I had to laugh at ‘pub talk’ claim
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EACH week I am meeting local business people and community activists who share with me and my party a positive vision for Caithness and north Sutherland in this vast three-counties constituency.
I am deeply impressed with the ideas for new developments they have. These can create sustainable jobs and ensure cherished public services keep going. If vital community buses or day centres are under threat, if small rural schools feel they are for the chop, if spin-off jobs are not materialising from the end of work at Dounreay site restoration... that undermines confidence in our future.
Yet I can see that many responses to my current consultation, “Small Works”, are positive and are seeking much more local control of everyday decisions that seem to have become too remote. I had to laugh at one councillor who dismissed my ideas as “pub talk”.
If he didn’t notice that these issues are the core of many discussions between friends and colleagues, perhaps he doesn’t listen to others around him enough in pubs or elsewhere.
I visited estate managers, small factories and several gatherings of community activists from Berriedale to Melness. I’m sure that many more folk would agree with the sentiments of a woman who was concerned about old peoples’ services in north west Sutherland.
She said: “At present it seems that the Highland Council and the NHS do not work for people in communities. Their main concern seems to be their structure and systems. Trust us – listen to us, see how we are, then build services around that view and that situation.”
People across Caithness and all over the small towns and rural areas of the North heartily agree. That is, the feel they want to take more control of the services we require in a civilised and, in world terms, wealthy nation. I am happy to hear all the views on this and to discuss “Small Works” as we proceed.
BY happy coincidence on August 16 this year the centenary of the birth of Ernst Friedrich “Fritz” Schumacher was celebrated. He was an internationally influential economic thinker, statistician and economist in Britain who served as chief economic adviser to the UK National Coal Board for two decades. However, his critical analysis of Western economies and his proposals for human-scale, decentralised and appropriate technologies made him famous.
His 1973 book Small is Beautiful: a study of economics as if people mattered, became widely known in much of the English-speaking world and in many other languages. According to the Times Literary Supplement, Small is Beautiful is among the 100 most influential books published since World War Two.
I’ve read and reread this book over the years and I have never seen it as being more relevant.
Last week I picked up a book of essays by Dunbeath-born Neil M Gunn. It is titled Belief in Ourselves.
As the publisher’s blurb says it is a “collection of essays that focuses on politics in the widest sense, embracing group activity in all its forms from nationalism to both communal work in a social sense and co-operation in crofting and fishing; the focus extends also to literature as a source of inspiration for a nation and a provider of national identity.
“That most of the essays were written between the two world wars – a period of political uncertainty and economic crisis – brings a sense of urgency to the writer in terms of the resolution of the problems and the exploration of the ideas aired by him.
Many of the problems he identifies remain with us, albeit in different forms. Indeed, the imaginative and enlightened way in which Gunn looks at the events of his day have a strange relevance for today’s world.”
Many of these ideas are vital to our discussions today. Thanks to Dunbeath Estate, the publisher Whittles Press is based in renovated traditional buildings in the village Gunn grew up in. More power to their elbow.
So Neil M. Gunn, a Caithness man actively writing in the 1930s and ’40s on his hopes for a sustainable future here, and E.F. Schumacher, a German naturalised in the UK writing in the 1950s and ’60s, both point to very pertinent arguments for us to act on in our times right here and across the nations.
ON my rounds last week I was pleased to check the progress of harbour developments at Scrabster. I saw the huge piles were being slung onto the quay from the MV Raba.
Also the “wood pecker” was chipping steadily through the old foundations around the new berth destined for renewables, oil and other cargos. At Holyrood on Wednesday, our rural affairs, climate change and environment committee took evidence of the work practices of the Crown Estate Commission (CEC) which has a lot of power and regulation over developments such as the Scrabster project.
As the Scotland Bill comes back into parliament, evidence about the money-making schemes of the CEC will be put under scrutiny later in the month.
Scrabster and many other ports, harbours, moorings, fish farms and shellfish growers have had very varied stories to tell. All of which adds to the need for the CEC to be controlled by us in Scotland to aid development, not add stealth taxes to the costs of marine businesses all around our coasts.
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