Oldies

Curious weather for July here near the Greek border. Relentless rain on Sunday and ovrecast skies and stunning claps of thunder yesterday afternoon followed by rain. This morning brings some sickly sunlight.
BBC’s Through the Night is always good listening and has currently a nice idea – 2 hours of music composed in 1876 - . Only available for a few days!
For those of you who don’t know Jason’s Godwin’s writing about the Ottoman empire and Istanbul, here is an interview which gives a sense of his knowledge on these subjects.
Travel writing is a favourite genre of mine. Here is a treatment of three famous names – although Robert Byron seems to have slipped out of public view.

Borderlands

Pernik is on the east edge of Sofia and, as befits an old coal-mining and industrial area, a sad eyesore – particularly on a cloudy and rainswept day with its grey rows of jerrybuilt flats an insult to the beauty of the surrounding rolling hills. A few kilometres on, a clutch of peeling high flats announced Radomir. But it was the more charming town of Kyustendil which was my destination – reached through a twisting 20 kilometres ascent and descent of dense wooded hills. In the puddles and rain, the town was less charming than I had remembered from my last visit in 2008 – and was showing evidence of the sort of decline (derelict shops) which can afflict border towns these days. Kyustendil is about 30 kms from both Macedonia and Serbia – and several busloads of umbrella-protected tourists from Macedonia were wandering around the desolate town centre. The old minaret looks set to fall any day – although an old hammam has been spruced up and the water from its well is still gratefully taken in bottles by the residents nearby. Apart from Monday’s workshop (on EU funded territorial cooperation projects), the main reason for my overnight stay is the chance to visit the Vladimir Dmitrov art gallery – whcih is housed in the ugliest concrete bunker I have ever seen. Dmitrov (The Master) is one of Bulgaria’s most famous painters – indeed the name of the gallery’s website actually incorporates the master into it. I’m not actually a fan of a lot of his stuff particulary not one of his trademarks – a face in front of a lot of crudely painted and brightly coloured flowers – but it was good to visit this collection and see a wider range of his paintings. I was taken with some of his earlier, smaller paintings – sunrises and sunsets; his mother; his father – and some multiple face silhouettes. And his Peasant with a hoe (above) which is in the Sofia City Gallery is very graceful.
It was good to meet up again with Belin, one of the trainers, at dinner – who’s deeply involved in the master plan for the stretch of the Danube in this part of the world. He made an interesting observation about the different attitude of the Bulgarians and Romanians to the river. For the Bulgarians, it’s their link with Europe - more psychological than logistical perhaps whereas the Romanians, apparently, have tended to turn their back on it. It’s part of the poor flatlands for them – although with the easing of border controls with Greece in 2007, he sees signs of change in that attitude. I'm reminded of an early 1990s film showing a 1930s military base in that part of the world with the lovely Kristin Scott Thomas speaking Romanian (An unforgettable summer - thanks to UTube in 8 parts - this is part 3)
The great pleasure at the workshop was to meet an official from Pernik – making a major presentation about how they had made succesful bids for EC projects – who was really enthusiastic about her work and the impact which visits to projects in Denmark and Northern Ireland had made on her. Sadly such belief in change and determination is rare in this part of the world. The 2 projects with which Pernik are involved are good examples of EC programmes – Innohubs which links towns on the edge of country capitals in a network to explore and develop good practice for places which have that particular combination of challeges and opportunities. Retina is a network after my own heart – revitalisation of traditional industrial areas (in south-east europe) – since I was one of the founder members in the early 1980s of RETI which brought old industrial European Regions together in a network of good practice and lobbying.
Another interesting chat with Belin whether there is any hope of reviving the derelict villages which are such a striking feature of Bulgaria – in all parts. True (and unlike Romania) Brits, Russians and Dutch people have moved in large numbers into some of these villages – particularly around Veliko Trnovo and the Black Sea (and even on the edges of the Danube) – but the Brits certainly are older people. And it is the young who are needed. He wondered whether the new contractual and work from home patterns which the internet now allows were part of the solution; to which I added my usual input about the increased need for frugality and self-sufficiency also supplying another perspective. We both seem to agree that it is about reframing the issue. The old solution was about location marketing and inward investment. Time to develop self-sufficient strategies!

Coming next

Just back from a trip to Kyustendil, the old town which is close to the border with Serbia and Macedonia - and only 85 kms from Sofia. Purpose was a workshop on inter-regional/transfrontier cooperation with EU funding. For more, read tomorrow's post.

Hungarian distinctiveness

Events in Hungary as relayed on a daily basis by the blog I would nominate as one of the few with a dedicated, sustained and gripping focus – Hungarian Spectrum – read like a surrealist novel. Amazingly both the Chinese and American leadership have been in Budapest in recent days – perhaps showing some of the issues at stake. Some very serious Hungarian people signed an open letter to one of the visitors (Hilary Clinton) about the growing repressiveness of the regime – and yesterday’s post told an amazing story about arrests and intrigues which bring back memories of the 1950s in that country I wouldn't be surprised to read next of action being taken against Hungarian Spectrum!
But the most detailed critique came in January of this year from a very revered source - none less than the Kornai who wrote the definitive book in the 1970s about socialist shortages.
Hungary has produced some amazing people - writers particuarly (Arthur Koestler for example - let alone some of the modern novellists like Peter Nadas) but in the photographic field it blazed the trail (Kertesz; Capa and many more). I have always treasured Andre Kertesz's small collection of photographs of people reading - "On Reading"

Fragility and frugality

The last few days have been cool, overcast and windy here in Sofia. An early morning cycle this Saturday to the old market’s arab shops for basmati rice and other cooking delicacies showed central Sofia at its best – the great low urban skyline; Vitosha mountain edged sharply against the skye; the coffee-carriers and smokers; the small shops with people happy to open the shop early for me and to chat and. Ali (from Lebanon) from the butcher’s next door wanted to know where I was from and what I was doing here. The shop with the rice seems to be Syrian - certainly the jar of fig jam and hugely chunky orange jam were from there - and the beautifully elegant but simple grey cardboard box of olive and laurel oil soap I bought was from Aleppo. The supermarket chains just don't care that they drive out such gems of experience from our lives. And we fail to appeciate the significance of such loss. Except those covered in the pages of Paul Kingsnorth's (unfortunately entitled) book Real England - the battle against the bland.
Because I’m so impractical, I’ve always had a sense of wonder about things other people seem to take for granted – electricity, running water, These days, more people perhaps are feeling a sense of fragility and beginning to rediscover the values of frugality. I don’t think this is a bad thing. What is unacceptable is that those who have saved honest money and put in what they regarded as the safest place (banks) are having to worry now where they should put it. I don’t have anything sensible to offer on the Greek crisis - but John Lanchester is one of the few journalists who offer us clear insights into the global financial crisis when it first revealed itself in 2007 and has a good piece in the current London Review of Books. Real World Economics also had a good post recently on the subject.
And somewhere in the last couple of days I read something interesting about Estonian people (I think) not being as addicted to credit cards as some other countries I might mention (France is another honourable exception I understand?)
I’ve just finished reading what I consider is one of the best novels I have ever read – A Perfect Peace by Amos Oz written some 25 years ago but one of several of his writings available at half price in a nearby bookstore. I've slightly amended the only review I could find -

it's 1965, and the children of the first settlers of an Israeli kibbutz are grown-ups. Here is the way one character sees them: "Neither Asiatics nor Europeans. Neither Gentiles nor Jews. Neither idealists nor on the make. What can their lives mean to them, raised in this whirlwind of history, this place-in-progress, this experiment-under-construction, this merest blueprint of a country..." This is a good example of some of his writing - the way he piles up expressions and descriptions. The main plot centres around a young man, Yonatan, who has a quiet wife, Rimona. His father (Yokel) is a former cabinet minister who now heads up the kibbutz. Yonatan's mother (Hava) is an energy-packed harridan. Yonatan works as a mechanic in the tractor shed, but he longs for a different life. One rainy winter night a miserable little fink (he calls himself that) shows up, talks incessantly (mostly quoting Spinoza) and gradually makes a place for himself. He becomes Yonatan's friend and (ultimately, with Yonotan’s encouragement) Rimona's lover after Yonatan fulfils his threat to flee. Oz provides brilliant portraits of a handful of characters. Oz is an interesting, original writer. Several of his characters serve as narrators of this story, taking turns, adding thoughtful layers of depth and meaning – and there are 3 of the most powerful outporings of emotions I have ever read – 2 of then in draft letters, the other in mean and savage outburst from Hava.The result is a suspenseful and moving novel that never glosses over the harsh truths about a "mob of the strangest individuals who ever pretended to be a people."

Greatness and local heroes

Lists – best 25 novels, films etc - are always enjoyable and useful exercises. They not only remind us of artists who have perhaps slipped a bit in our memory but, more importantly, they force us think about the criteria we use to judge what is useful/beautiful etc. So I was intrigued when my favourite E-journal – Scottish Review - reported at the beginning of the week that 'Who's Who in Scotland' was celebrating its 25th anniversary with an opinion poll conducted among the 4,000+ inhabitants of its pages. The Who's Who in Scotlanders were asked to nominate the greatest Scot of the quarter century of its existence. For the purposes of the poll the word 'Scot' was interpreted loosely to include anyone living partly or exclusively in Scotland, irrespective of nationality, the only qualification being that they had played some part in the life of Scotland since the book's foundation year (1986).
As my readers come from all around the planet (I kid you not!) I will not bore you with the details of the top 25 names which emerged – save to say that Sean Connery, Billy Connelly and JK Rowlinson were not amongst them and that there were a remarkably high number of writers, poets and politicians amongst the nominations from the nominated great and good. True to its philosophy, Scottish Review decided to take a lightning poll amongst its readers – and ask us to select our nominee (encouraging us to add new names). Various contributions were duly printed today (including mine I'm glad to say) and I have amended it to make more sense for a wider readership -

Greatness can be defined in two ways – first elevation to the highest accepted positions of politics, literature, business, etc. This can be measured in terms of position, awards and accolades or turnover. It's not difficult to measure. But such people (almost by definition) are rarely great in the more profound sense – of touching the human heart and influencing people and events (eg Gandhi and Luther King). I have met and talked with nine of these (Gordon Brown and Robin Cook (Labour PM and Foreign Sec respectively but, in an earlier life, both on the left of the party), Donald Dewar (who forced through the Scottish Parliament and was known as an honest politician); Winnie Ewing (a nationalist who spearheaded its breakthough), Jo Grimond (Liberal leader), Mick McGahey (Communist trade unionist), Sorley MacLean (poet), John Smith (Leader of Labour party until his death in the early 1990s) and George Younger (Conservative Minister for Scotlland in 1980s) and only Jo Grimond rates as a person who inspired me. Despite my being a Labour regional politician in a Liberal stronghold (Greenock) he chose to work with me and local people on a community project (ignoring his local political colleagues) and showed great charisma and humility. Those who fall into the second category – of touching hearts and inspiring lasting change are rare indeed. They operate at a different level – more serene and less concerned with occupying positions of business or political power. I can think of quite a lot of “local heroes” I knew in the West of Scotland (not least my father) . But two in particular spring to mind - a charismatic Minister Rev George MacLeod who established a radical voice in the Iona Community he created within the Church of Scotland. And also a social policy activist, Kay Carmichael, who helped shape Scotland’s unique social care system in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was always a quiet voice of sanity and support. But she was perhaps too early for this time schedule.

And there is probably the rub! That the generation of the last 25 years have no genes of real greatness!! What about my readers doing an exercise on the "greatest" 5 individuals of their country in the last (say) 40 years?? With reasons? And, as a bonus, what they learned from doing the exercise?
The painting is one I picked up in a lot here recently for a song - unframed, unknown (said to be Vulchev Vasil)and unfashionable these days with its socialist realist touch and memories of partisan activities. But it has real drama to it

project bids, public services in hard times; and the craft of short stories

Technical problems with blogspot prevented a post today. But my longer silence is due to my work on a bid for a project. I hate this stage when one is trying to construct convincing statement about HOW one would carry out the various required activities of a project. I don’t find writing difficult – I’ve had long practice and the results are there to see on the website and blog. But two aspects about writing proposals I find deeply frustrating and indeed alienating. First that one is generally writing in ignorance of the actual context – and actually prevented (by procurement rules) from actually talking with those for who one would be working. This not only breaches basic rules of consultancy – but creates a distance I can’t cope with. I’m a touchy, feely guy (in some senses) and can only operate in a hands-on situation when I’m getting responses. The second reason I find this stage difficult is that you are supposed to restrict text to HOW statements – not the WHAT. And I always want to jump to the content – not least to convince the evaluator that they would get a good deal if they went with my bid. As the content of bids have equal status with the original terms of reference, companies are reluctant to commit themselves to substantial things – and prefer to throw back in different language what the terms of reference are saying. And this is an EU Structural Fund project – whose administrative and financial requirements are so tough (for generally local companies) that it is not difficult to disqualify companies before their methodologies even reach the evaluation stage! What a game! So watch this space.
I’m just taking a short break (hopefully to get the creative juices working). But I have a few useful references to pass on. Amongst all the mythogising of Greece and Greeks that is going on, a rare bit of commonsense. This particular blog has looked at the various statistics to explore whether the Greeks are in fact as lazy as is being asserted (retirement ages, pension, working days etc ) and finds the myths unsubstantiated (although some people might say "fear the Greeks - particularly when tney come bearing statistics"!).
However what is true is that they don’t declare incomes in order to avoid taxation. And, of course, this is not merely true of Greece – I’ve made the same point about Romania - with the incredible time and money people spend on building their own houses - with local labour whose incomes are never declared!

Yesterday the Scottish Government released an independent report they had commissioned from an interesting collection of people last year on the future of public services in the new tough world . What was impressive was that they asked a retired trade unionist to chair it – and did not pack it with their own people (a couple of my left-wing colleagues were on the commission). And the report – despite some unpalatable messages – has been positively received in most quarters. So at least the Scottish tradition lives on – unlike the tribal politics of England.

Time for a stirring Spanish political song from the old guard

And Simon Jenkins has rediscovered the virtues of the classic civil service.

I’m becoming a fan of the short story art form. William Trevor, Carol Shields, Vladimir Nabakov always hold me in thrall. Hanif Kureishi is an impressive novellist whose acquaintance I am only now making – with his Collected Stories. Now back to the grind!

We're here to serve you

Our worship of progress and the “new” leads us to imagine that “performance management” is a modern discovery – and one that will set things aright in the world. It’s therefore marvellous to read this exasperated quotation from none less than the Duke of Wellington in 1812 -

Whilst marching from Portugal to a position which commands the approach to Madrid and the French Forces, my officers have been diligently complying with your requests, which have been sent by H.M Ship from London to Lisbon and thence by dispatch rider to our headquarters. We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents and tent poles, and all manner of sundry items for which His Majesty’s Government holds me accountable. I have dispatched reports on the character, wit, and spleen of every officer. Each item and every farthing has been accounted for with two regrettable exceptions for which I beg your indulgence. Unfortunately the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains unaccounted for in one infantry battalion’s petty cash and there has been a hideous confusion as to the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to one cavalry regiment during a sandstorm in western Spain. This reprehensible carelessness may be related to the pressure of circumstances since we are at war with France, a fact which may come as a bit of a surprise to you gentlemen in Whitehall.
This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request elucidation of my instructions from His Majesty's Government, so that I may better understand why I am dragging an army over these barren plains. I construe that it must be one of two alternative duties, as given below. I shall pursue either one with my best ability, but I cannot do both.
1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the benefit of the accountants and copy-boys in London, or perchance
2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain.

I owe the quotation to a brilliant website set up by a senior civil servant (Martin Stanley) which contains the clearest and best analysis I have ever read of British Civil Service Reform.
Most of the stuff written about this subject is by social science academics – who lack the historical perspective and seem to have bought into the rationalistic belief system. This guy first sets the political/sociological context for the breathless British changes of the past 40 years.

It is ironic that many of the problems facing today's politicians stem from the successes of their predecessors. Indeed most of them have their roots in our ever increasing wealth and ever improving health.For a start, UK society is now vastly more wealthy than 50 years ago. A typical post-war household literally had nothing worth stealing:- No car, no TV, no phone, nothing! No wonder it was safe to leave doors open along most British streets. But GDP has risen four-fold since then. Most homes nowadays have a wide range of marketable goods, and huge amounts of money to spend on non-essentials, including on drink and drugs. The crime rate has therefore soared, as drug addicts seek to get their hands on others' wealth, and drunks cause various sorts of mayhem. Our wealth causes other problems:
• We can afford to eat much more, and travel everwhere by car, and so get fat and unhealthy, with consequences for the health service.
• There are now 10 times as many cars on the roads as in the 1950s, with obvious implications for transport and environmental policies.
• Much the same applies to the growth in cheap air travel.

Other problems are caused by the fact that the distribution of the new wealth is uneven. And many of us seek to catch up by borrowing as if there is no tomorrow. Credit card debt, for instance, increased from Ł34m in 1971 to Ł54,000m in 2005.
The other big success is our health, and not least the fact that we are all living so much longer than before. Life expectancy at birth is currently increasing at an astonishing 0.25 years per year. Healthy life expectancy is also increasing - but only at around 0.1 years per year. In 1981, the expected time that a typical man would live in poor health was 6.5 years. By 2001 this had risen to 8.7 years. Just imagine what pressure this is putting on the health and social services ... ... not to mention on pension schemes. The average age of men retiring in 1950 was 67. They had by then typically worked for 53 years and would live for another 11 years. By 2004, the average of men retiring was 64. They had by then typically worked for 48 years and would live for a further 20 years. As a result, the work/retired ratio had halved from about 5 to about 2.4. These are huge (and welcome) changes, but with equally huge - and politically unwelcome - implications for tax, pensions and benefits policies.
It is also noticeable that voters nowadays want to spend more and more money on holidays, clothes, durables, etc. whilst few seriously try to promote the benefits that result from the public provision of services. Voters therefore resent paying taxes, and the Government is under constant pressure to spend less, despite the problems summarised above.
In parallel with all this, society has become more complex and less deferential:
• Voters are much more likely to have been to university, to have travelled abroad, and to complain.
• The family is less important.
• Adult children are much more likely to live some distance from their parents
• 42% of children are now born outside marriage.
• The media are much more varied and much more influential, whilst the public are much more inclined to celebrate celebrity.
• Voters expect the quality of public services to improve and refuse to accept inadequate provision.
• They also turn more readily to litigation.
• The Human Rights Act and the Freedom of Information Act add to these pressures.
• There have been other more subtle, but perhaps more profound, changes.
• The original welfare state was a system of mutual insurance - hence "National Insurance". It has slowly changed into a system of rights and entitlements based on need. This is morally attractive - but it is also open to abuse, which breeds resentment.
• The post-war generation believed in self-help. Much post-school education was through unions or organisations such as the Workers Educational Association. We now expect the state to provide, and 50% of our children go to university.
• Our increasing wealth and improving health - let alone the absence of major conflict - means that we really do have very little to worry about compared with our predecessors. But of course we still worry, and demand that the Government "does something about" all sorts of lesser risks, from dangerous dogs through to passive smoking.
• Another interesting change has been the introduction of choice into health and education policies. This is in part because modern voters want to be able to choose between different approaches to medicine and education. But choice is also a very effective substitute for regulation in that it forces the vested interests in those sectors to take more notice of what their customers actually want. There are, however, some unwelcome consequences arising from the introduction of choice into public services:
• The availability of choice inevitably gives a relative advantage to the sharp elbows of the middle classes. They can, for instance, move into the right catchment areas, and are better at demanding access to the right doctors.
• Choice also requires there to be spare capacity, which has to be paid for. Less popular schools and hospital have to be kept open - often at significant cost - so that they can improve and offer choice when their busy competitors become complacent and less attractive.
• Ultimately, however, persistently unpopular and/or expensive schools and hospitals have to be allowed to close, or else they have no incentive to improve. But such closures always provoke various forms of protest.

What sort of people, faced with all this, would aspire to be politicians? No wonder we get "the leaders we deserve" (title of a marvellous book in the 1980s by Alaister Mant). This extended quotation from the website is just setting the scene for the wry descriptions of the numerous initiaives taken by British Governments since 1968 to get a civil service system "fit for purpose". For more read here
Last night saw torrential rain here in Sofia - and today is like a typical dreich day in Scotland. The fig tree has become enormous - and is bending in the wind. Great after the heat of the past few days. I cycled before 09.00 to the great butcher's shop (diagonally from the Art Nouveau Agriculture Ministry building) and up a short drive which supplies pork, chicken and sausages sublimely marinated in honey and spices. There is a buzz about the place - these people know they are providing heavenly products!!!