Remote control

October 15, 2021, 11:52 am , by Newsdesk

Richard Lutz sums up a week on Planet Britain

I look north. Or rather to Knoydart peninsula way up in northwest Scotland where sky meets land meets sea meets the eternal twist of weather. It’s a wild place accessible only by an 18 mile hike or by boat.

No roads lead in or out.

It’s home to Britain’s remotest pub, The Old Forge. And, as you can see from the photo above it’s sitting pretty and snug on Knoydart, that finger of land that sticks out into the rumbly Sound of Sleat that separates Knoydart from Skye. The inn has now been sold- to the village that uses it. It seems the former owner was not over popular. There was friction between management and locals. Most refused to enter the bar because the boss was so irrascibly rude, said many.

I used The Old Forge each time I landed on Knoydart. The first was a lock-in when the pub desperately waited for a supply boat to bring over the weekly beer delivery despite bad weather. The whole bar stood at the windows as the craft finally rolled in on a choppy sea, moored up and unloaded. The whole place happily erupted. The lock-in continued….

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Then about three years ago, I strolled in and things had changed. I ordered a pint from the controversial owner and he was so unpleasant, so dismissive that I told him to keep his beer and left without paying. The beer stayed on the bar. I never went back.

Others had similar dismal episodes and for a while locals even ran an informal pop up Forge at a nearby picnic table to protest how the inn was run. That’s how nasty it got.

But now it’s owned by the new regime, run by the local community which also owns and manages 17,000 acres of an old estate. I know they will now be more courteous, more responsive, more friendly. So, if you’re in the neighbourhood, drop in, stay awhile, try some of the freshly caught seafood…the new Old Forge awaits.

Meanwhile, back to Planet Britain, sadly, and to kick things off, let’s go no farther than a quote. It’s from an Italian expert on the mafia. He refers to the UK as ‘the most corrupt country in the world,’ according to reports.

Ouch. That’s pretty nasty to say about the mother of democracy, the winner of The World Cup a thousand years ago, land of faded hope and glory and all that. But let’s grab a look at recent events and see if this harsh indictment has wheels. So, we’ll initially cast all eyes to Tyneside in the Northeast of England. Its sad-sack football team has just been bought by the Saudis for £300m. Triples of brown ale all round in the bars of Tyneside. Finally, money to buy star players and enter the billionaire elite of world football.

Ahhh, but it’s not that simple. The investment body that bought the team, Public Investment Fund, is a front for Saudi leader Mohammad bin Salman. He’s Crown Prince of the kingdom and also the fund’s chair, directing its £500b of assets. He’s a man not known for following league results on the back pages so much as overseeing a secret service that kidnapped an oppositional journalist-Jamal Khashoggi- marched him to a Saudi Arabian embassy and then sawed him up. In a torture room. That simple. And his government thought it best also to detain Lebanon’s Prime Minister. And let’s not even begin on the Saudi assault on Yemen to test-run the £20 billions worth of British weapons acquired since that murderous regional war began.

Of course, Newcastle supporters would rather not talk about this. Fans are happy and locals argue (without much enthusiasm) that the purchase is about pumping money into a struggling club in a struggling area of Britain. Yes, but….there’s a simple problem too of the cash being stained by the blood of a butchered man.

And with that local story of how a vicious ruler and his crew now run a newly wealthy football team, let’s move to international affairs. And let’s start with Ireland.

But is the latest row over Northern Ireland a national and international story? That’s the point. Great Britain sees NI really as an integral part of the nation. The EU says it legally has the right to have a say in things north of the border. And that’s the trouble. Who really runs things up there in Belfast, Derry and Newry? GB or the EU?

Britain went all Brexit but still has to contend with its neighbours….

Maybe this will help: when Great Britain (that’s the mainland without Northern Ireland) left The European Union, it signed a deal that NI would have an internal trade barrier wrapped around it. So, for instance, if you were selling sausages from Lancashire, it would have to be okay’ed or not okay’ed at a domestic trade border.Sort of like Nebraska wheat being stopped at the Oklahoma state line.

The Brits see this as a domestic issue. The EU thinks not. Britain may have gone all Brexit but it still has to contend with its continental neighbours. And, like it or not, NI is still partially managed by the EU. That was the core of the Brexit pact: to keep Northern Ireland in the EU single market to avoid a hard border on the island that could damage a fragile peace. That was part of the agreement. And this is the nub of the dispute.

Last week, the Eurocrats relented and offered loads of compromises about trade: to wit, the EU will scrap 80% of checks on goods entering NI. Belfast can now eat mainland sausages and Strabane florists can hawk English roses. But Great Britain still demands even more changes. One is that the EU’s Court of Justice should not have jurisdiction in a UK province. The EU tells the Brits to read the agreed document signed last year: backtracking, says Brussels, on the ECJ rule of law is not negotiable. Brits say it is unacceptable despite agreeing to it.

Dr Liam Fox, the erstwhile British international trade minister during Brexit, said four years ago that a deal with the EU would be ‘one of the easiest in human history.’ He was wrong, of course. What an Eton mess, what an Irish stew. What une affaire du merde.