How to recognise a shagged sheep

I get told things by my crofting neighbours and I can never be quite sure if they are pulling my leg.

However - I have been told that the sheep I see in the fields just now - with coloured bottoms - have been shagged - mated.
The ram, or tup as they call him here, has done his job.

I think it may be right.
A quick Google tells me that putting coloured paste on the underside of the tup before he mates, is called raddling.

I suppose it is quite clever really. How else would you know which sheep had been left out and still  needed attention?

 I wonder if it helps the tup - for the same reason

The Last of the Ducks

I wrote earlier (Duck Shooting 22/10/2013) about the sadness of the tame ducks being shot on the loch with the unpronounceable Gaelic name.

The snow has come here and the weather is dreich, so I set off up the hill to see how they were faring.

To my surprise I found 20 of them up the path, just seconds away from the croft, cowering in a hollow.

Today - just a couple of days later, there were none.

A walk right up to the loch found only one alive – wounded and dying.

It was a place of slaughter, with the odd dead bird on the ground and one even hanging in a tree. The ground was littered with empty cartridge cases and litter.

And they call this Sport?

Bank Debt

Do you find it difficult to get your head around bank debt? .
I do.
There was the initial lunacy - when they were all passing around parcels of debt - like children playing pass the parcel at a party. Who gets stuck with it when the music stops playing?

It seemed beyond belief that banks had been buying and selling - passing around all these complex parcels of  debt  - without understanding what they were.

In my naivety, I thought that all debt was bad. Why on earth would anyone sane want to buy a parcel of debt?

Well the music stopped playing and some banks had to own up to the horrific amount of debt they had.
Others (I gather) have still not been totally honest about it.

Apparently some of this is goodish debt, some bad and some very very bad.
What does this mean

I go shopping with Deborah and she sees a jacket she likes, but realises she has left her money at home. I lend her the money to buy it. She is a good friend. She is honest, has a well paid job and no debts. She agrees to repay me next day. That is a good debt.

I go shopping with Tracy and the same thing happens. I know she has money problems and a reputation for not paying back loans. This is bad debt
Whether it is good or bad depends on  how likely you are to be re-payed.

Who are all these people who owe money to the bank?
Are they little people from the UK who can't pay back their mortgages?
Are they little people from  the UK who have taken out loans and can't pay them back?
Are they small /medium size UK businesses who have taken out loans to make their business work?
Or are they huge faceless multinationals?
Or are they other countries?
Or - perhaps - they are massive debts incurred by the bank gambling with our savings?
Or - perhaps - it is all those nasty parcels of very toxic bad debt from all round the world

If Tracy can't pay me back, I lose that money.
What happens if someone can't pay their bank back? The bank loses that money.

If someone or something goes bankrupt, what happens?
If I went bankrupt Tracy would still owe me for the jacket.
But - If I died then Tracy would breath a huge sigh of relief.
If Tracy goes bankrupt she no longer has to pay her debt to me.

What happens when a company goes bankrupt?
I suspect that those who owe money to that company will also breath huge sighs of relief

But what happens if a bank goes bankrupt?
What happens to those who owe money to the bank?
and
What happens to those who have had all their life savings deposited in the bank?.

If I have a huge mortgage and my bank/ mortgage provider goes bankrupt  - does it mean that I no longer have to pay back my mortgage and that I now own my property?

When RBS (based in Scotland) was on the verge of bankruptcy, it was saved by the UK government tax payers putting in huge amounts of money and becoming major share holders.

If Scotland had been independent it would have gone bankrupt trying to that. What would that have meant?

RBS would have had large parcels of bad debt - money owed to the bank
It also would have had huge debts - money it owed to all those who had deposited their savings with it.
Would  those with bad debts who owed money to the bank have their debts wiped out?
Would the savers - the people it owed  money to - have lost all their money?

Was it insured in some way? Would insurance companies have had  to to pay out?
Would Scotland ultimately have had to pay?
At present the UK government backs all personal savings in UK banks up to £85,000

Why didn't the government allow RBS to go bankrupt?

Iceland's main bank went bankrupt and, as  a result, the whole country went bankrupt - because the debt of the bank was larger than the GDP of the country. (As was the case with RBS)

Did Iceland honour its debts?

I don't know - I have a feeling that it told everyone to xxxx off and started again. This is not a very business like way of behaving and must perhaps exclude Iceland from international business for a while.

It's shredded reputation now means poor ratings from the credit rating agencies.
Does this matter? Well yes - because it means that no other country will lend Iceland money, or if they do, the interest rate will be exorbitant.

Why might Iceland want to borrow money? Well for anything really - collecting the rubbish, running the hospitals, education, pensions etc.

Most  countries in the West borrow huge amounts of money and have massive debts - Britain and America being two of the worst.

Which is the main country lending everyone all this money?
The answer to that is - China
China - quietly - now owns most of the world

Last week, it was announced that RBS would not be split into a good bank and a bad bank.

When this was first announced I understood it to mean that ;-
The bad bank would be the one that gambles with our money  - the investment bank.
The good bank would be the old fashioned sort as managed by Captain Mainwairing in Dads Army.

I thought that an excellent idea. I don't want my bank to gamble with my money.

But apparently the bad bank, was to be one, into which all the bad debt was put. That would make it a very bad bank.

But - The new plan is not to split the bank up, but to open a special department in it, into which all  the bad debt can be put - hidden away - ignored - forgotten about - perhaps no longer even  mentioned in the every day accounts?
But most importantly - not counted as the type of debt that the bank needs to hold capital to balance.

Hence the bank can begin to loan more to the public.
It can be seen as a good bank with healthy books

It can loan more to all those people buying houses in this new government led property bubble- at exorbitant prices.

Is this a new game  -  pass the parcel and blind mans buff combined?

Interest rates will go up and the whole thing will implode - again

But I still don't really understand bank debt

Perhaps we could sell all the bad debt to the Chinese?
But perhaps they would be wise enough to ask -
(what our banks should have asked)
Why would  anyone sane buy bad debt?

What would China do about Tracy who still owes me for that jacket?
Perhaps they would just execute her.

PS - I miss you

My mother (now very frail and well into her 90's) is a terrifyingly practical lady -
a terrible thrower outer of anything and everything not in everyday use.

When I was a child I got a comic each week called Sandra. It was all about girls at a ballet school. I loved it. But each copy would disappear as soon as I had read it.

In my teens I graduated onto The Beatles Weekly. I had almost every copy and guarded them carefully. When I went away to University I hid them in the attic thinking they were safe - Sadly not. About 10 years later I went up there to have a quick read and they were all gone. That really broke my heart - especially knowing how valuable they had become.

Her recent throw out was the box of family postcards. In retrospect it is quite extra-ordinary that she hadn't done it years ago. There were postcards to us all, dating back to well before I was born.

I was horrified and said so. I had loved having the occasional look at them.

On my next visit they had miraculously been recovered. They had apparently reached the bin of items to be burnt, but had not actually  gone into the fire. I was amazed that she had saved them for me.

So of course I sat down with her to look through them with a renewed feeling of preciousness and discovery.

One of the first cards I found was one that I had never seen before. It was an ancient black and white card of Athens  -crowned by the Acropolis.
It was from my father (now dead more than 30 years) to my mother.

It said very simply that - He had arrived safely, had eaten and was going to have an early night - Love Dad Then it said
PS - I miss you

Oh my goodness. So simple and yet - such emotion - I wanted to cry

I read it out to my mother

Without pause for thought - she said
" I am still missing him".

I told her that she ought to put it somewhere special,
But she didn't seem really interested.

I get the feeling she is slowly letting it all go .
She doesn't need to throw it away

She will soon be going and leaving it all behind

Croft boundaries

There was a meeting of crofters on our side of the glen.
The man from the ministry was not happy about the boundaries.

If you look at our properties from the other side of the glen (see photo) the boundaries are quite obvious. They are delineated by burns and therefore bushes.

The hillsides here run with water at most  times of the year. This water  finally channels itself into a few burns. As a general rule there is a burn on each side of each croft's property. There certainly is with ours.

The burns - over time - make deepish gorges for themselves where the ground is soft . In a few places they hit harder ground and are more superficial and  meander a bit to get around the obstacle.

The man from the ministry cannot understand why the lines down each side of the properties are not  nice and straight. This would  makes it easy for him, in his office in London or Brussels to calculate acreage and things.

Hence the meeting

It had to be explained that the crofters have animals grazing in these fields and these animals have to have access to the burn to drink. There are only certain parts of the burns where that can happen  - and the old boundary was made so that animals from each side could both get good access to the burn at suitable places.

He still didn't really  understand

Sloe Gin crisis

What has gone wrong this year?

My husband makes sloe gin every year. This is a very serious business and it  has to been done just so.

It all starts with going to admire the sloes - at about this time of year.
Those who make sloe gin know where the best sloe bushes are - information that is never shared with anyone.

Then it is a matter of waiting and choosing just the right time to pick them.
Apparently they have to have softened a bit and  have a bit of a bloom on them.
Then you have to be really patient and wait till after the first frost - for some reason.

So - out we went - for the inspection - full of expectation - as the press  has had many reports of bumper apple and berry crops this year.

What do we find - NOTHING - not one

What on earth has happened? Last year there was a bumper crop and the bushes look quite healthy.

Is this Global warming?

Worse - Has someone found our bushes?

It is a crisis!

Crofters rights

I met a different crofting  neighbour today.
His croft is at the bottom of the hill and ours is more than half way up the hill, so we are more likely to be in our cars when we pass each other by

But today he was out with his camera. He is apparently the chief cameraman for-  The South Side (of the glen) Common Grazing Association.
The hill above our croft is MAMBA (miles and miles of bugger all) but - since time immemorial the crofters have had the right to graze their animals on it - and they do. Goodness knows what the animals find to eat.

Well - as I mentioned in a previous blog "Duck shooting"- the sporting rights on the hill have been sold to a rich man from Essex, who has brought in 1,000 or so ducks and is now happily shooting them all.

The ducks live on the Lochan with the unpronounceable Gaelic name. To get there, he has not only almost destroyed the existing track, which the crofters use to access their animals on their quadbikes, but he has built new tracks all over the place, so that his paying guests can go On Safari. They don't seem to like walking.

He has not asked permission from or even first notified the crofters. Gates have been left open so that animals can escape and new gates have appeared, were none were before, so that animals can't be accessed.

Crofters don't like this sort of behavior. Oh no! They have their rights - Crofter's Rights.

But - The rich man from Essex has the sporting rights and he his rights too.

Whose right takes precedence?
Well - the crofters - usually - but the rich man from Essex doesn't know that yet.

Hence chief cameraman crofter was off to photograph the damage

I almost feel sorry for the rich man from Essex.
Once the crofters are aroused en masse - he doesn't stand a chance.

However I don't feel sorry for him
He left a rude note on our car, asking us not to park in the place by our croft where we have always parked and no doubt the horse and cart was parked by our ancestors before us.
He then turned up wanting to buy our croft house from us.

Unfortunately voting for Scottish Independence would not stop this sort of thing. The sporting rights can be sold to anyone from anywhere
 But no Scottish Highlander would have been stupid enough to buy them on this hill.

Anyone could have told him that there is nothing to shoot here and never will be except rabbits.
Ducks will not breed up there on the Lochan with the unpronounceable Gaelic name and he has just shot the few remaining grouse. Pheasants were tried a few years ago with no success and there are no red deer just a few roe deer.

Sadly Mr Rich man from Essex - you have bought a lemon - with some very disgruntled crofters attached.
and  the disgruntled crofters always win.