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A little premature for Salmond to use Saudi Arabia tag





Exuberant members of the cast of Whisky Galore – A Musical! in action at Pitlochry Festival Theatre. It runs until mid-November.
Exuberant members of the cast of Whisky Galore – A Musical! in action at Pitlochry Festival Theatre. It runs until mid-November.

‘FRAU Angela Merkel, Has turned full circle. She’s gone non-nuclear, How very peculiar.”

Against the background of the First Minister’s great confidence in a coming boom for Scottish offshore renewables comes a sobering report by consulting engineers Mott MacDonald, commissioned by the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

They were charged with calculating the future costs of producing electricity by the various energy sources. A daunting task when all the many variables are taken into account but particularly the major ones: construction costs, lifetime operational costs (including emission taxes) and, ultimately, decommissioning costs.

Mott MacDonald’s assessment is that in 10 years’ time, when new power stations could be up and running to replace old coal and nuclear that have come to the end of their lives, they will be nuclear – if plants of the type now being built in France, China and Finland are chosen.

These reactors are designed to operate for 60 years and are likely to produce electricity a third cheaper than other forms. Onshore wind, when the cost of having standby generating capacity when there is no wind, is the next cheapest but still a fifth more costly than nuclear.

Offshore wind works out, in the consultants’ view, to be one of the most expensive, even after allowing an eventual reduction in costs by a quarter after economies of scale and experience are taken into account.

Coal and gas are bedevilled by the yet-to-be-proven – but thought to be expensive – costs of carbon capture and storage. So Alex Salmond’s declaration that the North Sea is Scotland’s Saudi Arabia, in terms of usable energy reserves, is just a little premature.

Oh, Angela Merkel. She cites Fukushima as her reason for closing Germany’s nuclear plants but apparently the real reason is to secure political support from other parties to remain in power to carry her through to the next German election in 2013 and beyond.

TWO years ago Pitlochry Festival Theatre (PFT) offered its patrons for the first time in its 58-year existence, a novelty: Whisky Galore – A Musical!

This was a free adaptation of Compton Mackenzie’s life-affirming novel of liquor, larceny and laughter in the Western Isles as the PFT’s first ever full-blown musical. It proved to be its most successful production.

Whisky Galore – A Musical! was revived this year after the normal summer season ended, and I went to see it last week.

For those unfamiliar with the plot, Mackenzie’s story was based on a real event: the loss during World War Two of the SS Politician, wrecked off the isle of Eriskay with a cargo of whisky bound for America. In his totally fictitious reworking of the incident, Mackenzie spins a hilarious tale of the islanders plundering the ship, and how they react to the attempt of the military to recover the stolen whisky.

The story reached a wider audience when Ealing Studios made a film of it after the war. I recall the marvellous moment in the film when a group of islanders gather at night, poised ready to loot the ship’s cargo – then the church clock chimes 12: midnight.

The men’s leader turns to a companion and in horror says, “Hamish,‘tis the Sabbath!” Their Presbyterian consciences troubling them just for the Sunday, they return to their homes, postponing the operation for 24 hours.

That scene did not appear in the PFT adaptation which was a fast-moving riot of incident accompanied by music and dance.

The remarkable aspect of the actors and actresses who come to Pitlochry each year to perform in the summer season’s six plays is not just managing to juggle nightly with the vastly differing roles they have to undertake, but their ability to sing, dance and play a musical instrument or two – or even more.

In the course of Whisky Galore – A Musical!, actor Dougal Lee, in a leading role, is required to exhibit all these attributes, including the playing of five musical instruments!

Whisky was very much in the news locally with the accolade accorded to 21-year-old Old Pulteney malt and the chop given to Prince Charles’s Barrogill malt.

At the same time, the Scottish Government was considering the imposition of minimum pricing of alcohol, although I don’t think they felt the need to curb the consumption of these two expensive whiskies.

Excessive drinking has a long history in Scotland mainly because of the existence of “the Creature”, although it was not usually the choice of the gentry.

For example, James Boswell’s liquor of choice was apparently port and red wine, as he recorded in his diary one day in 1774 when he got completely sozzled from a wander around Edinburgh: “I went home and saw my wife, then dined with the Colonel at his lodgings, and, as he was to be busy, just drank half a bottle of port, then sallied forth between four and five with an avidity for drinking from the habit of some days before.

“I went to Fortune’s; found nobody in the house but Captain James Gordon of Ellon. He and I drank five bottles of claret and were most profound politicians. He pressed me to take another; but my stomach was against it. I walked off very gravely though much intoxicated.

“Ranged through the streets till, having run hard down the Advocates’ Close, which is very steep, I found myself of a sudden bouncing down an almost perpendicular stone stair. I could not stop, but when I came to the bottom of it, fell with a good deal of violence, which sobered me much. It was amazing that I was not killed or very much hurt; I only bruised my right heel severely. I stopped at Sir George’s.” – For another refreshment, no doubt.

MOVING on 70 or so years from Boswell’s intemperance, Wick faced the problem of the excessive drinking of alcohol, especially whisky, at the height of the herring fishing season, with the large influx of men from the west coast.

In response there was a striking rise in the abstinence movement.

This situation continued in Wick right up to the beginning of the 20th century in spite of the consumption of whisky falling due to increased excise duty.

When a Temperance (Scotland) Act was passed at the time of World War One, allowing localities to vote on whether to go “dry”, Wick eventually chose to do so, and from 1922 until 1947 there were no public houses or licensed grocers in the town open for the sale of alcohol.

Dedicated drinkers found a number of ingenious ways of getting round the law, but to learn more read Iain Sutherland’s entertaining booklet Vote No-Licence: The true story of why Wick closed its licensed premises for 25 years.

If the Scottish Government’s current plans for minimum pricing come to fruition, it will be interesting to see whether they make any real impact on alcohol consumption given that Wickers in the last century had little trouble in by-passing the legislation.

WAS this the last straw that prompted the recent Tory revolt over the European Union?

Pythagoras’ Theorem –24 words.

Lord’s Prayer – 66 words.

Archimedes’ Principle – 67 words.

Ten Commandments –179 words.

Gettysburg Address – 286 words.

US Declaration of Independence – 1300 words.

US Constitution with all 27 Amendments – 7818 words

EU regulations on the sale of cabbages – 26,911 words.

Leslie Rowe

leslierowe123@btinternet.com

Pessimistic about future of the Corr

THE Corr, a traditional Scottish longhouse with 158 acres of land, situated off the A9 at Latheron, was put on the market recently. Offers closed last Friday and the property’s fate is as yet unknown.

The Corr attracted much attention because, in the words of the selling agent, Georgesons, it is a historic property – a unique example of a way of life which is in danger of being lost. It is a “listed, category A” building (the highest classification which Historic Scotland allocates to buildings of “national or international importance”; only eight per cent of all its listings come into this category).

Bunty Gunn, retiring chairman of the Highland Buildings Preservation Trust (which among its projects in the North acquired the mill at Forss and converted it into living accommodation) and who lives nearby, hopes the croft can be saved.

The land might well be sold separately with the croft buildings left available at a modest price. But even if a charitable funding body could be found to make a grant to restore the property, the real problem would be to make it pay its way as a visitor centre. It would be competing with neighbouring Laidhay and Mary-Ann’s croft at Dunnet.

Old buildings require a great deal of maintenance and both these centres, with reduced visitor numbers in the past few years, are finding it hard to keep their heads above water.

One particular maintenance problem the Corr would face is re-thatching. The thatch used at both the Corr and Laidhay is rush which has a relatively short life of six to eight years. When Laidhay was last thatched the bill ran into five figures, and even the small thatched pig’s house at Mary-Ann’s Cottage made a nasty dent in its funds.

To the worry of attracting enough visitors to cover the running costs of the centre must be added the concern as to whether sufficient volunteers could be found to run it. In an ideal world the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) would be the organisation to take on the Corr, and the NTS membership might boost visitor numbers to make it viable.

But financially NTS is in a parlous state and even the nearest property – Hugh Miller’s Cottage at Cromarty – was recently at risk of closure.

All in all one can only be pessimistic about the survival of the Corr.


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