At Elcho Castle

There is enough food in the world for everyone.......... IF

We watched this film in church this morning, and sent in the petitioning cards to David Cameron, asking him to take action through the G8 to take the action required to make serious inroads into world poverty.

Here's a copy of the card, why not click to enlarge, print off a copy, fill it out and send it to the Prime Minister yourself?

 

Coast

Torridon

Magic.

Summer Barn

After the Catch

On the Road

Loch 'a Mhuillin

Wild Wood

Lost Property

Down on the Farm

The Old Croft House

Rockscrape

Glint

All Blues

In Torridon, even the crash barriers seem look beautiful....!

In Torridon, even the crash barriers seem look beautiful....!

Torridon Otter

It's there, if you look hard enough!

Three Lochs, Eight Peaks

Click on photo to enlarge

John Shuttleworth: Out of Our Sheds, Live in Stirling

John Shuttleworth lived up to his billing as "South Yorkshire's Most Versatile Singer-Songwriter" at Stirling University on March 29th, when he brought his "Out of our Sheds" show to the Macrobert Theatre. With his trademark deadpan wit, entertaining songs, keyboard wizardry and endlessly joyous repartee, he left his audience delighted, and bewildered. Turning his with equal skill to grunge, rock, pop, ballads, and even a bit of country and western, John Shuttleworth thrilled his audience with such classics as "Two Margarines", "Pigeons in Flight", and "Can't Go Back (To Savoury Now)". John is well-known as a radio-personality, and musical entertainer with a full diary of live dates. The week before the Stirling date he told us that his agent Ken Worthington ("TV's Mr Clarinet Man"), had got him a gig in a hospice where he encouraged the residents to join in the songs and do the actions too - "which really seemed to take their minds of their problems". Less well known is that Shuttleworth is also an actor, and his acting masterclass midway through the show was a showcase for his prodigious talent.

The on-stage antics of Mr Shuttleworth were absolutely hilarious. Almost as funny was watching the reactions of the people with us. While some of the group were in hysterics, and a few others wore wry amused grins throughout the show - one member of our party sat in wide-eyed, open-mouthed incomprehension for its entire duration. This in itself was pricelessly amusing.

This was a fabulous night, of very funny comedy, through the quite brilliantly observed and performed persona of John Shuttleworth. Graham Fellows is a genius - I haven't laughed so much for ages.

Sand, Applecross Peninsula

Alligin Gloaming

Click on image to enlarge and see properly!

Book Notes: The UDA: Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror by Henry Mcdonald and Jim Cusack

McDonald and Cusack's book about the Ulster Defence Association (subtitled, "Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror"), traces the history of the  organisation from 1968 - 2004, from its foundation right through to the modern peace-process era.

These are four hundred of the most turbulent, bloody, depressing and unrelentingly hopeless pages I have ever read. McDonald and Cusack begin their story in the late 1960s as Protestant hegemony was being challenged, and the Troubles erupting.  While on one side of the divide, the Provisional IRA were preparing to renew their war with The British and Loyalists, the movement towards armed para-militarism was lead both by a small tight knit terror group called the UVF, and broad masses of street gangs caught up in the territorial wars that raged around Belfast. It was from these gang resistance movements that the UDA was formed. Violent, brutal and given to grotesque acts of barbarism to enemies both within and without its ranks, the UDA gained a significant hold on sections of working class loyalist Belfast.

According to the authors the high-water mark of the groups' influence was around the time of the Ulster Workers Council strikes of the early 70s, which brought down the Stormont regime, and with it power-sharing, and a role for Dublin in the rule of N. Ireland under the Sunningdale agreement. During this era, violent mass action against the perceived sell-out of Ulster by the British brought the UDA into the centre of Ulster's fraught politics.

However, it is the author's contention that everything was downhill from this point for the UDA. The organisation fundamentally failed to coherently develop a convincing 'political-wing' to mirror the electoral successes which Sinn Fein were able to enjoy after the hunger strike era. The Ulster Democratic Party consistently failed to gain any control over the disparate and warring factional groups within the UDA in order to ever achieve much politically. In addition to that, Loyalist voters lost any sense that the UDA were 'defenders of their community' much after 1974, and had no inclination whatsoever to vote for the representatives of violence, drug-dealing, thuggery, and organised crime which blighted their neighbourhoods. For this is what the organisation had in fact become.

Militarily, the authors assessment of UDA violence is also grim. Every chapter of this book is filled with descriptions of appalling and sickening violence. Some books (notably anything about the IRA from a nationalistic/republican stance) add detailed justifications for, and excuses for 'armed struggle'. McDonald and Cusack do not, but they do record a litany of horrors. Some of the worst of these were the 'tit-for-tat' killings conducted by the UDAs wing known as the UFF. Their strategy was to execute random Catholics in response to IRA/INLA killings of Loyalists. Their belief was that this terror would drive a wedge between the Catholic population and the IRA/Sinn Fein - while the truth was that their actions turned countless nationalists into republicans. The authors view is that this strategy was both morally and strategically disastrous.

The chapters on 'collusion' were not what I had expected. What I was anticipating was reading about the UDA being used to hit IRA targets who the Special Branch of the RUC were unable to get court-worthy evidence against. There was some of this. What there was a lot more of was details of the extent to which the security forces compromised and crippled the organisation, riddled it with moles and controlled it via the release of information and effective prosecution and imprisonment of key operatives. In addition to that, there were some incredible stories of UDA collusion with Republican terror groups, usually involving the betrayal of a rival in the constant battles to control the movement.

The book ends with two major stories. The first is of the official leaders of the UDA becoming involved in the peace process, and formally ending their 'war'. This is interesting reading, and a good counterbalance to the headline grabbing story of the IRA, London, Dublin, Washington and the path towards democracy. There were of course, a series of Loyalists terror groups who made similarly stuttering moves away from killing, but without the lure of the prospect of anyone ever voting them into office in return. The second is of the horrendous internal warfare that raged between the various Loyalist groups at this time, central to which is the menacing figure of Johnny Adair, who sought to control the movement by sparking a war between the UDA and the UVF, by siding with the LVF against their former comrades in the UVF.

The authors paint a miserable picture of a nasty, chaotic, violent, and bloodthirsty series of Loyalist terror gangs who carved out a role for themselves in the evils of The Troubles, fighting for Ulster - but sustaining their own glamorous lifestyles, and causing incalculable damage to their enemies and their natural friends. It is an extraordinary tale, one full of tragedies and contradictions. This remains one of the darkest books I have ever read - but yet is an essential part of the story of Northern Ireland's troubles, and search for peace. 

The book was published in 2004, and the UDA/UFF did not verifiably put its weapons beyond use until 2010.

Montage #5

A short series of 5 images which are stitched panoramas taken around Torridon/Applecross area. They all require to be clicked to enlarge them - in order to appreciate them.

Montage #4

Montage #3

Montage #2

Montage #1

Click to enlarge...

Gazing out to sea..

Big Sky

Another side of Alligin

Little Cairn, Big View. A' Bhainlir

A'Bhainlir, Torridon, Wester Ross.

Alligin Sundown

Looks even better (and bigger) when you click on the image..

The Marriage Course: Perth Spring 2013

We are going to be running The Marriage Course again in Perth this Spring. Our plan is to run on Monday nights from 7:30-10pm. The aim of the 7-session course is help any married couple (whatever their stage of life, or whether they are struggling or really happy together) to improve their relationship and enjoy it to the full.

An evening on The Marriage Course begins with a meal, then we watch a DVD together about an aspect of marriage. Then there are times for each couple to privately discuss their responses to the DVD, using some discussion materials in the course manual. These times are the most important part of the course, as so couples privacy during them is strictly protected, and there are absolutely no cringe-inducing group discussions whatsoever.

The course has a gentle Christian-flavour to it, but is by no means exclusively for Christians. On our course we have had several people attend who do not have Christian faith, but who told us that they both enjoyed and benefited from the course a lot.

Participants on previous courses have told us (sometimes years later) that working through this material together has made a huge difference in their lives for the better. Many married couples have a vague sense that 'we ought to be investing in our marriage' but don't know how to do it, or where to start. The Marriage Course provides a helpful structure and a safe environment for this, and so can be a great way of working together on building a stable and fulfilling relationship.

If you are interested in doing The Marriage Course, please e-mail office@perthbaptistchurch.org.uk, or speak to me personally if you know me! We ask for a donation of £25/head "or what you can afford" towards the costs of the seven meals and the course manual.

http://www.relationshipcentral.org/marriage-course

A Good Death

A Good Death from PRN Films on Vimeo.

A Good Death is a film about end-of-life care by my friend Robin Taylor

A sermon wordle

Ice ice, baby

East Lomond

Gazing Southwards from Birnam Hill, East Lomond in Fife lurks like giant pimple in the far distance, way beyond Perth.

From Birnam Hill

Rich winter colours...

Book Notes: A Secret History of the IRA by Ed Moloney

For many years Ed Moloney was the Northern Ireland correspondent for The Irish Times, and in the course of his many years covering 'The Troubles' gained unparallelled access to sources within the IRA. This book is the compiling together of his lifetime of research, detailing for what is claimed to be the first time, a detailed and accurate record of the internal history of that organisation. Many people have written before about the public faces, military strategies and terrorist outrages perpetrated by the IRA - but Moloney adds to this enormous insightful detail about the political machinations, power struggles, shifts and empires within Irish Republicanism, much of which I suspect would not have been safe for him to reveal prior to the Provisionals cease fires and retreat from armed struggle.

The story he tells is shocking, alarming, intriguing, fast -paced and completely engrossing. If even half of what he writes is true, it is one of the most strange, surprising and unusual political stories of modern times.

When I was a child, the letters 'IRA' on the news meant death, pictures of bombed buildings, grieving families, funerals, and bloodshed. Their sinister balaclava'd faces firing rounds over coffins at vast paramilitary funerals added a ghoulish element of 'cartoon-evil' to their inexplicable actions both in distant Northern Ireland and where I grew up near London. Of course, I knew nothing about them, their ideology, grievances, history, structure, organisation or reasons for violence - to me like most British people they were either purely evil or merely psychopathic. Either way, the political claims of Sinn Fein were completely drowned out by the sounds of gun-fire, bomb-blasts and decades of weeping. It is therefore fascinating to read about the thought-processes and reasoning of the people behind this terror, how 'armed struggle' began in Ireland, why it gained mythological status in Republicanism and why in successive waves it has been abandoned by people like Michael Collins, then Eamon De Valera, elements of the OIRA and finally the Provos.

Much of this book focusses on the Adams, and then Adams-McGuinness leadership of Republicanism. The story of Adams rise to the top of the movement reads like Stalin's manoevering to seize power in Russia after the death of Lenin - repeatedly isolating opponents only to subsequently adopt their platform. This goes in some way to explaining the odd ideological shifts within the movement. In the early stages of the book Adams is an opponent of engagement with politics, an advocate of only armed struggle. Later he appears as a proponent of the 'armalite and the ballot box strategy', while latterly he is seen endorsing purely political ends. Needless to say, at each stage of these shifts enemies were removed, and the whole narrative is encased in horrible violence. Moloney goes as far as hinting that key enemies of Adams were betrayed to the British forces by moles within the IRA some of whom were killed as a result at critical moments for Adams' leadership.

It's all here in Moloney's book, the Provisional's split from the OIRA and their seizing the initiative, the escalation of the 'war' in the early 1970s, the effect of the internment on the IRA, and the attitudes and policies of successive Belfast, Dublin and London governments. The stagnation of armed struggle, the hunger strikes, and the Republican's entry into elections, the passage of highly secret negotiations between all parties - notably Adam's route via Fr Alec Reid to the SDLP and governments, and the faulting path in the direction of peace. The publicity for the book majored on the fact that it reveals 'for the first time' the internal workings of the IRA Army Council and Adams role within it', that meant both leading it in actions of murder, terror and 'war', as well as in leading it away from that and into mainstream politics.

Adams' manipulation of the peace process and his interactions with the IRA are detailed in perhaps the most startling element of the story Maloney tells. His version of events suggests that Adams and McGuinness lied to the IRA about the possibility of a cease-fire, before leading the movement to a point when it was inevitable. The extraordinary lengths Adams went to in order to isolate opponents who opposed the political direction of the movement (notably the Micky McKevitt faction who subsequently formed dissident terror groups) are all documented here. Using the threat of losing control of the movement to these people, Adams is also pictured as winning concession after concession from the 'Good Friday' negotiators, which he continued to do long after these people had been removed from the equation.

Another amazing thread through this story is the IRA's external relations with hostile foreign governments (a history that goes back to their murky overtures to the Third Reich) such as Eastern Bloc governments during the Cold War and Gadaffi's Libya who would supply the Provos most sophisticated weaponry and large sums of money during the last decades of the conflict. This is interlinked with details of the incredible extent to which the IRA was infiltrated by moles giving away both military and political information to London and Dublin - of countless foiled operations, deaths and arrests. Some of these informers are known and named, in other cases Moloney documents the nature of the information and what was done with it - but either does not know or cannot name the informant. The most significant of these is the betrayal of the Eksund, a boat filled with a vast military arsenal from Libya with which the IRA hoped to bring the conflict to a bloody, violent and abrupt Republican victory which they names the 'Tet Offensive' after the VietCong's final push.

Maloney's work is incredibly detailed and insightful - yet its reads very easily. Interestingly, despite now living in America Maloney is still very guarded about many of his sources. The work is massively footnoted, and thoroughly referenced, but if you take a moment to follow the most revealing and alarming footnotes the will not reveal much more than, "119: interview with IRA source, November 1999" for example.

The book concludes at the completion of the peace process and the power sharing Stormont Government in the 'Chuckle Brothers' era of Paisley and McGuiness. Moloney charts the way in which Adams was able to use the skills he had honed in manipulating Republicanism to his desired ends to do the same to the wider political landscape. This process was mirrored on the Unionist side and so Sinn Fein displaced the SDLP in the same way that the DUP eclipsed the UUP - and the book ends tersely when he describes the handing of power over to the new executive:

"[Blair] and Bertie Ahern had brought final peace to one of Europe's most troubled regions, but at the cost of handing it over to the least deserving, most adamantine elements of that society." (p592)

This is a quite brilliant read, which anyone interested in the history of Ireland should take time to consider.

All Blues, No Rhythm

Birnam Hill, Dunkeld, Perthshire

Obney Hill 3

Colas Oil Train at Perth

A visitor crosses the Tay at Perth, Northbound towards Aberdeen.

Obney Hill 2

One of the oddities of taking photos when climbing hills is that the hill being climbed rarely appears well in the photos of the day - while adjacent hills loom large. Really I should catalogue all the photos and then post a picture of the day's walk, taken from a view of that hill rather than from it!

This view of Obney Hill was taken today from the Birnam Hill a couple of miles to the East. It forms a nice contrast to the previous post.

Obney Hill

There is a long line of hills which run east-west just north of the Perthshire village of Bankfoot. Visible for miles around, this chain of rolling summits divides Glen Almond to the South with Strathbraan on its Northern side. For travellers heading North on the A9, these hills visible to the left of that great main road offer a first tantalising glimpse of what the Highlands have to offer. The most famous of these hills is the furthest East of them, is Birnam Hill, forever enshrined in Shakespearean legend, which towers over the picturesque village of Dunkeld. Next to Birnam Hill is a lovely hill which is in comparison with its famous friend, largely overlooked but which gave us a wonderful little walk yesterday. I refer to Obney Hill, rendered on some maps as "The Obney Hills", and the summit in the photo above it shown by the OS as a 'fort' site.

Only a 2 or 3 hour jaunt, but an excellent tramp through some deep snow and some really wonderful views.