Author: jamescalumcampbell

On Remembrance Sunday, Andrew Marr interviewed the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Nicolas Carter.  It was an interview about the particular perils of the world in which we live, and our response to them.  Sir Nicolas did not agree with President Macron, that NATO is brain dead, and he thought President Trump had a valid point in insisting that member states pay 2% of GDP on defence.  There was discussion about cyber warfare, subversion, and assassination as techniques of international political interference.  Sir Nicolas regarded China as a “challenge”, while Russia was “a threat”.  His opinions were military rather than political; in an earlier age he might have remarked, “Leave that one to the frocks.”  Perhaps that was why Mr Marr chose to listen respectfully and not constantly interrupt.

Trident came up, briefly.  I pricked my ears up, as, living 25 nautical miles from the biggest nuclear arsenal in Europe, I have an interest.  Sir Nicolas described Britain’s nuclear deterrent as an “insurance policy”.  He asked, “Who can tell what the world will look like in 2035?”  It turned out to be a rhetorical question, bringing the interview to an end.  Both men looked relieved.  It’s often the way with Trident.  Best not talk about it; pretend it isn’t there.  I suppose insurance policies are a little like that.  You buy a little peace of mind (in this case for 100 billion pounds) in order to forget about it.

It’s a pity they ran out of time, because Mr Marr might have asked, “In what sense is Trident an insurance policy?”  As it so happens, I have just renewed two insurance policies, one for my house, and one for my car.  The idea is that I pay some money into a collective fund so that, should I suffer a mishap, the fund will finance me to repair the damage, to my house, house contents, or car.  I rather hope I won’t suffer a mishap, indeed I hope all I am buying is peace of mind, and that my contribution will be used to sustain the fund and assist others in dealing with their mishaps.  Insurance is a collective enterprise.  So I pay my dues, and then forget about it.  It’s only when I crash my car, or my house burns down, that my insurance policy kicks in and I find I have the means to repair or replace my belongings.

Now Trident isn’t like that at all.  Trident is supposed to be a deterrent.  It exists in order to deter an enemy from attacking us.  The enemy has to understand that attacking us will result in an inevitable and devastating response.  Trident is like a grenade whose pin has been removed and which will detonate if it is cast.  It is “locked and loaded”.  When a previous Minister of Defence, Sir Michael Fallon, was challenged that Trident as a Weapon of Mass Destruction could never be used, he replied that on the contrary Trident was being used every day, because it functioned as a deterrent every day.  So let us suppose that, despite its existence, we are subjected to nuclear attack.  This would signal the failure of Trident to act as a deterrent.  Therefore a deterrent is the exact opposite of an insurance policy.  For as long as my car and my house are intact, my insurance policy is dormant.  When the blow falls, my insurance policy kicks is and begins to work for me.  But so long as we are not subject to nuclear attack, we may imagine our deterrent is working.  When we are attacked, our deterrent ceases to work and demonstrates that it has never worked.

Forgive me for labouring the point, but the point is that Trident qua insurance policy is, frankly, a load of tosh.  It’s a slipshod metaphor, a cliché.  The greatest challenge facing humanity today is: how can we all get along together without destroying ourselves and the planet?  And we don’t really think about it.  Not really.

When I was a schoolboy in Glasgow I played my viola in the Glasgow Schools Orchestras, starting in the Second Orchestra and moving on to the First.  We would meet up for two weeks in an intensive summer course, followed by a concert.   I still remember vividly the concert we played the year I left school – Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, the Bruch G minor violin concerto, and Brahms 4.  The orchestras also met during term time, on a Saturday morning – a wonderful excuse for getting out of rugby.  (I need to protect my violist’s hands.)  After leaving school, you could continue to play up until Christmas, when you were deemed too old, and sent out into the big wide world.  I remember one Saturday morning when I had just started Uni, I decided on a whim to go along to the Saturday morning orchestra, really just to say hi to my pals.  For the record, we played Malcolm Arnold’s Second Symphony.

That Saturday morning, it just so happened the Assistant Music Adviser for Glasgow Schools was in attendance, and I guess I passed under his gaze.  He asked me if I would like to be the viola tutor for Glasgow Schools Third Orchestra – the junior orchestra.  Well!  Can a duck swim?  I said yes.  I was 18 years old.  I’d gone along on a whim, and I’m sure Mr McAdam asked me on a whim, but it turned out to be a very important chance encounter for me, because I fulfilled the role for the next six years, and forged many friendships, which have mostly survived.

Musical education was very strong in Glasgow at this time, and many of the members of these orchestras went on to forge very distinguished careers in music.  Of course, like me, the majority of those taking part went on to do something else, but I think we all knew that we had been offered a chance to experience something very special.  I am quite sure that the exposure to music, and the chance to learn what one’s relationship to music might be, was far greater, and more democratic then, than it is now.

In addition to the bill of fare of the schools, we also all played in a variety of amateur youth orchestras.  Looking back, the repertoire was quite extraordinary: Tchaikovsky 4 and 6, Sibelius 1, 2, and 5, Shostakovich 1 and 5, Prokofiev 5, all the Brahms, Vaughan Williams 5, Handel’s Messiah, Faure’s Requiem, Haydn’s Creation… the list is endless. We were fearless.

Then something happened.  Well, medicine happened.  I disappeared into the world of Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.  And then, well, I just disappeared.  Brisbane, Portsmouth, Swindon, Auckland…  I went to Auckland for 3 months and stayed for 13 years.  I became totally immersed in the world of emergency medicine. I still played from time to time, with St Matthews in the City in Auckland.  Beethoven 6.  And I remember with fondness a performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with, as I recall, a leader of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.  He was wonderful.

But it all began to peter out.  Not doing something is as much of a habit as doing something.  So my viola rested quietly in its case.  Even when I eventually returned to the UK, it remained silent.  Each year, just prior to Christmas, I would take the instrument out, blow the dust off, and take part in a ceremony of Nine Lessons and Carols for some dear friends of mine in Glasgow.

Then, last week, something extraordinary happened.  I got a phone call from a guy who introduced himself as one of the members of the viola section in that first summer course of the Glasgow Schools Third Orchestra, all these years ago.  A local chamber orchestra were on the lookout for a viola player and would I consider coming along?

I said yes.

Why?  Well, sometimes an opportunity comes along that is so bizarre that you cannot but acquiesce.  Of course, I had profound misgivings.  The next day, I berated myself.  How could you possibly be so rash?  Were you drunk?  I got out the Strad (well, to be honest, copy of the Archinto Stradivari, Duncan Sanderson, faciebat Glasgow, 1965 – still quite a nice instrument), blew off the dust, and played a C major scale in 3 octaves.  What a racket.  Then I hacked my way through 3 of the 6 Bach suites for unaccompanied cello.

The viola was as out of practice as I was.  It was just a dead, stone-cold piece of timber.  But I struggled away.  And, d’you know, little by little the varnished wood began to warm up.

I attended the first rehearsal, with some trepidation.  But it was okay.  Very good, sensitive conductor, very friendly atmosphere, and beautiful music.  I soon forgot my anxieties and became absorbed in Beethoven.  The Coriolan Overture, and the First Symphony.  I’ve noticed it before when you rehearse Beethoven: you sense the great man’s living presence in the room.  I forgot all my personal reservations and simply played the music.

I think it went okay.  Early days, but I wonder.  Have I rediscovered a rich seam?

For trips from Stirling to Edinburgh or Glasgow, I’ve lately been eschewing the car in favour of the train.  It’s really much better.  You experience that same sense of liberation when you drop your car off for its service and become a pedestrian.  Your whole outlook changes.  You slough off a sense of isolation and become part of a community.

The next train… from platform 3 is… the 11.12 to Edinburgh, calling at… Larbert, Camelon, Falkirk Grahamston, Edinburgh Park, Haymarket, and Edinburgh Waverley.

The pleasant voice of a young Scottish woman.  It’s useful to know you are on the right platform.

This train is formed of four coaches.

Is that idiomatic?  This train comprises four coaches, or perhaps consists of four coaches, but formed of?  Formed by, formed with, formed from – they all sound a bit awkward.  I think I would just say, this train has four coaches.

Once seated, the young lady reiterates, This train is for… Edinburgh Waverley.  Always good to know you’re on the right train.  There then follows a plethora of housekeeping announcements related to baggage stowage, various health and safety issues, the availability of WiFi, refreshments, toilet facilities… You begin to wonder whether this soundtrack will last the entire journey.  But at last the station platform glides silently back into the past.

We’re off!

The seasoned commuters are plugged in and absorbed in their smart phones.  How on earth did we pass the time thirty years ago?  Read the paper I suppose, or a book.  I am happy to watch the countryside pass by, like Philip Larkin in The Whitsun Weddings.

We’ll soon arrive at… Larbert.

That’s useful too, for people wishing to alight at Larbert, perhaps en route to Forth Valley Royal Hospital.  And I like the Scottish way she says “soon”.  Makes me swoon.

The next stop is… Camelon. 

Not pronounced like Camelot, but like Came-Lyn.  That’s useful too.  Still on track.

We’ll soon arrive at… Falkirk Grahamston.

Make sure you pick up your belongings, before you leave the train.

Now that’s a bit odd.  Clearly picking up your belongings after you leave the train is not an option.  If you are going to be in a position to pick up your belongings, you are going to have to be on the train.  If you find yourself on the station platform and see your belongings still on the rack above your seat, well, you’ve missed the bus.  I think I would prefer, make sure you take your belongings with you.

We’ll soon arrive at… Edinburgh Park.  There’s something very heartening about arriving in Edinburgh from the northwest.  There is a wonderful view on your left of the Queensferry Crossing, the Forth Road Bridge and the magnificent rail bridge, shortly followed by the elegant biconcave lighthouse of the Edinburgh Airport control tower.

Mind the gap, between the train and the platform, as you leave the train. 

Again, as you leave the train is perhaps a tad redundant.  Would there be any point in minding the gap at any other time?  I suppose it depends what you mean by mind.  Perhaps it would be useful, as you pick up your belongings before you leave the train, to mind that there is a gap.  And certainly, if you forgot to mind the gap, and as a result broke an ankle, well at that point you would most certainly mind the gap.

We’ll soon arrive at… Haymarket.  You pass the Aston Martin showroom (I never really wanted one anyway) and parallel the Edinburgh tram through Bankhead, Saughton, past the Jenners Depository at Balgreen, and the imposing stadium at Murrayfield.

Have your ticket ready, for the automatic ticket barriers.

Fair dos.

We’ll soon arrive at… Edinburgh Waverley.  This train will terminate here.

Well, there’ll be a helluva dunt if it doesnae.

If you see something that doesn’t look right, please tell a member of staff, or you can text…

Well, I’m very concerned about the parlous aesthetic state of the Princes Street shop frontages.  They certainly don’t look right.  Everywhere, the High Street is suffering.  We’ll soon arrive at a concourse of betting shops, pizza parlours, vacant lots and sundry purveyors of tat.  I must seek out an official to express my concern.

And thank you for travelling Scotrail.

With Scotrail, surely.  It’s almost enough to drive me back into my car.  But then I’d suffer the same thing, passing under a motorway sign:

Drive smart.

Like a BBC radio announcer in 1922.  Black tie.

I was curious about a statistic a correspondent to The Herald iterated, and then reiterated (on October 8^th and October 14^th to be precise) that “the UK’s man-made CO2 output is negligible at 0.3% of 1% of the world total”.  The correspondent went on to make the argument, based on this statistic, that there was therefore no point in the UK’s making any attempt to curb her carbon emissions, since the big players, like China, India, and Russia were the big polluters, and nothing we on these islands could do would make a whit of difference.

That struck me as a fallacious argument, on three counts.  First of all, the statistic itself looked to me to be decidedly dodgy.  0.3% of 1% of the world total is 0.003% of the world total.  Given that there are a little over 200 sovereign nations in the world, you might expect an average contribution of a single nation to the world total to be of the order of 0.5%, and given that the UK is the sixth largest economy in the world, with a population of 67,000,000 and counting, you might expect the UK’s contribution to be somewhat higher.

So I sought out some data and came across EDGAR, a database created by the European Commission and Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency in 2018.  EDGAR recorded the UK’s percentage Fossil CO2 emissions for 2017 at 1.02% of the world total.  So, at least according to EDGAR, The Herald correspondent was underestimating the UK contribution by a factor of greater than 333.

Still, you might say 1.02% is negligible.  But in a list of over 200 countries, only 6 (China, USA, India, Russia, Japan, and Germany), have emissions over 2%, so the overwhelming majority of countries in the world are in the same position as the UK, therefore any concerted effort by the world will be far from negligible.  China is often depicted as the bogeyman, but China has a population of 1.43 billion, therefore her contribution is bound to be significantly higher than the average.  In fact, per capita, China’s contribution is only one sixth of the biggest polluter, Qatar, whose total contribution in turn is only 0.26%.  As Greta Thunberg says, “No one is too small to make a difference”.

But there is a third flaw in the “What’s the point?” argument.  A black US serviceman spent some time in Glasgow in the 1950s (I heard this story in Dunblane Cathedral so I know it must be true).  His wife was utterly astonished when she got on a bus and a Glaswegian gentleman rose to give her his seat.  She went back home in due course to Montgomery Alabama and recounted this episode to her friend Rosa Parks.  The rest, as they say, is history.  So you just never know what may happen when you do the right thing.

I was minded to post the above as my blog for the week commencing October 21^st.  But let me tell you a little more of the piece’s evolution and let’s see where it takes us.  When the “0.3% of 1%” statistic showed up on October 8^th, I wrote a letter – perhaps I should say a riposte – to The Herald which in effect was a precis of all of the above.  I’m pig-headed enough to say that it was a good letter, but they didn’t publish it.  Well that’s okay.  I’ve been in the business of writing to the papers for long enough to realise that publication does not always correlate with – so to speak – literary brilliance.  They publish me often enough so I can hardly complain.

Then the rogue statistic reappeared on October 14^th.  So I wrote again, this time restricting myself to the single point that “0.3% of 1% of the world total” was (according to EDGAR), out by a factor of >333.  After I wrote the letter, I went to bed and had a nightmare during which I concluded that my computation was out by a factor of 10, or 100, or 1000 – or God knows how much.  I woke in the morning convinced I had made a mistake, and so wished to God I would not be published.  Of course, always under these circumstances of uncertainty, you get published.  I picked up my morning paper, and found myself therein.

I had nightmarish notions that I would suffer a rejoinder:  “Dr Campbell really needs to revisit ‘O-Level’ Arithmetic if he really considers that 0.3% of 1% = 0.003%.”  So I consulted three mathematicians (may I say of considerable eminence) and was greatly relieved to find I’d got my sums right.

Now this Monday morning, a friend of mine has written into The Herald quoting my name and rather mischievously using my “1.02%” statistic to point out that Scotland in turn is responsible for a mere tenth of this, and therefore really is too small to make a difference.  So this has afforded me the opportunity to recast and to resend my original letter to The Herald.  We’ll see what happens this time.

Small beer, you may say, and you’d be right.  But still I think I’m singing from the right hymn sheet.  At time of writing, there is a tremendous cornucopia of opinion with respect to the manifold manifestations of Brexit, the Benn Act, the Letwin Amendment, the next “meaningful vote”, and so on.  I have this notion it all amounts to a rearrangement of the deck chairs on the Titanic.  While we agonise about our relationship with Europe, a question that could take up the attention of our political leaders for many years to come, the world is, frankly, wilting away.  Each morning I wake and notice an absence of birdsong outside my window.

Something is happening to the present participle in England.  The Home Secretary, Priti Patel, says something along the lines of “The Government is bringin’ in a bill outlawin’ the traffickin’ of travellin’ people seekin’ asylum while fleein’ persecution in…”

This tendency to place the tongue behind the superior dentition, rather than occlude the posterior oropharynx, is akin to other recent evolutions in English wot she is spoke.  For example, the “you” sound is vanishing from English English.  Frank Sinatra sang “Noo York Noo York!” (It took me long enough to realise that the first NY was the city, the second the state) “It’s a helluva town!”  But the Beatles sang “You’ve got me going now, just like I knew you would…”

“…like I knew you would whaaaa!”

But now, particularly in London, “knew” or “new” is “noo”.  Notice that, analogous to the decay of the present participle, a narrowing of the posterior oropharynx is being pushed forward into the aperture of the lips.  Listen to, say, Jonathan Ross, or Steve Wright (in the afternoon).  If Charles Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend should become an audio book, I think it should be read by Jonathan Ross.  From Chapter 2:

Mr. and Mrs. Veneering were bran-noo people in a bran-noo house in a bran-noo quarter of London.   Everything about the Veneerings was spick and span noo.  All their furniture was noo, all their friends were noo, all their servants were noo, their plate was noo, their carriage was noo, their harness was noo, their horses were noo, their pictures were noo, they themselves were noo, they were as nooly married as was lawfully compatible with their having a bran-noo baby…

Simultaneously, the “th” sound is going.  I think this is profoundly significant.  Consider that the Anglo Saxons of West Mercia devoted two orthographic symbols to the “th” sound – the thorn and the eth.  And it is vanishing.  Somethin’ is goin’ on wif our yoof, an’ it aint bootiful.  Rather than obstruct the occlusion of the dentition with the lingua, you approximate the upper dentition to the lower lip.  That is to say, instead of sticking your tongue between your teeth, you jam your upper teeth against your lower lip, and create what is known as a “voiceless fricative”.

Then there is the glottal stop, otherwise known as the glo’’al stop.  To produce the glottal stop, you omit the “t” sound in the middle of a word and replace it by a kind of spasm of the vocal cords.  This used to fall, almost exclusively, within the gift of the burgers of the City of Glasgow (Ci’y ah Cul’ure).  No longer.  I first noticed its appropriation by the ruling classes when I heard the then Chancellor George Osborne (I guess trying to be a man of the people) deploy it: “Tha’’s jus’ ti’’le ta’’le!”

Another even more profound example of linguistic migration is that the language of the English street is becoming syllable-timed rather than stress-timed.  You don’t say:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

…you say:

Seas-on-of-mists-and-mell-ow-fruit-ful-ness.

Everything is stressed.  Ratatatatatatatat!  It’s the juggernaut lingo of a rapper.  Who knows, we may hear later today (at time of writing) in the Queen’s Speech to open Parliament:

“Ma guv’men’s doin’ nuttin’ pendin’ ugh Genral Lekshun…”

There’s a piece of received wisdom abroad about language that argues that, much as we still assign people to a specific class on the basis of the way they speak, there is nothing inherently inferior, or superior, about any specific accent or dialect.  I first heard this argument from Professor Michael Samuels, the Professor of English Language in the University of Glasgow, brother of the actress Miriam Karlin, back in the 1970s.  Prof Samuels himself spoke faultless RP but he happened to be a fantastic mimic and could authentically reproduce any accent extant within the British Isles.  So his “taster” lecture for the course in English Language was very amusing.  That was before we got embroiled in Beowulf.

But is it true?  Is one mode of expression just as good as any other?  I go to a gym in the Stirling Highland Hotel.  There are a couple of guys there in the locker room, Stirling guys, into whose conversation I sometimes eavesdrop.  Can’t understand a bloody word.  And mind, I’m a Glasgow boy; I come from 25 miles away.  If they include me in the conversation, they very kindly modulate their registration, in order to render themselves intelligible.

So I reckon this notion of a standard language (at least one, but by all means more) is very important, if a nation is going to be able to function as a nation.  I was conscious of this thought the other day when I chanced to be in conversation with a young lady on a help desk while I was trying to sort out a glitch on a domestic appliance.

“A ra’’le? Wo’ ra’’le?  How noo’s your App? ‘Ang on, putin’ you on ‘old…”

I said, “I beg your pardon?”

But I was on hold.

In the last 50 pages, or so, of War & Peace, Tolstoy gives a rather jaundiced view of history, in which he disses the idea of “the great man” and proposes that events are a grand amalgam of all sorts of untraceable causes and effects, over which we have little control.  I think of that when I think of the fact that, when I got in touch with a help desk south of the border, I could barely understand what was being said.  We think that the constitutional arrangements of these islands are all about the economy, or our relationship to Europe, or a sense of “identity”, or even “blood and soil”, but I have this notion that Scotland will become an independent nation simply because the Home Secretary is droppin’ her Gs.

Slogged away at the latest tome all day Saturday, trawling through it to cut out the outworn clichés, the dead wood, and all the passages that make me cringe.  You say to yourself, “That works… that doesn’t work…” but after a while you lose perspective and you can no longer tell.  So you have to put it down.  Besides, I was getting cabin fever.  So I put my pen down and went off to the Shenaz in Glasgow (“One visit means many” – indeed, though my last was about 45 years ago) for a delicious lamb bhuna.  They used to serve a starter called “indescribables” so I asked for them and received a look of incomprehension.  I’m turning into my father, who used to order a “Macallam” for dessert.  The Shenaz is on Granville Street opposite the magnificent west-facing frontage of St Andrews Hall – the only part of the hall to survive the devastating fire of 1962.  What a pity I couldn’t just cross the road to hear the RSNO’s season opener.  Instead, I walked the length of Sauchiehall Street to the north end of Buchanan Street and entered the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.

I nearly didn’t go.  Mahler 1.  I’ve played it, probably around the last time I had a curry in the Shenaz, and didn’t much like it.  One is so dogmatic as a youth.  I thought the opening was a steal from Beethoven 4, that Mahler having run out of themes also stole Frère Jacques, cast in a minor key for the third movement’s bass solo, and that the last movement was pure bombast.  So I was minded on Saturday to cut and run at the interval.

But the RSNO are on top form.  There was a virtuoso rendition of Strauss’ Don Juan, and then the magnificent Karen Cargill sang Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs which gave me a chance to practise my German.

Herbstsonnenschein.

Der liebe Abend blickt so still herein.

Sometimes I think German is just an English dialect – or maybe vice versa.  Anyway it put me in the mood, so I stayed.

It soon became evident that we were hearing something very special indeed.  As I said, the RSNO are on top form, but I also think this remarkable performance had much to do with Maestro Thomas Sondergard who seemed to know how to get rid of all the accrued barnacles of conventional performance interpretation and get to the core of the music.  I particularly recall the magical introduction and then, following the first movement’s principal theme taken from the second of Mahler’s four Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, the return to the opening material, with all these sounds of nature, when the whole world seems to hold its breath.

The orchestra evidently also thought Sondergard was key to a wonderful performance, because they applauded him consistently throughout the various curtain calls.  They remained seated to allow him to take a bow – which is something of a convention, but then when he gestured to bring them to their feet, they remained seated and had him take another bow.  Seasoned orchestral musicians can be pretty hard bitten.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen the RSNO do this before.

The communal act of music making, and music listening, in concert, can often be disappointing.  The performance can be routine, a run-through; the audience can be restless and inattentive, distracting neighbours with luridly bright mobile phone screens, polluting the soundscape with coughs, ringtones, hearing aid whistles, and even conversation.  Even when everyone, orchestra and audience alike, are giving their all, even then, some magical ingredient, inexplicably, is missing.

For all that, sometimes it just all comes together.  And that may happen, as it did for me on Saturday evening, when you least expect it.  You might record the concert and indeed, the resulting CD would be remarkable, but you can never really bottle the experience of a wonderful live concert.  The music existed for as long as the players played and the audience listened, and now, that unique experience only exists in the archive of memory.

We should not regret that.  Let it go.  Move on.  Next week the RSNO play Arnold Bax, Dimitri Shostakovich, and Sergei Rachmaninov.  Eight of us are going.  We are meeting first for a preconcert dinner.  We have being playing music together for a long time, since, come to think of it, before the last time I dined in the Shenaz.

And Bax – my hero – in concert.  How unusual is that?

Can’t wait.

“Bah,” said Scrooge.  “Humbug!”

To what was he referring?

Christmas.  His nephew wished him a merry one, and offered a panegyric to the festival as “a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time,” to which Scrooge replied, with evident sarcasm, “You’re quite a powerful speaker, sir.  I wonder you don’t go into Parliament.”

And in Parliament, Paula Sherriff on the Opposition Bench and a friend of the late Jo Cox said she was worried about death threats she had received, and accused the Prime Minister of exacerbating an already toxic situation by his use of intemperate language.  The Prime Minister replied, “I’ve never heard such humbug in all my life.”  This remark has proved controversial, not because “humbug” constitutes unparliamentary language, but because it appears the PM was belittling, specifically, a woman’s fear for her life.  Andrew Marr took the PM to task on this on Sunday morning, in Manchester, before the start of the Conservative Party Conference.  Well!  What a car crash of an interview that was!  The PM said that his “humbug” comment was a response to the assertion that his calling Hilary Benn’s Act to make a no-deal Brexit unlawful “The Surrender Act” was inflammatory.  Mr Marr and the PM battled this point out rather unproductively for fifteen minutes.  Couldn’t a quick referral to Hansard sort his out?  I’ll leave it with you.

But what, precisely, is humbug?  For a full exploration down this fascinating avenue I commend to you Professor Harry G. Frankfurt’s sublime tract, On Bullshit (Princeton University Press, 2005).  (I daresay “bullshit” would have been unparliamentary.)

To say that somebody speaks “humbug” is not the same as to say that somebody is lying.  Often, the issue is not so much whether some question of fact is true or false, but whether somebody’s emotional response to reality is sincere.  You might say to a political opponent, “I find your remarks deeply offensive.”  But you are not really offended at all.  You merely perceive a political opportunity to advance your cause.  That is humbug.

I don’t know about you, but I am completely scunnered (good Scottish word) with the political interview.   Mr Johnson and Mr Marr – I hold them both to account.  I can’t understand why so few politicians have cottoned on to the fact that sincerity would be a fantastic vote winner.  If I were a spectral eminence grise hanging around the corridors of No. 10 in my jeans and T-shirt, I’d advise the PM to proceed as follows:

“Do you regret the fact that you described your opponent’s viewpoint as ‘humbug’?”

“Yes I do.”

“You got it wrong?”

“Big time.”

“Shouldn’t you therefore resign?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

And now there is a chance to expand, and elucidate.  The difference between this last question and the ones preceding it, is that while the others are closed questions, seeking a simple answer, this is an open question, allowing you to give a multifaceted, multivariate, and nuanced answer.  It seems to me that the trick of the political interview, from the interviewee’s point of view, is to identify closed questions and answer them monosyllabically.  If the interviewer is hunting for your scalp, don’t give him, or her, anywhere to go.  Just answer in monosyllables, because sooner or later the interviewer will run out of closed questions and be compelled to ask you an open one.  Then you have a chance to state your case.

As for the interviewer, we really ought to expect something rather more sophisticated than the “yes you did no I didn’t did didn’t” spat that tends to result from confrontation.  If an interviewer has a blatant agenda designed to expose some specific fact, and the interviewee has a blatant agenda to get some other specific fact across, then you are not going to have a meeting of minds.  A skilful interviewer will find a way of getting under the interviewee’s skin.  If he can’t do it, then the whole shebang is… well, humbug.

But confrontation seems to define our entire public life.  With respect to the current impasse in Westminster, one of my neighbours recently suggested to me that it has moved beyond farce to… what?  What is beyond farce?  I wondered about that.

It is certainly just as well that the Government and Her Majesty’s Opposition are separated by two sword lengths, because things are getting a little heated.  There’s a general opinion that people across the board need to tone their language down.  Mind you, insult, and intemperate language are hardly new to the Commons.  Lloyd George said Churchill would “make a drum out of the skin of his own mother.”  Churchill called Ramsay MacDonald “a boneless wonder”, and Attlee “a modest man with much to be modest about”, as well as “a sheep in sheep’s clothing”.

Is Westminster a Whitehall Farce?  There are certainly farcical elements.  The booming voice of the Attorney General, for example, surely comes straight out of a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta.  He reminds me of Pooh Bah in The Mikado.  The general hubbub and waving of order papers is surely farcical.  When the Speaker calls for order but cannot be heard above the din, something very strange happens to his mode of delivery, as if he were being taken over and possessed by some malevolent demon, speaking in tongues:

ORDURE!  Or perhaps: HORS D’OUEVRES!

People are listening in to the Parliament Channel for its entertainment value.  Some of “our European partners” are convinced it is a parody.  It is certainly a Soap Opera.

The comparison with a Soap is worth exploring.  Soaps have changed.  Emmerdale and Eastenders, or even Coronation Street, are hardly The Archers and Mrs Dale’s Diary.  I only ever catch the last few seconds of Eastenders which usually seems to feature some grotesque event like somebody’s house being blown up, while a vicious man and a spiteful woman spit vitriol at one another: “I’ll dance on your grave!”  (Doof doof doof-doof-doof… doh re me fah soh, lah fah…)  An everyday story of London’s east end.  Brahms and Liszt dahn the Battlecruiser, touched the skin and blister for a Lady Godiva.  The trouble is, people actually begin to think this is an accurate depiction of normal quotidian experience, and so it thus becomes.  Everybody starts to behave as if they are taking part in a Soap Opera.  Manners are deteriorating.  Sooner or later, the bad behaviour observed on the telly spills over on to the streets.

Literally.  Some people, once they get behind the wheel, turn into monsters.  Somebody gets into the wrong lane, and signals a request to move into a line of traffic.  But they have made their choice, and no quarter is given.  An effort to signal and merge is greeted with a shrill and sustained blare of the horn from some Chelsea Tractor the size of a Sherman tank.  Then there are the tail-gaters, and the constituency, the very large constituency, that blatantly ignores the speed limit, and attempts to browbeat those of us trying to adhere to it.

And this is as nothing compared with the language and the threats of the social media trolls.

Courtesy is vanishing.  Sometimes when I practise the ritual of courtesy I receive a look of astonishment as if I were an aristocrat from Tsarist St Petersburg prancing a gavotte twixt the Winter Palace and the Hermitage.  A gentleman of the old style.  How quaint.

What lies beyond farce?

Madness.

Doof doof doof-doof-doof… doh re me fah soh, lah fah…

The eminent statistician Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter OBE FRS was on Radio 4’s Broadcasting House on Sunday morning, helping to review the papers.  Prof Spiegelhalter is Winton Professor of the Public Understanding of Risk in the Statistical Laboratory of the University of Cambridge.  He is concerned with the use and misuse of statistical data in public discourse.  He looked at several reported scientific surveys (“a crop of rubbish”) with headline-grabbing results and reiterated the question, “Who commissioned the survey?”  He was making a point about bias.  One of the other panel members cut in with a throwaway comment to the effect, “Well we know that statistics are 99% made up”, to which Spiegelhalter replied, with more than a hint of sarcasm, “Well I’ve never heard that before!”  Paddy O’Connell in the chair told us that the professor pulled a weary face – useful to know when the media platform is radio.  It’s the old adage attributed to Mark Twain, “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics”, which is often interpreted as a description of a downward spiral of misinformation and disinformation.  But there is another way of interpreting the adage.  There are, on the one hand, lies and damned lies; and, on the other, there are statistics.  I venture to say that this is Prof Spiegelhalter’s message.  The fact is that in this age of fake news, data are under attack, not just because they may be false, but because they may be, accidentally or wilfully, misinterpreted.

It so happens that on Thursday evening I was in Glasgow University to hear the inaugural Bowman Lecture, in honour of a modest and eminent man, courtesy of the School of Mathematics and Statistics, given by the self-same Professor Spiegelhalter.  This public lecture was entitled Trust in Numbers.  The Prof is a skilled communicator and it was no surprise that the lecture was a sell-out.  It was also noticeable that the audience members filling the Sir Charles Wilson Hall were of all ages (I wish I could provide a graph here) including a substantial number of school students.  Given that statistics is sometimes considered a dry subject, this was heartening.

The professor is on a mission; and it is one of public education.  I have to say that I felt right at home listening to his lecture, not just because it was full of medicine (breast cancer, prostate cancer, processed meats and bowel cancer, safe alcohol consumption limits), but precisely because he was enthusiastically conveying a message, in much the way that I vividly recall the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine championing the Emergency Medicine cause during the 1980s and 1990s.  It is always a pleasure to hear somebody who feels passionately about some cause, particularly if they possess the great qualities of rhetoric – coherence, fluidity, responsiveness, and humour.

The difference in statistics between relative risk and absolute risk was colourfully depicted.  Some of the lurid Red Top banner headlines misconstruing then sensationalising a piece of medical research caused great hilarity within the hall.  I was interested in the professor’s view on the latest medical advice about alcohol consumption.  Over the years the “safe limit” has steadily declined.  28 units a week, then 21, then 14, for both male and female.  And then, zero.  No consumption is safe.  Actually, as that graph extrapolates to zero, the evidence becomes distinctly hazy.  Prof Spiegelhalter announced his intention to have a glass of wine after the lecture.  He said, “I’ve created a new statistical unit – ‘NND’.  Number needed to drink.”  He added, “The medics like that one.”  That is because we are familiar with “Number needed to treat”, that is, the idea of the number of patients needed to treat with Therapy A before a positive gain in a single individual is achieved.  (To this, parenthetically, might be added the much less researched notion of ‘number needed to harm’ – the number of patients needed to undergo Therapy A before someone experiences a significant unwanted effect.

I was very intrigued by his concept of “inoculation”.  This was a kind of pre-emptive strike.  Some piece of misinformation is doing the rounds and you disable it by saying, “Isn’t it awful that everybody thinks…” and you reproduce the false information, as if you are supplying the recipient with a little piece of toxic material in order to protect them from the full effect.

After the talk, there were questions from the floor.  One of them was whimsical (or maybe not):  “Would the public understanding of statistical data be enhanced if Eton were abolished?”

Mischievously, the Prof asked, “Is this being recorded?”  And then, tactfully, “I’m uncertain.”  This chimed, because he had spoken about uncertainty, and the importance of owning up to uncertainty.  Here, I was reminded of the antepenultimate episode of a BBC series nearly half a century old, The Ascent of Man, presented by another great scientific communicator, Jacob Bronowski.  To me, Episode 11, Knowledge or Certainty is a little masterpiece.  It starts with an exploration of the portrait of Stephan Borgrajewicz by Feliks Topolski – “Lines, possibly, of agony” – and ends at the crematorium at Auschwitz.  On the way, Bronowski discusses Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and the idea that our failure to pin down, say, the exact position and the exact velocity of an electron is not due to the crudity of our instruments, but integral to the world of quantum mechanics.  Bronowski preferred to call this idea the Principle of Tolerance.  Of course, at the time these ideas were coming to fruition, the 1930s, tolerance was vanishing from Europe.

(Parenthetically, if you get a chance to see the Bronowski, you will notice the very limited use of “background” music.  I can recall the sparing use of a solo clarinet – is it from Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time? – composed, and first performed, in a concentration camp.  These days, televised scientific documentaries are rendered unwatchable, certainly unlistenable, by their incessant background of musical drivel.)

George Santayana told us to study the past in order to avoid repeating it.  But history never really repeats itself.  So while the 2020s will not be like the 1930s, they might be even worse, if we lose the urge to separate truth from falsehood, and we become ever less tolerant.  Yet Professor Spiegelhalter is a beacon of light.

So is Glasgow University.  How wonderful to be back in the hallowed cloisters of Gilmorehill.  I was back in these regions again on Saturday.  A medical student sought some career advice.  Why a millennial should choose somebody with my ramshackle CV to impart “wisdom” I can scarcely imagine.  I wouldn’t dream of telling anybody what to do.  Risky business!  But I hope I was a reasonably effective sounding board.  And I am quite sure I benefited more from the encounter than she did.

 

Do you remember The Man from U.N.C.L.E.?

BBC 1 (I think), 8 pm Thursdays, after Top of the Pops.  Now then now then, guys an’ gals…  ‘Nuff said.  It was a one hour slot, in four “Acts”, presumably to accommodate the commercials in the US.

U.N.C.L.E. was the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement and its man was Napoleon Solo, played by Robert Vaughn.  Napoleon Solo – what a fantastic name!  I have a notion Ian Fleming coined it.  Solo had a colleague, a Russian named Illya Kuryakin, played by David McCallum.  McCallum is still with us and so far as I can see has changed very little.  He is Scottish but Illya’s speech had a flat, almost Asiatic quality difficult to place.  David McCallum’s father was a distinguished violinist, leader of the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Thomas Beecham.  The LPO once provided the music for a movie in which Stewart Granger played Paganini.  Yehudi Menuhin provided the soundtrack and even auditioned for the part, an experience that he said he “didn’t disenjoy”.  For one particular scene, David McCallum senior lent his Strad to Granger.  Granger botched the scene and in a fit of temper smashed McCallum’s Strad to smithereens. McCallum, understandably, blanched.  Actually the whole thing was a gag.  Granger had substituted a cheap fiddle for the Strad.  If there is one thing I can’t stand, it’s a practical joker.

Solo and Kuryakin’s mentor was an Englishman named Alexander Waverly who week by week would set them a task to avert international anarchy and collapse.  He had a slurred delivery and a puzzled, bordering on demented, air.  “Gentlemen, time is of the utmost!”  Utmost what?

Vaughn played Solo’s role, I think, at an ironic remove, and largely for laughs.  Solo was irresistible to women.  As another woman succumbed, Illya remarked, with evident irritation, “Napoleon, can’t you ever turn it off?”  If Solo wished to communicate with Waverly he would talk to his cuff link:  “Open Channel D!”  U.N.C.L.E.  had a Nemesis with an absurd name:  Thrush.

McCallum and Vaughn made their names in the two great testosterone-fuelled movies of the 60s – The Magnificent Seven, and The Great Escape.  In The Magnificent Seven Vaughn played an ageing gunslinger who is losing his edge and, with it, his nerve.  He takes on a job, a forlorn task, at the behest of Yul Brynner, not for any high minded motive but because he’s barely surviving on a diet of beans, and needs employment.  (As a kid I remember thinking, that’s not so bad.  Pies and beans – my signature dish.)

In The Great Escape, McCallum played a naval officer (Fleet Air Arm?) incarcerated in Stalag Luft III, and struggling to get out.  The escapees are building three tunnels, Tom, Dick, and Harry.  There is a problem – where do you put all the dirt you have excavated from the burgeoning tunnels?  McCallum’s character comes up with the answer, and he presents it to Richard Attenborough’s Big X.  You conceal bags of dirt under your trousers and release them into Stalag Luft III’s compound when nobody is looking.  (Based on fact, at least according to the Paul Brickhill account.)

Well I don’t know about that.  If I had been a dragon on Dragon’s Den and somebody had brought such a proposal to me, I would have ridiculed it as preposterous.

“Let me get this straight.  You take the soil and put it into bags concealed under your trousers?”

“Yes.”

“Then you wander around the compound and when nobody’s looking, you pull a cord and the soil comes down over your shoes and you kick it into the dirt?”

“That’s it.”

“I’m out!”

But where is this walk down Amnesia Lane taking me?   Nowhere at all.  I’m just diverting myself, in an attempt to obliterate the memory of the first question on Friday evening on Radio 4’s Any Questions?

The programme came from St Mary’s Church in Chesham, Buckinghamshire.  Julian Worricker was in the chair and the panellists were Andrew Bowie, Conservative MP for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, Baroness Shami Chakrabarti the Shadow Attorney-General, Dr Sarah Wollaston, formerly Conservative and now Liberal Democrat MP for Totnes, and Peter Hitchens, “Fulminator-in-Chief” (according to the chair) for the Mail on Sunday.

The first question was posed by one Sebastian Heath.  What do the panellists consider to be the likeliest outcome of a No Deal Brexit, and upon what evidence do they base their view?

Sarah Wollaston thought No Deal was going to be Apocalyptic.  So did Shami Chakrabarti, who had to take a moment to calm down even before she’d started.  Even Peter Hitchens, a secessionist, thought the leaked Yellowhammer document an underestimate of the impending devastation.  He wants compromise, and favours the Norway option.  Andrew Bowie, being in the unenviable position of having to support the government, dodged the question completely.  Of course Yellowhammer is a worst-case scenario.  And we are striving for a deal… but it is only right and proper… responsible government… bla bla bla.  It was absolutely pitiful.  There was an echo of derisive laughter from the audience.  I found myself yelling at the radio:  Answer the bloody question!

I did admire Julian Worricker’s chairmanship. He didn’t interrupt, although he did gently try to remind the panellists of what the question was.  There is mileage in letting a panellist spout humbug.  The audience is perfectly capable of detecting it, unaided.  I would have liked him to return to the questioner, Mr Heath, and ask him if he was satisfied with the answers he had heard.  I venture to think he would not have been impressed.

At school, our teachers taught us how to sit exams.  Read the question.  Answer the question as it is given, not as you would have it be.  Aeons ago, when I sat at the feet of Dr Hobsbaum at Glasgow University he would hurl work back at me and say, “It’s all assertion with no back-up, Campbell.  Were you drunk?”

Shami Chakrabarti said to Andrew Bowie, “I met you before the show.  You seem a nice guy, but some of these people in No 10 are complete head-bangers.”

Maybe.  But why?

All assertion and no back-up.  I switched off.  Think I’ll go back to watching repeats of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.            

On Wednesday I had lunch in the Cuillin Hills Hotel, in Portree, with my cousin Rachel.  We had a drink, ordered, and enjoyed the relaxed ambience and the beautiful view over Portree Harbour towards Ben Tianavaig.  The lunch, which turned out to be delicious, was perhaps a little tardy.  I went up to the bar and said something along the lines of, “Excuse me, I hope you don’t mind me asking how our order is proceeding, but we are a little short of time…” etc etc.  The meal arrived a minute later.  Rachel said, “That certainly worked!  What on earth did you say?”

I replied that I had said, “Believe me I’m a mild mannered guy, but see that woman over there?  Trust me, you don’t want to get on the wrong side of her, when the crockery and cutlery start to fly around.”

Rachel laughed.

The following day I was in Ullapool.  It was a dreich day.  More, gruamach, as the Gael says.  But I didn’t mind.  I wanted to visit the Achiltibuie Peninsula on such a day.  I have written a novel, working title Speedbird, currently in the deep freeze.  A significant part of Speedbird takes place on the Achiltibuie Peninsula.  Now I’ve often visited, principally to go up Stac Pollaidh, but I’d never ventured further west.  The road that curves anticlockwise round the peninsula is a dead end.  In Speedbird, something bad happens at that dead end.  Being in the vicinity, I thought I’d better check it out.

It was an unnerving experience to discover that what I’d envisaged turned out to be remarkably accurate.  In the mist and rain, Stac Pollaidh itself was completely invisible.  I kept driving west and at Altandhu turned south.  In the mirk, there was no sign of the Summer Isles.  At Achiltibuie I stopped at the shop for a coffee.  The shopkeeper asked me what on earth I was doing down there on such a day.  “You won’t see anything.”

“No, but it’s atmospheric.”

“Atmospheric!  I think I’ll use that from now on.”

So for atmosphere, I listened on my CD player to a performance of Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten, because that indeed conveys the atmosphere I would wish to create in Speedbird, and it is the atmosphere of the world beyond Achiltibuie.

At Horse Sound I descended to the beach and found Badenscallie burial ground, abeam the undulating contour of Horse Island, beautifully maintained, but deserted.  Further down the coast the scattering of houses dwindled and then petered out.  At Achduart the old school house was completely hidden in a copse of trees.  This was virtually the end of the road.

But not quite.  I could see the ribbon of tarmac ascending in the direction of Bon More Coigach.  Here at last I was on the very edge of the world.  I continued with extreme reluctance.  The fact is I was spooked.  I forced myself to the end of the road under a state of intense oppression and finally, with the roar in my ears of the watercourse coming off the mountain, I turned and got the hell out of there.

But I’m glad I went all the way to the end of the road.  Now I know how to bring Speedbird out of its deep freeze, and revive it.  Still, crossing back over the blighted moonscape of Assynt, it took some time to regain a sense of equanimity.  What a relief to make the long ascent past Morefield, over the brow of the hill, and to see once more the Caledonian MacBrayne steamer berthed alongside the twinkling lights of Ullapool Harbour.