA’. France is France: fine for a summer or a skiing season, but all too French the rest of the year, so that is out. Switzerland would be dandy, even out of season, if I can be sure that the arrest warrant has been withdrawn. Liechtenstein, a libertarian / Hobbesian idyll in the mountains could suit me as a hide-away until Starmer is gone. There are no shops though, and Vienna is a long way away. There is of course Vienna, Austria-Hungary encompassed but with a Habsburg-shaped hole in the middle.

If I cannot leave for better fields, I will resolve to find places to stash the money to keep it from Rachel’s grasping hands until our land is delivered from its tormentors. And maybe longer if Kemi gets in and is as impotent in controlling the Leviathan as her predecessors were.

There is a lot to be thought of. In the meantime, I wish a prosperous 2025 to all, albeit with little expectation that you will achieve it unless you managed to get abroad.