Behold, Borismageddon did smite the land and he was verily afraid

Peter Riddell, Observer, 28th July 2019

Yes, I am still on holiday, and, yes, I hadn’t planned to write anything political whilst away. But I couldn’t let the victory of Boris Johnson pass unremarked. 

And so it has come to pass. The Borismageddon is upon us. The UK is now officially the laughing stock of Europe, led by a man who vies only with Donald Trump for the lack of esteem in which he’s held in foreign capitals. The Brexiteers predicted that we’d be punching above our weight and they’ve delivered a nuclear whoopee cushion and we are all the butt of the joke. EU leaders know who Boris Johnson is, and their opinions are not flattering. They’re not going to be disposed to do any favours for the man who brought the European project down with lies about bent bananas and, more recently, lying about kippers.

In his first rambling free form speech as Prime Minister, we saw Boris Johnson lecture the nation like a gerbil on crack. He sounded as though he was making it all up as he went along, and I suspect he probably was. Amongst the faux bumbling, the spewing out of promises that he had neither the intention nor wherewithal of keeping, our new PM was true to form. He lied. He lied with no sense of shame. He lied with no self-awareness. He claimed that it was merely a “remote possibility” that the EU would not reopen negotiations on the terms of the UK’s exit. Yet he knows that it’s a “remote possibility” in the same sense that it’s a remote possibility that the sun will come up in the east tomorrow morning. It’s a remote possibility in the same sense that Facebook will collect all your personal data and claim that it’s doing you a favour. 

The Brextremists can long longer blame a government of closet remainers for the failure of Brexit, so the new PM is just getting his excuses in early. When the vanity of Brexit comes crashing into reality it will be the fault of the EU. It will be the fault of MPs. It will be the fault of Jezza and his comrades. What it won’t ever be is the fault of the British Empire nostalgics and fantasists who created the myth of Brexit in the first place.

It’s one thing to anticipate a Boris Johnson government, but you only really grasp the true horror once it has actually happened. We now have the most right wing government in living memory, packed full of Ayn Rand fans, Brextremists, death penalty enthusiasts, failed ministers and those whose only criticism of Margaret Thatcher is that she didn’t punish the working classes harshly enough. And as if that wasn’t bad enough it is led by an empty egoist who cynically acts the clown, taking the country down a path of lies, in pursuit of a fantasy that doesn’t exist.

We didn’t witness a cabinet reshuffle. It was the wholesale appointment of a new government by a man who has no democratic legitimacy beyond the approbation of the selectorate of the Conservative party. Boris Johnson ruthlessly axed all those who didn’t give him their full support.  It's a purge that a Stalinist would be proud of. This is a man who believes that individuality is something that only applies to him. The role of everyone else in the universe is to bask in his self-esteem. The new Prime Minister has signalled that he’s going to pursue the most extreme form of Brexit possible and that the concerns of remainers are of no consequence. 
 
The Tories are now telling us that Boris Johnson will either do or die. Apparently, Malcolm Rifkind (remember him?) appeared on Sky News last night to tell us that this new government could make a success of Brexit and then Boris Johnson will be a national hero. There’s never been a greater display of wishful thinking since Theresa May bought a pair of red shoes and clicked her heels together three times in the hope that it would deliver her to the end of the yellow brick Brexit road. Even if Boris Johnson does deliver Brexit, he’ll be delivering something that many, many people have repeatedly, insistently, consistently, stated that they do not want. You don’t become a hero by forcing an unwanted dish down an unwilling throat in the hope that it will suddenly become tasty. You become a hated abuser.

It's predicted that Boris Johnson will be the worst PM that the UK has ever had. His reign will end with bombast, in self-delusion and with the UK in tatters. He likes to think he's a modern day Churchill. He's not, comparison with Neville Chamberlin would be more accurate.

Walking around Walkhampton

The weather was set fair and off we went for a walk with one of our regular Thursday groups. Back on the eastern edge of Dartmoor for this one.

The route took us on an almost figure-of-eight route with our starting point, Lowery Cross car park, at the centre. I clocked 6.2 miles on my GPS. An interesting route and one that we had not done before. There doesn't seem to be an end to the places that we haven't visited yet.

Heading down a lane from our starting point, with Walkhampton church in the distance. We dropped about 400 feet over the first half mile of the walk. As the saying goes, what goes down, must go back up.

Situated on a hilltop half a mile from the village of Walkhampton, St Mary's church, with its 85 feet pinnacled tower, dominates the surrounding landscape. It is built in local granite and originates from 1259 although most of it now dates from the 1450s.Interestingly, the bells were cast by Pennington, from our own parish, in 1764 and 1769 The fact that the church lies outside of its village indicates that it predates the village and was built in this location at a point being central to several local farms. Sadly, this is one of the few churches we've come across that remain closed to visitors outside of service times.

Next door to the Church is the old Church House, which is well documented and dates from the early sixteenth century. A plaque on the wall gives the date of 1698, but it is thought that this was probably put there when alterations took place to build the second floor. 

The Church House originally belonged to the parishioners and would have been managed by the church wardens. Its original purpose was to brew and sell ale and it would have been open for business straight after church services - a Public House owned by its customers, what more could one ask for! Besides the brewing of Church Ale, it was the Council Chamber, a collection centre for local Tithes, the distribution centre of bread for the poor and, of course, an inn on the route from Buckfast Abbey to Tavistock Abbey. It ceased trading in 1894 and was restored in the early 1980's. It is reputed to be the oldest house in the parish and certainly the one with the most history attached to it.

We quite often encounter cows on our walks and rarely have any problems with them, although, as with all large animals, their docility should not be taken for granted - especially if there are calves around.

A fingerpost pointing to Dartmoor - what more invitation is needed?

A gateway to the open moor, with Great Staple Tor in the distance. Going through the gate is like stepping over the threshold into another dimension.

Lots of beech nuts or beech mast around. And some of them were larger than normal and gave a reasonably sized nibble. Due to their high fat content, oil extracted from the masts was used for cooking and lighting in the past, and once it had matured was claimed to be no inferior to olive oil.  There is an eighteenth century reference to the kernels being put in soups. Another old source comments that suitably treated they could be turned into bread, it is also claimed that roasted beechnuts have been used as a coffee substitute.
All beech trees are capable of producing seeds as the trees produce both male and female flowers. The trees have mast years (is this year a mast year?), where an abundance of seeds is produced. This is induced by climatic factors, and observations have shown that drought years are often accompanied or followed by heavy mast years.

We walked a couple of miles along the track of the old Princetown Railway, a 10¼ mile single track branch railway line that ran from Yelverton to Princetown via four intermediate stations, Dousland, Burrator and Sheepstor Halt, Ingra Tor Halt and King Tor Halt. The line closed in 1956 and is now a very popular cycling and walking route.
Here's a thing: what is it about some cyclists that makes them never use warning bells when they are sharing a path with walkers? Do they delight at the prospect of running us down? Or are they, as I think, simply mindless dolts who couldn't care a toss about those of us on foot? Not that I wish them ill but I hope they are perennially saddle sore and have punctures galore.

Lunch stop with a view. Well worth the effort of getting there.

The Devonport Leat was constructed in the 1790s to carry fresh drinking water from the high ground of Dartmoor to the expanding dockyards at Plymouth Dock, renamed in the early 1800s to Devonport. It originally ran for some 30 miles but now stops at Burrator Reservoir. Here some of the water goes to Dousland water works and the rest falls down a waterfall into the reservoir. 

A kissing gate at Burrator and Sheepstor Halt station that led down towards the dam and reservoir. As is the case here, quite often these gates alongside railways have posts and struts made from bent railway rails. The etymology of the name is that the gate merely "kisses" (touches) the enclosure either side, rather than needing to be securely latched - and you thought it was to do with old-fashioned philematology!

Looking across Burrator Reservoir towards Sheepstor. Compare and contrast with the IR version of the same scene below. I know which one I find more interesting.

When you've got an itch, you've just got to scratch it.

I'll finish up this post with a few infra-red images. I carry the camera so I might as well show some of the photographs I took. As experience grows, I'm being far more selective about using it and am getting a better feel for what may turn out to be a reasonable image. Beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder for some of them as they are a representation of reality rather than the real thing.

Looking down from the edge of Yennadon Down, where we started, roughly to the north. IR makes the sky look much more menacing than it was. Keen eyes will pick out Walkhampton church and Brentor, making it an image that is worth studying as there's so much in it.

Walkhampton church as we approached it over the fields.

The church tower.

This shot has a rather Victorian sepia feel to it. Although the church is constructed of granite blocks, they are so smooth that they could be mistaken for concrete.

Looking across Burrator Reservoir towards Sheepstor. I prefer this one to the full spectrum version above.

Another walk along the Coastal Footpath, plus the church of St Juliot.

PAnother hot day and another chance to complete another stretch of the Cornish Coastal Footpath. This one filled in a gap between Boscastle and Crackington Haven. With this one under our boots, we should be able to finish the remaining miles in 4 or 5 sessions, depending on how energetic we feel about tackling some of the notoriously difficult sections. Not that this one was easy. But we did it and that was very satisfying. Our day was concluded with a visit to St Juliot's church, which has associations with the author, Thomas Hardy.

Our route was pretty simple: keep the sea to the right and head south west. 5.5 miles of  what can be justifiably described as 'moderate to strenuous' walking - with there being more of the strenuous than the moderate. We took a taxi from the centre of Boscastle up the The Strangles, just outside of Crackington Haven, and walked from there.

Our route from a satellite. It looks pretty flat from up there - just proving that appearances can be deceptive The red dot to the right is the location of St Juliot's church, which we visited on our way back home.

Looking south west along the route we'll be taking, although not as far as we can see. We'll be going as far as the white tower that can be seen in the mid-ground. High Cliff, the second lump, is the highest point on the coast of Cornwall and reaches 735 feet (223m) above sea level. And it felt like it when we got to the top.

Looking north east with the white domes of the Morwenstowe tracking station in the distance. Lundy Island can be just about made out on the horizon, giving a visibility of around 30 miles.

Who goes down...……………

……….must go up. I'm not sure how many steps we encountered on this walk but there were hundreds.

By and large, wayside flowers are well passed their prime and coming across a very short section of wall in pretty much full bloom was a very pleasant surprise. What was it about this particular spot that meant that the flowering was delayed? It was well sheltered and that may account for it.

Even to a non-geologist as me, the stretch of coastline between Boscastle and Crackington Haven is truly impressive. The cliffs tower above the sea and the wind-battered, bare rock faces tumble in a series of strange and dramatic formations. This concertina of black shale, sandstone and quartz was formed millions of years ago and is what is known to nerds as the Crackington Formation. Sounds like an obscure '60s rock band to me.

And so we came to the harbour at Boscastle. A delightful place and always a pleasant place to walk around - more so in the out-of-season months when there are fewer people around. The white tower I mentioned earlier on can be seen on the headland. It was formerly an observation tower for whatever was there to be observed at the time.

A Stonechat. There were lots of these all along our walk, flitting from the tops of vegetation and field posts. Perpetually on the move, making getting a decent shot quite difficult.

 

St Juliot or Saint Julitta. Another fascinating gem of a church. It is rather isolated and has a congregation of just 4. It has struggled in the past before its unique claim to fame. The medieval building, particularly the tower, was dilapidated and an architect was engaged in 1867 to make some renovations and, essentially, save the building. The architect was a struggling novelist: Thomas Hardy. He met and fell in love with the Rector’s sister-in-law, Emma Gifford. She encouraged his writing, and after this rebuild he gave up architecture and promptly published his second novel “A Pair of Blue Eyes". The rest is history. Their marriage was not a happy one, regrettably. Hardy married a second time, but this was prejudiced by emotional “baggage” from the marriage to Emma. The setting could easily feature in a Hardy novel and it probably does. It is both beautiful and atmospheric and yet another example of a building that must be preserved.

The Screen and Pulpit are Victorian, installed by Hardy - though not entirely in accordance with his instructions. He had planned to repair the original medieval screen rather than replace it, but the builder he employed for the work is said to have told him, "I said to myself I won’t stand on a pound or two while I’m about it, I’ll give ‘em a new screen instead of that patched up old thing!" and Hardy had to give in. The pulpit was also installed during Hardy's restoration, though again, it was not part of his original plan.

The patron saint of the church , St Julitta, was yet another relatively obscure Christian martyr who came to a gruesome end. She and her three-year-old son, Cyricus, had fled to Tarsus and were identified as Christians. Julitta was tortured and Cyricus, being held by the governor of Tarsus, scratched the governor's face and was killed by being thrown down by some stairs. Julitta did not weep but celebrated the fact that her son had earned the crown of martyrdom. In anger, the governor then decreed that Julitta’s sides should be ripped apart with hooks, and then she was beheaded. Her body, along with that of Cyricus, was flung outside the city, on the heap of bodies belonging to criminals, but two maids rescued the corpses of the mother and child and buried them in a nearby field. What a nice story!

The picture above is of the Thomas Hardy window designed by Simon Whistler. It was presented to the church by the Thomas Hardy Society and dedicated in July 2003. The window consists of scenes from the romance of Hardy and Emma Gifford, his first wife - these scenes taking place in the area around St Juliot, including Beeny Cliff and the Valency river valley. These scenes are frequently referred to in Hardy's poetry, particularly in those poems he wrote in response to Emma's death. 
As I never travel carrying a big piece of black cardboard, because of the light coming in through the engraved glass, it is impossible for my photographs to do justice to how beautiful this window is. My advice is, go to St Juliot and see for yourself.

Why go to Saint-Juliot? What's Juliot to me?
I was but made fancy
By some necromancy
That much of my life claims the spot as its key.

Yes. I have had dreams of that place in the West,
And a maiden abiding
Thereat as in hiding;
Fair-eyed and white-shouldered, broad-browed and brown-tressed.

And of how, coastward bound on a night long ago,
There lonely I found her,
The sea-birds around her,
And other than nigh things uncaring to know.

So sweet her life there (in my thought has it seemed)
That quickly she drew me
To take her unto me,
And lodge her long years with me. Such have I dreamed.

But nought of that maid from Saint-Juliot I see;
Can she ever have been here,
And shed her life's sheen here,
The woman I thought a long housemate with me?

Does there even a place like Saint-Juliot exist?
Or a Vallency Valley
With stream and leafed alley,
Or Beeny, or Bos with its flounce flinging mist?

(A Dream or No: February 1913)

This detail in the right hand window depicts Emma riding her horse near Beeny Cliffs, a couple of miles to the west of the church. We walked across the top of these but not until we'd negotiated yet another of the flights of steps. Emma had it easy if all she had to do was to ride there!

The church in infra-red. It works for me.

As does this infra-red shot of the graveyard.

 

Ann Widdecombe: what a star performer

Steve Bell: Guardian: 5th July 2019

Just when you thought that Nigel 'Dad's Army' Farage had won the trophy for British political clown of the decade, along comes Ann Widdecombe saying “hold my coat”. During her first speech to the European Parliament, Ann compared the EU to slave owners. That’s not hyperbole at all, oh no. That’s just an embarrassment. That’s just an affront to all those millions of people who suffered and died at the hands of the slave trade. It’s an insult to them and an insult to their descendants. And, on a relatively trivial level, it's actually an insult to her constituents in the South West, of which I am one. Not in my name, Ann. Certainly not in my name.

The only thing that Ann Widdecombe is a slave to is her ego and her overweening English nationalist entitlement. When an old Tory who supports austerity, who backs homophobia, who once defended putting women prisoners who were actually in the process of giving birth in chains, claims to speak for the oppressed, satire hasn’t just died. It’s been crushed to its atoms and those atoms split into their subatomic particles.

The gist of her speech was to liken the UK within the EU to a colony rebelling against an undemocratic empire. English nationalists like Ann are incapable of conceptualising any relationship between nations that isn’t one predicated on power and domination. The notion of independent states cooperating as equals is alien to them. They view everything through the prism of the relationship between the nations of the UK. You’re either the ruler or the ruled. A partnership of equals is just a lullaby sung to Scottish Unionists to stop them from crying themselves to sleep at night.

The English nationalism that drives Brexit still hankers for the days when Britannia ruled the waves and waived the rules, when Greater England and its hangers-on dominated the world and enforced its wishes with gunboats. Ann thinks that oppression is going to a restaurant in England and being served a meal by someone from Krakow.

British politics is broken and it can’t be fixed. Scotland may have lost faith in the Labour party a long time ago, but now that loss of faith has been replicated across the rest of the UK. According to an opinion poll from YouGov this week, 24% would vote Tory, 23% would vote for Nigel Farage Ltd. 20% for the Lib Dems, and 9% for the Greens. Just 18% of UK voters say that they’d back the Labour party in a General Election. The Labour party has fallen to fourth place in Westminster voting intentions over the UK as a whole. It is likely that, if there’s an early General Election, parties in favour of crashing out of the EU with no deal would take a majority of seats in England and Wales. This Conservative government is the worst in living memory, the most inept, the most venal, the most incompetent. Yet Labour is still behind them in the polls. Just think on that and despair.

Those Labour voters still remaining can now be under no illusions that the Labour party of Jeremy Corbyn is going to save them from a Tory Brexit, even in the unlikely event that Jezza does finally get off the fence and comes out in support of a second EU referendum. It's a crying shame that this single issue is clouding all of the good policies that Jezza stands for. His heart is in the right place, most of the time, but on Brexit, he's really misjudged the mood of the country. And we are all losing out because of it.

Steve Bell: Guardian: 3rd July 2019

The Pied Piper of Bungling

The attack on Boris Johnson’s character by his former boss Max Hastings which was published in the Guardian last week has obviously hit a nerve amongst the Borisketeers. Max Hastings was the editor of the Telegraph when Boris Johnson wrote all those lies about bendy bananas and there is clearly little love lost between them. No one knows how the bananas feel about it, possibly because they don’t exist, just like Boris Johnson’s plan for exiting the EU. Hastings said of his former employee, “Johnson would not recognise truth, whether about his private or political life, if confronted by it in an identity parade.” Then for good measure, he added that the only people who like Boris Johnson are those who do not know him.

In response, the Spectator Magazine, which Boris Johnson used to edit, has published a defence of him penned by Conrad Black. Yes, that Conrad Black, the former owner of the Telegraph, serial liar and convicted fraudster. Because, of course, the very best person to give a character reference for Boris Johnson is a former convict and fraudster, who was pardoned by Donald Trump after he, Conrad, wrote a book in praise of the president. The Spectator was once a respected publication. The voice of the intellectual Conservative, or for what passed as such, but it’s rapidly turning itself into Hello magazine for Boris Johnson fans.

The truly amazing thing here is that Fraser Nelson, the sufferer from irritable vowel syndrome who is the current editor of the Spectator, thought that a character reference from Conrad Black was going to help. Or more likely, it was because he thought it would help Boris Johnson’s chances to attack those who criticise the leading contender for the Conservative leadership. It sends a useful signal. Attack the darling of the Tory right and you will not be safe, no matter who you are.

Boris Johnson’s public image is of the bumbling fool, the friendly buffoon, the cuddly teddy bear who tells funny stories. But it’s well known amongst those who know him that he has a vicious and foul temper. That’s why Max Hastings said that the only people who like Boris Johnson are those who don’t know him. In part Bozza's support amongst Conservative MPs is built upon threats about what would happen to them if they don’t back him.

Maybe the only reason that they got Conrad to give a character reference was because Darth Vader was too busy. Whatever the reason, Black’s article in the Spectator is a pretty weak defence of Bozza. It’s more of an attack on Max Hastings. It’s amusing to witness the British establishment knock lumps out of one another. It would be even more amusing if it wasn’t for the sad truth that the entire UK is perched on the edge of disaster while the patricians play pretend politics.

Unfortunately for the rest of us, attacks on Boris Johnson’s character, as entertaining as they are, are unlikely to prevent him from winning the support of the Conservative party membership. The reason that they like him is because of his character flaws. They’re not a bug, they’re a feature. They like the fact that he’s an unreconstructed posho with a sense of entitlement. They like the fact that he has the tact and diplomacy of a bull in a china shop. They like the mock bumbling shambolic nature of his presentation, because deep down the Conservatives dislike and distrust intellectuals: because intellectuals think for themselves and are less likely to bend the knee to the authority of the established order.

Words are powerful things. They can protect and defend against charlatans and liars, but they can also cast spells that bewitch and betray. Perhaps Boris Johnson’s greatest sin is his sin against language. He uses words not to illuminate, but to distort and deflect. He didn’t tell us about his bus making hobby in order to inform us, but so that whenever someone Googles Boris and buses they’ll be confronted with articles about his confection of models from cardboard and not pieces about the lie about £350 million for the NHS that he had painted on the side of the leave campaign’s tour bus. As if by magic, the bus that’s a danger to his ambition vanishes. You don't believe it can be done? It can and it has.

Words are living things, they are creations from the soul. Our druidic distant ancestors believed that it was sinful to write words down, because by writing a word down you deprived it of the breath that gave birth to it, and in doing so you risked destroying its soul. A word that was written without respect for truth was a murdered word, and murdered words contain the potential to become a lie that lasts forever, a dark magic incantation that builds a world of untruths.

Boris Johnson is a killer of words. He uses murdered words to pen articles which create a false universe constructed of lies and deceit. He casts his spell over the Tory party like the Pied Piper who is playing the fool, because he tells them the stories that they want to hear and they lose themselves in a dreamscape made of comforting lies and self-congratulatory laughter. They think that Boris Johnson is letting them in on the joke, when in fact they are the joke. He’s the Pied Piper of Bungling who is leading them to their destruction and he’s taking the rest of us with him.