28.5.2011 - Rubbish and politics (Millport, Isle of Cumbrae, Scotland)
We had an election in Scotland while we were in India. We knew it was happening, and scuttled down to the tiny internet cafe cubicle in Tirur, sweating it out in more ways than one in order to get the results as soon as we could. And what results they were! The Scottish National Party won handsomely - a landslide of formidable proportions, forming a majority government, something that Westminster had tried to make impossible when the form of proportional representation was chosen for us eleven years ago. I was delighted, even though I could not take part, as my postal vote got lost.
Politicians will do a lot for a good photoshoot - look at Barak Obama and David Cameron, manning the barbecue in London last week. The press photographers were hunting in the usual packs, and got the shots they and the politicians wanted. I wonder how many sausages they burned before the genuine cooks took over - we shall never know. But there are more ways than that of getting to know your local politicians.
So today, at home in Millport, I got very close to my local Member of the Scottish Parliament - there are few things more personal than clambering over rocks, falling into rockpools, slithering on seaweed, in the company of your newly re-elected representative. Today was the annual event of volunteer rubbish collecting on our beaches, which Kenneth Gibson, MSP, master-minds each year. So as the sun glittered on the sea, we donned our yellow 'Keep Scotland Tidy' tabards, grasped our litter pickers in one hand and tried hard to hold onto our black bin bags in the other as a brisk wind attempted to tear them from our grasp.
Kenneth's car deposited us at a somewhat inhospitable section of the island's coast, where brambles curved over our path as we scrambled down to the rocks and shingle coves. Amazing how much rubbish you find when you look - plastic bottles, multi-coloured straws, bits of green and blue rope, sections of tattered black polythene, flapping in the grass like wounded birds. All mixed and mingled with the white and brown razor shells, the pink nodding Thrift flowers, the pebbles of every hue, size and shape. We picked at it with our litter pickers, we wrestled it into the disobedient bin bags which were forever making a bid for freedom, we foraged further and further along the shoreline, buffetted by the wind and occasionally soaked by showers that appeared from nowhere in the otherwise blue skies
As we stopped for a breather, Kenneth remarked, (slightly acidly, I thought) "And people ask me why I went into politics! It was for the glamour, of course!!!" And then he spied a bent drink can wedged under a rock, and dropping on his knees in the slimy weed, began to haul it out. And not a newspaper man or snapping camera in sight....
We had an election in Scotland while we were in India. We knew it was happening, and scuttled down to the tiny internet cafe cubicle in Tirur, sweating it out in more ways than one in order to get the results as soon as we could. And what results they were! The Scottish National Party won handsomely - a landslide of formidable proportions, forming a majority government, something that Westminster had tried to make impossible when the form of proportional representation was chosen for us eleven years ago. I was delighted, even though I could not take part, as my postal vote got lost.
Politicians will do a lot for a good photoshoot - look at Barak Obama and David Cameron, manning the barbecue in London last week. The press photographers were hunting in the usual packs, and got the shots they and the politicians wanted. I wonder how many sausages they burned before the genuine cooks took over - we shall never know. But there are more ways than that of getting to know your local politicians.
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| Shoreline, Isle of Cumbrae |
Kenneth's car deposited us at a somewhat inhospitable section of the island's coast, where brambles curved over our path as we scrambled down to the rocks and shingle coves. Amazing how much rubbish you find when you look - plastic bottles, multi-coloured straws, bits of green and blue rope, sections of tattered black polythene, flapping in the grass like wounded birds. All mixed and mingled with the white and brown razor shells, the pink nodding Thrift flowers, the pebbles of every hue, size and shape. We picked at it with our litter pickers, we wrestled it into the disobedient bin bags which were forever making a bid for freedom, we foraged further and further along the shoreline, buffetted by the wind and occasionally soaked by showers that appeared from nowhere in the otherwise blue skies
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| Holy Island and Wee Cumbrae from Great Cumbrae |
As we stopped for a breather, Kenneth remarked, (slightly acidly, I thought) "And people ask me why I went into politics! It was for the glamour, of course!!!" And then he spied a bent drink can wedged under a rock, and dropping on his knees in the slimy weed, began to haul it out. And not a newspaper man or snapping camera in sight....
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