Monthly Archives: February 2009

Three rescued from capsized fishing boat near Dunoon

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Earlier this afternoon (11th February) at around 2.00pm, a fishing boat capsized near Dunoon. Clyde Coastguard have confirmed this, saying that the cause of the capsize is not yet known.

A lifeboat, a police helicopter and a Royal Navy helicopter were scrambled to help the sailors but they were picked up by another fishing boat.

The three men were then taken by helicopter to Dunoon General Hospital but were not thought to be seriously injured. A Strathclyde Police spokeswoman said: ‘They all appear to be fine, just a bit cold’.

UPDATE 12th February : The fishing boat involved was the 40ft Belfast-registered Jubilee Star which works out of Troon with a Scottish crew. She was prawn fishing in deep water south of the Gantocks rocks off Dunoon.

The capsize seemes to have been caused by the boat’s nets snagging. She sank in minutes and her three-man crew had to jump into the water to escape. An RN Search and Recue helicopter (SAR) from HMS Gannet, Helensburgh’s inshore RIB lifeboat, and Dunoon Coastguard team joined other ships and rescue services at the scene.

The nearest boat to the Jubilee Star when it capsized was the Guide Me, registered in Kirkcaldy in Fife and skippered by Matthew Currie from Tighnabruaich in Argyll. The Guifde Me was also prawn fishing in the waters around the Gantocks. The Guide Me picked up the three men, one who had got on to the Jubilee Star’s life raft which had inflated normally, the other hanging on to the side of it and the third further away in the water.

The three men were taken to Dunoon & District General Hospital suffering from mild hypothermia. All were released last night. Mathhew Currie from Guide Me knew the skipper of the Jubilee Star as Gary McKinnon and Robert Jack as one of two crewmen.

The Marine Accident Investigation Branch is likely to investigate the incident.

Scottish Water hits two birds with one… well, lump of fat

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woodpeckerScottish Water has recently emerged from convincing the Chair of Inveraray Community Council that the seasonal problems with the towns waste water system were self-inflicted. As For Argyll reported, Garret Corner, having seen the evidence, now accepts that the problem was down to the persistent habit of hoteliers and householders of pouring waste oils and fats from cooking down the sink.

Of course this causes particularly large conglomerations of congealed fats in the system at the major communal holidays like Christmas and Hogmanay – and it did.

Anyway, on the back of the Valentine’s Day that is almost upon us, Scottish Water – lumping all birds into the handy category of ‘lovebirds’ – has come up with a very neat idea to persuade people to change the habit of washing it all down the sink. It’s asking us to think of how much we could benefit birds feeling the pinch of short rations in these cold, hard days.

In the company’s own words: ‘Use the fats and grease from those romantic Valentine’s Day meals to feed the local birds. Use either a fat trap, which is a special plastic pot with a screw top lid or alternatively use a yoghurt pot or similar plastic container to put the fat in.

‘Let garden birds know you’re thinking of them by mixing ingredients such as nuts, seeds and dried fruit into the fat to provide a tasty and nutritious treat. This will not only benefit our feathered friends but it can also help to protect the environment in the process’.

James Reynolds from RSPB agrees. He too is encouraging Scottish Water’s customers to love their feathered friends at this time of year. ‘Feeding birds in the garden is a popular activity – over half of adults in the UK feed birds in their garden. Providing birds with supplementary food brings them closer for us to marvel at their exciting behaviour and wonderful colours. Feeding birds is also an easy way to start teaching children about wildlife.

‘It’s best to give birds highly nutritious and calorific food during this cold period, so making fat traps with surplus fat that solidifies is an ideal way to dispose of kitchen waste that would otherwise cause a big nuisance. This can be added to a mixture of ingredients such as seeds, nuts, dried fruit, oatmeal, cheese and cake and is sure to attract a range of birds to gardens.

‘When done responsibly and hygienically, feeding garden birds, especially in the winter time when food availability is reduced, is really important to see our feathered friends through the lean times’.

It’s a triple whammy, really:

  • feed birds who badly need the nutrition
  • divert the oils and fats that clog the drains and pumps into doing good to Argyll’s fantastic wildlife
  • save Scottish Water’s resources to develop Argyll’s waste water infrastructure rather than constantly engage in avoidable recovery operations.

Look at the happy, greasy-chopped Greater Spotted Woodspecker above – which Scotland is fortunate enough to have around. It’s a no brainer.

The photograph of the Greater Spotted (male) Woodpecker enjoying his fatty birdcake has been provided  by Scottish Water with permission to reproduce it here.

Camanachd Association Director resigns, citing collapse of ‘sound governance structure’

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Trouble has boiled over in the cauldron of the national game as Donnie MacKenzie resigned as Director of shinty’s governing body, the Camanachd Association.

The resignation has focused the spotlight on the organisation, with at least three other Directors said to be unhappy.

MacKenzie’s view is that the current problems began with last year’s election of Duncan Cameron as President and Donald Stewart as Communications Director. In his letter to the Association’s CEO, Gill MacDonald he describes the pair as undermining others, including MacDonald.

He claims that respect in the Boardroom is no more and that ‘the speed at which a sound governance structure is collapsing is meteoric’.

Duncan Cameron has set MacKenzie’s claims aside and is quoted as putting them down to ‘disagreements arising from differences of opinion’.

Missives ready to sign for £80million Fort William waterfront development

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Developer, Fort William Waterfront, is about to see the signing of missives by Highland Council to enable work to start on a proposed £80million waterfront in the town on its frontage to Loch Linnhe. Work will include the developer rerouting part of the A82.

The 7 hectare site will include a supermarket and a library. No prizes in this for innovative – or even contemporary – thinking, of which there is admittedly  not much around. However Fort William badly needs some structural revision with the town long looking back-to-front after the A82′s lochside bypass of its narrow winding streets.

Those living in North Argyll will welcome both more choice and new experiences not far from home.

Rare 13th century face-mask jug found in dig at former Council Chambers in Rothesay

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Rathmell Archaeology Ltd was commissioned to undertake a programme of archaeological works before building work began on the site of the former Council Chambers and Sheriff Court at Rothesay on Argyll’s Isle of Bute. This was a condition of the planning consent given to Fyne Homes who are to develop 25 new homes on the site.

The buildings and their location beside Rothesay Castle added up to a significance recognised in the comprehensive archaeological dig that took place behind the site’s High Street facade in October 2008.

A previous dig at the site – in 2006 – unearthed two small sandstone walls and a hard-packed layer of mortar indicating a possible floor. This contained fragments of medieval green glaze potter and the sereis of finds prompted the latest dig.

Now – among a range of smaller finds of ceramic and metalwork – the archaeologists have found a rare 13th century ceramic face-mask jug. This will be handed over to the Crown who will decide where it will be housed. Somewhere near the Lewis Chessmen, perhaps, some way from home?

Alan McDougall, Director of Fyne Homes says: ‘We are all excited about the findings which have been uncovered on the site. Rothesay is an ancient Royal Burgh with a rich and dynamic historical past. This excavation has given us the chance to help further our understanding of how Rothesay grew and developed’.

Jamie McGrigor attracts cross-party support for the case of Songbird Survival

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Highlands and Islands MSP Jamie McGrigor has lodged a parliamentary motion to highlight the decline of the songbird population in Scotland, an issue brought to his attention by many of his constituents.  Encouragingly, his  motion has attracted cross-party support  and the MSP hopes to have the subject debated later this year. 

Research has shown that in the last 40 years there has been a sharp decline in songbird numbers with some species decreasing as much as 90%.  Jamie McGrigor quotes the House Sparrow population as down by 69% and the Skylark down by 75%.

Jamie McGrigor says: ‘I recognise that a number of factors have led to these declines, and these factors should certainly be considered by policymakers in the future.

‘I commend individual birdwatchers and bird groups in the Highlands and Islands and elsewhere in Scotland for their role in recording species numbers, and the work of organisations such as Songbird Survival that campaign to raise awareness of the threat to our songbird species and ensure the creation of a balanced biodiversity’.

Songbird Survival is a nationwide charity made up members who are lovers of the countryside, gardeners and farmers, ornithologists, conservationists, and people who are generally concerned about the decline of songbird populations.

Dalmally home to charity feeding 350,000 a day in the third world

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Mary’s Meals is a charity based in Dalmally in northern Argyll. Working from unprepossessing and super-efficient premises, its turnover, after six years operation, is now £5million per annum. Mary’s Meals is now providing 350,000 meals a day to children in, for example, countries in South America, Asia and Africa. Malawi – a particular target championed by former First Minister Jack McConnell.

The charity’s strategy is to support the potentially life changing initiatives around education by providing meals through schools. Parents make sure their children go to school to get the meals and when they’re at school they get education as well. The food keeps them alive while the education gives them skills and hope for the future. This sounds like a very successful squaring of a circle of deprivation.

It takes only £6 a year – yes, a year – to feed a child in Africa. This demonstrates the reach of the annual turnover of Mary’s Meals. It is now expanding its fundraising in to North America and with its proven careful budgeting is set to bring more children out of deprivation and into a healthy and educated life.

Tilting at windmills

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wind turbWhichever side you’re on in the changes brought about by the crucial renewable energy developments, wind turbines seem to focus the most vigorous and often blinkered debate.

People who hate them for what they see as their aesthetic interruption of Scotland’s magnificent landscapes are not wrong – but they are doubly blind.

  • They somehow don’t see any more the huge and aggressive-looking electricity Daleks marching endlessly across some of most beautiful hills, glens and skylines we have. Walkers pass by these with the same unthinking acceptance that Historic Scotland is sometimes guilty of applying to the preservation of the pointless. They exist therefore they’re good.  
  • And they fail to let their eyes fall upon wind turbines objectively. Yes, there are times when these objects are intrusive but there are as many times when they are oddly fitting. There is a curiously easy relationship between the primitive and the futuristic, perhaps because both are almost equally removed from us in time.

Driving the A9 north from Inverness and turning left at Latheron to cross the edge of the Flow Country to Thurso, you come to the Causeymire Windfarm, right at the side of the road, stretching back on to the moor. The slender structures rear up delicately from the mysterious and almost infinite moor and their wings revolve in and out of synch with each other. They are the aliens who’ve just landed They are mesmeric.Their strangeness marries with the strangeness of the place itself.

It’s important to maintain the power of discrimination – to see where wind turbine intrude and to see where they are of genuine visual interest – as Enterprise and Energy Minister Jim Mather has – controversially, just said. In the ire this has brought upon him, people seem to have forgotten that this is the Minister who – equally controversially in our view – rejected the application to build a very extensive windfarm in the north of the Isle of Lewis in the Western Isles. Whether or not you agree with his decision or his remarks, it has to be conceded that his position is a discriminating one.

For Argyll is unequivocally committed to the value of renewable energy development and energised by Scotland’s energetic engagement withits potential. We will have nothing else one day not too far away, so the sooner we develop and use such energy sources the stronger our position. And the sooner we develop the scientific, engineering and management skills and the technical infrastructure to deliver it, the sooner Scotland can reap some of the real economic benefit from leading the field.

We have in previous reports, noted that in the Netherlands wind turbines are sited alongside motorways. We have suggested that there is a value in looking at the siting of windfarms alongside existing built environments, like towns and viillages, to take as many as possible away from the peaceful hills and glens that understandably arouse such passion.

In the end, the key argument is the cliche about there being no such thing as a free lunch. We have no choice but to develop alternative and renewable sources of energy and to do so as fast as we can. The real advantage of wind turbines is that they are clean.

When technology eventually comes up with something better, wind turbines can be removed without leaving a negative environmental impact. How long will it be before, say, Doonreay, is even decommissioned? And the best research has not yet discovered a way to neutralise nuclear waste beyond sealing and burying for potential later  contamination – hoping that this will not be in our time.

The image of wind turbines above is reproduced here under the Creative Commons licence.

Has the Campbells’ role in the Glencoe massacre been painted blacker than it was?

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Glencoe paintingFor almost 317 years the entire Clan Campbell has borne the stigma not only of massacre but of the worst possible breach of the Highland code of hospitality. Early in the morning of 13th February in 1692, thirty eight members of the MacDonad clan were murdered without warning, as they slept, by Campbells lodging in their homes in the Glen; and forty more perished in blizzard conditions when they fled for their lives.

The signal for their murder was triggered by their Chief’s tardiness in taking the oath of allegiance to the then English King, William of Orange.

The revulsion of other Highlanders – and of history – for this action leaves the name Campbell, even today, often accompanied by an inward shudder in the uttering.

But a research publication, Glencoe: The Infamous Massacre 1692, written by John Sadler, a historian from Newcastle University, claims to present a different version of these events – and one relieving the pressure of this dark legacy on the Campbell name.

Where history has held that the massacre was the result of a scheme concocted between the King and the Campbell Clan, Sadler presents the Campbells as little more than a pawn in the game of the British Crown. His argument is that the Campbells lodging with the MacDonalds in Glencoe on the pretext of seeking shelter were not sent their as Campbells by their Chief but by the English as soldiers of the Crown.

Sadler also repeats what is now well known and accepted – that many of the Campbells involved were unable to carry out their instructions because of the strength of the code of hospitality and warned their hosts in time for them to make an escape – although the blizzard may itself have done some of the King’s work for him.

In an pretty wholesale attempt to recast the event, Sadler also makes shift to absolve the King to some degree, suggesting that the massacre was the result of Machiavellian interventions by court and military schemers with their own agendas, who deliberately misinterpreted what Sadler sees as King William’s ambiguous instructions.

The most persuasive element of the continuing attempts by historians to present a more textured perspective on the behaviours of the Campbells on the day is the force of the code of hospitality. This is not just a Scottish code. It is a classical and primitive one which was part of an early set of laws designed to offer as many people as possible as much protection as possible from each othe’s predatory intentions.

The code of hospitality and its origins

The Greek notion of hubris was such a law and is a direct forebear of the Scots code. There the law of hospitality too was central.

  • No one could commit a crime against kindred blood
  • No one, either as host or guest, could take any action causing harm to the other
  • No mortal could take credit to themselves for events whose attribution was due to the Gods

When you look at this ‘law’, it is basic but it does, in the sort of society it was designed to enable, offer widespread protection. The ties of blood locally would have been complex and wide-ranging. Away from home, most people would have been under someone else’s roof. And the final proscription kept people in their place.

What really did keep them in some sort of voluntary control was the penalty paid for infringement. No one could breach any of these conditions without bringing upon their heads the infinite curse of the Gods, enacted by the legendary Furies.

Greek society’s later examination of the ability of this early law to meet the needs of a more developed society is reflected in Aeschylus’s series of three plays on Orestes.

A part of the law forbidding crimes against kindred blood required a form of vendetta. Blood relatives of the dead were themselves required to pursue such crimes to the death of the perpetrator, whatever else the Furies inflicted.

As a son, Orestes, whose Mother Clytemnestra killed his Father Agamemnon on his victorious return from Troy, was required by this primitive law to exact vengeance upon his Father’s killer. But, since the felon was his Mother, if he fulfilled the edict and killed her he would himself fall foul of the law forbidding crimes against kindred blood, bringing the Furies in eternal pursuit. They, of course, had no interest in Clytemnestra’s murder of her husband since she was not his blood relative.

In the plays this complicated narrative weaves its way to a conclusion which sees Orestes pardoned for the murder of his Mother – yes, he did – and the Furies brought within the framework of a modernised law, playing a supervisory role and rebranded as ‘The Kindly Ones’.

So, with the historical embedding of the law of hospitality, it has always been persuasive that many individual Campbell’s would not have played a part in the massacre. Others, of course, did.

An interesting footnote to the news of Sadler’s book is that the management at the Clachaig Inn in Glencoe, famous for displaying to this day a sign saying: ‘No hawkers or Campbells’ is quoted as indicating that, if the history of the massacre is convincingly rewritten, they will consider removing the sign.

The image above is of an Edwardian painting of the site of the infamous 1692 massacre of the MacDonald clan in Glen Coe, Argyll. This picture is the copyright of the Lordprice Collection and is reproduced under the Creative Commons licence.

HMS Argyll with SNMG2 in the Mediterranean

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According to a report on Twitter, HMS Argyll (F231) and USS Laboon (DDG58) have joined the Standing Nato Maritime Group 2 (SNMG2.

SNMG2 is described as a multinational, integrated maritime force. It is composed of ships from several allied nations which train and operate together as
a single force. It is permanently available to NATO to perform a wide
range of tasks from participating in exercises to crisis response and
real world operational missions. It is normally employed in the
Mediterranean area but, as required, will be available anywhere NATO
requires it to deploy.

SNMG2 was in the Gulf at the end of 2008 but HMS Argyll joins it in the Med for operation Taurus, for which it spent a busy time in January preparing and working up.

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