THE JOYS OF AUTUMN

It is a time of beauty and completion, of harvests safely gathered in; our bard Keats sang its praises:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

Our gentle idealisation of the season, our rose-tinted-spectacles-view is supported by Harvest Festival displays of homely satisfaction.

 

                                                                    The Richness of Harvest

 

To round off this beautiful moment we can revel in Vivaldi’s Allegro from his Autumn concerto in The Four Seasons:-

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7hGiZ579cs&ab_channel=caballeroh

But we do not have to be too misty-eyed. The reality of a British autumn is lovely enough. I think about the trees in all their full autumnal glory, stately and colourful, their leaves a riot of russet hues carpeting the ground to the delight of children in wellies. I think of dogs snuffling about in canine curiosity and insects digging down in anticipation of cooler nights. We allow woollies to replace cottons, we layer with pullovers and sport tweedy hats, striking scarfs, cosy gloves and robust boots. At last, reaching our warm firesides, sheltering from the rising evening wind outside, we gratefully quaff our lush dark sherry or wee dram of finest Scotch. Heaven!

For Autumn too always seems to me to be a time of celebration and convivial laughter. Church Harvest festivals are perhaps losing their prominence but the laity keep the seasons carefully. Hallowe’en is well observed in Scotland and rural England, Australia and in the USA it is a raucous and lavish celebration, a survival of the Mayflower heritage. How much we loved as schoolchildren “ducking for apples”, playing party games and eating rich fruit cake, and most of all scraping out a raw turnip (tasty, but indigestible) and fashioning a “neep lantern” with slit eyes and toothy jaws to terrify the evil spirits- the American pumpkins are much easier!

                                    Anglophone Halloween

A more adult Autumn celebration is found at the Munich Oktoberfest, part harvest part folk festival. The locals dress up in lederhosen und drindl but that is not obligatory. What is obligatory is to consume substantial quantities of excellent German beer, supplemented by Wurst and to have a jolly, convivial time.

                    Oktoberfest in Munich

Yet these are one-off events and the Autumn treat we are more likely to experience is the casual meeting at the local pub, when a polite chat becomes a more profound conversation and you grow to value the person with whom you are talking and to appreciate new perspectives on how we live. You have made a new friend! Hurrah!

This 2023 Autumn is much fortified by an overflow of sporting events to quicken the pulse. As I write, Europe has made a splendid start to her attempt to win the Ryder Cup golf in Rome, leading 6.5 to 1.5. I hope Europe can keep ahead, though the singles are America’s strong suit. Grand Prix racing and the Cricket World Cup in India will also be gripping – not to mention the World Series Baseball tournament for which the Atlanta Braves are currently favourites.

The most absorbing competition is however the Rugby World Cup in France. Already we have seen many clashes of the Titans, great stuff from Ireland, Wales and Fiji, some gems from my native Scotland, solid games from New Zealand and England – but I put my money on France, the host with all the connected advantages. I expect to see peerless Antoine Dupont raise the trophy, probably playing with a protective face-mask after his fractured cheek injury, captain of a truly formidable French team. Allez France!

            The French captain Antoine Dupont

May you all enjoy a marvellous and mellow Autumn!

SMD

29.09.23

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2023

NEEDS SORTING

Our great nation is going through some kind of collective mental and moral breakdown and we need to shake ourselves out of negative attitudes and of what our French friends call Nostalgie de la Boue, the attraction to low-life culture, experience and degradation. How else can we have actually honoured or promoted the careers of such flawed characters as Prince Andrew, Boris Johnson (alas!), Jimmy Savile, Russell Brand or Ghislaine Maxwell – none of them role-models, for sure.

Prince Andrew

Boris Johnson

                                 

                                                            Russell Brand

Behind the personalities, there are serious issues and leadership challenges which need sorting and I list 5 – others will have much longer lists.

(1)    Political Behaviour. Westminster is an undignified bear-garden – far too many MPs (radical boundary changes required) and respect for the neutrality of The Speaker has been greatly damaged by Bercow’s tenure. The adversarial tradition should be modified with different seating arrangements and stronger cross-party committees. The unwritten UK constitution should be respected – prorogation of parliament, for example, to suit the party in power cannot be tolerated. PM’s Question Time needs to be remodelled, as it is uninformative in content and artificial in concept. Government must always be accountable to parliament, but it does not need a bogusly dramatic accompaniment. Perhaps the worst legacy of Boris is that the veracity and integrity of the Prime Minister is no longer a given assumption. Some of the time-honoured flummery of parliament, including The Lords, deserves the too long-delayed dustbin.

 

(2)    The National Health Service. Said to be the 5^th largest employer in the world with a payroll of 1.7m people, the NHS is a revered institution, once hardly ever criticized. When Covid struck we were encouraged to give it a clap every week and clang pots and pans in appreciation. But the obvious waste and incompetence displayed eroded confidence and the retreat of GPs from the front line and opportunistic strikes by nurses, junior doctors and senior consultants did not impress the public. The use of unqualified receptionists as gate-keepers, shielding the doctors, was scandalous and the whole edifice is too expensive and bureaucratic to survive without urgent reform. The staff union leaders, mostly extreme Lefties, have destroyed public goodwill. Tales of mis-diagnoses, appallingly bad care in certain hospitals, the Lucy Letby scandal and the past calamity of polluted blood administered to patients (£26bn compensation estimated) further undermines the NHS’s reputation. Vigorous management and focused financial plans would reignite public affection for the NHS.

 

(3)    The Media. Britain has always suffered from her “gutter press”, but now with a Woke-rampant BBC / ITV and rancid social media, the smell from the media drains is overpowering. The lowest common denominator holds sway, with a deeply moronic output and opinions expressed as facts, to which only a tiny minority subscribe. Toxic cancel-culture is everywhere and bias partout. The current Russell Brand imbroglio is a case in point. Brand may well be an insufferable twit and was given too much latitude, but he is not yet a criminal. There must be at this stage a presumption of innocence and still the laws of defamation and contempt of court probably need strengthening (and enforcing, by our abject Police and Judiciary.)

 

                                    

                                                             

               Rupert Murdoch (92), ruthless arch-agitator                Piers Morgan, his cheerleader

(4)    Devolution and Local Government. If the last 20 years have shown us anything, it is evident that if you give a politician an inch, he will take a mile. The well-meaning devolution experiment has been a disaster and somehow the political clock will have to be put back and devolved powers and privileges drastically reduced. In Scotland, a once proud nation has seen its home reduced to a crime-ridden, drug-guzzling, squalid slum by fanatical leaders obsessed with absurd dreams of “Independence”, when it is one of the most neighbour-dependent states in the world. Wales is another political slum, where nothing works well, while the obtuseness and ignorance of Northern Ireland’s crew are legendary. England itself is not much better with Birmingham going bust and cosmopolitan London rocked by its ill-conceived but woke ULEZ scheme. When local authorities are charged with real responsibility, like the regulation of care homes, they make a spectacular mess of it, employing low-lives who abuse vulnerable patients. Let’s face it, the UK talent pool of competent managers and administrators is alarmingly shallow.

 

(5)    The Watchdogs. A classic solution for the control of powerful institutions is the appointment of an overseeing watchdog, who has the ability to rectify abuses and omissions, and has the power to challenge and monitor those institutions. But these watchdogs are fallible and the question is soon asked: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who watches the watchmen?). Such watchdogs hover over the City, Education, the Health Service and many other government departments. Their effectiveness is questionable, and while they provide well-paid billets for experienced old hands, they are often far too close to their erstwhile friends and colleagues. Thus recently, charged with investigating whether “de-banking” banking customers for political reasons was widespread, the City watchdog, the FCA, pronounced that they had asked 34 banks and found no evidence that anyone had been “primarily” de-banked for political reasons. This flies in the face of widespread publicity given to the struggle of Brexiteer Nigel Farage to retain his Coutts Bank account and the subsequent resignation of the CEO of NatWest, the owner of Coutts, when clear evidence emerged. Another mess – as we Scotsmen say, “There’s none so deaf as those who do not want to hear!”

A heavy agenda of Reform is suggested in this piece, unlikely to be completed in my lifetime. But I suggest that the powers-that-be start down the hard and treacherous road now!

 

SMD

21.09.23

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2023