It’s been a while. For this blog at least. We have been busy in other spheres. The rumour that we went to jail again is unfounded. The word is busy. Busy +++.
Bands, day jobs, consulting, contracting, agitating, politicking, making trouble. That has been the watchword of the day.
Since we last updated GTF, the Smurph has been appointed to be leader of “Scottish” Labour, whatever that may be. It is simply an accounting unit within the great british Her Majesty's loyal opposition Labour Party.
Murphy of course is a career politician. He has never had any other kind of a job. Like me (I am slightly older) he benefitted from a public policy of Grants for students. We got our education at the public expense. When an official of the National Union of Students Murphy was one of those who strove to ensure there would be no opposition to the abolition of grants.
One difference between Murphy and myself is that the public has continued to fund him at vast expense to represent himself in the House of Commons.
There are other differences between Murphy and myself. I am a truthful sort of a person (by and large, white lies are not unkown to me). Telling lies is second nature to Murphy. He can look you in the eye and tell a blatant lie. You know it’s a lie and he knows it’s a lie, yet not a flicker of unease crosses his brow. That talent is the secret of his climb up the greasy pole of Labour stardom.
His partners in crime Blair McDougall and John McTernan are similarly strangers to the truth. They should thank their lucky stars we live in a peaceable society. Being tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail would be the least of their worries.
It is always good to vent one's spleen by giving in to the temptation to play the man and not the ball. The egregious nature of Murphy’s offensiveness is so staggering that it might almost be designed to attract scorn for the man and to avoid critical appraisal of his policies.
Hi proclamation that the “Scottish” Labour Party opposes the practise of “fracking” was followed up by his failure to vote for a moratorium on the practise at Westminster. Murphy was busy at the time attracting the ridicule of Aberdeen fans by playing keepie uppie at Pittodrie.
With no shortage of hubris, he then takes credit for the Scottish Government policy stopping fracking in its tracks. Not content with that he hitched himself to the campaign led by Women for Independence opposing a new women's’ prison. He then has the gall to suggest that Women for Independence were supporting HIS campaign.
A man who raises lying to an art form is no freakish exception in “Scottish” Labour. Margaret Curran MP tweeted that she had voted for a moratorium on fracking at Westminster, when the record showed that she had voted against a moratorium.
Bare-faced, brass-necked, hard-enamelled lying.
On another note. It’s been a while so let us wax fulsome in our choice of topics to exercise our minds.
The media reported the other day that two directors of Usan Salmon Fishing pleaded guilty to an offence relating to leaving nets in the water at forbidden times. It is not permitted to have fixed engines (coastal nets) in the water between 6pm on Friday and 6am on a Monday. The nets themselves are in the water for only a few months over summer.
The weekend "close time" was a great boon to those of us who worked in the fishery as we got some time off. The rest of the week was four hours on and eight hours off to work the nets on the tides. It was handy for the fish as well.
The end of every week was marked by “takkin in the leaders”. This meant hauling in the walls of netting which led the fish into the traps. This was no mean feat when they had been in the water for nearly a week. Covered in weed and slime and other (all too human in its origin) detritus. It was a major effort. I think if I had to do it now I would be knackered in minutes. A young person’s job.
It did mean going out in all weathers because the time was fixed. Going alongside rocks being pounded by waves in an open Coble to unhitch the end. Fending off the rocks when the boat was going up and down like a Fiddler's elbow. Steaming out to the sea end hauling hand over hand of heavy netting over the side of the boat.
The Pullar brothers (George skippered a Coble I served a season in ) will be sentenced in the future and have the opportunity to make pleas in mitigation. There may well be mitigating circumstances, I cannot tell. Neither can anyone else till all this comes to light.
What does trouble me about all this is the glee with which the proprietary landed interests have greeted this process. Part of me can’t help but believe that if they are so happy about this conviction, then right is on the side of Usan Salmon (at least in this instance).
Angling for wild salmon in this country of ours is a sport for wealthy men (nearly always men). The coastal salmon netting fishery takes about 7% of all the wild salmon caught. That means that 93% is caught by anglers. If you don’t think that Salmon Angling is a sport for the wealthy, try renting a beat on the Dee for a week.
Salmon fishing rights are one of the many rights that can attain to ownership in land in Scotland. This is yet another of the inequitable aspects of land ownership in Scotland.
Landed wealthy interests control most wild salmon fishing to their own fiscal advantage. Wild salmon are a natural resource that should belong to everyone (and no-one) in Scotland. The fishery (both rod and net) should be regulated in the public interest like almost every other fishery.
We would then be done with the notion of landed interests giving themselves a “Greenwash” by attacking small-scale artisanal netting.
In this as in so many other questions, Land Reform is an essential condition of the answer.
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