Walk that line: Suit or Sandals or Suit with Sandals.

There is interest in the set up of Community Interest companies in Cumbria associated with Energy - (Energy Coast paper (see previous blogrant)). An agency was approached to gauge interest and I suppose ultimately some funding. The response, though positive, ended: The problem …. with Social Enterprises is what they do in a Gross Value Added (GVA) model.  Not for Profit companies don't contribute much to The Economy.

Community Interest companies have better buy in and more success over private 'incomers' - so why the caveat?

Superficially the agency is correct. Not for Profit companies shouldn't contribute losses to the economy. However there are quite a few For Profit companies (big ones too - Northern Rock – to name but one) that have not contributed much to the GVA. (Work through that last sentence again before moving on – it's a wee bit convoluted but I think I know what I mean).

It's a very fine line to walk:  the one between profit seeking, sharp suited entrepreneurs and sandaled, socialist do-gooders. The former is seen as dodgy to fund and the latter is also dodgy; but for different reasons. The fact is that government agencies would rather give money to the profit seeking, sharp suited entrepreneur.

Social Enterprises are not agencies redirecting public money for a fee. (Agencies that sometimes spend less on themselves than the money they are given to redistribute). Social Enterprise are sustainable - not for loss (as I prefer to call them) organizations meeting their own costs and able to make a difference and add to the GVA whilst putting any profits back into other social ventures or repaying the funder. They need to have all the controls and processes that normal businesses have – where sensible and appropriate of course. However their focus is to provide jobs and services for the common good and pay fairly its employees and supply partners.

On a GVA basis I would do away with all government funded agencies and just let me decide who gets the money.

Rant over for today.

I haven’t ranted for a while – but there was an item on the news yesterday about contractors and the Office of Unfair Trading that wakened the dragon.

I am not fond of some of the 'big' contracting outfits in the UK and thus am loathe to think well of them whilst they undergo the Office of Fair Trading investigation of uncompetitive practices and collusion. However, I do have a lot of sympathy as I believe that it's the Competition Laws and government buying policies that drive companies to collude or collaborate. The practice is widespread it seems so for some they have colluded unwittingly.

The Office of Fair Trading police are there to find unfair trading, on their dawn raids – and so they will and have done. Their powers are terrifying and encourage people to NOT bid for publicly funded projects. I've very recently retired from a contracting company – they don't build schools or hospitals and are very much of the mechanical/electrical discipline rather than building or civils – so collaboration is unnatural -we don't trust our contracting colleagues (sorry). Nevertheless I am sure that we will have transgressed the competition laws and no doubt we will have colluded.

The whole competitive process is unfair and stacked against the idea of competitive sustainable contracting. We are not talking about cartels here or' ringing' prices for commodities such as cement, bricks and bolts. We are talking about guessing the price of something very complex, like a school or hospital, and then being able to deliver and make 2% net profit. In my experience it is all too easy to guess, I mean, estimate, low by 10%. Making 2% net is pretty good, especially as costs have been known to go up over the life of a project.

About 10 years back I was involved with an initiative driven by the DTI to make contractors more competitive – ACTIVE it was/is called, born out of something called CRINE. Analysis of the acronyms reveals:
- Achieving Competitiveness through Innovation and Value Engineering (if I remember correctly) and,
- Cost Reduction in a New Era.
Basically these mean: early collaboration by clients with contractors; choosing the best contractor most able to do the job; don't compete on price – compete on ability; concentrate on the engineering and project management not on the provision of a cost that equals or is less than the budget; carry out cost and value analysis at every stage of a project; don't replicate roles within client and contractor teams; encourage collaboration through the supply chain … and so on. I know it works, because that's the way my company worked and I saw in ACTIVE the way forward for a sustainable contracting industry.
However, at the same time, government was pushing the answer to life the universe and everything – COMPETITION. How would they build hospitals? How would they decommission the nuclear industry? How would they restore our heritage? - COMPETITION.

I found myself at an ACTIVE workshop at the DTI offices in the morning of the same day, where in the afternoon I attended a seminar at the same office on - COMPETITION. Competition, as described by the men in grey suits, is all to do with getting as many companies as possible to bid for the work and also to bid with the best safety record; best engineering record; best quality record; best corporate social record; best administration record; best financial record. All very laudable but guaranteed under PFI and PPP projects to put costs up drive projects into over-run and companies and clients out of business. 15% of the costs of a PFI are taken up with getting the contract wording 'right' and policing to make sure the contractor doesn't rip off the client. A £10million project thus only has £8.5m available to the contractor to actually build. Where's the 2% profit? The industry is littered with write-offs by PFI contractors.

So, why does competition drive people to collude?.

The tendering process demands much more of the contractor. The ACTIVE approach discourages the growth of pre-contract resources (pre-engineering ?) and claims/clever estimate driven quantity surveying departments. The COMPETITION process does the opposite – confrontation and counter actions cost much more than facilitation and action. My retired from company specialises in Nuclear Decommissioning and Heritage Restoration and they saw their marketing and tendering and post contract effort increase from 2% of staff effort to 9%. These costs have to be recovered from the client thus putting further pressure on the 2% margin.

The competition process usually demands that at least 5 contractors are asked to bid and have to show either in a one stage or two stage process that they are capable of doing the work safely, well and without going bust, whilst investing in the local community for the best value price (lowest). The resources and costs required to prepare the bid – with all the bells and whistles can reach £80k (weigh 22kg and be in 12 lever-arch files) or so for a £5M project. £30k for even the smallest of projects. For 4 of these people this is lost money and they may be struggling for resources or borrowing off other projects. Yet we cannot refuse to bid because we have been asked to and may not get asked again and the client needs to make up the numbers to obey the rules. We have been encouraged through ACTIVE and others to collaborate with our competition and supply chain as the projects have become multidiscipline and clients only want to place one contract. Clients also encourage teaming in the supply chain to fulfil the building of capacity in the locality as tenders over a certain amount have to bid across the European union. Being too busy is no excuse – it makes sense then that the contractor with the resource to produce a good bid and estimate of costs does it and uses his supply chain to help him. Hopefully he is able to guess his costs correctly to allow the 2% margin and pay for the tender and fees to the lawyers. If bidding in a team or consortium it is likely that another member might also be bidding with a member of another consortium – how can there be collaboration without breaking of the competition rules. It's inevitable that the 'others' get some idea of the prices and elect to cover the price of the company likely to win rather than lose face by not putting in a bid. Just ringing up a supplier and saying have the others asked you for a price for supply of pipe and then saying can you copy me in I'm too busy to send you the details and quantities separately can be construed as collusion. One company sending out all the specs to the supply chain instead of five all sending out the equivalent of a small forest in Norway must be a better use of the planet's resources.

On TV yesterday an expert reporter was explaining that Company 'A' had won a hospital contract at £12M because companies 'B' and 'C' had 'covered' the company 'A' prices by bidding £12M plus; the client's budget was £10M – meaning that the tax payer had paid £2M too much. I have a feeling that the real price should have been nearer £15M and contractor 'A' got his estimate wrong. Contractors 'B' and 'C' would still have had to have done a load of work submitting the other tender deliverables even if they didn't work up a proper price. A fixed price bid is a wild guess to 3 decimal places – so my old chief estimator used to say.

I have a solution:
The client should put major effort into working up the right price for the job- he could even pay a contractor – 1 only, or a consortium to provide that price and if necessary value engineer it to the budget. The project could then go out for bidding. Contractors would in effect all bid the same price. "Yes – I can do that project for your budget price of £12M and make 2% profit". The client should then make his decision based on who is most capable of doing the work and has the resource to be able to do it in the timescale.

I'd also be prepared to pay 10% more just for peace of mind and the luxury of not having any claims or employing a shed load of quantity surveyors, lawyers and auditors to argue over the final account. Oh- and I'd also scrap all this KPI based payments and bonus nonsense. By all means measure performance and run KPI's but don't make them a reason to pay or not pay.

There are projects that have gone well under the competitive process. I know of an £8m project, where the public client was brave enough to choose and defend to the auditors the 2^nd lowest bid because he wanted the specialist experience of this particular contractor. The job went well – the QS's were sent away – effort went into engineering and project management not apportioning of blame for the things that were wrong. The project came in well under budget – slightly late. The contractor made 6% and enhanced his own and the client's reputation. An analysis of this project would make good reading but the grey suits would only say 'they should have taken the lowest price and saved the difference'

I could go on… but… back to my retirement lair.

From Western Cumbria to Western Cape Feb 2008 letter 1

We are 4 months in to our first 6 months posting to Dwarskloof Farm.

Dwars is an Afrikaans word meaning 'across'or 'challenge'. It certainly has been a challenge. First the lack of electricians then the floods then the worms then the power cuts then the power surge then the visitors then the crickets then the post office then the insurance claim then the gates then the cv joints on the car and …new tyres… It goes on and on .. it's a relentless challenge. Dwarskloof literally means 'across a ravine'.

We seem to cross the ravine every day. Just posting a letter can be stressful. The post office closed with the demise of the petrol station in November. The petrol station (state of the science new pumps no less) was due to open again in January BUT 'they had the wrong sort of electricity' so it remains fenced off (Feb 2008). Post Office has moved to Municipality buildings but has to be manned (personed?) by a duly authorised post office official from Caledon (22kms distant). Post office hours are 12 noon to 3pm with an HOUR for lunch at 1 pm

7.30: rise and prepare myself for the task of posting a letter during the 12 noon to 1 pm time slot.

11.45: I leave home to travel to town (Greyton)

12.05: I join the queue to buy the required stamps to send a small envelope to Cape Town

12.57: Envelope is measured and weighed and declared to be a standard envelope. The uniformed post office official looks disappointed.

12.59: I am proud possessor of stamps.

1.05 pm: I walk to site of fenced off petrol station and post letter through wire with stick and masking tape device (fashioned earlier in the day)

1.10: order 'coke float' at Oak and Vigne to calm fevered brow.

1.35: receive 'coke float'

1.45: leave Oak and Vigne to travel home (forgetting to pay)

2.00: arrive home

Duration of task 2.15 hours. By now the day is almost over - pointless trying to start another task. I'll wait for RW to break open the new bottle of gin at 6 pm and note that the last time we drove to Capetown it took 2 hours.

Nick And Ben's Bogus Adventure

On Saturday afternoon I took Ben The Trailhound down to Mawbray (as previously blogged), one of his and my favourite spots. Usually he romps along the boardwalk and cavorts on the beach. This time he got a scent within seconds of leaving the car, and was off along the seaward fence towards Allonby. I walked down to the beach, expecting his return (trailhounds have a highly developed topological awareness and if you don't know where they are, they almost certainly know exactly where you've got to). No Ben. I set off along the line of fences to Allonby. No Ben. I walked back. No Ben. Reasoning that he would make for the car, I returned to the car-park. No Ben. I waited patiently until the weather had turned, and horizontal rain powered by a Force 6 gale was lashing the windscreen, before walking along the fence once more. No Ben. So I started knocking on doors. After a diverting but fruitless encounter with Cumbria's celebrity chef (who gave the impression I was by no means the first person to have lost a dog at Mawbray) I soon found the trail. Yes, the chef's neighbours assured me: a trailhound had been here an hour ago. Their friend The Active Citizen, who was visiting them, had taken him home and called the Dog Warden.
After calling The Active Citizen, I eventually got through to Allerdale Borough Council's emergency out-of-hours help desk. "Is it about the trailhound?" they asked when they picked up the phone. Clearly Allerdale was having a slow emergencies day. They gave me the number of the kennels to which their Dog Warden had delivered Ben.
I drove the 15 miles to High Harrington to be reunited with a mildly distressed but unharmed trailhound. The kennel-owner had some difficulty with the fact I wasn't the person on Ben's ID-chip, which led to a certain amount of No, I am not the Renaissance Man, nor was meant to be . . confusion, but after signing off Allerdale Council's paperwork, I was allowed to take Ben home three and a half hours after he first disappeared into the dunes.
The phone rang as soon as we walked through the door. It was The Active Citizen, wanting to know was the trailhound safe and well? I reassured her that he was.
"Was the silver Mondeo in Mawbray carpark yours?" she asked.
Yes, it was.
"Only that's where we found him - he was sitting next to it."
Very politely, I thanked The Active Citizen for her help.
I'm curious to understand how a collared and well-kempt dog, sitting next to an empty car in a place where many people walk their dogs, is in any sense lost, strayed or abandoned. However, it is reasuring to know that Allerdale Council's Dog Warding service is so efficient that it can spring into action and transport a dog 15 miles on a Saturday afternoon before his keeper has any sense that the animal may be lost.
There's a moral about the state of our nation in all this, but I'm not sure what.

The Group Areas Act, 2008

The higher gardening in South Africa seems convulsed by a campaign to eradicate 'alien' flora and populate 'native' species in woods and gardens. My land management friends tell me this is a project doomed to failure, but in a country with a history like South Africa's, it's difficult not to see this approach as a metaphor.
Up on the Wild West Coast at Lambert's Bay, next door to 'Potato World' (incredibly, not a starch-related theme park for the couch-bound but a chip factory - it seems that when the Atlantic fishery got all fished out they diversified into the other half of the fish and chip market), a colony of 16,000 gannets sits atop a quarter-mile-square slab of guano. Things turned ugly a while back when a colony of seals arrived in search of food (a result of the same ecological pressure that caused the fishermen to move in on the potatoes), worked out that what fish there were to be found were inside the gannets and promptly started eating the seabirds. We heard all this over a beer with a tanned and grizzled gannet-warden in the bar of the Lambert's Bay Hotel. His solution to the competition-for-resources problem was admirably simple: the gannets were confined to their white guano-stained slab; the seals to their wave-darkened promontory rocks. A wide no-creature's land was decreed between the two groups and patroled by conservationists. Any seal straying into this area was deterred with extreme prejudice and deported back to its rocky homeland. The DMZ was then fumigated to remove the enticing odour of seal and the status quo preserved. The day we were there both communities seemed quite content with their separate developments. Some things don't change.

The Bright Lights Tonight

Even in Cumbria the northern night skies are no longer the jewelbox of childhood. Light pollution from Carlisle and the coastal towns swamps much of the starlight not already dowsed by the particulates that hang heavy in industrial skies. Here in the populous, over-developed north of the planet you look up and feel yourself solitary in the isolation of a lonely universe.
Down below, in the unpopulated oceanic vastness of the southern hemisphere, the night skies give an entirely different impression. Orion, shorn of his scabbard, sports an enthusiastic erection, a lover not a hunter. The Milky Way streams in incandescant profusion across the sky, and the Magellanic Clouds swarm with light. It's impossible not to feel a local part of so great a celestial network, and the most distant realities seem close enough to touch. Stargazing brings with it a wondrous sense of connection, and I'm looking forward to the next time I see the Southern Cross from a hillside in the Western Cape.

SA closed- back at just after 2

TWIR's reference to 'struggling for some days with the eccentric opening hours of South Africa's public services' may puzzle some. I'm of the firm belief that we could have won the Anglo Boer and Anglo Zulu Wars sooner (if, in deed we did win - discuss?) if we had have attacked at lunchtime.
The local post office in Greyton shares premises currently with the Municipality administration. There appears to be only one member of staff - a bored Afrikaans lady. Her hours of work are 'wait for it': 12 noon to 4 p.m. with an hour for lunch. Although I have never seen her eat her lunch, nor have anywhere to go, other than sit at the other chair; give up hope of collecting the registered letter or buying stamps. Oh! and take along some ID. I didn't. And put in 3 trips and 30 or 40 carbon miles collecting my repaired spectacles. Stress?
The Office of Home Affairs is, how can I put this without hopefully being deported, a bureaucratic nightmare. The red tape and idiotic forms I can sort of live with, and the blu-tacked posters of Mbeki and pals and handwritten 'Our President' labels BUT. Last week we attempted (again) to extend our visitors permit. 50 minutes into the interview, the bureaucrat, unannounced, stood up and strode off to the 'rest area' carrying some of Dion's excellent fish and chips in a Styrofoam box and balancing a tinnie of coke atop, whilst gripping a copy of the SA equivalent of Hello magazine under her chin. It was lunch time. We have not been back. Our permit expired yesterday but I note that the form says that we can stay as long as we have applied to stay, 30 days before expiry... which we did. The form is silent on the need to have the application granted. Looks like we won't be deported afterall. The question is do we go back to the OHA?
Oh .. and ... the pie shop across the road (what's this other SA obsession?- calling shops Pie Land or Mr Pie? Mr Exhaust... Bead Land... Irrigation Land.....Mr Safety Film) was also closed until 2.
I've had a bad week. Forgive me.

Alvin & Ziggy

There being no stars to gaze upon, we arranged a tour of the SALT on its plateau just out of town. The Renaissance Man will probably be blogging about the sheer mechanical engineering of the telescope's intricacies of design. For me the most startling parts of the tour were two exhibits in the visitors' centre exhibition which precedes sight of the telescope. On the floor in the corner of a gallery sits a large, twisted mass of nickel and iron: it's a meteorite, a navel-stone which fell to earth somewhere in the Karoo. Almost reluctantly, I touched it then tapped its surface with my knuckles. It rang metallic, deep and true. There was a cold frisson to this encounter, both a sense of wonder that I was touching something left over from the formation of our solar system and which had been present out there for thousands of millioons of years, but also a feeling that, for all the strange trajectories of its wanderings, I was the unregarded piece of stardust whose course had led me to a brief encounter with something that would endure till the Big Rip.
Round the corner from the meteorite was the cast of a skull, the blank-orbited heavy-browed Australopithecus Africanus, possible ancestor of Homo Sapiens, who was perhaps wandering across the veld when the lump of nickel was still out beyond Pluto. The hominid family tree is such that you and I cannot claim that this individual is a common ancestor, but certainly a very distant cousin, someone with whom we share DNA and perhaps some degree of humanity. It's probably impossible to think your way into the mind of another creature, however close, without the certainty of the shared artefacts of consciousness such as language and a sense of self. But after the coldness of the stone, I was struck by a forceful sense of the reality of the individual, the selfness, that had inhabited the bones and given them life. No doubt s/he had looked up at the stars which gave birth to the twisted nickel a few feet away from us, though what shape and meaning s/he had seen in their patterns I cannot imagine.

SALT & Lamb

The Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) sits atop a plateau in the Karoo about ten miles from Sutherland. The skies are, apparently, particularly clear here, though when we hit town to celebrate the Renaissance Man's birthday with a spot of stargazing low clouds stretched across the sky. We made up for our disappointment with a stay at Jorg's Kambrokind Guest House and dinner at Perlman's Restaurant.
Sutherland really is in the middle of nowhere, a one-street, one donkey-cart town 5000 feet up in the desert and a hundred kilomteres from the next one-horse, one-donkey-cart town. The graveyard records the dead of the Boer War and there's still a palpable feeling of outrage at the English occupation of the town's church in 1901.
And they'll probably still be discussing our dinner at Perlman's a century hence. The restaurant, whose hostess appears to be Judy Dench's separated-at-birth twin, is decorated with memorabilia of Swinging London and specialises in Karoo lamb. The evening was a roaring sucess, fuelled by an endless supply of Beyerskloof Pinotage and the lamp speciality - quite simply the most powerfully delicious I have tasted outside Cumbria. And it culminated in a prolonged singalong - led by the Renaissance Woman and enthusiastically supported by fellow-diners Dave The Astronomical Chancer, a former child prodigy bassoonist, and the president of the local chapter of the Afrikaaner Hell's Angels, who broke off from extolling the virtues of Pink Floyd to show us photographs of his Kawasaki 1300. Worryingly, these were kept in the part of his wallet other men reserve for pictures of wife and children. We went home late. Very late. We're still not sure how the proprietors will react the next time we turn up for dinner . . .

Windsor Castle Revisited

I had been struggling for some days with the eccentric opening hours of South Africa's public services. My goal: buy some stamps for postcards home. Clearly the government's stealth-oriented public service strategy was paying off, because it was the best part of a week before I found the PO in the tiny settlement of Sutherland (see other posts) open at the advertised time of 0800. The clerk duly sold me a strip of stamps. It was only when I was back on the street that I noticed their design, and across the space of fifty years felt an intense and utterly unexpected rapport. The stamps were commemoratives celebrating the history of the Union Castle Line with images of their ships from the 19th and 20th centuries. Two caught my attention: the Edinburgh Castle and RMS Windsor Castle. I have intense memories as a child of visting my father when his ship was in harbour at Southampton, Glasgow or Hull. The Union Castle Line was his employer, and for a while in the 1950s and 1960s, he captained the then Edinburgh Castle and the Windsor Castle.

The Great Railway Theme Park

Prize for the oddest place visited in South Africa (& believe me the West Coast provides some serious competition for that title) undoubtedly goes to Maatjiesfontein, a wind-blown railway halt in the Karoo where the Johannesburg - Cape Town Blue Train stops. The 'town' is a single 200-yard street of rather grand Boer War era buildings which have been quaintly preserved in a run-down version of their original state and are manned by staff dressed in period costume and some rather unconvincing waxworks. It was as if we had stumbled onto the set of Young Winston and I half-expected Simon McCorkindale to charge down main street at the head of a squadron of cavalry irregulars.
The mayor wore a threadbare bowler hat and could have gone on as Oliver Hardy without rehearsal. For some reason he was very excited about an imminent 'lesbian night' the town was about to host. Or at least that's what we think he said. Quite what the economic reality of this bizarre theme park may be I cannot imagine, but perhaps the pink rand keeps it afloat.
But there was one really cherishable feature: the station waiting room houses an Aladdin's Cave of curiosities and wonders, the private collection of a deceased resident encompassing 19th Century agricultural equipment, Union Castle Line menus, Victorian surgical instruments and 1950s cine cameras. All thrown together without any concession to taxonomy or interpretation and in its own slightly mad way quite magnificent.

Wanted: Friendly Bombs Or Near Offer . . .

I am reposing amidst the rococco splendour of the Holiday Inn, Slough-Windsor. Should you ever find yourself similarly benighted, a word of advice regarding the room service lasagne: Avoid, Avoid, Avoid.

I'm Too Sexy For This Shop

Marketing, South African style. If you ran a fly-blown, run-down, half-wrecked roadhouse in the middle of the Karoo desert, covered in graffiti, with old bras and knickers hanging from its rafters, and you wanted to ensure travellers stopped and bought a beer rather than accelerating rapidly away as soon as they caught sight of the place, what would you do? You'd change its name to Ronnie's Sex Shop, wouldn't you? People would be bound to stop, wouldn't they? And yes, we did stop, didn't we?

So Long - And Thanks For All The Photos

Draaihoek Beach at 6.00am is deserted (except for some kelp . . .). A soft wind blows in from the South Atlantic, and a gentle surf crashes onto the ramp of sand at my feet. Behind me, over the dunes, the sun has just risen, and the sand-flies cast long shadows. Southwards the beach disappears into the middle air: northwards the sandstone cliffs of Eland's Bay rise above the salt haze. Suddenly, a fin shows where a breaking wave curls into foam at its crest, and a dark body skims forward on the swell: a dolphin is surfing towards the shore.
A hundred yards out three more groups of dolphins are frolicing, turning their backs above the water; periodically one jumps clear of the sea. At this point my camera announces that its batteries are flat, so this blog's policy of crisp minimalism with respect to illustrations will be maintained. Later on a seal waddles along the beach before galumphing into the surf, swimming into a foot of water, taking a brief look back at the land, and then shooting with astonishing speed and grace along the line of breakers, its head and back breaking above the foam.

The New 30

We celebrated my birthday, the Renaissance Man, the Scouse Ambassador and me, by taking a hike - a beautiful 12-mile walk through the mountains north of Greyton on the so-called 'McGregor Trail'. That we did so at all is down to the determination of the Scouse Ambassador, whose walking takes no prisoners. The first two miles of trail had been washed away by recent floods and this meant much cutting through trackless undergrowth, fording and refording rivers, forcing ways through close thickets, all the while surrounded by the colourful wreckage of Greyton's public infrastructure: twenty-foot lengths of industrial tubing littered the riverbanks, which the Ambassador confidently identified as 'the town's water-main'. After a while we reached a distinct trail and we turned our faces to the hills, boldly going where no four-wheel-drive had gone recently. We ascended a snaking path into the Overberg leading to a hidden valley of luscious fynbos circled by the craggy redoubts of Table Mountain Sandstone which receded into the mist-wreathed peaks.
At first the Renaissance Man seemed beset by bandana-related fashion issues, but by the time we posed for delicious lamb sandwiches at Breakfast Rock he had recovered his characteristic disdain for haute couture. The trail led us through storm-gouged dongas (into which I stylishly fell headlong) and across stream-crossings choked with tree trunks, boulders and rubble, but the waterfalls were spectacular, enchanting torrents that plunged sixty feet through narrow rock-chutes into bottomless black pools. Then we ascended to the barrier at Galg along the remains of a road cut across a cliffside by Italian POWs in the 1940s. It was reassuring to note that their sense of style had not deserted the forced labourers as the road, rough-hewn blasted and precarious, was flanked by attractively cut decorative curbstones.
Then we descended to the steaming plains of McGregor, past rows of hives where bees feasted on fynbos blossoms and found, quite coincidentally, that we were passing Lords vineyard, a new winery whose Sauvignon Blanc has the authentic sharp fruit of the variety and whose Shiraz is as perfumed, smooth and supple as one could wish. After a conversation on the intricacies of vine-cultivation, the Cellar Manager drew some of his unreleased Pinot Noir from its cask for us. Altogether, rather a good way to turn 50.

. . . Aliquid Novum

Stars upside down.
Toilets flushing wrong way round.
Any suggestions?

Africa At Noon

Frozen mist curls around the margins of the ploughed fields. Across the lake the shades of departed Twisbies gibber and squeak. Outside, Dr Biswell is patiently chipping ice from the dashboard of the Hispano-Suiza. I depart for the southern hemisphere in an hour.

Trailhounds Roasting By An Open Fire

Ben The Trailhound would like it to be known that Christmas in the Deep North - long periods of idleness sprawled in front of a peat fire, punctuated by episodes of frantic activity chasing rough cats at the White Lodge - is probably the finest Christmas a trailhound could ever enjoy. Even his relations with Miss Kit have achieved an unexpected harmony . . .

Relentless

10 weeks without striking a blog bat. Retirement (or retardedment according to the grandson) has meant that I now understand that well worn phrase - 'I don't know how I found time to work'
We've been in the Western Cape of SA for the last couple of months, finishing off the house and adapting to my post employment phase of existance. The Western Cape would be difficult to categorise as 'real Africa' but nevertheless when scratched.......
I've been busy as hell coping with tempests and plagues and the hazards of builders merchants. We've been marooned in the house twice. Would you believe the second time we had 24 inches of rain in 24 hours? We almost ran out of wine. The reactive council managed to rebuild the roads in less than a couple of days. Which is typical, as they have been planning flood defences for some years now. The plagues of centipede like creatures follows the rains and can take days to clear. The maintenance of the swimming pool and the energy needed to outwit the creepy crawley device designed to negate the need to intervene with the maintenance of the pool seems to take up 2 to 3 hours a day.
However the main gobbler of blogger time (almost an anagram) is house snagging/finishing in particular the search for drain rods and the missing pipefittings. Builder's Warehouse in Hermanus has seen more of me than RW and I also got an invite to their staff Xmas do.
There does seem to be a lull in in the relentless proceedings. So with fingers poised over keyboard I look out over the wheat fields and the terrapin infested pond and .... blog.
We miss the dog and Nick of course

Groucho, Thou Shouldst Be Living At This Hour

Cockermouth Main Street, a few days before Christmas. I enter an off-licence and buy a bottle of reliably good single malt ahead of my departure for the Deep North. The establishment's swanky new POS system blinks at me with an animated Santa and an important seasonal message: "(Well-known Scotch manufacturer) asks that you enjoy alcohol responsibly this Christmas". To which corporatist inanity I can only respond in the words of G Marx Esq - Thanks - but I've got other plans . . .

Les Delices De Cumbria - XXI

Blessed are the cheesemakers. Possibly the finest goat's cheese available to humanity can be found a mere 10-minute walk from my front door at Wardhall, where Lynn and Thomas Balantine Dykes manufacture the delicious Wardhall Blue, a truly pungent sharp and rich example. If you're inclined to aquire a sliver of this lactic heaven for yourself, drive down to Wardhall Guards and ascend the birdleway towards Tallentire Hill. You'll know you're heading in the right direction when strange, satanic sheep and double-horned and dark-browed goats populate the surrounding fields. The dairy itself is a cat-swingingly small room just off the farm-yard guarded by a golden retriever of fierce mien. The cheese it protects is heavenly delight. There are rumours of a soft Brie-like cow's cheese to come in 2008. Watch this space for further artisanal Arkleby cheese updates.

Amour - And A Man With A Dog

This blog has been uncharacteristically silent - largely because the sorts of things I was likely to post about are precisely the sorts of things I'm not inclined to record in this blog. The Renaissance Couple have decamped to South Africa for six months (where I'll shortly be joining them for a brief holiday). Some time before their departure I agreed to dogsit Ben The Trailhound. On hearing of this innovation in my domestic arrangements, V promptly combusted in a terminal lather. The upshot of which strange fashion of forsaking is that I have gained custody of a trailhound for the winter. So far, I'm pleased to say, the relationship has been one of mutual trust, respect, admiration and affection. It must be something to do with the cheese treats I feed him . . .

Earth Conscious Pledge - Cumbria Futures Forum

Here we are.
Note my low impact blog.

If you are an individual or organisation living in Cumbria:
Cumbria Futures Forum.
Cumbria Futures Forum Pledge.
Have fun.
From the main website
In honor of Blog Action Day, we wanted to highlight some of the many Blogger-powered blogs that are focused on the environment, climate change, and sustainability. Want to see more Blog Action Day participants from around the web? Find them on Blog Search.
Cleantech Blog - Commentary on technologies, news, and issues relating to next generation energy and the environment.
The Conscious Earth - Earth-centered news for the health of air, water, habitat and the fight against global warming.
Earth Meanders - Earth essays placing environmental sustainability within the context of other contemporary issues.
Environmental Action Blog - Current environmental issues and green energy news.
The Future is Green - Thoughts on the coming of a society that is in balance with nature.
The Green Skeptic - Devoted to challenging assumptions about how we live on the earth and protect our environment.
Haute*Nature - Ecologically based creative ideas, art & green products for your children, home and lifestyle, blending style with sustainability.
The Lazy Environmentalist - Sustainable living made easy.
Lights Out America - A grassroots community group organizing nationwide energy savings events.
The Nature Writers of Texas - The best nature writing from the newspaper, magazine, blog and book authors of the Lone Star State.
Rachel Carson Centennial Book Club - Considering the legacy of Rachel Carson's literary and scientific contributions with a different book each month.
Sustainablog - News, information and personal meanderings related to environmental and economic sustainability, green and sustainable business, and environmental politics.
These Come From Trees - An experiment in environmentalism, viral marketing, and user interface design with the goal of reducing consumer waste paper.

Inheritance tax - do we give a damn whose idea it was?

Not really.
A threshold increase was always going to be announced.
The Boy George knew it was coming so said "£1Million" knowing it was a bit ahead of what Darling/Grodon had worked out precisely. Who cares, he/they thought, if £1M would have a negative effect it's bigger and, in this instance, better than £700k.
More money for hospitals and education and .... see I've forgotten already the other thing, are all ... yeah the flight tax... I remember. Anywez they were all anticipated and The Boy George did a clever bit of upstaging - stole all the punchlines. That's the way I read it.
Or - Did he? I have serious doubts all round - everyone of them is a fibbing Tuareg.
Hell I'm confused now. Maybe they were Genghis Campbell's ideas afterall- Simon Hughes thinks so. Not much you can do with a name like Simon Hughes?
Go for a fixed term between elections that's what I say.
I'm not sure I can be bothered voting again. Certainly not for a party.
Forgive my political outburst - I retire from paid employment tomorrow (12 Oct 2007) after 42 years and I'm feeling a little trepidatious (must check spelling).
We had in mind that this blog site would be 'Arts & Literature'. Didn't we TWIR? What happened?

I've been thinking

I've been thinking. Twice in as many weeks.

Take a look at these 6 faces: Why are they likeable?

Charles, the painter, says it's due to their World icon status and also adds Mother Theresa, Princess Diana, Marilyn Monroe (to balance my male dominated selection). I'm not so sure. 2 of the above have no World icon standing and 1 of them is relatively unknown. 3 are alive; 2 were shot; they all have some celebrity probably due in some way to the way they look. Quite a lot of icons are not likeable and quite a lot of celebrities I wouldn't recognise. Tony Blair, George W and to some extent David Cameron all have recogniseable, approaching icon, faces, but for different reasons, have a countenance in need of a good slap (as the late father used to say). I'd queue to have a smack at young Cameron.

I know very little about the personal traits of any of the above - John Lennon I believe was a bit of a self-centred sod with Cynthia at least, but that doesn't stop me liking his image.

Wondering now - why in my first 'think' I didn't choose a woman. Ummm - could be something to do with the published image of women. Female images are always based on sex which can be confusing as we all know. The likeability of a Marilyn Monroe image is totally constructed.

See what I mean? Personally Julie Christie always did it for me.

No. There has to be something more to it. It's not to do with beauty either 'cos that's in the eye of the beholder.

I'm puzzled. Maybe it's face shape or eye spacing or the captured smile. Captured smile or the image frozen in time - constructed again - Einstein didn't smile much but the eyes twinkled (Charles said). Lennon's eyes hidden I hear you say. In that case that would make him least likeable of the bunch above. Maybe so?

Charle's threw in Che Guevara as another of the likeable icons. It depends on which image they print I say. Discuss or tell me to get on with something useful.

See Di and Robert Plant

Last night Di (RW) and me went to a rock n roll event in the newly refurbished Birmingham Town Hall. 10 years of Brum Rock (The 60's mainly); 3 hrs of happiness including 25 minutes of absolute genius - Robert Plant.

Why, how and where? The where bit is already obvious. 10 days back I was sur(f)ching for the words for 'storm in a teacup' sung by 'The Fortunes' 1965ish, written by Lynsey de Paul (i didn't know that). I noticed that the Fortunes were still playing and had a date at Birmingham Town Hall on 6 October.

"Let's go" sez I in a spur of the moment sort of way "it'll be a bit of nostalgia for us..... The only downside being missing sounds of the sixties as we have to travel back on the train on Saturday morning." So we booked it. ........."It also says that ...subject to availability .... Also appearing ... Steve Gibbons, Danny King, The Rocking Berries, Bev Bevan and The Move, Trevor Burton, some of The Moody Blues, Robert Plant, Jasper Carrot .... ........"

" WHAT?! Robert Plant?" spluttered RW. "There's a 20 million waiting list to see him and ledzep … 'ow much are the tickets?"

"50 quid it's for charity and there's Dave Pegg (bassist with that Fairport lot) subject to availability" - he was available unfortunately but more later.

"But what about Robert Plant" she went on. "My hero ... Best voice in rock. Lovely hair.... Wonder who had his babies? ....... Robert ....? Plant ...." You get the picture?

And so it came to pass. Everybody was available. Danny King had been sprung from the retirement home. He had a hell of a comb-over but moved well and had the voice of an angel though not the memory. He must be 70 at least. He did admit though that he was "..nervous as hell because of Planty". I know what he meant. Planty with just a guitarist (Justin Adams) and 2 West African guys on percussion (Salah-Dawson Miller) and a 1 string violin thing (Juldeh Camara) were mind-blowing good. 4 songs Ledzep re-interpreted back to roots. I could have gone to heaven then. Di was already there. Robert Plant - as close as that tree in our yard and chatting away to the audience as if he'd just got the bus in from Stourbridge. RW's still talking about it 2 days later. She thought he was just talking to her.

The Fortunes were a little too cabaret but very good nevertheless a little… oh and then we had Raymond Froggat. ........ and to my great embarrassment, and the rest of the cast who studiously ignored him, Dave Pegg! Oh dear oh dear .. he's my age now and should know when not to play TFT (the fucking tambourine- for the musicians amongst you). He kept appearing on stage obviously much the worse for drink, trying to moon walk and join in on backing vocals with whoever had a mic. He nearly took out the drums at one point as he skidded on some trailing cables. Danny King, 10 years his senior, was much steadier. C'mon Peggy - get off! In one drunken moment I spotted him playing air tambourine and singing to an imaginary mike. Could have been funny - but it wasn't. He enjoyed himself though

I'm off to down-load some Planty stuff and track down whatever that thing was that Juldeh Camara was playing.

Got to get RW off the flaming Robert Plant website first, and she wants me to have my hair curled and wear my shirt out over my jeans. Not sure about the Planty poster blue tacked to the wardrobe door. What am I going to do? We'll never travel in silence again.

 

Cumbria – Consultant Fees Coast if you ask me

My reference to the Energy Coast may have baffled anybody who read my previous posting.
Even if “a blog is the sound of one person talking to himself” (*1) just so’s I can get my own thoughts sorted it’s worth me wandering through the subject.
The West Cumbria Strategic Partnership (http://www.westcumbriavision.co.uk/) commissioned Grant Thornton to come up with a master plan for West Cumbria.

http://www.nwda.co.uk/publications/infrastructure/britains-energy-coast.aspx
This document was costly, £200k plus, and adds to the £10million (and more) of consultants fees milked out of the system over the last 15 years or so. I’m not bitter by the way - just a natural born cynic.
The rather catchy tagline ‘Britain’s Energy Coast’ and the green mesh lines stretching from Allonby to Millom confuse the reader into thinking that the West Cumbria Strategic Partnership/The Consultants Grant Thornton are proposing an economic solution for West Cumbria (from Allonby to Millom) based on Energy production.
Britain’s (Nuclear) Waste Reprocessing Coast would have been a better tagline and maybe change the colour, of whatever is obscuring the coastline, to Red.
Let me be clear about this the only energy being generated in Cumbria is from the 100 or so Windmills scattered down the coast, oh- and one gas fired Combined Heat and Power Plant on the Calder Hall site. The Nuclear power station at Calder Hall closed a while back and had it’s cooling towers dropped 2 days ago. Chapelcross on the other side of the Solway has also closed. There was an oil powered station at Workington 30 years back and all our coal was sent out of county to - I don’t know where. There’s a gas fired station near Barrow but Barrow though I believe technically part of Cumbria (West too) seems to have been largely ignored on the cover of the plan at least.
Energy wise unless there are plans for a few hundred more windmills I can’t see why we should become Britain’s Energy Coast. Windmills once built need very little maintenance and while being built seem to employ more Danish and Dutch labour and resources so the local economic benefit is at best poor.
The Solway Energy Gateway above Allonby towards the mouth of the Eden would make tremendous sense with massive energy generated by the tides and would also give lasting economic regeneration. There are some hurdles though, the main one being the local environmental impact. Local environmental impact might be the price we have to pay though to have any chance of impacting on Global Climate Change.
A new Nuclear Power Station at Calder/Sellafield would seem to be in the subtext of Grant Thornton’s plan. Whilst I have no problems with Nuclear Power Stations (I’ve made my living for 30 years or more from the Nuclear Industry), the only reason for a plant in Cumbria is the existence of a nuclear licensed site and a population conditioned, through 60 years of exposure and dependency to accept anything nuclear.
Sellafield has never been a nuclear power station – how many times have I had to tell people over the years and how sick am I of the jokes – Cumbrian – glow in the dark – 2 headed fish – pre cooked lamb.. I’ll stop.
Sellafield is a waste treatment and reprocessing plant for the nuclear industry.
Read the words from the Grant Thornton’s plan (11,000 words and loads of big pictures over 48 pages – this blog posting is 1,200 words with 1 picture; possibly 3 pages max- work out the value for money – bear in mind it took me 35 minutes to write this)
“West Cumbria has major nuclear assets and internationally competitive expertise and skills in a range of related activities, including environmental remediation, engineering and decommissioning. Employment in Research and Development is double the regional average.These strengths and assets are of national and international importance. The UK’s energy, environmental and economic policy now involves a unified approach to the twin challenges of energy security and climate change. Maintaining a sustainable national economy requires integrated answers to both. This approach will also provide major business opportunities for UK firms.It will also enable the UK to make an important contribution to European energy policy. West Cumbria can provide a unique contribution to the UK’s short and long term policy goals, transforming its own economy in the process. Our Vision for West Cumbria is based on this unique relationship between local economic assets and transformation and national policy priorities.”
Now read them again.
Now tell me what they mean?
Weasel words when read with the tagline.
“West Cumbria has major nuclear assets and internationally competitive expertise and skills in a range of related activities, including environmental remediation, engineering and decommissioning. Employment in Research and Development is double the regional average.These strengths and assets are of national and international importance…..”
Yes it does have major nuclear assets but it does not have nuclear energy producing assets. The redundant reprocessing plants at Sellafield were classed as liabilities until very recently and there is a new research centre now so that must be what doubles the regional average (regional being where exactly?)
“(environmental) Remediation, engineering and decommissioning “ – yes at last – glossed over pretty quick and early – that’s what we do.
Look I’m glad that we are doing it and not anybody else.
The rest of the executive summary really means -carry on Cumbria being the nuclear waste treatment plant for Britain and the World.
The £300million a year Nuclear Decommissioning Authority continues to buy the dependency of West Cumbria. We see a succession of companies coming in to show us how to decommission – mostly American (though I used to share a building with a German/now French company) and my old factory has now been bought by a Swedish outfit. It’s a whole lot of heat and not much light as far as I can see and quite a lot of money spent on local advertising and promotion telling us Cumbrians about how good the colonists are and how much they are spending on social projects in Cumbria - sponsoring businesses, schools, the local supply chain, rugby teams. If you have to blow a trumpet it might as well be your own. It turns off most Cumbrians – they see right through it. Actions - not words about actions. Let people judge for themselves.
Instead of the NDA waste of nuclear money on themselves and commissioning consultants I could have provided the plan for free and redirected the money to better schools, a university 10 years ago (not just now), apprenticeship training, infrastructure. Focus on engineering and the environment not just nuclear. If we get a new nuclear reactor at some time then so be it. If we really need to have a windmill every mile including 60 in the Solway at Robin Rigg then so be it. But let’s not dress up what we are doing as a “unified approach to the twin challenges of energy security and climate change”. It means sod all to the population at large. All we want is a sustainable way of life not so obviously dependant on the command employer and not to be told by the incoming colonizers what a good job they are doing for Cumbria.
*1 – plagiarized from ‘the sound of 1 hand clapping’ – van morrison or zen?

Cumbria – The Energy Coast

On Friday I discovered a piece of Cumbria where you cannot see a windmill. It's in a dip in the road surrounded by high hedges. The road is a lane really between Pica and Rowrah (more on pronunciation of these place names later*).

It has just struck me that on the drive down the coast from Carlisle to Whitehaven there isn't a place (apart from the Rowrah Pica interchange) where windmills are not visible.

I'm all in favour of energy from the wind so I suppose I will just have to put up with the high visual impact. I quite like the look of windmills though, there's something quite pleasing about them compared to a coal fired power station or a nuclear one for that matter. In fact compared to the mining scars of the villages that are Rowrah and Pica they are positively beautiful.

*Pica – pronounced: PIE – KUH
Rowrah - pronounced: ROW (as in having an argument – not Boat) – RUH

I recently discovered that the PICA environs has decoy buildings dating back to the 2^nd World War designed to trick enemy bombers in to not dropping their loads on Workington. Pity!