The People Voted For Change

'The People voted for change' is being repeated ad nauseam here in Ireland, especially by Sinn Fein supporters. One is tempted to reply, 'have they not noticed that change happens all the time, and increasingly in spades?' Much of it is thoroughly undesirable from my point of view, such as the introduction of abortion and homosexual 'marriage'. More generally, all sorts of people are complaining of all sorts of other things, most genuinely the shortage and cost of housing; but this is a direct result of the banks' failure, and didn't we all complain when they were bailed out?

      Vacuous slogans are unfortunately the stuff of politics, and as the world has become more complex and inter-dependent, it becomes correspondingly more difficult to engage with all its complexities. It is a great deal easier to opt for whatever populist short-cuts are on offer; this is why parliamentary democracy is a good idea. One elects whichever politician comes nearest to gaining one's confidence, to do the business of politics on one's behalf, leaving one free to get on with the actual business of living!

     However, the actual business of politics in any kind of real democracy cannot be merely a matter of the survival of the fittest, barging on and getting their way regardless of other people and their rights, in the manner of a fascist dictator, anymore than any society worthy of the name can accept it as a pattern for the actual business of living. Real democratic politics are a matter of making the effort to listen to and engage with people on all sides, of genuinely seeking truth and justice for all. The 'on all sides' bit is crucial - not just 'on our side'. Such is the essence of catholicism, as opposed to sectarianism.

     It's not at all easy, and of course 'Catholics' can fail and lapse into sectarianism themselves. Many of us do not even know the meaning of the word 'catholic'. Many of us do vaguely know, but still fail to live it out, which is worse. Nonetheless, a radical kind of openness and kindness is noticeable in cultures fortunate enough to have been shaped by it; indeed the whole European project is so shaped, based upon Catholic social doctrine, set up by a group largely of Catholics and with the crown of Mary, twelve stars, as its emblem. If you don't believe me, ask Mr Farrage. 

      Now regardless of that, by all accounts this Julian Smith, who has just been fired as Secretary for Northern Ireland, is someone who tries to apply such principles, and has thereby earned widespread respect there. Firing him is an extremely bad and ominous signal, as we seem to be getting into the endgame with regard to Brexit. 

     I hope it is not just that he was born in Scotland, but he seems to lack the narrow and arrogant nationalism that is apparently a prerequisite for being a member of Mr Johnson's Government, which seems to be setting on a course of confrontation with Europe over Ireland. It will challenge us very deeply to define more clearly what the EU means to us and how we understand Ireland's relationship with it. As such a challenge, it is to be welcomed, but it won't be easy.

     We have to avoid fighting fire with fire. This is why the prospect of a potentially populist and nationalistic party in Government in Ireland is not appetising. What else is on offer, other than everlasting talk and prevarication? It was partly because I could not answer questions of such a nature, and to immerse myself in the practical dilemmas that were even then beginning to define our times, that I settled to earn my living as a fisherman back in 1970s. The conditions of that game are of themselves therapeutic in this sense; either you catch fish or you don't, and no amount of codswallop will make any difference there. At least I have a pretty good grasp of the realities of fishing as a result, and it does indeed exemplify many of the dilemmas we are facing. 

     The first lesson I learnt, beyond doubt and which I have referred to repeatedly in this blog, is that modern technology and unbridled capitalism are a lethal combination that is destroying our society and our planet. To find another way is indeed imperative, and in this sense I can sympathise with 'the people voting for change'. Probably not that many had this kind of change in mind, but at least the result of our recent election is quite promising in the respect that there is no 'winner'. Dialogue and sharing power is the only way ahead, and admittedly if the Shinners can do it in the North, why shouldn't they do it in the Republic?

     But what other 'steers' are there to be taken aboard from fishing? There are those who seem to think that if we can only get rid of the 'foreign' boats, à la Brexit, our problems will be solved. Of course, they will not. It is after all the 'Continental Shelf' we are talking about, continental fishermen have been working it for hundreds of years, we all depend on the continental market, and the fish themselves do not recognise frontiers. In fact the industry doesn't either, most of the big trawlers being owned by multi-national companies. On the other hand, it is true that these big trawlers have no long-term commitment; when they have one area fished out, they just look around for somewhere else.

The principle of subsidiarity needs to be respected; bigger boats should not be fishing where smaller ones can. Also the 'command and control' approach embodied in the Common Fisheries Policy is not working and never will work effectively in its present form; no matter how much fancy technology is thrown at it. The fact is that fishermen, if they are to survive, will find a way round it if they have to, especially the biggest and most destructive of them. The alternative is to find a way to enable them to 'own' it; it is best when the fishermen themselves own the boats, and learn to husband the resource for the longer term and to own the policy of conservation, which is then in their own interest.

The whole array of the problems of technology and of our economic set-up lies behind the politics of it, and there is no solution to anything that does not involve facing up to them; yet one can make a start in tackling immediate abuses. We have a situation in County Cork where our prime fishing port, Castletownbere, is being overwhelmed with big foreign trawlers, whose gear and supplies come from abroad in the lorries that take the fish way, doing no good to the local economy whatever. They make it difficult for the local boats to operate, and moreover we have a situation in which these can be prevented from fishing by the implementation of quotas, while few such restrictions are apparently imposed on the Spanish ships. These just land into the back of lorries with few checks. This has been going on for years. When Simon Coveney's father, as Minister for Fisheries, tried to do something about it, he was shafted.

The quota system itself is a bad joke. Everyone knows that if it was strictly enforced, the industry would mostly go broke. Box counts may be applied, but ineffectively with regard to what is in the boxes. The big trawlers are likely, for instance, to book monkfish as white pollack; then smaller boats fishing pollack have to book white pollack as black (saithe). Meanwhile Irish boats frequently have to dump species for which they have no quota and cannot get to market, such as dogfish or bluefin tuna.

One knows how the fishermen in France or Spain would react (and indeed have done) on the receiving end of such treatment. Ireland and Europe can and must be bigger. This case of Uefa and Manchester City shows the way to go; as someone said, football needs rules off the pitch as well as on it. City's response of 'scorn, outrage, denial' is classic these days, strongly calling to mind The Ducky and Mr Johnson, and the way we are now seeing his Government react to other European efforts to enforce the rules of law and genuine good management.

Another simple little move in the direction of sanity is the exclusion of boats over 18m from inside the six mile limit which is coming into effect this year. I would like to see it extended to fifty miles for vessels over 20m, while the 6 or 12 mile limit would be for boats under 15m. But the ultimate solution will not merely a matter of such restrictions, but also in the development of fishing methods that do not involve the use of large quatities of oil and the destructive effects of such fishing both on the sea-bed and fish stocks. I still dream of building a modern fishing boat that will fish mainly by jigging or droving, say for mackerel, pollack or tuna, using sails and hydrogen to get around and generate electricity.

Genuine engagement with others, at the same time taking aboard inconvenient truths, respect for nature and for justice; refusing to shut ourselves in silos; these are the kind of thing that will enable a new kind of politics and of living, and wouldn't one think that most people would agree if they had half a chance?

Cow Strand today.

     

Secret Sardinia

It’s good to have a store of sunny memories on an evening like this in Sherkin, as I sit with a whiskey by the stove and a south-westerly gale with rain lashes our island home. Secret Sardinia … My mind goes back to the few happy days that Fiona and I spent in the Anna M around the north of Sardinia and Maddalena Island six years ago, on our way to Rome. But what kind of images does this title of a short film on aljazeera.com conjure up for you? Sparkling emerald blue water, hidden bays, beautiful hills roamed by flocks of sheep and goats and old-world villages?  

     All the more shocking to discover what the film was in fact about, namely the NATO exercise areas in Sardinia and their horrific effects on the local people and animals, with many cancer deaths, deformed babies, lambs and kids, and about the usual official efforts to cover it all up. It is all an horrendous desecration of a most beautiful place, of a piece with so many factors that would make it hard for me to take the kind of innocent pleasure that I used to in cruising.

     Unfortunately it is among many other such desecrations, which if at all possible are kept away from offending the sensibilities of us affluent consumers, who should not be allowed to consider too deeply the costs of our life-style and the gross imbalances it involves, awareness of which might not alone spoil our fun but also be bad for business! At least we Sherkin islanders are far from the small class whose main business in life is to keep the goodies flowing in vast quantities. Unfortunately this seems to somehow involve the supply of those trillions of dollars worth of oil and arms, and to Hell with the consequences. They certainly struck gold with the Ducky, him of the Golden Gates!

     So ‘the economy is doing well’, everyone can afford to fill their fuel tanks and the Ducky is likely to be re-elected. He is so lucky with the tar sands and fracking, which mean America is self-sufficient again in oil and exporting it to Europe. A glance at AIS shows a steady stream of tankers heading in our direction, and I am told that most of the oil in Whitegate (our refinery in Cork) and Millford Haven in Wales now comes from America. Why wouldn’t ‘the economy be doing well’? 

     The ‘War on Terror’ has of course been another bonanza for the arms industry, while failing spectacularly in its alleged purpose. What better way to breed terrorists than to bully, bomb and impoverish whole populations? It is interesting to recall that the standoff with Iran dates back to at least 1953, when Great Britain and the US orchestrated the overthrow of a democratically elected Prime Minister who had the temerity to require the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company to open its books to his Government. One thing the many trillions of dollars spent on ‘defence’ since have notably failed to deliver is a safer and more secure world.

     The Ducky came to power promising to bring home the troops and spend money on infrastructure at home. It does not seem to have happened. Spending more money on the health or social welfare of his citizens was of course always too much to ask. In the event he has only provided the icing on the cake for the rich, while in the last four decades, according to Robert Reich, a former American Secretary for Labour,  ‘the median wage has barely budged. But the incomes of the richest 0.1% have soared by more than 300% and the incomes of the top 0.001% (the 2,300 richest Americans), by more than 600%. The net worth of the wealthiest 0.1% of Americans almost equals that of the bottom 90% combined.’ President Trump’s ‘tax cuts, his evisceration of labor laws, his filling his cabinet and sub-cabinet with corporate shills, his rollbacks of health, safety, environmental and financial regulations: all have made the super-rich far richer, at the expense of average Americans.’

     One has to admire the sleight of hand, also exercised in a slightly different way by Prime Minister Johnson and his cronies in Britain. Let us hope that the politicians elected today in Ireland are a little better at delivering their promises, but of course we are feeling the same pressures here; and whats more, we are in danger of finding ourselves in the front line between two opposed camps. The question is, can Europe really offer an alternative? How can all the talk about a ‘Green New Deal’ be made to stand up? For it is by no means clear that our ruling politicians are really that much different to the Tory and Republican ones.

     In Ireland at least the system is not subject to the same tidal waves of money. What’s more it looks as if the establishment parties are going to take a beating. But whatever the good intentions around, the Green New Deal will not happen unless it is taken up not alone at the 'top end' of politics, but also pushed at a grass-roots level as widely as possible, and indeed people are willing to make sacrifices in order to do so. I wonder how that might happen! I'm looking forward to see how the new Government here turns out, though my hopes are far from sky-high. At least, thank God, there are no NATO exercise areas around here, and lets keep it that way!

On the Sherkin ferry.

      

     

Where We Stand.

So Britain has exited the EU, though nobody seems to know what this will in fact entail! The concepts advanced by its proponents are as vacous as ever, but they appear to involve a yet deeper dependence on the Big Brother Chinese state for internet technology and on a pyromaniac President of the USA for security, in a relationship wherein the Brits will have the privileges of eating dodgy food and paying more for their drugs, all the time claiming to be 'taking back control'. This is what Mr Farrage calls 'fighting globalism'!

     Far from being 'done', Brexit has hardly begun. Sooner or later, the lies will be exposed. Poor Sir Keir Starmer claims that 'There are no leavers or remainers anymore', but it is no use just papering over the cracks. European minded Englishmen may be forced out of positions of influence and responsibility while a vacuous but uneasy calm is imposed in England, but the real choices remain. 

     Unfortunately the battle is likely to be fought out in Ireland and Scotland. It won't be the first time that England, and indeed Europe, has thus exported its conflicts, such as that between King James II and William of Orange. What it will involve this time round is frankly beyond me, but meanwhile it is clear what we have to be doing.

     Lies cannot really be combatted head-on. They are by nature devious. Neither is there much point in trying to confront directly rogue or foolish powers that be. While we do have to resist and expose them, perhaps the best way to do so to work around them as best one can, and work all the harder at what is true and positive. Many valuable relationships have been built up in the last half century, in all sorts of ways, let them be personal, academic, industrial or whatever. We must keep doing our best to sustain and improve them.

     In some ways politics can be a mere mesmerizing distraction from this real work. For my part, I am applying myself as best I can to SNAPP, the Sherkin Nazaré Alternative Power Project. We are trying to develop electric and hydrogen drives, especially for boats, between Nazaré in Portugal and Sherkin Island in SW Ireland. Please email me if you are interested in participating - gannetsway(at)gmail.com.

Here I am!

The Sun is Getting Stronger

The sun is getting stronger, and at last the long spell of wet and windy weather has abated. The daffodils will soon be out and I have started to work in the garden. Here are some that are already out in Baltimore (photo by Ger Kavanagh) -

      Meanwhile a nice boring Irish general election beckons. Boring elections are surely a good sign of a country. None of your Westminster high drama! I like it this way. Foreigners say, 'but what are your politics about?' I say well think rugby for Fine Gael, G.A.A. (Gaelic football and hurling) for Fianna Fail  and soccer for Labour. There's a little bit of harmless tacking to left and right, but the main thing is to be able to shuffle the pack regularly - throw out one crowd and have the other lot in. This strikes on the whole me as reasonable and healthy.

     If one can only avoid such monstrous miscarriages of democracy as Brexit! Yet maybe the absence of high drama here does indicate a rather large dose of fudge! For example, is not national security at least one of the most basic responsibilities of Government? And what have our Irish politics to say about it? We support the UN! Beautiful, but meanwhile we basically leave it to the Americans and British to come between us and any real badies. 

     Unfortunately the USA seems to be in danger of becoming a rogue state itself. Even the Tory Minister of Defence has said he is kept awake at night by it. The EU has the potential to become an alternative, but the Tories are committed to demolishing the political, industrial and technological ties that have been built up since WW2 and which might provide the basis for this alternative. Mr Johnson claims to want to continue working with Europe, which appears to be both insincere and irresponsible. Anyway so much of British defence capability is dependent on the Americans. It also seems to me that the emphasis on aircraft carriers and submarines is a matter of still fighting the last war. They do not constitute a basis on which to build real security today, which highlights  the fact that the Brexiteers' famous idea of national sovereignty is downright obsolete.

     By far the greatest threats to our security these days are in connection with digital technology and climate change, and again, the EU constitutes our main hope of doing anything effective about them, at least on the political level. One can only hope that things do not have to get too drastically bad in Britain for the lies about a bright future on the basis of Brexit to be revealed in all their lurid fatuity, but in the meantime we just have to keep banging on doing our best to expose them. 

     I have been reading a little book of my grandfather's, recently liberated from a dusty fish box: 'Prophets, Priests and Kings' by A.G.Gardiner. It consists of biological sketches of prominent figures of the early 20th century, before the Great War. He describes 'a time of change and disturbance and fickleness', when the outlines of modern Britain were already emerging.  There were of course great hopes, even while standards were being turned upside down, for example by Lord Northcliffe, founding owner of the Daily Mail. 'The principle to which his loyalty never falters is to be on the side of the big battalions.' When he found himself in danger of being 'left in company with that dismal thing, failure,'  he found the 'thing unthinkable, and he leapt the fence on the instant.' Distinctly reminiscent of some leading Tories today!

     Mr Gardiner proceeds to deliver this philippic:- 'It is this commercial conception of journalism which is Lord Northcliffe's contribution to his time. Journalism was a profession: he has made it a trade. It had a moral function: in his hands it has no  more moral significance than the manufacture of soap. The old notion of a newspaper was a responsible adviser of the public. Its first duty was to provide the news, uncoloured by any motive, private or public; it's second to present a certain view of public policy which it believed to be for the good of the State and the community. It was sober, responsible, and a little dull. It treated life as if it was a serious matter. It had an antiquated respect for truth. It believed in the moral governance of things.
  Lord Northcliffe has changed all this. He started free from all convictions. He saw an immense unexploited field. The old journalism appealed only to the minds of the responsible public; he would appeal to the emotions of the irresponsible. The old journalism gave news; he would give sensation. The old journalism gave reasoned opinion; he would give unreasoning passion.'

      Thus Mr. Alfred C. Harmsworth, an archetypal 'man in the street', became Lord Northcliffe of the Daily Mail. The elite had to realise that there was 'a better way of dealing with the office-boy than to drive him into revolutionary movements. It is to give him a vote and the 'Daily Mail'. Yet one cannot help feeling that Mr Gardiner paints perhaps too rosy a picture of 'the old journalism', even though he had no illusions about the Tories, describing their 'fundamental policy' being 'to hoodwink the people, bribe them, drug them, use them as tools.'

     Even if they were misled by 'irresponsible emotion',  it was hardly their own fault that they proceeded to be led off to the killing fields, was it, a few years afterwards? They surely were most (ir)responsible who found it more politic to exploit nationalism than to anticipate what a modern war would involve. The people fell into the trap. Have their grandchildren and great grandchildren managed to learn anything at all? 

     These days we might justly refer to the likes of the Daily Mail  as 'the old journalism'. Just look at the alacrity with which they have turned from serious questioning of the new Government to the Royal Soap Opera! It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation, but we must hope for a new journalism and a new facility for critical thought on all sides. If we don't cop on and get a new grip on ourselves, we could end up in a situation that makes the World Wars seem like tea parties. In order to do so, we need a new leadership whose method is reason and whose focus is truth, but it's hard to see how it can emerge when the mere pursuit of power is so difficult and all consuming. Meanwhile, I'm off to get some seaweed on the garden.

First fine evening in the heart of Sherkin.

     

What Will It Take?

It's grey, damp, windy and very mild for January on Sherkin. Everyone seems to have coughs and colds, but I am lucky enough to be able to take it easy beside a warm stove. How lucky indeed one is to have a good home, when the wide world hardly bears thinking about! The USA, Britain, Australia, all in trouble, and all places where we have close relatives. 

     The Ducky seems finally to have lost it, demonstrating that in the unlikely event that he does actually keep his word to pack in the Forever War in the Middle East, he will make sure to leave even more chaos, mayhem and ill-will behind. Boris' Blighty is sloping off into a hall of mirrors and Australia is burning. Welcome to the 2020s!

     Denial is a common thread that links these three disasters. We have seen long-term denial that the American 'war on terror' and intervention in the Middle East has overall been one long counter-productive disaster, as has (most dramatically in Australia) the attempt to ignore  climate change - both cases of disasters fertilised by lies, as indeed Brexit will prove, unless I am much mistaken.

     Many people, most notably the Ducky, have tried to suppress all reference to climate change or 'the climate catastrophe'. Now Mr Johnson is even trying to suppress this word 'Brexit'. The hope is that people will not be able to hold them responsible for the results coming down the track, which will all be other people's fault. It makes it very difficult for anyone, especially civil servants, to call out their lies; the merest reference to such forbidden words is put down as divisive, unpatriotic, negative etc. They will even pride themselves on 'avoiding confrontation'.

     But after all, isn't that what we would all like to do? Especially within ourselves? We hear from the Ducky that he doesn't want war, in pretty much the same breath that he virtually declares it, just as we see so many people who want to 'do something about global warming', while living lives that stoke it more than ever, but 'actions speak louder than words'. Meanwhile those who point to the reality of what is being done and expose the hypocrisy of so much that is said are accused of being 'divisive and negative'.

      We Irish are of course pretty good at doing hypocrisy with the best of them. Indeed, can anyone be sure they are free of it, or even survive in a world that is full of it without keeping their mouths shut and playing along for much of the time? On the other hand, to be aware of and to articulate the truth even about oneself is very difficult, though surely it is the first duty for anyone with pretensions as a thinker or writer; needless to say, to do so about others is not a great way to win friends. The world is full of people who prosper by way of telling others what they want to hear - hence the tendency of thoughtful people to shun it!

     Nonetheless, there is no use in 'speaking truth' unless one tries to do so in a way that others may hear.  Gentle and respectful diplomacy is the honourable way to address others and indeed the only way if we are to avoid mutual self-destruction. It would be nice to think that Ireland has a unique and special calling to find ways of speaking to people from opposing camps who are no longer able to hear or to speak to each other, since we have suffered this situation so long and so dramatically on this island. But sometimes such attempts at reconciliation just do not work, and one is left wondering what it will take to bring it about, enabling us to see ourselves and our world as we really are? 

    After a decade in which denial has trumped all efforts to do something about global warming, will even those fires in Oz turn that country around? And what about us? The joy of living on a little island is that it defines a world that one may just hope to leave more beautiful in some small measure than one found it, yet I would not wish our lives to be inward looking. At least let us hope that along with making our corner as joyful as we can, we also find the space to see the world more truly, and to say it more or less like it is! New Year's Resolution - let us try to deal in truth!

The West Room finished and in good use at last!

Lies Will Set Us Free?!

Sherkin Island and Baltimore Beacon, put there to make sure seafarers found the right gap in the cliffs!

Happy Christmas and a Joyful and Prosperous New Year to all my readers!

Maybe it was just as well that I have been horrendously busy, with Fiona incapacitated and a lot of work to the house to be finished in time for Christmas, so I have not had much time for thinking about the Rt Dishonourable Johnson and the horrendous election result in Blighty. Meanwhile, season of goodwill and all that, I have to reflect on why I am so out of tune with all those voters. Not that I accept that the election represents, as the RDJ avers, 'a powerful people's mandate' for his lousy deal - that's another addition to his long list of lies. 
     
     In fact a majority (52.6%) of votes were cast for parties that either opposed Brexit or, in the case of Labour, called for a second referendum on the final deal with the option of remain, as opposed to 47.33% who voted for Brexit parties. Meanwhile all opinion polls still indicate that there is 'a consistent and clear majority for “Remain.”'* So much for the British 'beacon of democracy'.

     I do however understand how many voters are convinced, in good faith, that the EU is too remote and cumbersome, and have come to identify it with globalising tendencies that they do not like. As G.K.Chesterton put it:- 'Democracy is never quite democratic except when it is quite direct; and it is never quite direct except when it is quite small.' Yet for all its size, the continental set up is not doing so badly. Great Britain and its post imperial, first-past-the-post system barely qualifies as democracy in comparison. 

     Where was the intelligent and respectful debate in that election? Are elections just a matter of who has the best slogans and can shout loudest? Those little knitty problems, especially the Irish ones, were simply ignored by the Tories, as of course were the even knittier big ones like turning the massive investments in war, weapons and fossil fuels over to peace and sustainability. The Brexiteers have been promising a great future with all sorts of new trading opportunities, above all a great new trade deal with the USA. That it would come at the cost of what little progress is being made in tackling climate change bothers them not at all. I do not think the moment of reckoning will be long delayed.

     Chatting to an islander home for Christmas but living in Philadelphia for years, I commented how shameless the Republicans were in simply repeating the Ducky's line about the 'scam' of the impeachment hearings, rather than engaging with the facts as established, while lamenting that the same approach appears to be prevailing nearer home. "Well, at least Johnson is reasonably intelligent and knows he's lying", says he,"Trump is too thick for that!"

     In another recent conversation, about climate change, I was quite confounded. My man admitted that the planet was heating up dangerously, and that CO2 etc were building up in the atmosphere - "but the scientists cannot prove a connection between the two!" What can one say? Millions and much expertise have been expended demonstrating this connection with hugely sophisticated computer models, yet I suppose it is true to say this does not constitute 'proof'. To me this constitutes a good demonstration of the whole fallacy about 'proof', that we have heard so often in the mouths of clever fellows who 'don't believe anything that can't be proved by science'. Actually none of the really important things can be, such as the fact that I love Fiona or even the beautiful island that we live on - or any connection there may be between these two facts!

     Perhaps we should be glad of the fact that it has become quite impossible to continue to pretend that our 'democracies' are rational affairs, and electorates make their decisions on the basis of reasoned arguments. The very conviction of the potential primacy of reason is in fact ultimately a matter of religious faith. Getting there is a journey, to be undertaken at many different levels. Clearly the EU represents considerable strides on this journey on some levels, but we Europeans can admit too that the heady ideals need to be more effectively rooted in people's experience. The degree and success of subsidiarity is critical, and the ability to embrace these ideals at a personal and practical level.

     Meanwhile British Europeans may recall that it was a lot worse for catholics when His Narcissitic Majesty Henry VIII was on the job. Today's catholics, those who have universal solidarity and sustainability at heart, can only keep on trying to take hold of truth wherever they find it, build on it and trust that in the end it will prevail. We can also be profoundly grateful for the positively miraculous fact that, for all the many failings of her children, the Catholic Church remains basically on track, and thank God for Pope Francis!

     Unfortunately, when people are confronted with horrors like having to rein in the destructive habits that are so dear to them, like driving whenever they like in the biggest car they can afford and flying to beat the band, they are inclined to react against those who would try to persuade them to do so. We can only try to find another way to live, and show perhaps what fun it can be. But, if nothing short of a flood through the Palace of Westminster will persuade the English to change their political set-up, so be it! One may hope and pray for wise and honest leaders, but they are a rarity, and we should not be downcast or confounded in their absence. We just have to keep on trying to hold the ones we are stuck with to account, refusing to give in to their false narratives and speaking the truth as we see it....

Photos by our Cristiona, whom we are so lucky to have home from London for Christmas.

 *see https://fedtrust.co.uk/brexit-the-end-of-the-beginning/     

WhyTell the Truth When a Lie Will Do?

It was one of those quirky sayings that I picked up about Glencolmcille. "Why tell the truth when a lie will do?" I can hear it now on the lips of Old Johnnie, in his sweet Donegal brogue, with the merest hint of a smile glinting in his dark eyes. "Bah," he commented one evening - "Joe doesn't tell any lies!" While there may have been some smidgeon of respect behind the comment, it was not exactly a compliment. After all, seeing how successfully one could pull the wool over some people's eyes was a time-honoured sport, honed over generations who had to deal with bossy and over-bearing landlords.

     He tried it on Fiona pretty quickly when we landed in Braide, fresh from English middle-class life. She went over to  his house with some ticks that she had extracted from the children, on a saucer, to ask what they were and find out if they were harmful. "Ah, them's very good to eat!" said old Johnnie. 

    In that square head beneath the grizzly grey hair, set on the squat, powerful body, the questions must have played endlessly as his solitary toil went on - 'was Connie Dan lying about the big money he got for that beast? What is going on between Moira and Sean? Is the world coming to an End?' What after all would one be doing with a mind unless it were to play with such questions? And what kind of a man does not sometimes come against the final culmination of them - 'What is Truth, anyway?'

     How many people in England today would even recognise this query, from when it was most famously employed? By Pontius Pilate questioning Jesus, I suppose that I had better add! For surely the contemporary 'crisis of truth' has not a little to do with the fact that only a minority now have a basic acquaintance with Holy Scripture. I am not even commenting that the world would be so much better and happier if everyone believed the Gospel. What I am saying is that it is unlikely that our civilisation can last much longer when people have no knowledge of or acquaintance with the Man who claimed to be the Truth, and not the least opportunity to put to themselves the questions, 'could his word be true?' Or even, 'if there were such a thing as truth, is that really what it might it look like?'

     One aspect of the matter should be obvious - the Truth can get one crucified. It is simply incompatible with narcissicism. To perceive it requires training and discipline, and a  civilisation requires foundational stories that commend it to succeeding generations. Any profession is built upon the recognition of certain truths, which sometimes may well be inconvenient. A professional person is someone who one can rely on spot and express the truth of a given set of conditions, whatever they may be, 'in season and out of season'.

     Regular readers of this blog will know that I value the sea

particularly as a teacher of truth. It sometimes seems these  days that my career as a professional sailor came to an end when I recognised an inconvenient truth - as we were sailing along on a beautiful day with everything going well, except that the bilge pump was working overtime, in spite of my having done my best to fix the leaks, and we were heading north, homeward bound for Ireland, on the Portuguese coast. I chose to put the Anna M on the concrete at Nazaré, despite the facts that there were plenty of fathoms beneath us, we had a brand new liferaft, a fine long sandy beach under our lee, and she was insured for €60,000.... But there you go, that course of action would have involved some whoppers! Who would want to have ended their career that way?

     We are all confronted with a rather larger 'inconvient truth'! Our spaceship Earth is in serious trouble. We need to fix it, fast. It will not suit a lot of people to recognise this fact, and cost a lot of money. But truth is a habit and a skill that we seem to be losing. Even old Johnnie Andy would have admitted that it is well to avoid lying to oneself with that dangerous little phrase - 'oh, it will be fine!'

     Time was when Englishmen prided themselves on speaking truth and standing up for it, at whatever cost to themselves. When I confounded my Dad with the information that we were heading to live in Ireland, one of his parting shots was 'Never trust an Irish lawyer!' I doubt if he was even aware that even in those days some of the unfortunate lesser breeds of the world harboured a very different kind of stereotype - that of the deceitful, devious and downright untrustworthy Englishman. 

     I wish I could shout it across the land of my birth - please, please do not elect one of them as your Prime Minister! 

     

It's SNAPP for 2020.

The feast of Christ the King today marks the end of the Church year, and we start to think in terms of the coming new one. For myself 2020 will be make or break with what I am now calling SNAPP - the Sherkin-Nazaré Alternative Power Project. I have modified the name in this way to give it a more explicit Sherkin dimension, for various reasons but above all because, besides being my home, this is such a splendid microcosm in which to set about applying the technologies we envisage.

However my mind was concentrated on the matter by the visit to Sherkin yesterday of our Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Simon Coveney, as well as the Minister for the Gaeltacht and the Islands, Seán Kyne. I also met our new MEP for Ireland South, Billy Kelleher, a couple of nights ago in Cork. It is one of the beauties of living in a small country that one has a better chance of effective access to senior politicians. The rest of this blog was written as an outline of SNAPP, with a view to sounding out what effective political advice and support may be forthcoming....

The day-to-day problems of island living have very much to do with transport on both land and sea. While access for mainland-based vehicles, vans etc, is difficult and expensive, it is rarely practical for an individual person to run an expensive vehicle on an island, and neither would it be doing much good taking up space in the car park by the sea on the mainland. Fiona and I have been happily living without a car for six years now, but this is much easier with the children grown up and a pensioner’s free travel pass.

Bangers' End

What happens in practice is that old bangers are drawn out to islands to die; visitors are treated to lungfuls of foul exhaust as they walk up the hill from the pier, which is usually congested with them, and when they finally conk out they are inclined to litter our beautiful landscape. Meanwhile we are dependent on an unreliable old island bus, while we do not know how it is to be replaced when it finally conks out.

     Undoubtedly in general electric power will eventually replace internal combustion engines, but not necessarily in the extremely expensive and flashy vehicles offered by big industry, and preferably without lithium-ion batteries. We need very basic and rugged electric vehicles that can be maintained here on island - preferably a fleet of them owned and operated by a coop. They would be available for its members to drive, while overseen by someone charged with monitoring their use and location.

With regard to lithium-ion batteries, which are expensive, messy to produce, of quite limited durability and difficult to recycle, I would bet on hydrogen fuel cells for powering the future. While there is at this stage a wealth of scientific research and knowledge on all alternatives to oil, practical applications are falling very short. There is something that could be done to ameliorate the situation quickly, radically and relatively cheaply, which is to fit every diesel engine with a hydrogen generator, which would reduce their consumption of diesel oil by up to 30% and radically clean up their emissions. It is with the development and production of such units that SNAPP will most probably set to work.

     Many of the same considerations that apply to vehicles also do so to boats, though of course there are whole new dimensions involved. With regard to electric power in a sailing boat, there is the advantage that batteries can be recharged (or hydrogen produced) by the power of the sails transmitted through the propellor and electric motor functioning as a generator. It hardly needs to be said how attractive the idea of quiet, pollution and smell free electric power is for boats.

In the case of both my associate in Portugal, Alec Lammas, and myself, our boats are the prime focus of our interest in electric drives. Alec owns a small steel trading schooner that he built himself, and I have a 50 year-old Illingworth schooner, the Anna M, that I am renovating with new laminated ribs. Both vessels are fairly ideal for the reach between West Cork and Galicia. Having cruised extensively between Scotland, the south of Spain, Rome, Venezuela and the Caribbean, my main interest now would be to use the Anna M as a test bed for various forms of alternative power and to demonstrate their utility. While Alec is very busy in the boatyard at Nazaré, he has a fine workshop in which he has been experimenting with hydrogen and electric motors. Here on Sherkin a similar workshop could also function as a place to experiment with and try out different techniques, while also training technicians to service them.

     The critical considerations for electric power are always going to be where and how is all this electricity going to be generated, and how will the power be stored and distributed? Our islands have multiple potential sources of renewable energy available, and surely there is massive potential for ‘cottage industry’ hydrogen production. Maybe farmers in the future will produce it much as they do milk today. Techniques might also be developed that would also provide massive opportunities for sunnier countries using desert land for solar power, and enable their populations to thrive in their own places rather than considering desperate means to migrate to Europe.

     The concepts referred to above give some little idea of the many areas ripe for the research, development and application of the kind of techniques that are urgently required everywhere if we are to manage to build the new sustainable society. The challenge is so huge that the more widely the response is connected, the better. SNAPP envisages a strong connection with Portugal, which has very many advantages to offer in terms of, for example, lower production costs and access to Africa and Latin America, not to mention the Iberian markets.

It happens that sailors have been trading between West Cork and Portugal, mostly under sail, since time immemorial, while at this point in history it seems a good idea for Ireland to renew such ancient links. I am seeking sponsors who would be interested in nailing their colours to this project, while first of all am seeking political advice and support, in the hope of effective corporate and state collaboration.

Good Morning Galicia.

A Year of Paralysis

A year ago, I was full of enthusiasm for The Nazaré Project. What seems to have ensued mainly is paralysis. Indeed, as 2019 begins to slip away from us, we might have to call it 'the Year of Paralysis', so widespread has been this experience, brilliantly exemplified of course in our part of the world by the B saga. It is a dead weight weighing down not just on Brits trying to do things and go places on the Continent, like our Alec, but on the whole of Western Europe.

     I am just back home on Sherkin after another fortnight in Nazaré, where I did little besides getting the Anna M lined up for another year there, which involves moving her off the concrete apron to the cheaper part of the yard. I am sufficiently worn down to enjoy my visits there regardless of 'progress'; it is a very pleasant place to be! While I was there, we went from late summer to a very mild early winter:-

One thing about going away now and again is that it is very lovely to come home again, especially with Fiona being here. Meanwhile I do hope that, deep down, things are happening. Certainly our thoughts about what we want to do, both technically and in general, are maturing. And for all the lack of actual progress and political movement, surely there is a much more widespread understanding that the environmental crisis simply has to be addressed; the question is, how?

     The General Election in Britain promises only more and indeed worse paralysis, as far as I can make out. Of the two men who are apparently contenders for the top job, enough has been said about the present incumbent. If he were to win a viable majority (which I hope is most unlikely), the likes of me would have to write the UK off for the duration. But I shall also make just one little observation about the other fellow.

     "My whole strategy has been to try and keep the party, the movement and the country together", says Mr Jeremy Corbyn. He has a brilliant way of doing so - simply deny the split! So as far as he is concerned, as he informed his Shadow Cabinet, "The debate (about Brexit) is over." It's all crystal clear - his government will negociate a new agreement with the EU (though most of his party say they do not want it and it is very hard to expect the EU to take such negociations seriously) and then 'put it to the People to decide if they want it'!

     How a devastating dereliction may be dressed up as responsibility! The pretence of unity where it does not exist, canonized in the name of 'the People's decision', is actually a recipe for tyranny, and especially so if it happens to wangle some sort of 'democratic majority'. In the same breath as the above quotation, gleaned from the Guardian*, we find Mr Corbyn apparently proud of the fact that he took the decision to go for a General Election entirely on his own. “I put it to them (the Shadow Cabinet) quite clearly: I said, our objections are now gone. We are now supporting a general election – and everybody gulped. I didn’t alert anybody in advance – it was my decision. On my own. I made that decision. And they gulped, and said, Yes Jeremy.” This is the same guy who says he 'would share power out to everyone who helped build the Labour movement'.

     If Mr Corbyn cannot build consensus in his own party, what hope for doing so in the whole country? In the circumstances, one must hope for another hung parliament, who would put a stop to the wild imaginings of either of the Great Leaders on offer. Yet, one can only tolerate so much paralysis, and reluctant as the EU may be to cutting the mooring ropes and letting the good ship Britannia drift away, in the end Europe is likely to be wound up into insisting on one of the dreaded 'binary decisions' that the fashionable anglophone chatterati profess to disdain- Yes or No, Oui ou Non. 

     Those who disdain 'binary' politics seem generally to assume that any of life's many polarities necessarily entail adversarial behaviour, even as in the relationships between men and women. This is a counsel of despair. I insist that actually the correct application of polarities is the basis of all creativity (based on the most fundamental of them all, the relationship of the Father with the Son, from which the Holy Spirit springs). But one does not get there, to creativity, by denying the polarities.

    Is there then any chance of leaving the sorry adversarial politics behind? What would an holistic politics look like anyway? Is it not struggling to take shape in Europe? Instead of claiming the EU is falling apart, would it not be so much better to participate wholeheartedly in this immensely exciting project? But in Blighty, having reformed the voting system, one would need to furthermore turn the Palace of Westminster into a museum, and build a purpose-built, round parliament in, say, Brum, wherein the seats might be allocated to the constituencies in alphabetical order!

     Meanwhile, the best most of us can do is to build away at an holistic world in our own little ways. It is pressure from below that will bring about change, not just some great political project!

 *https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/03/obey-brexit-jeremy-corbyn-warns-cabinet-dissenters