Farewell, Godfrey. Requiescet in pace
Spray-painted onto the side of the cattle crush at Standingstone is a white 'Yes'. It's one of the last marks Godfrey made there, when he was preparing to spray 'Yes' onto his blue van shortly before the referendum; I don't think we'll paint over it any time soon. Godfrey — that gentle, modest, self-effacing man — has many memorials, scattered half across the world, but Standingstone, so precious to me and to all of us who live there, is not the least of them. It was he who started the conspiracy, and his steady patient enthusiasm which helped carry us through the complex negotiations which led up to buying the farm. It's right, of course, that his ashes should be scattered at Taliesin which he did so much to create and which he loved so much, but something of him will be with us on our windy hilltop for ever.
We buried Godfrey today, or at least consigned him to the flame. To everyone who was there, I apologise for not staying longer at the wake, but I think you all know how bad I am with crowds.
I'm startled and unsettled at how upset I am.
Heritability and taxation
The more I've thought about land reform over the past few months, the more convinced I've become that the heritability of land is the key to the problem.
People need security of where they live; it isn't good for anyone to live under threat of eviction from their home. Management of land is a long term issue. It's easy to make good profits out of land in the short term by depleting its long term capital of topsoil and nutrients; at the same time, Scotland needs productive, sustainable agriculture. So farmers should be confident they have their land in the long term. Many other enterprises, which employ many people and contribute significantly to the wealth of the nation, depend on capital plant which is built at a fixed location and cannot be conviently or economically relocated.
The Levellers Rant — just the verse
[I originally posted the Levellers Rant eight months ago, following the death of Margaret Thatcher, as part of a long essay. Go there for the background, and the arguments, behind it. But I've found as time has passed that I think about it more and more. It's rough, demotic verse at best; but yet it says a great deal of what I have to say.]
The wicked witch is lately dead
The tower clock is silenced
That else had toll'd her to her bed
Ding Dong. Yet when all's said
Her hagiographers are read
She's cast a sanct, her people led
Tae 'freedom', a land promised -
Her people, no us lesser bred
It's time tae rise as levellers again
Ilk' pauper pays their Vee Aye Tee On aa they need tae live or dee Fae whilk the lairds aa dip their fee Their 'agriculture subsidy' On land they lang syne stole fae ye Land that they haud, whit's mair, scott free Sall we bide douce, an let this be? It's time tae rise as levellers again
An unlamented year
It's been a bad year.
It's been a bad year for a lot of reasons. I needed a job; in January I took a job with a company with an office in Glasgow. The people I worked with there were good people, but the company is an evil one, and I felt profoundly tainted by my association with it.
When I took the job I'd hoped I would only need to work there a few months, but running a flat in Glasgow as well as my home turned out to be even more expensive than I expected and I did little more than break even; so I've been away from home a full year. My home is very important to me. I dislike crowded places, I dislike cities. I like having time to think, time to read and to write. I have spent a year on a cycle of eat, sleep, work, repeat; sleeping in my own bed no more three nights a week. This is not a life I want to lead.
Of Discipline, and Conscience
Craig Murray is a man whose personal reputation has been so traduced in over a decade of unattributable monstering by the British state and the main stream media that it's hard to form a good assessment of his character. That he is somewhat vain, inclined to depression, prone to hyperbole I can believe; monstering has to be based on exaggerating characteristics that really exist. That he has had problems with drink would not under the circumstances be surprising. I can believe, also, that he could make a difficult and challenging member of a team.
The SNP have chosen not to make him a member of their team. That is their prerogative — and I say 'their' advisedly as I am no longer a member. However, the SNP is still the party of which I am not a member, and consequently I'm interested in and concerned for their future; and especially interested as it's very likely they hold in their hands the future of my nation.