Issue 98

The Voice Needs You

The first issue of the monthly Voice for Arran online magazine was published in February 2011. With the exception of April and May 2015, when our technical guru was indisposed, we have published a new edition every month since then. We will soon be reaching our first century and our techie will be retiring once issue 100 is published in July.

Do you have the skills to manage the Voice for Arran magazine on line? We need someone with an understanding of Wordpress. A bit of HTML and CSS is also required occasionally. You will also be minding the coffers as our techie is also the treasurer and advertising manager as well as being distributor of our two publications "Arran To Canada - One Way" and "Golf On Arran". Sadly, you won't be going to the Bahamas on the funds as we have just about enough to cover our next server and domain registration renewal bill!

The Arran Gallery at St Columba’s

To end the reign of the climate delayer we need to re-write our contract with nature

Scott Leatham, political ecologist, researcher and campaigner, says that natural solutions must be part of any credible strategy to address climate breakdown. Published in CommonSpace 29.04.19.

As messages on climate breakdown and biodiversity loss dominate the airwaves, the emergence of a new form of denialism stalks the policy landscape: the delayer.

We don’t need to convince governments, for the most part, or local authorities, or other bodies that climate change is real, or that biodiversity loss imperils our life-support systems. That the First Minister has just announced we are in a climate emergency is a welcome sign of that. But we have endless speeches, statements, social shares and assurances they care. We have words. What we lack are actions. The first thing the Scottish Government needs to do is end its support for North Sea oil – but that’s just the first step.

COAST call for a Marine Rebellion

Having fought off the expansion of the fish farm in Lamlash Bay last year, the proposal for a new one off the north east of Arran was never going to be met with much community support. The Scottish Salmon Company (SSC) who are proposing the new mega farm, are trying to make contact with the Arran community and organised, what they termed a public consultation, at the beginning of last month in Lochranza. They clearly had very different expectations for the event than the local people of Arran, many of whom came along to find out more.

Public Relations in the Salmon aquaculture industry

Sally Campbell contemplates the irony of the PR machine in the aquaculture industry, with prizes and awards for 'the best' salmon, when disease, pollution, and morts, characterise the reality of this industry, highlighted no more clearly than in the last few days with reports of total loss of stock due to contaminated water at the Scottish Salmon Company's Loch Fyne farm.

It seems to many in western Scotland that the worse the reputation of the salmon aquaculture business becomes, the greater the acclaim is for “Prizes”, “the best”, “The most Scottish” from the industry. One of the habitual offenders as applicants for awards is the Scottish Salmon Company, despite its dubious reputation over the past year about salmon health, sealice populations eating their fish alive, tonnage of morts (dead in the cage salmon), disease, use of neurotoxins especially emamectin and tankers of hydrogen peroxide being emptied into Clyde farms. In Lamlash Bay alone in 2018, over 44 tonnes of morts were removed and over 1/2kg of emamectin used. We know from SEPA’s recently documented research that emamectin persists in the marine environment much longer than previously recognised. SCC husbandry on their 14 farms in the Clyde has also been poor with heavy infestations of sealice. The vain hope is that the judges will look at the whole life cycle of the products it is judging.

The Garden in April

April is a great month in the garden with magnolias, daffodils and rhododendrons.

[slideshowck id=4635]

A Celebration of Whiting Bay Past and Present

Make your way to Whiting Bay on the 11th & 12th May!

You can’t forget what you don’t know

Why we need to talk about the links between colonialism and climate change in the context of Highland land reform.

Brodick Castle – A history in your hands

We walk around the castle’s Victorian extension, reliving the stories of objects that have seen so much change since their collectors first took them home. A fender seat for weighing jockeys which the 12th Duke used as a jape to weigh his guests before and after feeding them a seven-course meal. A porcelain bonboniere said to be given to Princess Marie’s mother by Napoleon. A triptych of portraits on the first-floor landing of the 10th Duke, his wife (Beckford’s daughter), and their grandson, in which I now see so much more than just three dead aristocrats. They’re people, with quirks, foibles, scandals…

30X30: How we can protect 30% of our oceans by 2030

Of course it will need political will from the Nations of the World to pass a UN Oceans Treaty. Just as we need political will in Scotland to really protect our inshore waters. You all need to play a part in persuasion! Click on the video below to see the award-winning Earthrise Aljazeera documentary produced after joining Greenpeace’s 2018 Antarctic ship tour. We all hope that an Antarctic sanctuary will be passed at the next meeting of the Antarctic Ocean Commission (CCAMLR) in October.

A Celebration of Jazz

Events at COAST in May

Seagrass community film workshop

MPAs vs MCZs: Differences between Scottish and English marine protection explained

Shetland - killer whales, seabirds and otters

Makers Festival at Brodick Castle – A Call for Stallholders

Brodick Castle is hosting Crafts and Company’s very first Makers’ Festival from
the 12th-14th July. There are many elements to this event to include a makers’ exhibition, workshops, demonstrations, walks, talks, exhibition of the 52 Stitched Stories project, performances and stalls. This is a call for stallholders for the event.

If you would like to apply for a stall for one or more of the days you need to email us on craftsandcompanyarran@gmail.com and we will send out further information and an application form. All applications need to be submitted by Monday 6th May and decisions will be communicated via email by end of Monday 20th May.

News from the Arran Community Land Initiative

Arran Community Land Initiative – opportunities to get involved!

Through the winter we held volunteer days on the second Saturday of each month; these involved fencing, polytunnel clearance, and other vital maintenance tasks. Many thanks to all who came along!
We also obtained 450 native trees from the Woodland Trust which volunteers and children from Whiting Bay Primary School planted in April. The children really enjoyed it and it helped develop their awareness of the environmental and climate change benefits of tree planting. The Land Initiative expects to obtain a further 400 Aspen and Oak trees for planting this year.

The Arran Ferry Action Group

A summary from the recently established Arran Ferry Action Group outlining developments since the first meeting in Brodick last month.

The current state of our lifeline ferry service shows it is not fit for purpose in terms of reliability, resilience and infrastructure. The Arran Ferry Action Group is a new and fully representative lobbying group being set up to represent Arran interests in demanding service improvements and accountability in future investment decisions.

Tackling Climate Change at Home and Overseas

Post offices are again under threat

Marine News

Monthly update on marine matters around Scotland and the UK, from John Kinsman, station manager at Coastwatch St Monans, East Fife.

The Bluebird
The man behind the restoration of the Bluebird plans to run the vessel on a Scottish loch for a second summer despite the threat of legal action. Donald Campbell’s craft was recovered from Coniston Water in the Lake District in 2001 and rebuilt by Tyneside engineer Bill Smith. Recently lawyers for the Ruskin Museum demanded the Hydroplane be handed over so it can be put on display. But Mr Smith said the vessel should be seen in action and it would be taken back for test runs on Loch Fad on the Isle of Bute in July.
Campbell’s family gifted the Bluebird’s wreckage to the museum in Coniston but the Ruskin Trust and Mr Smith’s Bluebird restoration team cannot agree what the crafts future should be. The museum has built an extension to house the retired Bluebird but Mr Smith said it was in the public interest for people to be able to see it in action as it was built. It has to be operated on a regular basis or all the hard work will decay.

Corrie Film Club in May

The film showing on Sunday May 12th at 8 pm is I, Daniel Blake (Director Ken Loach (UK 2016) 100 mins Cert 15).

Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, this film from legendary director Ken Loach is a gripping, human tale about the impact one man can make. Gruff but goodhearted, Daniel Blake (Dave Johns) is a man out of time: a widowed woodworker who's never owned a computer, he lives according to his own common sense moral code. He has assets, but not the kind that the market rates highly since they have little monetary value: qualities such as integrity, honesty and compassion. Blake’s attributes carry little weight in a system designed to pitch one human being (the bureaucrat) against another (the citizen temporarily in need of state support) at a time of “necessary” austerity.

Poem for May

All the world’s a stage

by William Shakespeare

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover.
Sighing like a furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like a pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
turning again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Wild garlic pesto with goats cheese and hazelnuts

With all the wild garlic still growing on Arran at the moment it is the perfect time to make this recipe, a creation from Mark Williams at Galloway Wild Foods http://www.gallowaywildfoods.com

I’m sure many people already make pesto with it and the internet is awash with recipes, and really doesn’t need yet another. But I get asked a lot by people on my guided walks for my recipe that I’ve tweaked and refined down the years, so I thought it was time to share…

Letters to the Editor

Saga of the Scottish Salmon Company (SSC) consultation exercise? Tuesday 2nd April 2019. Venue Lochranza village hall.