Food in Argyll

Our boiler was due for its annual maintenance, but when the man came to service it he said it was unsafe, and stuck a sticker on it saying it should not be used.  Unfortunately, the only people who can fix it are those from the company who built it, and they seem to be so busy that we could only book an appointment with them ten days hence.  Ten days without hot water or heating.  So there was little else we could do but head for a hotel with a spa, and I decided that Argyll would be a good location.  Very nice it was, as well, but after wallowing in the pool, steam room and sauna for a couple of days we realised we couldn’t afford to live there indefinitely, and so resorted to pitching the campervan at some very attractive sites, also in Argyll.

Another reason for leaving the hotel was that the evening meals there were a bit meagre.  Tasty, but short on substance.  Above is a photo of the first course, which was shared between the two of us.  The breakfasts were very substantial, so we didn’t go hungry.

Argyll is a very attractive part of Scotland, and a region we don’t know too well, so it was a delight to cruise the backroads, walk in the hills, and investigate the villages.

We ended up at Tayvallich for one night, where we enjoyed an excellent and satisfying meal at the Tayvallich meal.  It’s the only pub and restaurant in the village, but the food is glorious.

Lindsey’s main was scallops in a garlic sauce, with fries on the side.  Mine was scallops in a creamy sauce, with peas and mashed potato on black pudding.  I asked Lindsey if I could taste hers, but she would not part with even a morsel, so good was it.

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The Road to Somewhere

Regular readers of this blog will know that my Friend Fat Mac is completely ‘aff his heid’, as we say in Scotland.  For a start, he is stuck in the 1970s.  All of his attitudes and his perspectives on things haven’t really changed since those days, even to the extent of which bars he will drink in.  He likes old-time bars full of old grumpy men.  Nowhere is he more stuck than in his politics – his are to the far left.  He’s still waiting for the day the working classes rise up and create some sort of Stalinist miracle.  Of course, if the working class still exists at all, it is much reduced nowadays, and I joke with him that many folk are actually ‘previously working class’.  Fat Mac hates the ‘effin Tories’ because, under Thatcher, they destroyed his idyllic ‘sivinties’ lifestyle, and while I was never a fan of Thatcher I can’t see what was idyllic about high inflation rates, mass unemployment, power-cuts, the three-day working week and violent political conflict in the seventies.  Because of his thirty-five year dislike of the ‘effin Tories’, Fat Mac also supports independence for Scotland, and to put this in context, some time ago Donald Dewar noted: “the only parent of devolution was Margaret Thatcher”.  I don’t think Fat Mac actually cares very much about independence per se, but sees it rather as a possible way to get back at the Tories.

I think Fat Mac was overly influenced by the cowboys and indians films he watched when growing up in the 1950s, where there were always goodies and baddies, with the goodies winning in the end, and to him, this black and white situation transferred to politics during his formative years.  Now, he can’t seem to realise that many things have moved on since the seventies and that the political scene has completely changed.  I think it is fair to say that the UK Labour Party has recently swung to the left, and this has given Fat Mac new heart, though whether Labour is now electable is another question.  I reckon that the next election, when it comes, may see a really low voter turnout, so anything could happen.

Mac should read The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics, by David Goodhart.  It is a very good analysis of certain features of modern UK politics, and how they have moved on in the last two decades during which Mac has been AWOL.  Goodhart, a member of the Labour Party, shows that the old left and right, based largely on class, is long gone.  In its place, Goodhart maintains, there are now, to great extent, ‘Somewheres’ and ‘Anywheres’.  I won’t try, in this blog post, to define in detail the Somewheres and Anywheres, because Goodhart writes at length about both groups and stresses, again and again, that they are not uniform, but in essence, the Anywheres welcome change and are not nostalgic about the past, they tend to be individualists and internationalists who are not strongly attached to large group identities, they tend to be better educated and value autonomy and self-realisation rather than community and tradition and see themselves as liberals (with a small ‘l’).  Anywheres voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU in the UK referendum.  Somewheres tend not to have gone to university, they tend to be conservative (with a small ‘C’) and often vote Conservative, though many voted UKIP, they tend to earn less, they don’t generally welcome change, are nostalgic for what they see as a lost Britain and have strong group attachments.  They voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU in the UK referendum.

It’s much more detailed and complicated than that, as Goodhart is at pains to explain, but the above is the essence, and I think that his definitions work better nowadays than class definitions, although there is obviously some overlap.  Goodhart writes that many Anywheres tend to dismiss the concerns of the Somewheres, and this frustrates the Somewheres and makes them even more determined.  He tries to address how Anywheres can be more understanding of Somewheres, in the knowledge that there are more Somewheres than Anywheres, rather than just dismissing them as, well, dumb traditionalists and stupid Brexit voters.  Somewheres are often populists, but this can confuse things as there is no agreed definition of populism.  Populism can be right-wing or left-wing, as has been shown in different parts of Europe in recent elections.  Populists are often hostile to elites of many kinds, bankers, politicians, intellectuals and even experts.  On top of all of this are changes in the ways that people become involved in politics, with membership of trade unions very much declining over the past 25 years, along with membership of political parties (notwithstanding several recent surges), and more expression via social media.  As Goodhart writes “The elite political filter once provided by the conventional party system and traditional media has been broken; the voice of the people, angry or otherwise, spills out everywhere” and this has often benefitted populists.

This is a wide-ranging book.  Goodhart covers politics in the UK, Europe, the USA and elsewhere in his attempts to explain many recent changes and the emergence of Anywheres and Somewheres, but always stresses the many differences between the situations in different places, often backed up by statistics.

We know that immigration was a big issue in the Brexit vote, and Goodhart discusses immigration in some detail, and the differences between how Somewheres and Anywheres regard the issue.  I want to be careful in what I say about immigration to Britain, because it is an emotive issue.  I have twice been an immigrant myself, once in Malawi, where I had no intention of remaining longer than my two-year contract, and once in Botswana, where I did consider staying longer.  In neither case did I work for financial gain (my salary in Malawi was a fraction of what I would have been earning in the UK, and while I earned more in Botswana than Malawi, it was still less than my UK salary), but there must be some other similarities with those who come to work in Britain.  I’m not, however, pretending that I understand immigration.  I would say, though, that we tend to think of immigration only in how it has an effect on British society – it helps in providing qualified, and sometimes unqualified, labour, and it can have a detrimental effect on demand for services and housing, etc.  What about the effect on the places immigrants come from?  The population of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania decreased as a result of (mostly) well-educated people emigrating to western Europe.  The IMF estimatd that 20 million people have left eastern Europe over the last 25 years.  Highly, and expensively, trained doctors leave developing countries for the west, causing a brain drain in their countries of origin.  Immigration therefore has negatives as well as positives.

What I don’t understand, even after reading The Road to Somewhere is the supposedly inviolable connection between freedom of movement and the European single market.  Freedom of movement is based on EU citizenship legislation, and not on the requirements of the single market, as far as I can see.  Somewheres see immigration, but more specifically freedom of movement within the EU, as a threat to themselves, their livelihoods and their ways of living.  Few people in Britain ever bought into the concept of being European, rather than their original nationality.  Whether right or wrong, this needs to be recognised.  It is also an important issue for the SNP to address in Scotland, though the SNP currently seem more interested in making gains out of a poor Brexit agreement (or non-agreement).

Fat Mac really should read this book, and in doing so will hopefully be able to move forward from the seventies.

Dictatorland

I saw Paul Kenyon talk about his book Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa, at a joint presentation with Tom Young who spoke about his book Neither Devil Nor Child: How Western Attitudes Are Harming Africa, which I mentioned a few weeks ago in this blog.  The two authors could hardly be more different – Tom Young is an academic who teaches at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and Paul Kenyon is a BBC correspondent who has contributed to various television documentaries.  Their books are very different as well.  Young’s work is scholarly and full of insights, with a central hypothesis about aid to Africa, and Paul Kenyon’s is less dry and more entertaining.

Kenyon tells some fairly well-known tails about various African dictators, including Mobutu, Mugabe, Gaddafi, Houphouet-Boigny, Abacha, Afwerki and Macías Nguema, and relates them to various lesser-known individuals who were caught up in the various episodes.  He thus adds human elements to the historical processes.  This mostly works, though the chapter on Nigeria becomes rather cluttered with big and bit part players.  Nigerian politics in the 1980s and 90s were complex, confusing and almost universally corrupt.  Since then, much progress has been made towards democracy.

Where countries were rich in natural resources, such as oil or diamonds, dictators often took advantage to plunder the riches for their own bank accounts.  This didn’t happen in Botswana, where democracy has flourished, so it wasn’t an inevitable process, but often dictators were supported by multi-national companies, or by the West or East during the Cold War.  It all makes for sombre reading.  Most of the dictators in question were nutters, though Macías Nguema stands out amongst them as completely and utterly mad (according to Wikipedia “…perhaps fueled by his consumption of copious amounts of bhang and iboga“).  In 1975 about 150 of his opponents were executed at the football stadium in Malabo, while amplifiers played Mary Hopkin’s song “Those Were the Days”.

Kenyon has met a number of people who were directly involved with the various dictators, and sometimes includes their stories.  Africa is not full of mad dictators, of course, though there have been quite a few, and it is important to realise that nearly all of them are no longer in power.  One dictator who remains is Isaias Afwerki, who has made Eritrea into a very hostile place.

I particularly enjoyed reading the chapter about Côte d’Ivoire and Houphouët-Boigny, because I knew very little about this country and its past.  French West Africa has an interesting history.  It is hard to believe, but on several occasions during World War II, Free France forces fought with Vichy France forces in Africa.  De Gaulle was involved in the fighting in Gabon.

You never know what you’ll see next

It is festival time, here in Edinburgh.  The city is very busy, there are countless events and performances, and you never know what you may see round the next corner.

Bubbles in the Meadows

The Pleasance

George Street

George Square

Bognor

After attending the Test Match at Edgbaston, we drove further south and eventually reached the coast.  There are many attractive towns along the coast, but Bognor Regis, in my humble opinion, isn’t one of them.  Sorry, Bognor.

A most peculiar sign, seen near the beach at Bognor

Neither Devil Nor Child

Neither Devil Nor Child: How Western Attitudes Are Harming Africa, by Tom Young.

I found this book full of fascinating insights which, despite extensive readings on Africa, I did not already know.  It was slightly heavy going at times, but worth the effort.

I had no idea that there were so many NGOs operating in Africa.  Young estimates that there were between 8,000-9,000 in 1988, but by 2005 this had risen to nearly 99,000 in South Africa alone.  Kenya had 6,000 in 2008, Tanzania had 10,000 by the year 2000.  Young states that many of these are ‘briefcase’ NGOs set up merely to funnel funds into their directors’ pockets.  That gives you a flavour for where Young is coming from.  He is not a big fan of aid.

Africa has received about $1 trillion in aid over the past sixty-five years.  In 2014, for example, Britain spent £11.4 billion on foreign aid, of which almost 40% went to Africa.  Young looks at many examples of aid initiatives, and then the effect of all of this aid and concludes that it “…has had some impact on poverty; probably does not explain much growth, and has done little if anything to bring about economic transformation.”  He then looks at why such huge amounts of aid resources have not had a greater effect.  If you want to know all of the reasons, you’ll have to consult the book, as there are too many to list, but the final ones are that aid induces dependency, aid becomes a substitute for domestic policymaking, aid can cost money to implement (in terms of salaries of those involved), aid can contribute to the poor accountability of African states to their own people, and aid can reduce credibility of their own domestic policies.

Young reckons that aid in Africa appears to be as much about transforming people in the image of Western modernity, as anything else: “Such a project is often thwarted; practical politics often dictate compromise; the vagaries of international relations, and the fickleness of Western public opinion, shift energies from one campaign to another.  Realities intrude: it is simply easier to bomb Libya than Zimbabwe.  But underneath these swirling currents and tactical shifts lies a dogged determination to make Africans like us.” There are numerous damaging consequences of this determination, which Young analyses.

Young also addresses issues around aid which has been provided to reduce conflict.  In the case of Sudan, those in the north were ‘nasty’ (very nasty) to those in the south, those in the south capitalised on the situation, played the part of a state in waiting, and received much aid and assistance.  Shortly after South Sudan held a referendum and became independent, the fragile SPLA alliance shattered and conflict broke out between various groups, with great resulting violence.  $4 billion went missing.  Young concludes that “It is not at all clear that the foundation of a new state in South Sudan was a step forward.”  This is but one example of many where the West has intervened to prevent conflicts, only to make them worse.

Then he looks at how aid can affect the self-esteem of Africans.  Too often they are portrayed as helpless, and in need of assistance from the West, even though that aid does not seem to work and can even make things worse.  The impression in the West is often that Africans can’t do anything for themselves.  This can cause resentment.  There are anxieties about lack of respect.  Africans always seem to be in a subordinate position.  Some, perhaps, start to think that aid is bogus, and not really meant to help solve problems.

The final chapter of this book, entitled ‘Changing Direction’, is extremely thought-provoking.  I may not agree with everything Young writes, but he is a very stimulating author, and I’m looking forward to attending his presentation at the Edinburgh Book Festival in a couple of weeks.

Nowhere in Africa

Nowhere in Africa is an autobiographical novel by Stefanie Zweig.

By page 22 of Nowhere in Africa, when I read the following sentence, I knew I’d enjoy this book:

Regina also loved her Aya, who had come to the farm shortly after Rummler [the dog]. She stood in front of the house one morning after the last bit of red had disappeared from the sky and the black vultures on the thorn-trees moved their heads out from under their wings.

As you may gather, Zweig is a creative writer, with an imaginative style that catches your attention.  At times she is brilliant and humorous, and every now and then so good it brings a lump to your throat.  There’s lots of clever writing:

After the house was finished, Daji Jiwan constructed a kitchen building in the round shape of the native huts, and, after that, very reluctantly, a wooden shed over a deep pit with a bench with three holes in different sizes cut out of it.  The toilet was Walter’s invention, and he was as proud of it as Kimani was of his fields.  He had the wooden door decorated with a cut-out heart, which soon became such an attraction on the farm that even Daji Jiwan made peace with the building, for which he himself did not have any use.  His religion did not allow him to purge his body twice in the same location.

Nowhere in Africa tells the story of a Jewish family who escape Nazi Germany and go to live in Kenya.  Apparently, there were quite a few people who did this, but their new lives were often not easy.  Zweig’s father had been a lawyer in Silesia who spoke little English.  With no previous relevant experience, he became a farm manager in a remote part of Kenya and struggled for a long time.

On the outbreak of WWII, immigrants from Germany, who were mostly Jewish, were rounded up by the Kenyan authorities, and while the men were housed in camps, the women and children were boarded for a while at the Norfolk Hotel (a wonderful colonial-style establishment by the time Lindsey and I had coffee there, forty years later) and the New Stanley Hotel.  Walter eventually joins the British Army in Kenya, where he learns a little English, and towards the end of the book, they prepare to leave Kenya and return to Germany.

This book is wonderfully written.

Last night we watched the movie Nowhere in Africa.  As it was playing through a PlayStation 3 box, at first we had some problems with the subtitles (the DVD was published in Germany), but we enjoyed watching scenes of Kenya, which is surely one of the most beautiful countries.