Bees, and independence
About ten years ago, when the Scottish National Party was still in opposition (and I was still an active member), I confronted Nicola Sturgeon after a party meeting and told her that if I heard her say 'the minister must resign' just one more time, I'd tear up my membership card and leave the party. We've heard very little of that refrain from the party since; not, I suspect, so much because of what I said (although I hope it helped), as because for a good part of that time the party has been in power.
Don't get me wrong: I still want independence. It's unfinished business. And I honestly think it will make the world (and Scotland) a better place. I still work for it. I still campaign for it. But it isn't, for me, the most important issue on the the political agenda now, by a long way. The most important issue on the political agenda has to be the preservation of the planet as a viable habitat for humans into the future.
That is very challenged at the moment. It's challenged first and foremost by global warming, and the most important contributor to global warming is burning fossil fuels, which makes all the arguments about whose is the oil under the north sea a bit moot. It would be better for all of us if the oil stayed where it belongs, under the north sea, and the carbon it represents was never returned to circulation. But another very significant challenge is ecocide, the accelerating destruction of major parts of the ecosystem which supports all life on this planet. And one of the key elements of ecocide is the genocide of the bees.
A rant concerning bees and poison
This is the text of an email I have just sent to Richard Lochhead MSP (Richard.Lochhead.msp@scottish.parliament.uk), the current Minister for Rural Affairs. I very strongly urge you to write to him, too. I strongly urge you not to copy my text, not least because my text is extremely intemperate, but also because the more different messages he gets from different people the more persuasive it will be.
Standingstone Farm, Auchencairn, DG7 1RF
Dear Richard Lochhead
Harem: Notes and clarifications
Harem is fiction, but it's fiction based in the real world. However, it's a real world slightly modified.
In part seven, Fiona says to the American journalist that 'there is no road' from Seyðisfjorður to Loðmundarfjorður. In the book, she's deliberately lying; in the real world, she's right. There is no road, and, furthermore, if there were a road, although she's right that it's only eight miles, it would be a tough ride on a bike with a wean on the back — there's a high (and steep) ridge to cross. I do not know whether there are really hot springs in Loðmundarfjorður, but it isn't very likely — it's quite a long way from current volcanic activity. The Kárahnjúkar dam, and the aluminium smelter at Reyðarfjörður it was built to serve, are real, and the controversy over their building was real and painful in Iceland. Indeed, all the places I describe in Iceland, with the exception of the house at Loðmundarfjorður and the road to it, are real.
Blackwater tarn, and the house on it, do not exist. If they did exist, they would be somewhere near the hamlet of Holm, above Holmfirth in West Yorkshire. The unnamed village in which Jane Wilkinson lives (end of Part Two) is entirely imaginary.
Harem: Genesis
On the 25th November 2005, the footballer George Best died. Of course I was vaguely aware of who he was; he'd been, in the real sense of the word, a celebrity for most of my life. But I knew only the grossest outline of his career. After his death, I read a long obituary — possibly in the Observer — and was interested enough to later watch a television documentary about his life. It struck me as extraordinarily sad that a young man of such talent had been so overwhelmed by sudden wealth and the sudden sexual availability of women that it had essentially destroyed his life. It started a train of thought running, about how a young man, far from home, would cope well with those pressures.
That's one of the roots of my novel Harem, and it's the root which actually started me writing. But it's not the only root, and arguably not the main one.
I was brought up a Quaker and a pacifist. The problem of conflict in society was something that interested me as a young man: what its functions and evolutionary drivers were, and how, in a civilised society, we manage and control it. I was interested by a paper by Johan Galtung of the University of Lund on 'Entropy and the General Theory of Peace'. In this paper, Galtung argued that messier and more complex interrelationships between groups and nations led to more frequent, lower level, more easily resolved conflicts, and that by contrast simpler, more clear cut, more structured interrelationships — such as the then current stand-off between the NATO and Warsaw Pact powers — would lead to fewer but much more intense, destructive and hard to resolve conflicts.
Average size of holdings
I posted yesterday about the exponential land tax, and that's raised some questions about how it would affect ordinary farms. So as background data, here is some information about the average size of holdings.
| Territory | Average holding size (Ha) | Source | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| USA | 181 | US Department of Agriculture | Quoted as 449 acres |
| Czech Republic | 152.4 | European Commission | |
| Scotland | 101 | Scottish Government | 2010 data |
| UK | 70.8 | European Commission | 2007 data |
| Denmark | 62.9 | European Commission | |
| Germany | 55.8 | European Commission | |
| Sweden | 43.1 | European Commission | |
| Netherlands | 25.9 | European Commission | |
| Norway | 21.6 | European Commission | |
| Italy | 7.9 | European Commission | |
This broadly confirms my belief that the average size of holdings in Scotland is unusually large. My broader argument, of course, is that it is pathologically large, but this post is about data, not argument, so I won't expand on that here. The only country in the EU which currently has an average holding size larger than Scotland's is the Czech Republic, at 152.4 hectares (2010 figures, source European Commission). It's worth noting, however, that across the EU as a whole, the trend in holding size is upwards, and this is particularly true in eastern Europe; the average Czech holding size has doubled in the decade 2000-2010.