How I spent my Spring vacation

How I spent my spring vacation, or comments and impressions on the United Kingdom

          My sweetie and I recently returned from 24 days in the United Kingdom and Ireland the tour was guided and travel was by luxury coach. We saw more of the UK than (by their own admission) have many of the wonderful persons we chatted with along the way. Beginning in London we travelled to Canterbury, Brighton, Plymouth, Dartmoor, Glastonbury, Bath, Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland and back to Ireland again (Waterbury, Limerick, Killarney, Sligo, Derry, Belfast, Dublin). Recrossing the Irish Sea we then travelled to Holyhead Wales, Liverpool, Glasgow, Isle of Skye, Inverness, Aberdeen, St. Andrews  and Edinburgh, crossing and recrossing the highlands. Back through the lowlands to Newcastle, York, the Cotswolds, Stratford on Avon and London. I also watched a lot of BBC news. Lovely trip, but good to sleep in one’s own bed again!

          First, allow me to say, “It’s friggin’ green!” Everything everywhere  from  Brighton to Isle of Skye is green, mostly due to the islands’ situation at the confluence of the Gulf Stream and Europe’s mainland weather patterns.  Ireland’s rural areas are the greenest places I’ve ever seen, and the Cotswolds are a close second.

          Secondly, there are gazillions of sheep. I don’t mean just a lot, but actual gazillions, because I counted them. Unfortunately (for them) most will not see their first birthday. Too “baaad,” but England eats a lot of lamb. 

          Third, it’s much larger with much more open space (Ireland and the UK) than the smallish map, representation makes one think. There are vast empty spaces, even in lower England.  Dartmoor and the mountains of Wales are examples, and don’t even get me started about the Scottish Highlands, where I think there may yet be clansmen who don’t know the Stuarts are out of power. 

Fourth, the Irish and British people are, as a group, lovely warm persons who will speak to strangers and offer help at the drop of a confused look.  They also have supported, in the past and still do to some degree, a lavish lifestyle for a small portion of their countrymen who are landlords of “huge.. tracts”  (thank you, Michael Palin)  mostly  due to lucky circumstances of birth in the lineage of an ancestor who did nothing to deserve such wealth other than help William the bastard, Duke of Normandy, hijack their way of life almost 1000 years ago! Driving through the highlands, one sees numerous deer, which are actually culled annually from helicopter due to overpopulation, yet the average Britisher cannot hunt them, just like in Robin Hood’s time. Almost all the apparently empty highland areas are under ownership and control of nobles who simply inherited the land and who still control the hunting rights on this land.

The rights of public access to private land in Scotland are very different to those in England and Wales, The code of practice that governs access in Scotland has been formulated as the Scottish Outdoor Access Code. This essentially ensures the public’s right to wander private land, including woodlands, provided that they behave responsibly. However, the code expressly excludes right of access for hunting, shooting and fishing. To carry out any of these activities, a member of the public must have permission from the landowner (usually expensive, if granted at all); and in the case of deer stalking (the expression used for tracking and shooting deer), or fishing for salmon or sea trout, the permission must be in writing. It should be noted that unauthorized entry onto private land with a firearm is a serious criminal offence. If you own woodland in Scotland (and remember most is privately owned in huge estates), you also own the rights to fishing and hunting on that land. Only one exception to this rule is found: the rights to salmon fishing are sometimes owned separately to the land. Woodland owners can lease the rights to hunting or fishing on their land to others, and do, at rates which preclude hunting and fishing for many average persons. The rights to fish for salmon and freshwater fish in Scotland are privately owned. Fishing for salmon and Sea trout without the legal right, or written permission from a person having such a right, is a criminal offence. Fishing for all other freshwater fish without the right or written permission is, in general, a civil offence.

As Duke of Cornwall, Prince Charles has income from rents on 133, 602 acres of land with a value of over a billion pounds, due to a grant (Gift) issued by King Edward III in 1377. Of course, all he does is collect rents, not manage anything. Charles isn’t even close, however to the richest of the do-nothing nobility in the UK. Their assets account for 20 million out of Britain’s 60 million acres of  land, and researchers estimate that the vast majority is actually owned by a wealthy core of just 1,200 aristocrats and their relatives! Remember, these are not Bill Gates, Warren Buffet or the like, who have worked hard to earn their wealth. In fact, they are much more like the Bush and Kennedy boys or the Rockefeller heirs, but at least, at some point, that money was earned and the property purchased.  For example, the Duke of Westminster has a property portfolio totaling around £6 billion. A retired  professional army officer, Gerald C. Grosvenor inherited all his wealth. The first Grosvenor peer was “created” a Baronet by James I in 1622, and given land awards later  which today include the wealthiest areas of London, including ¬Belgravia and Mayfair.  The top private landowner, not just in Britain but Europe, is the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensbury, whose four sumptuous estates cover 240,000 acres in England and Scotland. As recently as the 19th-century, the Church was among the largest landowners in the realm, but more recently their land has been snapped up by the state, charities and the private sector.

          Much of this  information has been uncovered only in the past five years after a registration campaign targeting huge landowners who had previously avoided disclosing their assets. A small minority still own a huge amount of Britain’s land and over the last 100 years, little has changed. For the rich the control of land is as important as it’s ever been. They receive subsidies and most of their assets are held in trust, avoiding inheritance tax. A case in point is Blenheim Palace, estate of the Duke of Marlborough, the family of which Winston Churchill is a scion. The land on which it is built, 55,000 acres, was given by Queen Anne and its recipient created as the first Duke in the early 1700s. The current heir, the 11th Duke is a three time jailbird and heroin addict who will inherit this huge estate, which today is maintained by tourism, while the family continues living there - free, of course.

          For many working class Brits  this means that the diversions of hunting and fishing which in the US are considered rights (and rites of passage for many fathers and sons) are out of reach, as fishing licenses may cost as much as £100 (about $170) per person and in Scotland permission may simply be refused by those who “own” streams and make money charging the wealthy to fish. Hunting is similarly out of reach for most average UK residents. While enjoying the beauty of Great Britain and Ireland it is easy to forget that the conspicuous and wretched excess of the peerage was built and supported by a servant and in many cases peasant class and is today, in some instances supported with tax dollars extorted by VAT taxes and generally high costs. It certainly isn’t, as some would claim, the cost of the National Health Care System, which actually costs Britain only about half the per capita cost of health care in the US!       

        So enjoy Downton Abbey, but be a realist about the society which created this tiered system. I find it sad that the British Government which decried the caste system in India, is still very much operating under its own version. And by the way, Hilton, you cheap bastards, why can I get free wi-fi in even the sleaziest Motel 6 in the US, but while I’m in England where overseas data rates are $5 per minute, you want to soak me £5.00 per hour for what every hotel in Ireland and most in Scotland offers free?