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Reposting a mystery from my web pages of 1999

Sunday, March 22nd, 2020

A true story for the Millennium

Forgive me, Ron, wherever you are, for breaking my word and letting the world know about this story. I found the negatives by chance, on the eve of the 25 years before the writings are due to be revealed. I do not know where they are, but perhaps I was meant to photograph the box and to be told what was inside it – otherwise it might be that it has all been forgotten, and the people who set this in motion are all now dead. At least by telling this story, and showing the evidence of the pictures, I may set things in motion myself to ensure that what was originally intended does happen.

Please note – I have added some comments in italics, these were not in the original 1999 web page. I have published the story in two editions of different magazines in past years, and so far not a single contact has come forward to shed light on it. At times I have thought that if I retired and had all the time in the world, and enough money, I might put on my old journalist’s identity and set out on a quest to continue this story. Posting this as the coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic takes hold across Britain and the world, I know I’m never likely to do so and I would never have found the time or the money to revisit the scenes and connections involved and interview the descendants and successors involved.

The few of you who know me through my photographic magazines will know that I have no politics but tend to be assumed to be coming from the left, and have no religion though people mistakenly assign me some concern with affairs of the spirit. Similar assumptions are often made in matters of money, or education. The truth is I have very little of any of these things.

Over twenty-five years ago (early 1970s), I made the acquaintance of a man called Ron Wilkinson who had the ability to carve wood unusually finely, in the style and perhaps even to the standard of Grinling Gibbons. Having the above-mentioned lack of education I promptly wrote an article about him in which Grinling (Chatsworth House, et al) was transmuted to Orlando (more at home with the lute than the chisel). Ron forgave me, and I photographed his work over a period of two or three years.

One day in 1975, he called me urgently to his home and workshop. He thought I might have an interest in some writings. An elderly – and apparently uneducated – lady (called Ina, I hope I remember accurately) in the nearby village of Brampton-en-le-Morthen had produced a huge volume of automatic writing. She believed this to be the work of St John the Divine (the topical one – Revelations). I had a brief opportunity to read some of this; it had a metre and verse structure, though not in rhyme, and a quality which seemed unlikely to come from the conscious mind of the ‘channel’ herself, whom I met. Ron then swore me to secrecy about what he was going to ask me to do – I was to photograph a chest, which a ‘group of people’ had paid for to hold these works until the new Millennium.

I believe this group included the potter Roy Newman from Laughton-en-le-Morthen, the Earl and Countess of Scarbrough, and the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire.

The chest was to be held securely in a chamber inside a mountain in Scotland (I don’t know where but the strongest clues would be ‘old religion’ family estates, Freemasonry and possibly the legendary Templar thing – so Rosslyn Chapel and the crag it stands on could be a candidate – I also wonder about the Eildons, Black Hill near Earlston, and Schiehallion), and against the express wishes of his sponsors, Ron wanted a photographic record before it was lost for ever. I set up two flash heads, and shot the chest in cramped conditions using a 35mm camera on Agfachrome film, which I had been using regularly and always had processed by A H Leach of Brighouse, the main professional Agfa lab in my area. Ron was to have the entire roll of slides, so that no copies would exist outside his keeping, even for me.

This film, however, was not be a triumph of process control. I was told that the Agfachrome had been processed, and fixed, in black and white negative chemicals. By this time the chest had been filled with the manuscripts and sent on its journey north. I could not believe the misfortune ­ and I wondered, at the time, whether ‘darkroom forces’ had been at work Leach’s then worked miracles (figuratively; I should watch my words). Somehow they recovered some of the colour into a few of the extremely grainy, dense frames. They made hand C-type 12 x 15s, and their artists carefully retouched them to restore apparently natural colours. They then made 5 x 4 copy negatives and final 10 x 8 prints, which showed the details Ron had wanted to keep on record.

I filed those copy negs and thought little more of it – 25 years seemed so far away then that I never considered it likely I would be there to see the end of the Year 2000 (I hope I see 2040 and would like to see 2050!). Ron, rather suddenly, gained the (deserved) patronage of the Duke of Devonshire. He left his south Yorkshire village cottage, and the next time I saw him he and his wife Eda had a lovely farmhouse looking across the Chatsworth estate. He had become, however, very reserved. I could no longer photograph his carvings; he was busy restoring the Gibbons work in Chatsworth House. When I visited him, I could feel the tension, and I think he was not in the best of health. I am not sure when Ron died, or if Eda is still with us, or would remember me if she was; I am sure that someone will tell me.

I found the copy negatives by chance, when looking for another photograph from 1975. I had not forgotten, but I had consigned the story to the backroom of memory. I scanned the 24-year-old negatives. Modern digital techniques made far superior ‘prints’ emerge, even if the crossed curves which had once made half the print almost blue could not be eliminated entirely. Had those negatives been the intended 35mm slides, they would have been handed over; and all my commercial ‘packshots’ of that date were long ago consigned to the bin. The 5 x 4 copy negs had survived because they were kept separately.

If I feel sure of anything, it is that the Duke of Devonshire himself had some part in the encystment of the automatic writings – of the ‘songs of angels’, and ‘pearls of wisdom’, as the old lady identifed them. I may be wrong with the first name; I did not take notes. I do not know who else will have been privy to the location of the chest, whether they are still alive, whether their plans and intentions have been forgotten or kept alive. If the writings are of any importance they must be published either in the Year 2000 (which the public see as the start of the new Millennium) or preferably on January 1st, 2001. The year 2000 is merely the final year of the second millennium, just the same way that the year 100 was the last year of the first century. Regards of our calendar errors and arbitrary dating, it is in 2001 that we should be celebrating the future.

Everything is in place –  the Internet is complete and globally functioning, we have the fingers and the keyboards to transcribe the manuscripts, and we have the scanners or digital cameras to record each page in evidence. It is only necessary now to start the work – if it has not already been started – and to open Ron’s locked and vaulted box to the world, electronically, in the single moment of a new server going live on World Wide Web.

Whether I believe in any of this does not matter one bit; it is a certainty that many millions of people in the world will read, study, translate and absorb the words. From what I saw and read myself, I believe this will do nothing but good. Words, whether written or spoken, can be magic bullets ­ as indeed can photographs.

If we are to witness a battle between Good (with a capital G) and Evil (likewise) then it will be fought on Internet between words and images ­ and much though I regret to have to say this, you probably all know very well where my beloved photography takes its place vis-a-vis God vs Auld Nick.

If there are two things you can be sure the Devil has in his museum of triumphs over mankind, they’ll be a five-string banjo and a Leica.

The second coming won’t need the Word to be made Flesh, nor even into a book. Our computers, our satellites, our cables and our TV screens are all the flesh that words need now.

And as for Lucifer? Well, with a name like that he must have dominion over the realms of lens and light if not the darkroom!

David Kilpatrick, March 1999

POST ADDITION: a scan of my first local magazine article from 1973, in Yorkshire Ridings Magazine, about Ron Wilkinson. It’s not a very sophisticated article and contained an error as mentioned above (blacked out by me in the cutting!) but I was only 21. Click to open.

Non-reversible ‘austerity’ – future imperfect

Saturday, May 16th, 2015

Here’s a simple question for David Cameron and George Osborne – and IDS, and all the cohorts of Conservatism, UK 2015 style.

When a government uses fiscal measures to balance the books, through tax changes, the measures are adjustable and reversible. They can be modified, ended, tweaked, extended or whatever is needed.

Parkgate, Rotherham, 1974 – walking towards the (coal) gasworks during the Winter of Discontent strikes @ David Kilpatrick

When a government implements cuts to budgets, staffing levels and grades can be controlled along with purchasing contracts, attention to waste, changes in allocations to match changing times (ever worked with a big underused stationery expense budget but an inadequate capital budget for the IT systems which have actually replaced all that stationery?). All these things are reversible. Staffing levels can go up as well as down. Salaries can be frozen for a period, but increased generously when greater prosperity permits.

My question – how do you REVERSE the current implementation of ‘austerity’?

boutiqueproperties-web

Leicestershire, 2015 © David Kilpatrick

When times are good once again, do you stipulate that instead of paying a bedroom tax, all social housing tenants should be housed with at least one spare room to take account of modern lifestyles and Britain’s terrible record for cramped housing?

Do you send in a team from ATOS to re-assess the terminally ill, disabled, or incapacitated and ensure life support with indemnity from punitive financial action by banks, landlords, government and local authorities, and utility providers? To remove from unsuitable work those forced to undertake it, and remove the detriment to their lives and the lives of their families?

Do you GIVE BACK what you have taken away and RESTORE the welfare cuts, reverse your social policies, and mend the safety net which is supposed to stop those who fall off the tightrope of life from crashing to a hard landing way below?

Vintage black and white print scan 1972 image of old Humber car and trailer outside condemned terrace of houses gypsy encampment at Anston near Sheffield

North Anston, Sheffield, 1972 (condemned, replaced by an industrial estate) @ David Kilpatrick

I don’t think I need speculate about the answers. ‘Austerity’ sounds so much like the period I was born into, just after rationing had ended (though petrol coupons returned for other reasons). That was austerity too – but with a promise in return that once the nation was through its few years of utility furniture and clothing, austerity would be replaced by prosperity. It was succeeded, over the years, by measures such as 25% Purchase Tax, unthinkably high Supertax on income, pre-EU import duties and quotas and measures affecting the whole of society from the top downwards (while enabling the NHS, public utilities and transport, nationalised essential industries and the construction of the modern welfare state). All could be undone, or moderated, to suit conditions and most now have been even though the conditions rarely demanded it.

The answer is that this austerity is not intended as a temporary measure.

Miners Gala

Retired miner, Canklow Meadows Miners’ Gala, 1974 @ David Kilpatrick

It’s planned as a permanent part of our future society regardless of what happens to the economy in five, ten, or twenty years’ time. It has been imposed selectively, making life in Britain worse for those who already found it most difficult. Unlike taxation, the measures now being extended can not be ‘rolled back’ or fine tuned. They are intended to be permanent.

So, it’s not ‘austerity’ then. It is not a period of reduced expenditure intended to rebalance the books. When Cameron talked and talks of so many years of austerity being needed to cut debt and deficit, he has never been talking about a period of austerity. He’s been talking about the time-scale needed to introduce and implement cuts, which will then be permanent. For those involved this austerity is forever austerity, not a few years of corrective action.

york1969-web

Family life with dog, terrace backs in York, 1969 @ David Kilpatrick

Maybe if you’re reading this you will consider your position on ‘austerity’ with more care, for your own future and that of your families and friends. Cameron was and is a PR executive, an expert in the use of language to deceive or persuade. This is not ‘austerity’ as there will no return to normality.

Had the Government taken the route of using higher taxation a very small basic increase and few critical adjustments – all fully reversible or tuneable to suit future conditions – would have seen us through. Instead they promise a five-year tax ceiling and repeated measures to enrich the rich, squeeze the middle and turn ‘honesty poverty’ into despised destitution.

Please hit the social media, whenever you like in future, to quote this article and prove me wrong the very first time you learn that any of the measures of ‘austerity’ have been reversed or removed because the GDP has risen, the deficit is lower and the debt is affordable.

– David Kilpatrick

When you vote, think first

Wednesday, May 6th, 2015

A month ago I wrote this: Be An Agent of Change

That was not so long ago despite all the debate since, and I don’t think much has changed, except some feelings have turned out to be well founded. I didn’t anticipate the anti-Scottish stance taken by politicians and the media, or its effect on perfectly normal English voters. Scotland and the Scots have become targets for malice and demonisation, with myths about grabbing English money supported by comments on the rather better use made of that money by Holyrood.

Well, it’s not English money, since Scotland is a net contributor to the UK economy. Scotland without oil would no doubt look far healthier than England without the City but politicians and those in the pockets of power will always be selective with the facts and figures they use to create ‘information’ – and in turn, opinion.

It’s over 25 years since we moved to Scotland and we felt we had journeyed another decade or two back into the past then. Now the voices of England I hear on television street interviews seem to have come from the 19th century, as if the country has turned to look backwards, to before the rise of democratic socially responsible governments, let alone all the progress which has happened during my own sixty-plus years.

I’m worried that if you turn the political clock back this way the next step will be regression in tolerance, freedom, fairness and everyday human values. Would it be better to break up the UK into smaller federated country and regional units – devolved or otherwise – than to break it up by divisions of class, ethnicity, income, health, education, and enfranchisement?

milinocchio-nicolacricket

Can the SNP become Labour’s conscience?

The talk on the eve of polling is of a progressive alliance – SNP, Plaid Cymru, SDLP, and Greens supporting a Labour government and giving Miliband a backbone rather than just ‘backing’. The alternative to a progressive solution does indeed seem to be a regressive one.

Welfare’s boost to the economy

It’s sad to hear so many people swallow the line that welfare, benefits and services existing for the social good and lifetime security of us all are at the root of excessive borrowing, deficit and debt. In fact, they are at the root of a society functioning at all. Every pound which goes from the Government (the taxpayer, you and me, all of us) to someone who can’t otherwise be housed, keep warm, have enough to eat and stay sane and healthy is not a pound which somehow disappears.

What happens to it? It’s not put into savings – and the only way that money becomes inactive, and ceases to produce further wealth, is when it’s saved today. Banks can barely pay interest, or earn anything from moderate interest, leaving a personal and small business finance sector which depends for much of its viability on charges, fees, commissions, unsecured high interest payday loans, credit card interest and so on. Above that level you’re into the City, tax-free leveraged gambles on the stock market, hedge funds and high frequency computer trading none of which actually does anything except extract money through the cyclical creation of losing and winning positions (the loser is probably you, even if you don’t know it – and the winner is someone you will never know at all).

I’d say that every pound carefully invested, saved, put into a pension pot or kept under the mattress is a pound’s worth of problem for the economy. Cameron and Osborne made no reference to that when changing pension rules to free up some of that frozen cash, but they must have had it in mind.

In contrast, money spent on social housing, welfare, unemployment benefits when needed, child care, education, health, transport, infrastructure, protecting the disabled and looking after the elderly returns immediately to the economy. It pays for the employment of others and for the goods, services and energy needed. Even if it does end up mis-spent on cigarettes or alcohol it’s going right back into the active economy as those industries don’t simply hoover up the money and stick it in a vault. They too employ people. Even gambling keeps the cash recycling, however much you dislike it.

To keep an economy thriving, people must spend money. Not just the middle classes or the top toffs either, as they are more likely to spend on luxuries and imported goods. Money must be spent on essentials and everyday life, including the maintenance of social environments whether city suburb or village. That’s where the continued ‘austerity’ really falls down – it reduces too many people to a state of economic hibernation.

I’d argue that working folk I have seen on TV saying things do seem better now, the economy is turning round, austerity is working (and so on) show signs of habituation to changing conditions. It’s now been so long since they really were well off that they see their reduced circumstances as normal. I have seen this happen in business myself and understand the process; gradually, you accept less, and expect less. It’s even easier in daily life.  You work longer hours, you change your shopping habits, you stop doing as many things for fun, cut down, simplify and keep going. Some call this process ‘sleepwalking’ into a different situation and it’s not a bad description (also applied to the erosion of civil liberties and the acceptance of corporate impositions on civic society).

End austerity and restart the circulation from the heart

So, I reckon Nicola Sturgeon and the progressive minor parties – slightly to the left of centre, and not in any way extreme – have it right when they call for an end to austerity and especially an end to the purposeful impoverishment of sections of society which need financial support. It’s support to survive, not support to enjoy some ‘benefit’ others don’t, and pretty much every pound which goes to this support returns immediately to society in general and it is spent – it pays bills, it pays councils, it pays shops, it pays carers, it pays nurses, it pays teachers.

And guess what happens to those pounds? Yes – they in turn pay their bills, buy their services, their goods, employ their staff. And it keeps on. The truth is that ‘trickle down’ has never worked but fuelling a domestic economy from the bottom up does work. As for higher taxes on extreme wealth or income, both now causes of problems and not signs of a healthy economy, they can in theory return money to active circulation which would otherwise disappear from the UK or be locked up for a lifetime.

Ending austerity and increasing public spending, perverse though it may seem, could restore the UK to economic and social health and make us a happier and more secure nation.

Scotland in general, and the SNP as the current chosen representation for many thinking Scots, grasps this idea rather well. I just hope that that greed, envy and malice don’t prevent England from working with Scotland (and Wales, and Ireland) towards the betterment of all people of the UK and downfall of the present shiny, happy Westminster kleptoplutocracy.

– David Kilpatrick

 

Be an agent of change in May

Sunday, April 5th, 2015

I have very little time to write this kind of thing now, as over the past three years, I’ve successfully increased my workload greatly instead of winding down towards passing the pension post.  I’m not an activist and have not been since the mid-1980s, and when I signed up as a member of SNP it was after a 30-year gap without any party membership.

All I want to do here is to pass on a few things I’m fairly certain about. The most important of these is that rapid change, of any kind, is good. Change for the better needs no explanation, so why should apparently negative change also be good? It’s good because the response to it must be further change. This is one reason I hope the Scottish Westminster MPs form a voting bloc after the election. As it happens, I don’t mind whether they are SNP, Labour, Conservative, Green or Liberal as every one of these parties has something positive to offer. I’ve always said that a government where Tories run the private economy and Socialists have control of welfare and the public economy would be successful, and that’s why I helped form the Social Democratic Party three decades ago.

In Scotland, the SNP Holyrood parliament has come closer to achieving that than Westminster ever has. Anyone who accuses the SNP of being ‘Tartan Tories’ or ‘in bed with the reds’ is right. They are both, and that’s the great thing about the SNP. And neither, at the same time. You may say ‘well, that was the idea of New Labour’ but we know what became of that – the lure of City riches, and the gradual erosion of standards created by the Westminster environment…

However, underlying the dual (or multiple) standards of the SNP there’s one thing which shines out. They have suffered over the years from a sustained campaign of deceit, propaganda and manipulation by the Westminster parties and their client Press – the press which prints different headlines for England and Scotland because the ‘news’ depends on who is reading it. This has left SNP candidates, party members, supporters and sympathisers absolutely determined to maintain a kind of moral high ground. At its best, this high ground would mean the abolition – outlawing – of the party whip and replacement by voting according to personal conscience or decision by all MPs. Along with this, proportional representation (or its moderated form as found in Scotland) would increase the diversity of voices within Parliament.

The spectre of Scottish MPs ‘destroying’ Westminster life is a change for worse from only one point of view, and a change which would demand rebuilding on a better model. It’s not what Scottish MPS acting as a bloc would demand, or how they would use their support to influence Labour or some other coalition which interests me. It’s how the whole Westminster ecosystem will respond. Change will provoke change.

Scotland has a chance to send a cadre of MPs to Westminster with the real power to bring about change for the better, with a remote chance of switching defence policy away from Trident, and preventing austerity measures from targeting people in the most difficult circumstances. Beyond this their very presence may advance the cause of proportional representation, strengthen the voice of English regions as well as Wales and Northern Ireland, and calm the baying and bawling of question time. It’s unlikely to drag Westminster out of the 18th century, or see the House of Lords replaced by a smaller elected second house.

To those who think this is all about Scotland, it’s not. Scotland has a political history which is even worse than that of England, or the United Kingdom. ‘Enlightenment’ is praised as an idea and Scotland is praised for its past moderation, by English and Scots commentators alike, so show how the ‘extremism’ and lack of economic nous of the SNP is so very un-Scottish. Well, Scotland of the past exhibited such extremes of inequality, religious superstition, oppression, sexism, racism and avarice that it’s best not to go there. That golden era included cabals of aristocrats, judges and clerics procuring 13-year-old girls to undress and be admired, so they could ritually weigh the outcome of their disturbingly congenial self-abuse. It was world of migrant seasonal labour, hiring fairs, indentures and tied cottages to make today’s zero hours contracts, minimum wage, payday loans and private landlords look utopian.

Recently the rest of Britain has woken up to understand that the SNP is not a ‘nationalist’ party in the extremist sense, but a very moderate and flexible coalition within itself, one used to working with other parties (all of them) and responsible for keeping a most orderly and hardworking house at Holyrood. I regret that many of my friends and neighbours in Scotland may still have doubts, and feel that casting a vote for SNP is almost like burning the Union Flag. I hope they will reconsider this, think about the contribution their elected Westminster MPs have made or failed to make in past decades, and look to the future.

Scotland has produced some powerful Westminster politicians, all standing for the three leading parties. Those days are past as those parties simply do not attract principled minds or individuals with vision and vigour – they are magnets for those who seek comfortable careers isolated from the problems of real life. Instead, we find that the SNP and the Green Party attract candidates with some kind of edge, some drive, some burning discontent and desire for change. These are the people you need to represent you at Westminster in future.

As for the importance of leadership – the Salmond and Sturgeon succession – one likely effect of voting SNP in May is a that you also bring about change within the SNP itself. New blood, on Westminster benches, will create two separate groups within SNP. There will be MSPs, and MPs. The two groups will not overlap as both are full-time jobs (even if many Westminster MPs think otherwise). They may compete, they will form different relationships externally and internally, and this will be one of the greatest challenges to survival and integrity faced by a political party in Britain in the last 300 years.

Are we likely to see independence for Scotland? Probably yes, but not in some breakaway form leaving the rest of the UK as an odd threesome. If independence comes, some kind of federalism or a different ‘union’ of four states may come with it. Change, for the future, for the better.

– David Kilpatrick

The pyramid of devolution

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2014

Great powers went to work against the unthinkable possibility of an independent Scotland. It seems, from promises made, that they stopped considering it unthinkable. However, in the aftermath an interesting prospect arises. It seems that England – and clearly not England as a single lump, but England divided into large regions comparable to Scotland or Wales – may be given ‘Devo Max’ too.

What strikes me is that this process is the reverse of what it seems to be. Westminster and the City remain, a single central seat of government, no longer responsible for the internal finances or day-to-day running of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, The North, The Midlands, East Anglia, the South Saxons, the Kingdom of the Cotswolds, the West Saxons and beyond them the West Celts…

Instead, in the grand of tradition of departments in pre-revolutionay France or the English shires before Henry VIII booted out the abbots, each region will become a tax-farm responsible for the oppression of its own peasants and the extraction of dues to be remitted to London. The myth will be that London is the place which creates the wealth, and hands it out to the devolved provinces. The reality will of course be that London is the place which takes the wealth, keeps the lion’s share, and returns substistence rations.

Certainly London will provide defence (an army has many uses), communications and transport while exacting the charges and tolls needed to make every last strand of fibre optic cable, every metre of tarmac or rail, not only pay their way but provide a good profit.

How else, after all, can this end? What David Cameron hints at can only, ultimately, result in Westminster and the City becoming a state in itself. It will have a relationship to the several parts of the United Kingdom rather like the relationship of Brussels to the whole of Europe – an administrative enclave which accrues to itself a hundred thousand salaried sinecures, which governs, regulates and taxes but does not actually make or do anything.

Underneath this pinnacle will be the rest of pyramid, the devolved regions, the counties, cities and boroughs and at the very base supporting the lot will be the people.

What more could Westminster and the City want? What better outcome for the whole of the UK, to be blamed in years to come on the temerity of the Scots to think they could take a parcel of these islands, call it a nation, and govern it without the control of Whitehall and Westminster?

Of course, this is all just uninformed fantasy and speculation. None of this will happen. Wait and see!

– David

Yes Please, not No Thanks

Friday, September 12th, 2014

I’m feeling deeply ashamed of the British media. I’m worried because I’m reasonably well-informed and spending too much time on the whole Yes/No Scottish Referendum question, and what I’m reading, seeing and hearing makes me sad and slightly angry. I was trained in 1970-71 as a journalist, a ‘junior reporter’ at first, followed by three years on the staff of the Sheffield Star culminating in the 1974 NUJ lockout and the fist-fights witnessed in the newsroom between largely left-wing team on the evening paper and the right-wing staffers of the morning Sheffield Telegraph.

Despite these battles between individuals worse for the traditional journo’s liquid lunch, and extreme debate between the rest of us who stayed sober during working hours, standards of journalism in print never slipped. If you reported a speech or a conference, your words were limited to those spoken at the event. You did not, like the Daily Mail, editorialise in a news report by providing your own adjectives (‘petulant’ used to describe Alex Salmond’s perfectly calm, complete, measured and accurate response to BBC questions, in the Daily Mail).

Here is an analysis of how the BBC itself used heavy editorial biasing to spin a reverse of what actually happened when Salmond held a press conference for international media:

And this, now well-known via social media but probably ONLY to Yes supporters, is how the Daily Mail ‘reported’ the event:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2751287/Now-Union-strikes-Poll-puts-No-campaign-lead-Scottish-separatists-suffer-series-hammer-blows-Salmond-s-Black-Wednesday.html

I appreciate that UK newspapers have always been partisan, always been easily bought, and that falling sales make them extremely vulnerable to withdrawal of tenuous trading partnerships. This, between the BBC and the Mail, is something different. It seems that we have a government and media marching in step into an Orwellian future – not of course the future Orwell would have wanted to see, but the worst outcome of his satirical and cynical imaginings. Orwell wrote about a future deception of all people by all governments, the transition from the party line to the party lie, to the government lie, the continental lie and ultimately the global lie.

Some would argue that we already see the global lie at work, that there’s nothing but one great conspiracy orchestrating false flag attacks, provoking wars, engineering plagues and enslaving humanity. Personally I think we’re at least a generation away from that and it’s all nonsense. But these recent days of the Better Together campaign to apply blunt instruments with force to the will of Scotland’s people show that we have a United Kingdom government prepared to lie, to conceal, to misrepresent, to coerce, to bribe, to undermine. This is worse than disheartening. It’s not a country I want to live in. I need to be able to trust government, or to be armed with knowledge to deal with deceptions pragmatically – not to be duped myself, but to accept the need for duplicity.

When I became a journalist it was driven home to me that my job was to expose this, not to become a propaganda vehicle, and to base all reports on verifiable facts or literal quotations fully attributed. I might use an emotive word in a headline, as a sub-editor, but if you studied the story below you would find it was not MY word. It had been said by someone, noted down, quoted in the story and was legitimately borrowed (sometimes even with quotation marks) for headline impact.

I could only call someone angry if they were clearly angry, said they were angry, or were accused of being angry. I could not describe a measured and polite, quiet speech as a ‘rant’ let alone ‘extraordinary’. I could not make up ‘facts’ on one hand and call actual facts ‘lies’. We didn’t see this kind of thing even in the Winter of Discontent or in Thatcher’s assault on the economic power of industrial labour.

Something is terribly wrong here, standards have fallen. Time, then, to raise a new standard – a blue one with a white cross – in a new country with old values still at its heart. Scotland as an independent nation will have its mismanagement, its scandals, its financial predators, its successes and its failures but at least it will start on higher moral ground won by defeating this barrage of orchestrated mendacity.

One day England may be lucky enough to make a fresh start too. Please don’t oppose Scottish independence because you envy it, and should Scotland achieve it in the face of this assault, don’t feel guilty just because you live in a country which tried its utmost to avoid this tiresome change. Scotland won’t abandon you. We will leave footsteps in the snow, markers across the quicksands of the future, for the time when change is the only option for the rest of Britain. And there won’t be border guards or a Travelex branch at Carter Bar.

– David Kilpatrick

Don’t turn ‘don’t know’ into ‘no’ – be honest!

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2014

Are there ever circumstances where you should forfeit your vote – don’t use that polling card, stay at home?

Yes. The Scottish Independence Referendum presents exactly that situation.

A normal multi-party, or even two-party, election is an occasion which demands as many people use their vote as possible. For one thing, each ward or constituency is electing just one one member of a larger representative body. The fairest distribution of opinions may be achieved by a high turnout – by everyone weighing up the various candidates or parties, and making a choice. In Scotland, of course, that can mean making multiple choices and it’s even fairer than the old Westminster first past the post system. This is one reason why Scotland has such an effective parliament.

But this is NOT an election. This is a train heading for a set of points in the track, and it’s a tug of war between two sides to switch the points to Independence or hold them set straight ahead as before down the rails of Dependence.

Despite this, Scottish voters are being told it must be Yes, or No.

What about those who really can’t work out the pros and cons, who don’t know what to believe, and who can’t do the research or previsualise the possible outcomes?

Would they ever do the logical thing and flip and coin to see whether to vote Yes or No? Unlikely. Would they decide to switch the points, to vote Yes, as the default action best taken if uncertain? Even more unlikely.

In practice, the undecided voter in this bipolar referendum will vote No. Their vote may not be a real ‘No!’ at all. It may simply be a vote of ‘Not Yes’ and this is a major flaw in the voting process. There is no third box on the ballot paper with:

UNDECIDED – I DON’T KNOW

written down to be checked with a cross as the most accurate choice for that voter.

This means that hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of genuinely undecided and neutral voters will vote No because they mistakenly see this as representing a neutral position.

So please, when discussing the vote with people you know are intending to vote No because they ‘have doubts’, suggest that the most honest action to take is NOT TO VOTE AT ALL. A No vote should only be cast if you are actively anti-independence and actively support ultimate government from London via a subordinate Scottish Parliament.

Think hard whether your intended ‘No’ vote should instead be simply no voting at all.

My feeling is that if you are undecided, doubtful, and uncertain about the future of Scotland you already accept that a majoirty No vote will place that future in the hands of others for generations to come. It will forfeit many key powers to Westminster when these powers could be held, forever, by Scotland. If you are willing to accept this, and understand the limits of Scotland’s influence in future over these powers and decisions, then you should be equally willing to accept the referendum decision made by your neighbours who have done their research, reached their conclusions and have firm positive reasons to vote Yes or No.

Do not add your indecision to one side of the referendum only. Do not make your own neutral position turn into a vote. If you are voting with a partner or spouse and you are both equally undecided and unconvinced by either side, do not distort the outcome by donating your vote to ‘Better Together’ by default – at the very least, agree for one to vote Yes, the other No, to reflect your neutrality. Or abstain, like members of a committee who can not agree to support or oppose a motion because they don’t really think the motion is necessary.

You have been deprived of the neutral or middle position, Devo Max, by decree of Westminster because they have understood from the outset that an undecided position still held by polling day would normally translate to a No vote and rarely if ever to Yes.

If you really do not know, do not vote No. Do not vote at all.

This is the one kind of polling where an abstention can actually count. Forget your conditioning that voting is a good thing. It is not a good thing if you vote for one choice simply because it looks like not voting, like ‘no change’. Change is now certain, either way. You can not vote for ‘No Change’ by voting ‘No’.

– David Kilpatrick

 

 

Scotland’s Yes and No in the balance

Monday, September 1st, 2014

I am not a blogger. I don’t make political posts or comment through my business web pages, or through the insignificant medium of the magazines I publish. That’s more or less saved for Facebook likes and occasional comments on other blogs and websites. You may be able to deduce my views and you may agree or disagree with some of them, but most of the time my political views are not why I’m here and certainly not why I publish.

This month, however, there’s something which is bigger than politics although it feels exactly like politics to some people, and that is the Scottish Referendum on Independence. It’s fair to say that even before we moved to Scotland 26 years ago I would have favoured Scottish independence. Now I’m worried that this simply won’t happen, despite a general consensus that the broad political mix presided over by the SNP at Holyrood has proved to be intellectually and morally superior to Westminster’s two houses.

I’ve spent time observing the Yes and No campaigns, which voters they affect, and how they affect them. I have friends and neighbours who will vote No, and perhaps rather more who will vote Yes… because so many of my friends are anarchic, exuberant, hopeful dreamers and imaginative thinkers. They are doers, builders, creators and agents of change. They want to live in ‘interesting times’. Independence, if it comes, will energise them whether they are teenagers or pensioners.

And these are exactly the kind of people that the No campaign lacks any connection with. My observation is that the No campaign – if not all No voters, many of whom are merely undecided and apprehensive bystanders – is vehemently conservative, patronising, patriarchal, anti-creative and firmly committed to preserving the status quo.

So today I took a small camera out for a short drive. I had seen what I considered to be a most offensive (and equally expensive) weatherproof banner appearing along roads bordering farmland. I wanted to photograph this. It says everything you need to know about how the landowners (mostly sitting in the Westminster House of Lords) and their tenants (unable to hold any opinion of their own) and perhaps their workers (ditto) view Scotland and Scots people.

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This may be a major graphic design fail, but someone actually had to brief the unfortunate would-be artist on exactly what this strangely mis-shapen and aggressively-puzzled frowning figure should look like.

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Now I just don’t think I would LIKE the committee, or individual, who instigated and approved this icon for a United Kingdom seen from a (subordinate and maybe subservient?) Scots ‘loyal’ perspective.

The farming community in the Borders, despite the vast amount it loses under the present handling of EU support through a Westminster government which favours English farming to a manifold degree, is entirely in the pocket of old money and old ideas. Fortunately this is not how most Scots see themselves or their relationship with England, or their part in the UK. I’m sure this particular banner is firming up the resolve of Yes voters.

There are many more large placards in farm fields. You won’t see many, if any, Yes art-installations (give or take a few badly defaced No examples, which are no credit to the spraypaint skills of the Yes partisans involved).

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This double poster visible from the passing bus is not a minor undertaking for anyone except a farmer with all the materials, land and labour needed to erect it. This is a pretty substantial temporary advertising hoarding.

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And just down the farm road from the corner where the ‘delighted to be united’ banner is fixed, a little too far away to get into a single image with any effect, is a sign which helps us understand where all this is coming from.

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In Heiton, there were both Yes and No placards and stickers on display.

I was not trying to find just the No posters. I wanted to see how many Yes and No examples I saw, taking the road to get to this poster (from Kelso through Heiton, Border country not far from England, in an area with a great mixture of locals, Scots from all over Scotland, English and much welcomed folk from Europe and the wider world).

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If you think that Yes affirmations are rarely as big as the No campaign, No stickers in windows can be even smaller. I don’t think this is necessarily because the No voters are frightened of a stone through the window or a scratch on the car – certainly no more so than the other way round, and in this civilised patch of Scotland, unlikely. I certainly would not put a Yes (or No) sticker on my car and park it in Edinburgh or Glasgow.

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That’s a very small No in the house door.

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In Kelso, that’s a pretty big No in the car window. Hopefully, it’s removed when driving, as it would be terrible for the police to appear to be partisan by asking the driver to stop and remove the obstruction to rear vision!

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And then we do get subliminal messages – LIDL may be European, but in Scotland, it’s very Scottish (except for the car park fines).

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You might also suggest that this huge charity sponsorship poster indicates some kind of commitment to social change. It’s good thing that Kelso’s bourgeoisie is just as likely to be found loading the Land Rover at LIDL as at Sainsbury’s. If there’s one thing the Yes/No issue isn’t, it’s a class thing or an income-group thing or a Scoticity (ethnicity…) thing. Except, of course, that small farming issue of lairds, land and labour which appears to distort the balance to anyone driving through the Scottish countryside.

But this should not  let you think that Scotland is the egalitarian, balanced society some media would have you believe – that a vote for Yes will automatically create some Nordic-style levelling of wealth and opportunity. Near the purple No sign, beyond the Duke of Roxburghe’s eponymous hotel and golf course, lies a ‘village’ created to be permanent or rented mansion-style housing for golfers, called Sunlaws (the old name of the hotel and estate). This is a remarkable example of how a local architectural style – the four-square neo-Palladian, post-Adam Georgian villa or farmhouse which Sir Walter Scott so much disliked and thought vulgar and modern back in 1820 – can be used inappropriately.

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In Scott’s day such houses, which do indeed exist in the Borders in their original form, generally sat alone at the heart of a farm estate, or in gardens in the centre of towns. They didn’t sit in groups, even though housing estates and developments were every bit as popular 200 years ago (just look at Edinburgh’s New Town, or any of the Border towns).

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Even the roadway is on an unusual scale, with this three-lane wide turning circle at the foot of the estate. I saw no Yes or No stickers in Sunlaws, just an impressive showcase of executive cars – because this place has no services, no shops, no school, and is totally dependent on car ownership.

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In contrast, I’ll show you this. This was the old Kelso allotment, owned by a committee which discovered it was worth enough to fund their pensions comfortably if sold for housing.

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The allotments were behind LIDL – my view is, in effect from where the wooden fence is now. And these houses were finished a few weeks ago, with families moving in just before the schools went back.

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They make an interesting contrast to Sunlaws – in no less attractive a position (the River Tweed is 100 metres beyond the furthest house you see here) but a mix of social rented and affordable private housing. “I’ve been told that single mothers have got the keys to some of them”, an informed local told me. Indeed, they have, and I spoke briefly to one young mum who had just moved in, agreeing on what a lovely place she had been lucky enough to secure, and how much space there was (wide parking drives, and a park-like fallow field left undeveloped). And it’s two minutes to LIDL, three minutes to the town centre, on foot.

I saw no Yes or No signs here – but I imagine if you could read the thoughts of the burghers of Sunlaws (who have seen their house prices fall, much the same as at the ‘Disney village’ of Cardrona next to another golf course near Peebles) you’d spot very few Yes flags… and here, probably not that many No banners.

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As for me, Shirley and the cats we remain optimistic. There’s still a chance of a bright future for Scotland as the Yes campaign remains forward-looking, imaginative and willing to take some risk for the sake of the future. The No campaign continues to rely on fears and doubts, to sow seeds of uncertainty; there is a nasty undercurrent promoting the guilty feeling that if you vot e Yes, you are somehow Against England, or Against the UK, rather than Pro Scotland.

It is worth saying that most of this polarisation would have been defused completely by the inclusion of the Devo Max option in the referendum vote. Every conversation I’ve had with supporters of both sides indicates that full devolution without statehood would have attracted a firm majority vote. That option was in effect vetoed by David Cameron in person; divide and rule, rather than face the loss of control over an undivided Scotland.

The last word? Well, I couldn’t resist making a small change to that awful ‘delighted to be united’ banner… if only in Photoshop!

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We shall see, on September 19th, what the outcome has been. I will be very disappointed if Scotland decides it can’t face the future and an intimidated majority turns the nation’s face to the wall to go back to sleep for a few more generations, while her ‘partner’ in the UK sneaks out of the marital bed to fight, gamble and put itself about as usual.

– David Kilpatrick