<Αθηνών σε λίγη ώρα δε θα είναι Ελληνικός!>

Dr George Savvanis on the Ano Korakiana website:

ΕΡΤέλος...

Γράφει ο/η Γιώργος Σαββανής
11.11.13
 "Κάποιοι θα ντρέπονται εσαεί και θα λογοδοτούν στις επόμενες γενιές», είπε χαρακτηρίζοντας «ενέργεια εκτροπής» την έφοδο της αστυνομίας."
Αυτά δήλωσε κάποια βουλευτής το πρωί έξω από το ραδιομέγαρο της Αγίας Παρασκευής. Θα μου επιτρέψετε να αμφιβάλλω πολύ, αν ανάμεσα στους «κάποιους» υπάρχει έστω και ένας που να είναι σε θέση να ντρέπεται. Το αίσθημα της ντροπής, από όλο το ζωικό βασίλειο διαθέτει μόνο ο άνθρωπος.. Όσο για τη «λογοδοσία», εδώ πια δεν έχω την παραμικρή αμφιβολία! Θα λογοδοτήσουν και αυτοί όπως λογοδότησαν όλοι οι κατά καιρούς απατεώνες και δοσίλογοι πλην ελαχίστων εξαιρέσεων. Έτσι λοιπόν απλά μπήκε η ταφόπλακα στην ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗ ΡΑΔΙΟΦΩΝΙΑ ΤΗΛΕΟΡΑΣΗ και στην ογδοντάχρονη ιστορία της. Έτσι απλά έσβησε η φωνή της Ελλάδας. Ο «τσοπανάκος» δεν θα ξανακουστεί στον αέρα. Η μοναδική ελεύθερη και ανεξάρτητη φωνή στους τελευταίους πέντε μήνες σίγησε. Τα σκύβαλα των ιδιωτικών καναλιών θριάμβευσαν. Το απόλυτο μαύρο κυριάρχησε. Οι εργαζόμενοι της ΕΡΤ που άντεξαν, υπέστειλαν τη σημαία τους και βγήκαν με αξιοπρέπεια. Τώρα στις ίδιες συχνότητες ραδιοφώνου και τηλεόρασης εκπέμπει το κυβερνητικό «μόρφωμα». Πόσο επίκαιρα ακούγονται τα λόγια του εκφωνητή Κ Σπυρόπουλου στις 27 Απριλίου 1941 από το «ραδιοφωνικό σταθμό Αθηνών»: "προσοχή! Ο ραδιοφωνικός σταθμός Αθηνών σε λίγη ώρα δε θα είναι Ελληνικός! Θα είναι Γερμανικός! Και θα μεταδίδει ψεύδη!"
 Γιώργος Σαββανής (Γιατρός)  (my earlier blog reference - scroll down)

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«Η αλαζονεία, όταν ακμάσει υπερβολικά, δίνει στάχυ γεμάτο καρπό συμφοράς»  Αισχύλος, Πέρσαι  821

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And from our friend Richard Pine…a fascinating archeological dig down eight decades:

12 November 2013
Germany and Greece
I offer this article to members of the Hellas-Greece discussion group in the belief that the intentions of Germany in 1942, as expressed in the following text, find significant echoes in the views of the European core states today, regarding the economic and political future of smaller, peripheral states such as Greece and, indeed the whole of the Balkans, and that this raises issues concerning the status of the smaller states vis-à-vis the dominant powers in Europe today. I would welcome comments either through this channel or to my e-mail <rpinecorfu@yahoo.com>:

I recently read the transcripts of ten lectures delivered in Berlin by senior German officials (bankers, academics, most of them economists), which envisage the transformation of the European economy and, as a result, of its social structures. Strategies include a massive investment in infrastructure, sweeping agricultural reform, industrialisation of south-east Europe, and a rationalisation of fiscal conditions among the member states.
But this wasn’t yesterday. The year? 1942, when Germany was still confidently anticipating victory in the second world war. Not only continental Europe was involved, but also Russia which, at that time, had a massive food surplus which would be used to supply net importers of foodstuffs. German military might would prevail and create the conditions for economic peace and growth.
Britain, of course, would be excoriated and cut adrift, and would have to pursue its fate in the company of the USA, which, it was argued, had brought about the economic malaise of the continent, through 'estrangement from the European continent' in the pursuit of imperial interests.
The giveaway is that the entity to be summoned into existence would be known as the 'European economic community' (EEC) – a body which of course did not actually come into existence until 1957 and is now the EU. The guiding principle would be a 'coalition of the countries of Europe', 'a community sharing one destiny', founded on economic integration, and a 'unity of political order'. To create such a unity would be 'an act of European self-determination immune to Europhobic influences' – by which it meant the British attitude. Germany’s role was 'to recreate a natural situation whereby Europe’s natural focus is the centre of the continent'.
The overall intention was, in the sentimental words of one speaker, to recreate the trading conditions which flourished in Europe from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, in German cities such as Lübeck, Cologne and Hamburg, which developed control first over the Baltic and later established trading posts throughout Europe including London and Paris - known collectively as the Hanseatic League. The League provided the economic hub of European trading, and the 1942 vision of a new Europe under German control envisaged a modern-day linking of the chief producers by the creation of an autobahn system for faster transit of goods and services.
How this unity would also be capable of demonstrating 'respect for the independence of the nations concerned' is difficult to imagine, since those nations would be bound together by irrefragable economic treaties and their independence would be subject to 'the destruction of these monocultures: Europe has to be dragged out of its romanticized backwardness'.

'Europe has to be dragged out of its romanticized backwardness' - cover page of the original collected lectures

The smaller nations, especially those of the east and south, would be satellite clients of this centrist system. They 'must never remain in any doubt that they are dependent on their neighbours...The spirit of the individual economies may not be allowed to go against the spirit of neighbourly co-operation'. In terms of citizenship, we would see 'the subjugation of the individual to the primacy of the economy' which is 'the ultimate goal': 'there will be victims here and there but the end result will benefit all the peoples of Europe'.
Curiously, the one feature of today’s eurozone, which the German economists of 1942 did not consider necessary, was the establishment of a single currency, since the Deutschmark would be the controlling currency to which all other currencies would be subservient.
As an adolescent in 1960s Britain, I vividly recall the cliché “they may have lost the war but they have won the peace”.  As Winston Churchill acknowledged in 1949, at the foundation of the Council of Europe, “a united Europe cannot live without the help and strength of Germany”, since “we are engaged in the process of creating a European unit”. A defeated Germany, divided between east and west, as it was until 1990, could not have exerted the economic or administrative muscle necessary to develop that strength. But over sixty years after Churchill spoke, we now see a form of domination by Germany of the fiscal system which keeps the eurozone afloat. The spirit of these lectures, delivered by top-ranking academic figures, including the president of the Reichsbank and the minister for economic affairs, is widely perceived to be the issue confronting Europe today.
It is not far-fetched to suggest that many persuasive figures in Germany today, including Chancellor Angela Merkel and her finance minister Wolfgang Schaüble, though they have entirely different motivations, have a similar vision of a united Europe, with Germany overseeing and guaranteeing the fate of the euro.
Recently Jean Asselborn, the Luxembourg foreign minister, warned of the dangers of a “German hegemony” – a clear indication that, in some quarters (especially the 'smaller' states), direction by Germany of the economic fate of Europe is seen as a move towards rather more extensive control of the domestic affairs of member states.
But what is remarkable about these lectures, and the economic vision they propose, is not so much that the same blueprint seems to exist today, but that seventy years ago they so accurately predicted key factors in today’s economic and social scenario, such as the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties, the British 'eurosceptics', and the near contempt with which the European centre regards the peripheral newcomers to the EU.
To a hankering after the glories of the Hanseatic League have been added the diminution or eradication of economic and political sovereignty, while all the time the EU’s cohesiveness and solidarity are being threatened by citizens’ apathy, anger and indignation.

Richard Pine lives and works in Greece

Lectures presented in 1942 under the title 'The European Economic Community' by the Society of Berlin Industry and Commerce in conjunction with the Economic Advisor to the Berlin Committee of the NSDAP and The Chamber of Trade and Industry:

Walter Funk, Reichs Economic Minister and President of the Reichsbank: The Economic Face of the New Europe

Dr. Horst Jecht, Professor at The Berlin School of Economics: Developments towards the European Economic Community 

Dr. Emil Woermann, Professor at Halle University: European Agriculture 

Dr. Anton Reithinger, Director of the Economics Department of I.G.
Farbenindustrie A.G., Berlin: The European Industrial Economy 

Dr. Philipp Beisiegel, Ministerial Director of the Reich’s Labour Ministry: The Deployment of Labour in Europe 

Gustav Koenigs, Secretary of State, Berlin: Questions about European Transport

Dr. Bernhard Benning, Director of the Reich’s Credit Company, Berlin: Questions about Europe’s Currency 

Dr. Carl Clodius, Ambassador of the Foreign Office: European Trade and Economic Agreements 

Professor Dr. Heinrich Hunke, Economic Committee Advisor of the NSDAP, President of Germany’s Economic Publicity Agency and the Berlin Society of Industry and Commerce: The Basic Question: Europe - Geographical Concept or Political Fact?

My email to Richard today:

Dear Richard. You're a troublemaker. Thank goodness! I’ve made your words prominent on my blog. As one of many who has maintained high hopes for the 'unification of Europe' as an antidote to the worst of the 20th century, this kind of revelation is an affliction. I doubt it will sink in to most readers, confirming the prejudice of knee-jerk anti-Europeans. And I don't think for one moment that Merkel is a neo-Nazi any more than you do. That's not what this is about. In fact the irony is that Hitler ignored the advice in these lectures - using Nazi occupied Europe as a granary, a reservoir of raw materials and slave labour (see Mark Mazower’s Dark Continent). Had Hitler implemented the toxic vision contained in these seminars, he might have undermined the US-UK alliance that became his nemesis. Stalin made the same mistake with the satellite countries of the so-called Soviet Union. I resent and detest the notion of Greece being 'dragged out of its romanticized backwardness' and I do not look forward to its industrialisation and - so-called - ‘modernisation', for all that  corruption needs to be dealt with so urgently.
I'm so glad you posted this - depressing as it is. Academically these papers are fascinating in their prescience. But I do not believe Merkel is trying to repeat history. I have to believe her agenda is closer to that described by Roger Cohen in the NYT. What do you think?
I’d heard about these lectures from you and others last year but it’s quite something to be reading them 70 years later (1942 being the year I was born)
I guess some editors would be chary of publishing these revelations. Best, Simon

Ευρωπαϊκή Οικονομική Κοινότητα 1980 - Aristedes Metallinos, Ano Korakiana's great sculptor, 
depicts the EEC as a broody chimaera

[Back to the future - from Jim Potts' Corfu Blues a piece about the origins of democracy asking why modern Germany seems to be promoting the same policies in Greece that ended its own democracy in the 1930s;  'Που γεννήθηκε, ή που πέθανε η δημοκρατία;' in Το Βιμα by George P Malouchos Γεώργιος Π Μαλούχος - last para:

...Το ερώτημα λοιπόν είναι το γιατί σε πείσμα κάθε λογικής το Βερολίνο επιμένει με κάθε τρόπο να δημιουργήσει σήμερα στην Ελλάδα εκείνες τις συνθήκες που θυμίζουν το θάνατο της δημοκρατίας στην ίδια τη Γερμανία στο Μεσοπόλεμο, στη Βαιμάρη. Δυστυχώς η απάντηση είναι απλή: γιατί αυτό είναι το τίμημα της νέας ευρωπαϊκής ηγεμονίας της. Και το Βερολίνο αδιαφορεί παντελώς για το ποιος θα το πληρώσει και πόσο ακριβά. 

...So the question is why, despite all logic, Berlin persists in creating in Greece those conditions reminiscent of the death of democracy in Germany itself during the interwar period. Unfortunately, the answer is simple: because it is the price of the new European hegemony. And Berlin is completely indifferent as to who will bear the high cost of these policies - my translation.]

The wind vane on Brin Croft

James, Isobel’s son-in-law, roofer, got astride the ridge of Brin Croft and tugged at the iron wind-vane, already loose in its bracket, until it pulled free. He lowered it to me on a washing line.
“Do you want the bracket as well?”
We’d tried – Colin, with a good socket wrench, and I with a mole grip – to loosen the bolts on the bracket; treated them several times and weeks ago with WD40.
“No, just leave it, James. Those bolts are too well rusted”
“It’d come off with an angle grinder”
“Too many sparks next a wooden house”
I’d thought of a blow lamp. Hot and cold, Hot and cold; brought one up from Birmingham.
“No way!” Lin had said
“So take a photo of the bracket with lens on zoom. I’ll have another made.”
We wondered where to put it; this vane with the sheet metal initials E, W, N, S on the fixed plane and above it, to turn with the wind, a Jack Russell called Sukie and a whippet called Jenny – dogs we had as children when a Newbury smithy made this up for the roof at Bagnor.
“Where shall we put it up again? In Handsworth, in Lydbrook, in Greece?”
“Where?”
“How about a bracketed metal pole that reaches 8 feet above the seaward balcony to mark, where we can see it easily, the changing winds that blow across the village.”
“Can you get a wind vane all that way? How do you pack it?”
Clearing Brin Croft. Lin’s already done a good job, staying up most of Thursday night wrapping and boxing and packing, protecting the sharp edges of the vane with envelopes of cardboard; doing the same with a pair of antlers for removal by Dunne's to Birmingham, but all the way to far Greece and fair Corfu, up the Sidari road turn left to Ano Korakiana a mile beyond Doctor’s Bridge, wind down past the chickens and guinea fowl on the left and the goat-sheep grazings on the right, then up the hill to Democracy Street where other drivers will civilly wait in the narrow space between houses while our van’s unloaded.
“With the chests of drawers too - drawers full of other useful stuff”
This disassembly and dispersion is another part of the ritual of mourning and remembrance. It’s perhaps why after a death, offence can seem so trivially taken among survivors who surprise even themselves, not, as often surmised, through cupidity or covetousness, but through differences over something sacramental, umbrage over observance; matters of faith; worse - theology. Isn’t religious strife the most obdurate cause of war? Mum’s chattels become her diaspora – though some are made anonymous by sale and auction, memorialised in ordinary use by friends and relatives. The market doesn’t figure. It’s their association. Lin has packed a semi-opaque plastic tooth mug that Amy remembered “when I was brushing my teeth at Mains”.
Other things formally priced for probate have gone to auction at Dingwall – two full vanloads - and Roger from Auldearn Antiques packed his blue transit with things he values more than any of us.

One aside in chat with Roger...he'd advertised some prints on ebay, and been refused permission to show Da Vinci's Virgin and Child because of concerns not to depict infants unclothed. Hm? Context?

Lin with Roger Milton

Two most pleasant blokes – one of them older than me, drove up from Scarborough in a yellow transit – and filled it with mum’s disability gear...

Dave and Colin 

...paying just over a thousand pounds for things that cost mum new nearer ten thousand. It had taken Lin weeks on Gumtree to find anyone prepared to pay anything for these – a mobility scooter, mechanical bed, mechanical riser and recliner with remote control, a lightweight folding wheel chair, all terrain walker, ordinary walkers, a commode, a bath lift, a Pilates leg exerciser, numerous gadgets for twisting and lifting. Isobel at Inverarnie Stores has pointed customers up to the house, one to buy a freezer – the driver of the Strathnairn bus for the elderly who had a ready lift to keep the machine upright.

Oliver, Amy, John and Guy loading mum's freezer on the Strathnairn Community bus

Others have come and bought from the inventory. No large objects remain. Lin and I eat on a couple of old garden chairs and an ugly little MDF table rejected at auction. We sleep comfortably on a remaining mattress.

Two friends - nurses - one with a talent for cartoons and caricatures, stayed at the cottage attached to Mains of Failie in the late 1970s, when the wind vane I've removed from Brin Croft, stood on the roof of mum and Angus' shippen, a victim of mischievous spaniels.

Grazings behind Brin Croft

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Richard Pine sent out a link to his latest Letter from Greece - from Corfu - published in The Irish Times, Monday 15 July

Antonis Samaras

In a recent opinion column (‘Greece in crisis needs a public broadcaster’) I made the mistake of saying that ERT, the Greek public service broadcaster equivalent to RTÉ, which had been shut down by the government, was back on the air. I wrote this in good faith. Faith that the Greek supreme court, which had ordered the reinstatement of ERT, would be obeyed by the prime minister, Antonis Samaras. However, I had not allowed for the fact that Samaras had engineered the closure of ERT for many reasons, one of which was to test the water of what he could or could not do in respect of closing or radically changing a number of public bodies, for which ERT has provided the test case. Ordered by the supreme court to reopen the broadcaster, pending a review of its activities and a likely reduction in both its staff numbers and its budget, Samaras has chosen to behave as if there had been no such order, just as he has proceeded with the suspension of ERT as if he had a single-party government, rather than a fragile coalition. Not only this, which has dismayed the Greeks, who are hard to impress these days with arrogance of this magnitude, but Samaras has also defied international opinion.....(continued)

From the Ano Korakiana website:

Για την ΕΡT26.07.13 Θέλω μόνο να υπενθυμίσω ότι η ΕΡΤ είναι ακόμα εκεί και λειτουργεί.Εκπέμπει 24ωρο τηλεοπτικό πρόγραμμα, μέρος του οποίου ζωντανά, μέσω του European Broadcasting Union.Επίσης εκπέμπει 24ωρο ραδιοφωνικό πρόγραμμα που στην Αθήνα λαμβάνει κανείς στα μεσαία κύματα (ΑΜ), στα 729 μέτρα. Με δελτία ειδήσεων ανά ώρα και το αγαπημένο ιστορικό σήμα της Ελληνικής ραδιοφωνίας (τσοπανάκος)!Θα πρέπει λογικά να ακούγεται από αναμεταδότες και στην υπόλοιπη Ελλάδα. Ακόμη όλα αυτά μεταδίδονται και από το Internet.Οι εργαζόμενοι της ΕΡΤ είναι πραγματικά αξιοθαύμαστοι που σχεδόν 2 μήνες μετά το "μαύρο" και παρά τα προβλήματα επιβίωσης που αντιμετωπίζουν πολλοί από αυτούς, καταφέρνουν να διατηρούν ένα υψηλού επιπέδου ραδιοτηλεοπτικό πρόγραμμα. Το μόνο που χρειάζονται είναι μία συμπαράσταση. Στον κήπο του ραδιομεγάρου στην Αγία Παρασκευή (από όπου και η φωτογραφία) συμβαίνουν καθημερινά πολύ ενδιαφέροντα πράγματα, όπως καλλιτεχνικές εκδηλώσεις και συζητήσεις. Πολλά από αυτά μεταδίδονται ζωντανά. Κάνοντας κανείς μία βόλτα και περνώντας ευχάριστα λίγη ώρα εκεί, εκδηλώνει ταυτόχρονα και έμπρακτα την τόσο πολύτιμη συμπαράσταση. Για να μη σιγήσει για πάντα η φωνή της Ελλάδας. Για να μην χαθεί για πάντα από τον αέρα το σήμα που όλοι έχουμε στ' αυτιά μας από τότε που γεννηθήκαμε. Για να σωθεί η μοναδική νησίδα πολιτισμού και ιστορίας στα ερτζιανά. Για να μην γίνουν τα σκύβαλα των ιδιωτικών καναλιών ο απόλυτος κυρίαρχος του ραδιοτηλεοπτικού τοπίου. Γιώργος Σαββανής

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From Jan D: 

...Something to ponder. You know I have been 'predicting' that LAs are heading for insolvency. £14.4 billion in the red. Add to that anything between £30-50 billion shortfall in NHS by 2021. I think it is time to take stock. Today Detroit City in USA have filed for bankruptcy. This was the centre of the American Motor industry in the richest country on earth. If it can happen there it can happen anywhere. Time for LAs to wake up and smell the coffee. Sadly they are far from doing this. This was a comment made by observers of the recent LGA conference re local councils: 'The magnitude of the cuts themselves provoked very little reaction and local government was very much business as usual – which is sadly why it will always be burden with such a large share of the responsibility to reduce public spending' - LGC 11 July. Hoisted by their own competence and compliance on the flagpole of political naivety and ostrich attitudes. This was after being harangued by Pickles to the effect that there was not a hope in hell’s chance that the recommendations in in the LGA Rewiring Public Services report would be accepted. He called LAs 'Luddites' creating 'Groundhog Days'. I need a holiday! Enjoy the summer. See you in the autumn.

Tidying and clearing the house in the Highlands

Tidying Brin Croft

I would, while she was alive, think of how it would be, sleeping and eating in her empty home, going through her things, sorting, allocating, disposing. I knew the day would one day come when she would be gone, Indeed it was an ever present understanding, once I was a grown-up, that intensified the joy of all the days we were together. Lin and I have spent nine days in Brin Croft, sprucing up the house, inside and out, deciding a ranking of the many things that must go - some, depending on what they offer, to antique dealers, some to auction, some to be sold on ebay or Gumtree, some to the family, some to charities, some, that can't be sold or donated, to house clearance. I've had a word with Sandy, the regular postie, who'll halt the flow of catalogues mum used for her bedside shopping. I've taken sacks of junk mail to be recycled in the bins by Inverarnie Stores. As I heaved handfuls of unread glossy catalogues into the recycling bin by the shop, I spied a slip of paper with typical scribbles in mum's hand...

'On the divan are piled (at night her bed) stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays…'

I didn't throw it out thinking of the only context I've come across the word 'carbuncular', known those resonant lines since I was taught about them at school. I recognise Watson and the Gaelic place names reference, but what's that 'Sister Theresa' and 'Hullo Hullo Hullo'? How mum shrank from 'apathy'. The Wiesel quote in Against Silence 'The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference...' She and Jack, between them, taught me, entirely indirectly and by example, that being 'bored' is nearly a crime, something to be scorned.
The house will be cleared, but for a few things left on the estate agent's advice - "so the house is not entirely empty" - in mid-July. All valuable items removed, we've reduced the contents insurance; given the place a short back and sides - washing, scrubbing, vacuuming, dusting, weeding, pruning; taken photos for the agent's website, lined up auctioneers, dealers and other potential buyers; made dates for van hire and moving; kept detailed lists of everything...demonstrated some of mum's disability gear...

Apart from those the family wanted, we've sold or given away what remains of mum's books - a good number bought by Leakey's in Inverness and Logie Steading Bookshop in Forres - both places where mum was a customer. Roger from Auldearn Antiques, often visited by mum...

...came to Brin Croft and made offers for us to review and compare with other valuations.

The house goes on sale in mid-July

I've got to find someone who'll climb the roof to recover the wind vane I've known for sixty years. It's followed mum around since it was first designed by my stepfather, put together by our blacksmith, showing a lurcher, whose name I've forgotten, and a Jack Russell called Sukie.

I've had times to go walking with Oscar, following familiar paths through the woods that march along the edge of Strathnairn along the Farnack...

Brin Rock

Brin Croft from the south

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For two days of our time at Brin Croft the once winding narrow road with passing places - the B851 that runs two and a half miles to a T-junction with the busy A9 to Inverness, was closed for the completion of 'improvement' works - in this case at the bridge over the river Nairn near Mid-Lairgs. To transport the big turbines for Dunmaglass Windfarm, just beyond Croachy, to be sited four miles down the strath from Inverarnie, the only route there has to be widened.

1. Littlemill Bridge
RES aims to commence construction work for the new bridge at Littlemill in early 2013 to replace the existing double arched stone bridge with a new, wider clear-span bridge. This bridge will require minor re-routing of the B851 to link in with the new bridge and provide approaching traffic with a clear view.
The new bridge works will take approximately six months to complete. No road closures are anticipated. However, temporary traffic lights and speed restrictions will be used for a limited time when the bridge is connected to the existing road network. There will be a brief interruption to broadband and phone services over one night. Residents likely to be affected will be given advance notice.
2. Inverarnie Bends
RES will be widening a 400 metre stretch of single track road near Tombreck to create a twin track carriageway. The works will include replacement of an existing culvert and diversion of existing BT cables, which will cause minor disruption to broadband and phone services over one day. Residents likely to be affected will be given advance notice. The road widening scheme requires the section of road to be closed to traffic. Diversions will be put in place for general road users but local properties will continue to have access. The works are likely to take two months to complete. Temporary traffic lights and speed restrictions will be used for the duration of the road improvement programme to minimise the road closure period and to protect the workforce and the public.
3& 4 Croachy North and Croachy South
Works at Croachy North will extend the twin track carriageway from its current extent near Brinmore School Bridge for more than one kilometre to the entrance to Croachy village. At Croachy South an upgrade of the B851 from single track to twin track will be undertaken on a short stretch of road between Blarachar Bridge and the existing twin track carriageway near the Aberarder Estate.
The improvements will include diverting existing BT cables and water mains to allow construction to begin, extending the road and embankment and creating new drainage. Residents will be given advance notice of minor disruption to water, broadband and phone services. Interruption to each utility should last no longer than one day. RES will work with The Highland Council to maintain access to fields and properties for adjacent landowners affected by these road improvements....

I approve renewable energy but this scheme deprives the route down the strath of a marker, the old humped bridge with traffic lights that pinched the road to Tombreck; always noted near the end of a long journey. It's gone; sidelined to a farm road and footpath beside a steel fendered clearway for the necessary trucks, incentive for speeding motorists. The building of a new parapet of 'old' stone where the river runs under the flattened crossing is an unconsoling excuse. Seeing the wide straight tarmac that's replaced the familiar delay I felt almost relieved to be ending my connections here.  I remembered something my stepfather had written a year before his death...lines from an ode to a book he never wrote...

...I said I must write a warning. But I was angry and - as the
Japanese say - to be angry is only to make yourself ridiculous.
So we will live out our days in the cracks between the
concrete. And then they will pour cement on top of us.

Road 'improvement' at Littlemill in Strathnairn

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Jan comments on our letter to Highland Council:

Subject: Some thoughts
Date: 18 June 2013

Simon. I have read with a mixture of bemusement and despair your experience with the Highland Council. It is beyond me how councils get themselves into this mind set but I suspect it is an accumulation  of trying to cover every eventuality and solve ‘problems’ by drawing up more and more elaborate rules and regulations and double/triple checks on everything, combined with a dilution in decision making and a defensive mind-set. Instead a system of delegated decision-making based on some simple but effective principles and procedures would improve the situation. We had a similar experience when we cleared out my mother-law’s council flat in Middlesbrough. The person on the phone informed us they could only deal with the tenant. As she was dead this was rather difficult and we had a bizarre ‘Pythonesque’ dialogue for over 20 mins, reminding me of the dead parrot joke, before it was resolved by us informing them that we were just leaving the keys in the door and driving away. This, not surprisingly, jolted them into action. There are times when it is difficult to defend councils.
On a more positive note it is pleasing to see that some councils are now trying to co-ordinate their actions in respect of all the welfare changes. Manchester City Council is taking a lead on this. I think developments in and around the Greater Manchester area are worth a bit of study. They offer some models of ‘recalibration’ with government, albeit on the latter’s terms, but it think they have been rather astute at exploiting what is on offer whilst also being robust in defence of their own communities.
Did you see the letter in the Observer from a large number of Council Leaders across the country pleading with the government not to be too harsh in the next spending review. I think this will fall on deaf ears and is a lost cause but it was interesting to read that they all now claim to be in or close to ‘insolvency’ in terms of not being able to fund their core statutory responsibilities. I believe most councils are beyond that ‘tipping’ point already. I think district councils in particular are very vulnerable to becoming ‘redundant.’ What was depressing was the tone and focus of the letter. It read like a drowning person without a lifejacket  crying for help and rescue to an imaginary rescuer on the beach (The Child believes the Parent will come to its rescue but the Parent believes the Child has to either sink or swim and this will make it stronger). 

It is frustrating that there is a lack of real meaningful strategy and narrative being developed by councils themselves other than the now rather old ‘innovation and transformation’ mantra, or a straight forward ‘help us’ message to government. As I have said before I think councils are hoist by their own success. They are by far the most competent and best performing sector across the whole public sector and this combination of Competence and Compliance is being ruthlessly exploited by Government and we’ll see this even more clearly in the next spending review. The most acute part of this is Adult Social Care, where numerous hospital, care homes, domiciliary reports, not to say scandals, point to a collapsing service for a very large proportion of elderly people. We are talking about basics such as not feeding and watering people, leaving people unattended and worst of all treating vulnerable people with contempt. Yes I know that there are examples of good service and committed people but when according to published figures between a quarter and a third of older people receive sub-standard services, then we have a national scandal which nobody is getting a real grip on other than by voicing rhetoric and platitudes; very depressing. Sadly, it can only get worse, especially for the most vulnerable. If you are old, ill and poor, then your end of life is likely to be a very distressing experience indeed.
There are no quick fixes but anybody who says “throwing money at the problem is not the solution” is either a fool or incompetent (or worse, driven by politically motivated ideologies). The key to it is to throw the money at the right things at the right time, but I can think of numerous examples where this approach has worked very well and often paradoxically (but not surprisingly) been more cost effective in the long run. 

It is disappointing that the various organisations representing LAs and its various professions have not developed more robust strategies and alternative narratives around such an approach although in fairness I see the occasional ‘green shoot’. The dialogue is dominated by Government around ‘cutting bureaucracy’, ‘efficiency’, ‘being creative’ etc.; in themselves OK, but in an ideological context, merely a smoke screen and hardly a substitute for proper strategies and investments. It is strange (or perhaps not) that concepts the government is keen to apply elsewhere (as long it’s not public investments) hardly feature in this debate, where it is absolutely vital. 

We can see the way the Welfare State is being phased out. The first stage is being completed; the removal of all universal benefits and services. This is being replaced by discretionary services across the board. The big prize here is the State Pension. We are being ‘softened up’ for its replacement by a means-tested state pension after the next election. The final stage is the emergence of a new form of ‘poor law’ heavily dependent on ‘voluntary’ contributions. Just look at Food Banks and Wonga Loans to see a glimpse of the future. Zero hours employment contracts are also a pointer to the future allowing government to claim employment is rising; but income is actually falling (15% since 2008) and growth stagnant. There is psychology at play here. Actively manage people’s expectations downwards. The new feudal elite (neo-feudalism) will use certain localities, mainly the financial centres of the world, as their docking stations; their connection to any locality merely guided by investment potential eagerly sought by Local Enterprise Boards, probably adopting a race to the bottom approach (e.g. as in Ireland). I am trying to put this and much of our previous correspondence into the context of Localism and the managerial-political arena, but I can’t get it to gel yet. Best, Jan. 

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Until just after Easter - the Orthodox that, this year, wasn't until the start of May - a collection of potholes on the country road between Ipsos, Ag.Markos and Ano Korakiana, endangered cyclists and people on motorbikes, and did little for any vehicle's suspension. Linda, adept at driving around them even at night, took pictures and showed them to a friend at Sally's Bar, her son Rob Groove. He's half in love with inventing impossible images.
"Rob! Can you make it look as if I'm stuck in one of those big pot holes?"
"No problem. Take a pictures for me of you looking as if you're holding on to the edge of one"
The Demos had sent a crew round and filled all the holes by the second week of May but Rob has just sent me a clever image.

Στο δρόμο προς την Αγίου Μάρκου - eίναι το ποδήλατο μου, ανησυχώ για!

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And in The Irish Times, Richard Pine writes from Corfu on the closure and reopening of Greece's public TV and radio:

Dispute over Greek broadcaster illustrates how essential public broadcasting is

Protesters demonstrate outside Greek state television ERT headquarters in Athens last week. Prime minister Antonis Samaras was forced to climb down over his decision to close the state broadcaster. Photograph: Reuters 

Imagine waking one morning to find that RTÉ radio and television services had been taken off the air by an overnight government decree. Many, it is true, might say “good riddance”, while others would scarcely notice. But the social and political repercussions of such a decree would be far-reaching. That is precisely what happened in Greece last week when ERT (the Greek equivalent of RTÉ) was suspended by a ministerial ruling of New Democracy prime ministerAntonis Samaras without reference to his junior coalition partners Pasok and Democratic Left. Samaras claimed that ERT was responsible for “incredible waste” and suffered from a “unique lack of transparency”. 

In the face of huge international criticism and opposition from his partners in government which might have broken the coalition and provoked a general election, the prime minister was forced into a climbdown, while Greece’s supreme court declared his actions beyond his power. ERT is now back on the air.
The episode is crucial to Greek society because it calls into question whether the country actually wants public service broadcasting.
Even more importantly, perhaps, it highlights the government’s announcement that ERT would be replaced within three months by a new organisation, “a state company owned by the public sector and regulated by the state”
“Regulated by the state” should alert all proponents of public service broadcasting to the dangers of too close an association between a public broadcaster and a government. It was Seán Lemass, as taoiseach, presiding over the formation of RTÉ in the 1960s, who saw the station as merely “an arm of government”.
Conversely, the European Commission, which denied it had any part in the Greek decision, has supported the role of public service broadcasting as “an integral part of European democracy”. 

National airlines in recent decades have largely succumbed to market forces, but public service broadcasting is a different kind of entity: the need for public channels which are not profit-motivated, which are supported by the state but not subject to government interference, is generally accepted as a necessary means of ensuring that information, as well as entertainment, is available free of market forces.
It also provides a common reference point in this case not only for Greek residents but also (as for Irish people via the RTÉ Player channel) for an enormous diaspora.
To give Greeks a sense of Greekness at such a crucial time for the country could be seen as one of the principal justifications for public service broadcasting. Given my background as a former RTÉ employee I might be expected to have an affiliation to the concept of public service broadcasting. But there is no room for either sentimentality or complacency. In the 1980s I wrote RTÉ’s mission statement “to commission, produce and transmit cost-effective programmes of excellence”. When the public broadcaster falls short of those standards it deserves a reprimand. In Ireland we have seen RTÉ putting its house in order by internal revisions in budget, structures and staffing, not least in the light of the Prime Time Investigates debacle in regard to Fr Kevin Reynolds. Yet it can also provide programmes, such as the recent Breach of Trust expose of Irish creches, which are of national importance and 100 per cent in the public interest.

In Greece a review of ERT’s performance and market share, on an already reduced budget, had been signalled for some time.
This is amid general agreement that the organisation was overfunded and overstaffed, and that its current affairs programming sometimes tended to follow the government line rather than conducting its own investigations.
However, on the basis of my knowledge of RTÉ’s budgets and staffing levels, it seems clear to me that in the case of ERT the proposed reduction of the workforce from 2,650 to a third of that, and a comparable budget reduction, is untenable if responsible quality programming is to be maintained on three TV channels and a nationwide network of local radio when Greece also has seven nationwide private TV channels and literally dozens of regional ones.
ERT channels may not necessarily be the viewing and listening options of first choice – they have only a 15 per cent audience share while private channels are thriving due to the popularity of their mindless diet of foreign soaps and “spin-the-wheel” programmes.
But that is not the point. At a crucial period for Greek society, with issues of identity and national self-confidence at the centre of public debate, the existence of a public broadcaster, even a faulty one, is of paramount importance.

Richard Pine is a former public affairs editor at RTÉ. He now lives and works in Greece

Barbara Burnett Stuart 1917-2012: 'a life of favourite days'