Hamish Gobson’s diary: the view from across the Uisge
20 April 2023
“WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE between a U-saff and a U-turn?”
This is the question that reporters throw at me when I emerge onto the tarmac at Great Todday non-international airport.
I do not usually travel in such luxury or style, but I was summoned home from Barcelona in a hurry due to the imminent closure of the Scottish fishing fleet by Hater Humza and his friendly, green-fingered bottle-dwellers.
“U-saff is a Turnaff,” I say to bewildered looks from the assembled hacks.
Not the right answer, clearly.
“The lady’s not for saffing,” I offer as a tendentious alternative. Same result—blank faces poking awkwardly out of the top of entry-level suits. All seem to want to look like Peter Murrell before his arrest—knowing, silent, inscrutable, unassailable, richer than you.
Finally I answer fire with fire by asking a riddle of my own: “What is the difference between a U-saff and a U-boat?”
Answer: “The U-saff is more dangerous to shipping than a U-boat. The U-boat only sank ships individually, whereas the U-saff can destroy them wholesale.”
Muttered noises indicating incomprehension burble up until they all ask: “What is a U-boat?”
“A U-boat is a submersible machine which carries pencil-shaped weapons which explode on impact with the hulls of floating vessels,” I explain, immediately conscious that I am dealing with unwilling consumers of Michael Russell’s history syllabus. “A U-saff, by contrast, carries pencils that are even more destructive as they can sink whole fleets with a single signature at the bottom of a thing called a law. Does the word ‘legislation’ mean anything to you, ladies and gentlemen?”
The hacks melt away, like seals in the open season. I head for “Customs”, one of which on this island is a free dram to anyone who manages to make the journey from Scotland without swimming. That is a rare occurrence now that the Caledonian MacBrayne fleet has been administratively sunk by the Scottish government. Humza Youboat is carrying on where his predecessor, Nicola Ferguson Sannox, left off. Her sistership, Hull 802, is increasingly being thought of in the islands as the mythical ghost ship that is doomed to live forever but without arriving in any port. We now call it “The Flying Ferguson”.
In fact, I am here for a meeting of the HIC (Hebridean Island Council), which is due to debate something even more serious than the destruction of sea-borne communication between the Scottish islands. The subject is Humza Yousaf’s latest attempt to cripple fishing communities by introducing something called Hyper-Protected Marine Areas. These are supposed to cover “10% of our seas”, and it will be illegal to enter them without a permit from one of U-stop’s minions in Edinburgh. Writing in The Skirtsman,Brian Wilson-Harris has compared the likely effect to that of the post-Culloden Highland clearances, which Michael Russell knows a lot about—some of it accurate, perhaps.
All this talking in statistics amounts to the O’Grady Says style of administration, or “box ticking”. It appeals to the modern, digitalized civil service, in which no-one is allowed to think for themself. Few are capable of doing so anyway, having been brainwashed by Michael Russell’s “curriculum for excellence”. Their problem is that fishing, like most maritime activity, requires people to think for themselves at all times. That may be a “big ask” in Edinburgh or Glasgow at Local Government level, but our honourable councillors on the HIC are quite capable of it, probably because they are all too old to have been Russellated at school. Hunta Youstinoff is one such. Being half Hebridean and half Russian—“White” Russian, Humza!—he is a dab hand at the conspiracy theorising, offering the meeting this important one.
It is well known that the Russian trawler, Admiral Vladimirsky, has been cruising round the North Sea mapping the underwater cables that carry power to the mainland from marine windfarms. President Putin made a major effort to destroy Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which he considers to be the country’s main vulnerability. The Russian GRU (military intelligence) has assured him that the United Kingdom has a comparable vulnerability due to its dependence on marine windfarms for energy. It cannot be long before the Admiral Vladimirsky lays a course for Hebridean waters.
Without a native fishing fleet once Humza U-boat has successfully scuttled the existing one, Scotland will no longer have fishermen able to warn the Coastguard about suspicious activity in Hyper-Protected Areas. The conclusion Youstinoff draws from this is that, as it was the Greens who forced this destructive policy on a floundering SNP, they must have allowd themselves to be suborned by the Russian intelligence service. Figgers. We all know that Half-Pint Patrick is as bright as flat stout.
I pick up my copy of Das Boot with a sigh and say a quiet “come back boys, all is forgiven.” The only realistic alternative would be if Humza Youboat were to do a U-turn and saff the Greens where it really hurts—in the pencil.
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Hamish Gobson lives on the Hebridean isle of Great Todday (Todaidh Mór) and features in Nicola Sturgeon: the Years of Ascent (1970-2007) – A Citizen’s Biography of a Driven Woman in a Drifting Parliament (Ian Mitchell, 2022) – available on Amazon.co.uk and also reviewed here by Tom Gallagher.
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