Issue 61

On Saturday 27th February the Arran Music Society featured the Atéa Wind Quintet, a brilliant group of young players who delighted the audience. The classic combination of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and horn lends itself to a wide range of music, and Brodick Hall was filled with attentive listeners. The Music Society's new policy of informal seating, with listeners grouped round tables with a drink of their choice, is proving to be very popular and results in a convivial, attentive audience, full of appreciation. A further immense benefit is the invaluable support of the Tunnell Trust, through whose generosity this concert was made possible.

The Atéa five provided much to appreciate. Every one of these young players demonstrated easy mastery and a vast range of emotional expression. Alena Lugovkina on flute acted as lead violin in a string group, and her technical brilliance and dept of feeling exemplified all that is so great about the best of Russian players. Anna Hashimoto on clarinet, Ashley Myall, bassoon, Chris Beagles, horn and Philip Haworth, oboe, were constantly in close, empathetic touch, sensitive to every nuance of pace and feeling. The rare chance to hear the fantastic quintet by Karl Jenkins was thrilling. This long, technically demanding composition ranges widely through every shade of emotion, and was presented with intelligence, sensitivity and a great dash of sheer panache. Nobody present will forget it – sometimes a musical experience is so dramatic and compelling that one feels in the presence of something very special, and this concert was absolutely in that category. The audience went out into the night moved and elated, and you can't say better than that.

Alison Prince

On Saturday, March 19th, a good-sized audience was spell-bound by the artistry of the Da Vinci Trio. Scott Mitchell, piano, Anthony Moffat, violin and Robert Irvine, cello, electrified the audience from the opening bars of the Beethoven Op 1 trio in E flat. Their almost uncanny bond delivered a sound that was hair-trigger precise and charged with feeling. The sheer beauty of what they were doing held the listeners as if in an astonishing dream, though instrumentalists among them were marvelling at the virtuosity that was being unrolled.

Particularly in the haunting Schubert Adagio Notturno in E flat major, the measured, thoughtful phrases wove an intricate pattern that brought a sense of familiarity even though the piece was a long way from the lyricism of much of Schubert's chamber work. A new piece by an Estonian composer, Arvo Pärt, had a bell-like quality coupled with the purity of old music sung in monasteries and cloisters.

The evening culminated in the magnificent Brahms piano trio in C major, Op 87. Throughout, the sense that the performers shared the single mind of the composer brought a sense of privilege to the audience. The passion of the music put a finger on the innermost emotions of listeners and left people feeling moved and exalted. This was an evening when we heard something very special, and it will stay long in the minds of all those present.

Once again, we must be grateful to Colin Guthrie, whose generosity in gifting the Kawai grand piano to Arran made concerts such as this a possibility.

Alison Prince

Ed O’Donnelly

I was born in Hamilton and studied Fine Art at Bath Academy of Art and Cyprus School of Art. Professionally, from the mid 80s to late 90s, I was involved in animation production and latterly in film and digital arts education. In the past decade I have gradually concentrated more on painting.

Coinciding with this issue of the Voice, I have a small exhibition of six paintings in Brodick Library showing examples of work from ‘themes’ developed and explored over the past five years. I use the term ‘themes’ loosely and one is not distinct from another, rather part of an evolving development. All the paintings are in watercolour, although I don’t consider them to be ‘watercolours’ in the traditional sense as the paint is applied in various ways, sometimes more akin to oil painting.

Tim Pomeroy has just released a second CD of his singing and playing. It is called The Poetry Place and was called this because of the photo on the front cover, taken as the sleeve notes testify, outside the Poetry Place in London, (The Poetry Society’s coffee and book shop and performance venue) prior to that night’s gig at which the Arran Poets, Cicely Gill, David Underdown and Tim were the headline act. Tim was also the musical interlude. The photo was taken by his daughter, Saskia.

The CD consists of 13 songs by some of Tim’s favourite songwriters and performers, and three of his own poems. He says:

“I don’t know about proper musicians, but these songs represent the ones I feel most for at the time of recording. Some of them are very new to me like the wonderful Kate Rusby song Falling, while others like Don McLean’s Oh My What a Shame I’ve known since about 1976. Some songs stay with me for years and I seem constantly to be learning new ones. Which is inspiring and invigorating and as a process, almost accidental.”

Tim’s CD is available at Fiddlers Bar in Brodick, Brodick Post Office or on Ebay or directly from him on his ebay page.  

This year Tim is doing the opening 40 minute set at the Arran Folk Festival, ably accompanied by Andy McCallum and Robin Fisher. More details on the AFF website.

Gillian Frame, who also hails from Arran and, Tim insists, is a much bigger fish in folk circles, is also playing at the festival and will be launching her own new album then.

On April 10th the Corrie Film Club will be showing Pride (120 mins, UK 2014).

Based on a true story, the film depicts a group of lesbian and gay activists who raised money to help families affected by the British miners' strike in 1984, at the outset of what would become the Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners campaign. The National Union of Mineworkers was reluctant to accept the group's support due to the union's public relations' worries about being openly associated with a gay group, so the activists instead decided to take their donations directly to Onllwyn, a small mining village in Wales, resulting in an alliance between the two communities. The alliance was unlike any seen before and was ultimately successful.

Pride has been met with critical acclaim. Peter Bradshaw, reviewing for The Guardian, described the film as "impassioned and lovable". Bradshaw praised performances of the cast, including Bill Nighy's "taciturn shyness" in his portrayal as Cliff and the "dignified and intelligent performance" from Paddy Considine as Dai, as well as Imelda Staunton's performance as Hefina Headon.

Everyone is welcome to come along to Corrie and Sannox Village Hall at 8pm to see Pride.

The Saltire Society for Arran finished its season of events in Corrie hall recently. The Saltire Society is a non-politically affiliated organisation which celebrates Scottish cultural life in its widest remit. From poetry to architecture, drama to engineering, literature to town planning and more besides. Events can be performances or talks, discussions, slide shows, whatever best suits the activity.

This final evening of the first syllabus, singer and voice teacher Peter (Alexander) Wilson who has a house in Corrie, was the guest of the Society, ably led on Arran by Scottish cultural enthusiast Hazel Gardiner.

As befits an evening reflecting Scottish identity, Peter Wilson chose to take the audience of 20 on a musical tour of Scotland. The evening got off to a skip in its step with Peter’s version of Dancing in Kyle. And Peter talked briefly about the different kinds of love to be found in Scottish love songs. The Eriskay Love Lilt and Tiree love Song backed up his gentle proposition. He talked fondly of his father’s association with the famous Glasgow Orpheus Choir and told the audience that both his father and grandfather were singers of distinction. Must be something in the genes.

On the 4th March the Guardian reported “Berta Cáceres, the Honduran indigenous and environmental rights campaigner, has been murdered, barely a week after she was threatened for opposing a hydroelectric project.

The Engineering Challenge for school kids took place at Kildonan Village Hall on Saturday 19th March. The competition was open to all school children under 17 on Arran and with a cash prize of £500. There were three entries, two from the High School and one /from Whiting Bay primary school. The entries were all different and each with considerable merit. Unfortunately two entries were let down by their chosen adhesive which failed at the critical moment.

The task was to build a cantilever of 1 metre to carry a weight of 3kg out of given materials. Those materials were limited to softwood, paper, fishing line and glue. Components could be pre assembled, however preassembly was limited to a certain size and final assembly was to be completed over a period of two hours at the venue.

As some of you may be aware, the Hear to Help service which runs on Arran, was due to close on 31st March as no continuation funds have been made available from NHS Ayrshire and Arran or the local authorities.  This means that no hearing aid support will be available on the island and service users will have to travel to Crosshouse Hospital to access this.

Arran is already much disadvantaged in its medical provision - Lamlash hospital is equipped to do many of the procedures we have to go to Crosshouse for, such as endoscopies, but the trained staff are not here, as allocation has been cut to the bone.

As such, a protest was held on Wednesday 9th March at Brodick Ferry Terminal and many people turned out to say “Save Hear to Help!”  The service is extremely important for hearing aid wearers who live on the island, and this service currently supports in excess of 150 Arran residents.

It was with mounting concern that we in the SNP benches witnessed the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne MP, deliver a budget which brought tax cuts for the better off in society and yet more bruising cuts for the disabled.

We continue to hear about how the UK must “live within its means” but it seems that this mantra only applies when punishing cuts are being inflicted on the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. Austerity is a political choice and one the Tories continue to show themselves ideologically wedded to. By every economic measure this Chancellor has failed his own economic tests with debt, deficit and borrowing levels even worse than he promised only last November.

Chillingly, the Institute of Fiscal Studies predicts that the scale of the cuts to departmental budgets and local government would reduce the role of the state to a point where it would have “changed beyond recognition” with a further £3,500 million of new cuts which will again hit unprotected departments.

The SNP was the only party to say it during the general election and we continue to say it now; an SNP budget would increase spending on public services by 0.5% a year in real terms between 2016/17 and 2019/20 releasing over £150billion for investment in public services whilst ensuring that public sector debt and borrowing fall over this parliamentary term.  The UK’s deficit and debt can be brought down without the need for huge spending cuts and our plan for investment has international support and credibility. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Economic Outlook endorsed this very plan, arguing that a commitment to raising public investment collectively would boost demand while remaining on a fiscally sustainable path.

So what of Scotland?  Scotland faces a further £1,500 million cut in its funding for public services over the next four years.  Cuts made to Scotland’s budget between 2009/10 and 2019/20 means Scotland’s resource budget will be £3,900 million less in 2019/20 than a decade earlier; some 12.5%, whilst capital spending is already 26% lower.  This comes hard on the heels of this Tory Government attempting to slash Scotland’s budget by and ADDITIONAL £7,000 million over ten years, which the SNP managed to defeat, during the recent fiscal framework negotiations.

More than anything else, this is a budget which bolsters inequality across the UK. An eye-watering £4,400 million of cuts will be taken from the benefits of disabled people over the course of the parliament. And for what?  To fund tax cuts for the better off!

The Chancellor’s biggest single revenue-raising measure over the next five years is to cut Personal Independence Payments for people who need aids to help them dress and use the toilet. Disability rights groups have warned that these changes will be a devastating blow to disabled people who rely on this benefit to help them live independently on their own. Yet £167,000 million can be found over the next 25 years for the renewal of Trident nuclear weapons, and billions have been made available for A4e to run the Secretary of State for Work and Pension’s doomed Work Programme, which was described even by the Telegraph as “worse than doing nothing.”

Prior to his shock resignation last week, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith MP, described cuts to the most vulnerable as “not defensible” following a “Budget that benefits higher earning taxpayers.” Whilst he is absolutely correct, one fears his resignation is more about the internal Tory civil war over Europe than about standing up for those who will suffer hugely from these cuts. Whatever, the case, we in the SNP will fight these cruel cuts every step of the way.

I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who donated money, musical instruments and craft materials to “Planting for Hope Uganda”. My brother Lionel and I set off in early February with three heavily laden suitcases of donations. The cases were in fact so heavy we could hardly lift them and the donations were all very gratefully received. Some donations are to be used in the school, while others are being kept at the project base for use with the village ladies.

We arrived in Entebbe very early in the morning and we were taken to rest for a couple of hours at a hotel overlooking Lake Victoria, where we were able to freshen up and have a good breakfast. Then with our Ugandan project leader, called Apollo, a 6 hour journey started, going via the bank and shops for some basic supplies, along with getting some essential bottled water. We broke the journey on the equator where we could watch a fascinating water experiment, with two sinks a couple of feet apart. They had water flowing in opposite directions and in a third sink placed on the line the water just gurgled down the plug hole.

Sue Weaver and Alan Bellamy of Kildonan would like to thank everyone on Arran who so generously donated clothes and sleeping bags for the refugee camp at Calais. A van load was taken to the central collection point in Glasgow and will by now be at the camp, where many volunteers are trying to make life more bearable for the thousands of refugees.

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson. £7.99

Kate Atkinson, one of our most inventive and emotionally poised novelists, writes with humour and sometimes near-unbearable poignancy about Teddy Todd, a young pilot in World War 2, flying Lancaster bombers over Germany. As always in her work, Kate ranges freely across time, building up a picture of the irresistibly adorable Teddy in all his courage and innocence. Though the author was not born until after the war, her research is impeccable, and from the last surviving bombers preserved carefully in museums or in hangers on a few British airfields, she builds a hands-on experience that is impossible to duck. The writing is laconic and packs an extraordinary punch. There is, to start with, the individual character of each aeroplane, and when the men crew up for a night sortie across Germany, the heart is already in the mouth for them as Teddy, the skipper, does his final check. 'OK, rear gunner? OK navigator? OK co-pilot?' Never at any point can the reader be sure these men are coming back.

For those of us who lived in the south of England in the war years and saw the bomber squadrons fly out in the last of the evening light, nostalgia grips the heart. Nobody can forget the Lancasters returning at dawn, assembled again in their nine-plane squadrons but this time with gaps, some aircraft flying with a dipped wing and stuttering engines, one or more feathered and useless. Nobody wants war, but nobody who was in it can ever forget. All honour to Kate Atkinson for a wonderful, heart-rending book.

Alison Prince

Selected by David Underdown, who also writes the commentary.

Many folk on Arran regularly fly to holiday destinations abroad, and some fly to and from other parts of the UK for business or to visit family. The SNP government wants to halve Air Passenger Duty and encourage more flying to, from, and within, Scotland. And yet this same government says it wants to cut Scotland’s carbon emissions! Most of these journeys could be done by train or ferry, but of course it would take longer and be considerably more expensive, because of the subsidies already enjoyed by the aviation industry. This is the great elephant in the corner of the room for many people who otherwise make some effort to reduce their carbon footprints in order to mitigate the effects of climate change, and for governments which try to do likewise.

Dr. Peter Kalmus wrote this article for Life After Oil, the Spring 2016 issue of YES! Magazine. Peter is an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and we reprint it with permission.

I’m a climate scientist who doesn’t fly. I try to avoid burning fossil fuels, because it’s clear that doing so causes real harm to humans and to nonhumans, today and far into the future. I don’t like harming others, so I don’t fly. Back in 2010, though, I was awash in cognitive dissonance. My awareness of global warming had risen to a fever pitch, but I hadn’t yet made real changes to my daily life. This disconnect made me feel panicked and disempowered.

Then one evening in 2011, I gathered my utility bills and did some Internet research. I looked up the amounts of carbon dioxide emitted by burning a gallon of gasoline and a therm (about 100 cubic feet) of natural gas, I found an estimate for emissions from producing the food for a typical American diet and an estimate for generating a kilowatt-hour of electricity in California, and I averaged the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Environmental Protection Agency estimates for CO2 emissions per mile from flying. With these data, I made a basic pie chart of my personal greenhouse gas emissions for 2010.

This picture came as a surprise. I’d assumed that electricity and driving were my largest sources of emissions. Instead, it turned out that the 50,000 miles I’d flown that year (two international and half a dozen domestic flights, typical for postdocs in the sciences who are expected to attend conferences and meetings) utterly dominated my emissions.

Extreme weather caused by global warming could lead to more violent and more frequent storms devastating beaches on exposed Atlantic coastlines in Europe.

The Atlantic seas could be getting rougher, with winter storms capable of causing dramatic changes to the beaches of Western Europe, and new research that is particularly relevant to us here on Arran shows that the pounding delivered to the shorelines of the UK and France in the winter of 2013-2014 was the most violent since 1948.

Gerd Masselink, professor of coastal geomorphology at Plymouth University School of Marine Science and Engineering, UK, and colleagues report in Geophysical Research Letters that they decided to switch focus from sea level rise resulting from global warming, and instead, they concentrated on the energy delivered by the rising waves as they crashed onto the beaches, dunes, shingle beds and rocky coasts, and on the consequent erosion of sediment.

The study examined open-coast sites across Scotland, Ireland, England, France, Portugal, Spain and Morocco. The researchers found that, along exposed coastlines in France and England, the beaches had taken a hammering. For every one metre strip of beach, there had been sand and shingle losses of up to 200 cubic metres.

Beaches change according to tide, season and weather. But, overall, while the waves take sediment away, they also shift in new material from further along the coast. It’s the natural pattern of erosion. But the logic of the latest study is that the extreme violence of individual storms, and the seeming increase in storm frequency, could result in dramatic changes.

“We have previously conducted research showing the devastating effects caused to the UK by the stormy winter of 2013/14. But the damage caused to coastal communities there was replicated – and in some cases exceeded – across western France,” Professor Masselink says. “All but one of the sites assessed for this study reached their most depleted state at the end of the 2014 winter, and it will take many years for them to fully recover.”

During the winter storms of 2013-2014, extreme wave conditions were five times more frequent than normal, and wave heights were 40% higher than average. “The extreme winter of 2013/14 is in line with historical trends in wave conditions and is also predicted to increasingly occur due to climate change, according to some of the climate models, with the winter of 2015/16 also set to be among the stormiest of the past 70 years,” says Tim Scott, a lecturer in ocean exploration at Plymouth University, and a co-author of the study.

The Falkirk Wheel is set for a mini revolution as a £1million programme to revamp and develop new visitor experiences at the world’s only rotating boat lift gets underway.

The project will see the 13-year-old Wheel, which links the Forth & Clyde Canal to the Union Canal 35m (115ft) above, refurbished inside and out, with the existing visitor centre, trip boats, conference rooms and activity hub refreshed with new branding, signage and interpretation celebrating the engineering behind the iconic structure.

The Falkirk Wheel will remain open throughout the works, which are due to be completed this summer. The project forms part of a phased investment plan which will see further improvements and exciting new visitor experiences developed over the coming years to keep the attraction fresh and encourage people to come back time and again.

The revitalisation of the Wheel, the construction of which formed a key part of the £84.5 million Millennium Link project, comes on the back of its busiest year ever, with more than 600,000 people enjoying a visit to the working sculpture in 2015. It’s hoped the project will encourage even more people to take a turn on The Falkirk Wheel in the years to come, with the profits generated by the attraction reinvested in safeguarding the rich heritage of Scotland’s 250-year-old canals.

With plaudits like “radical”, “transformative”, and “new dawn for land reform” being thrown about by the Scottish government, the land reform (Scotland) bill had its final passage through Holyrood during March.

But for many underwhelmed land reform campaigners, this new act represents unfinished business.

Voted through Holyrood by 102 votes to 14, the legislation includes new protections for tenant farmers and an end to tax relief for sporting estates and is accompanied by a new Scottish Land Fund opening on 1 April with £10m available to help community buy-outs.

But amendments that would have restricted the amount of land that one individual can own, and prevented land ownership via offshore tax havens, were voted down by SNP and Conservative backbenchers following a lengthy debate, to the huge disappointment of the wider land reform movement.

As the Guardian reported, Andy Wightman, land reform spokesman for the Scottish Greens and MSP candidate for Lothian, said:

“The limited nature of this legislation demonstrates that we need a bolder Holyrood with more Green voices. With a government majority it’s simply baffling that the SNP - whose own membership has been agitating for radical measures - have passed up the opportunity to deliver real reforms.

The Green bid to clamp down on the use of tax havens goes to the heart of understanding who owns Scotland. As we have seen this week with the uncovering of the complex corporate affairs of the Buccleuch Estates, there is an urgent need to ensure transparency in who profits from Scottish land.”

Many of us on Arran are already very careful not to waste food and us folk at Eco Savvy are as keen as the next person to get our full value out of every penny spent in the Co-op, or every hour sowing, weeding and picking in the garden.

And yet, and yet - can you imagine that 10% of greenhouse gas emissions in developed countries comes from producing food that is never eaten? And across the world, irrigation water (OK, not a local problem) sufficient for the needs of billions of people is wasted in producing food that is dumped uneaten. Deforestation and climate change are exacerbated by the obscene waste of food we have come to accept in the rich countries. One third of food grown around the world is left to rot, much of it never leaving the farm where it is produced.

South to make three spades against any lead.

Work on the new Brodick ferry terminal is progressing and we bring you an update here: