jamescalumcampbell

It is salutary to go on the web and search for “human population of the world”. You can easily find an estimate of the population in real-time, steadily increasing as the seconds tick by. When I found the site, the number read 7,747,727,296. By the time I had written it down, the number had risen to 7,747.727,452. I did a quick computation. The world needs to create a new London, with all its infrastructure and facilities, once a month.

But we don’t talk about it. We talk about related issues – plastics, pollution, climate change, deforestation, but we shy from the question of overpopulation. It’s the mastodon in the auditorium.

Talking of auditoria, I’m interested in the imagery of politics qua theatre. Politicians frequently talk about “the world’s stage”. For example, we have to be in Europe, or indeed out of Europe, if we are to play a meaningful role on “the world’s stage”. Similarly, politicians refer to “the top table”. We must retain and renew our nuclear deterrent if we are to remain at “the top table”. These expressions are used so frequently that, like many other tired metaphors, they have degenerated to the condition of cliché. But I think they might be worth re-examination.

Shakespeare, not surprisingly, used the stage as metaphor quite frequently. In As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII, Jaques says

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players…

He goes on, in a tone of gentle mockery, to describe the seven ages of man; mewling, puking infancy, tedious schooldays, febrile love, jealous war, pompous societal gravitas, the slippered pantaloon of retirement; and, lastly…

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

And in Macbeth, Act V, Scene V, scepticism becomes cynicism:

Out, out, brief candle.

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

So it is far from obvious that the world’s stage is an enviable location on which to find oneself. After all, even if art holds the mirror up to nature, what happens on stage is not real; it is make-believe.

Related to “the world’s stage” is that other frequently recycled cliché: “the top table”. This conjures an image of university academics dining in hall; or of the hierarchical seating arrangements at a banquet, perhaps a wedding feast. Jesus had something to say about aspiring to sit at the top table. He recommended that you put yourself into a lowly position, and who knows, maybe the host will invite you to sit with him. On the other hand, if you put yourself at the top table, you might have to suffer the humiliation of being demoted. In geopolitical terms, the top table’s current makeup arose out of the Second World War. The Allies – Britain, the United States, and Russia – sat at the top table. Nowadays, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council constitute the top table and key to membership is that you must be a nuclear power. Hence the Security Council comprises Britain, the US, Russia, China, and France.

Being at the top table is a little like being on the world’s stage. You occupy your own universe and you may have little idea as to what is going on in the real world. You think what you are doing is tremendously important, but to the majority of the seven billion, seven hundred and forty seven million people, and counting, for all you know, it is all beside the point. I heard some people on the radio at the weekend who aspire to sit at the top table and occupy the world’s stage. All that is wrong with the current state of our politics was summed in in the last three minutes of Any Questions, BBC Radio 4, on Friday night, repeated on Saturday afternoon.

Chris Mason (Chair): Just time to slip in one last question.

Questioner: Are any of our current politicians worthy of the term “statesman”, or “stateswoman”?

Chris Mason: Give us a name, but not from your own party.

Grant Shapps (Conservative): general affirmation that most politicians are people of integrity and good faith (despite cynical groan from the audience.) And a name – Yvette Cooper.

Steven Kinnock (Labour) – lots of Tories, but they were all sacked by the PM. (Hearty applause from the audience. This was obviously too much for Grant Shapps, who rather spoiled his hitherto straightforward answer with a sour remark about all the Labour members defecting because they couldn’t stand the anti-Semitism.) Give us a name, Steven: Rory Stewart.

Delyth Jewell (Plaid Cymru) – used to think Jeremy Corbyn was a man of decency – but now devastated by his lack of conviction…

Ben Habib (MEP, Brexit): can’t think of a single one, especially not the leaders. And by the way what Boris says about Brexit blah blah blah we’re out of time.

Pitiful.

Grant Shapps nearly managed, and then, goaded by a political opponent’s cheap gag, threw it away. Steven Kinnock – owner of the cheap gag. Delyth Jewell – turned what appeared to be a compliment into an attack. Ben Habib – didn’t get out of his political rut to answer the question.

We are being weighed in the balance and found wanting.

Meanwhile, an update on the Mastodon in the Auditorium.

7,747,851,818

And in the time it took me to write it down

7,747.851,853…

November 25. Just under a week to go before the official start of winter, but already the NHS news reports are sounding pretty wintry. Down south, the BMA has got into a spat with the government over the viability of GP home visits. Here, there is a horror story about a patient’s miserable experience seeking out-of-hours care, and an interminable wait in an out-of-hours GP clinic. For the next three months we can expect that the NHS will be under intolerable strain. There may be more horror stories to come. Yet paradoxically, the more the NHS appears to fail, the more it will be upheld as a sacred cow which must under no circumstances be sold to Mr Trump. Since we are in the midst of an election campaign, we can expect some extravagant financial gestures of goodwill in the NHS’ direction. We may also be sure to hear that there are technological solutions to the NHS’ woes, particularly in the fields of Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence. You know the sort of thing. Robots caring for the elderly.

As somebody who has been there, done that, and got the T-shirt (if I may say so) in the fields of emergency medicine and general practice, I’m always struck by the absence in these arguments of consideration of what might constitute a tolerable burden for a GP (or indeed an emergency physician) in their day-to-day practice. Yet this seems to me to be a valid starting point: think of what an individual can reasonably do and then integrate that computation into the whole picture.

I offer no evidence base here, but rather an assessment based on personal experience. A contented GP who in the long term is not running the risk of burnout will see no more than 100 patients per week. Fifteen minute appointments. What would that look like in reality?

Something like this:

Monday: morning surgery 0900 – 1130: 10 patients

11.30 – 11.45: Coffee.

11.45 – 1400: admin, home visits (say 3), liaison with colleagues, and lunch, scheduled according to need.

1400 – 1630: afternoon surgery: 10 patients.

1630 – 1800 admin and any further home visits (say 1).

Total: 24 patients. Enough already. Ask any GP. After you’ve seen 30 patients in a day you begin to get tetchy. But some busy urban GPs are seeing in excess of 40 patients a day. It’s unsustainable.

I should say a word about what constitutes “admin”. The most important elements are the surveillance of correspondence and laboratory investigation results, and further contact and correspondence with colleagues, particularly within the secondary and tertiary sectors (ie hospital specialists).

Tuesday might look a bit like Monday.

Wednesday morning also looks the same, but Wednesday afternoon is free, because it so happens that Wednesday is the GP’s night on call (yes, I’m advocating bringing the responsibility of out-of-hours care back to the GP surgery). So after 1800, the GP remains in the surgery or health centre, and provides out-of-hours cover for the practice, and probably a group of neighbouring practices who will return the favour on another night.  (Because this burden is being shared with other practices, this may not be a weekly commitment.)  Ideally, he or she will be accompanied by a practice nurse. (Working alongside a colleague is so much more rewarding than working alone.) The evening and night’s activity will involve consultations on site, and home visits. A driver will be provided.

Thursday: the day post night on-call is a non-clinical day. If the night has been busy, the GP will need to sleep. Otherwise the day is devoted to the GP’s special interest – research, administration, further education and professional development etc.

Friday – normal day.

Saturday and Sunday: must be covered as with any weekday evening. Depending on the local arrangements, the GP might have to fulfil a single weekend shift approximately once a month. If that shift happens to be Sunday night, then for the following week the GP’s protected day will become the Monday.

That works out as a working week of about 60 hours, which sounds a lot, but around 18 of them will constitute time on call, including the average weekend commitment, and 9 of them will be protected for non-clinical activities. That is sustainable.

In order for doctors to achieve this lifestyle, their patient list (per full-time equivalent GP) needs to be a flock of around 1,000 souls. GPs are paid partly on a per capita basis. If you look after 1,000 people, you won’t get rich, but you have a chance of being happy. We need to train and retain more GPs.

In the endless debate about how the health service is run, you seldom hear opinions about modus operandi at this level of detail. Instead, the BMA tells the Health Secretary the GPs are too busy to do house calls, and the Health Secretary tells the BMA that house calls are mandatory. Shouldn’t the health secretary be asking the GPs what they need, and shouldn’t the GPs be replying with – well, something along the lines of what I’ve just written?

Do you remember the Hamlet cigar advert?  There were a series of them that shared the common theme of the cigar as a cure for fretfulness.  The one I remember best was a shot taken from the edge of a golf bunker.  The golfer in the bunker was not visible but you could tell he was there because you could hear the recurrent sound of wedge (or perhaps mashie, or niblick – you can tell I’m not a golfer) versus golf ball.  A spray of sand rose above the lip of the bunker – but not the ball.  There may have been barely audible grunts of exasperation from the invisible golfer.  Then, a pause.  The rasp of a match, and now, instead of a spray of sand, cigar smoke, to the accompaniment of the advert’s signature theme – the air from Bach’s third orchestral suite, BWV1068.  It was all deeply calming.

I used to have a penchant for a good cigar.  Who knows, maybe the Hamlet advert was its root cause.  Advertising can be insidiously successful, though not always.  Another famous tobacco ad was for Strand cigarettes.  The recurrent theme this time was of a man in a raincoat lighting up on an inclement night in a deserted cityscape.  The strap line – “You’re never alone, with a Strand.”  But then Strand bombed.  The received wisdom was that people did not like to consider themselves as pathetic lonely old men in need of a drug to offset their solitude.

One of the last times I smoked a cigar was on the last night that it was legal in Scotland to smoke in a public place.  The place in question was Cromlix House in Perthshire, an establishment now owned by Sir Andy Murray.  I was in the company of a young lady who happened to be a smoker, and it was very relaxing to puff on a Havana cigar in front of a blazing log fire.  I can’t remember what cigarette Julia smoked – not Strand.  It seemed churlish not to have this experience for the last time (of smoking in a hotel, not I hope, enjoying the company of a young lady).  In his autobiography My Last Sigh, the Spanish film director and surrealist Luis Bunuel gives a deeply seductive description of how to prepare and drink a dry martini, pointing out that alcohol and tobacco are essential accompaniments to lovemaking.  (And in Thunderball, when Bond picks up Dominetta Vitali by buying her a carton of Dukes, king-size with filter in a Nassau shop, he invites her for a drink, pointing out that smoking goes with drinking.)  Bunuel does, however, end his panegyric to alcohol and tobacco with a palinode – don’t smoke or drink because they’re bad for you.

In the absurd days of the Quality Outcomes Framework which used to drive General Practice in this country, doctors got Brownie points for recording patients’ smoking status.  I used to ask patients, “Do you smoke?”  “Yes.”  Tick the box.  “Just in case nobody has ever told you, it’s very bad for you.”  I knew a GP who actually prescribed cigarettes.  There is some evidence that smoking might attenuate attacks of ulcerative colitis.  This GP would advise patients with that affliction to smoke a few cigarettes every day.  How many?  He said five.  (I think he was getting his “five a day” message mixed up.)  I dare say the General Medical Council would have taken a dim view of this particular aspect of his pharmacopoeia, but I don’t think anybody ever dobbed him in.

Fortunately, Cuban cigars are so ridiculously expensive (you are more or less setting fire to bank notes) that I’ve got my habit down to about one a year.  So I need an alternative cure for fretfulness (heaven knows, perusing my morning paper, there’s more than enough to be fretful about) and fortunately I have such a cure on my doorstep.  I take a turn down to Flanders Moss, a stretch of peatbog in West Stirlingshire stretching from Thornhill to Aberfoyle.  You could easily disappear into this Grimpen quag, but fortunately there is a boardwalk affording a kilometre circuit, from which you can enjoy magnificent views of the southwest origin of the highland boundary fault line that stretches from Loch Lomond to Stonehaven.  Now, the big peaks, Ben Lomond, Venue, Ledi, Stuc a’Chroin and Vorlich, and in the distance, Ben More and Stob Binnein, are snow-capped.

Sometimes I stop and talk to the horses.  People walk their alpaca down here.  Alpaca are another wonderful cure for anxiety.  They are good company, so alert, so interested in what’s going on, always smiling.

So I “take a turn round the moss” and, at least for a time, the cares of the world recede.  I don’t have to light up, yet I can still hear the long, soothing melodic line of Bach’s Air.

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…