Secret Scotland

While it was little more than a collection of woefully inadequate numbers which would need to be provided with considerably more background information before any meaningful conclusions could be drawn, this week’s story about the changing pattern and numbers of properties in the £1 million and £2 million ranges as researched by the Bank of Scotland does show that things are anything but stagnant at that end of the market.

Sales of £1 million properties made up 0.2% of all Scottish sales in 2007, which rose by 3%, but from a total of 144 sold in 2006, the number sold in 2007 rose to 343, and increase of 138%, or 2.4 times more than the previous year, if expressed sensibly.

Measured from 2003, the total here has increased by 7 times.

Looking at the £2 million plus range, the increase there was 30%.

Measured from 2003, these property sales have increased by 9 times.

The £1 million total for the whole of Great Britain was 8,257, up 36% on 2006.

In geographic terms, Edinburgh was second, after London, in terms of the number of £1 million properties sold. However, the pattern is changing, and while Edinburgh still accounts for the majority of of such property sales, its share is showing a decline, with clusters beginning to appear in places such as Glasgow, Perth, and Kinross.

We’ll never have, or see the information if it is available, but it would be interesting to see how these apparent increases fared if they were corrected for the effects of inflation and the general effects of increasing property prices, and how many of the properties were purchased by people who truly owned them through their own wealth, rather than by loans or mortgages, which are really only borrowing, until that last payment is made - of they can keep up the payments.

It’s always slightly amusing to watch English property programmes, and see homeowners sigh as they look at the soaring value of their properties, with many becoming unwitting property millionaires simply through lifetime ownership of the family home, but trapped in it as they do not have the income to support a move elsewhere, or realise that unless they move far, far away from their roots, there is no way for them to convert that increase in value into cash. If they sell and move anywhere nearby, all the other properties will have increased in price by a similar amount to their present abode.

As they say, you just can’t win.

VE, or Victory in Europe Day passed quietly this week, marking the day when German command representatives headed by Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel were invited to sign the final German Instrument of Surrender, which entered into force at 23:01 Central European Time.

I mention it after noticing some debate about whether or not it should be more publicly celebrated than it is, and comparing it to Remembrance Sunday,  the second Sunday of November, the Sunday nearest to November 11 (Remembrance Day), which is the anniversary of the end of the hostilities of the World War I at 11:00 am in 1918.

I also noticed that part of the debate observed that VE-Day meant nothing to many young people. I found that interesting after watching a news item this morning, which was exposing the apparently ineffective management of national school exam timetable, resulting in situations where pupils may be required to sit anything up to four exams in the one day, spending anything up to 7 hours under exam conditions. I’ve been there, most of have, and two would be more than enough, split between morning and afternoon. Heads should roll over something like this, as the folk collecting wages for running our exams are clearly incompetent, based on this, and  other fiascos they have have presided over recently.

Regardless of that, given the level of ignorance suggested, one is moved to ask what the surfeit of exams is aimed at, if the pupils are not even being taught basic modern history?

A Little Local Memorial

On a more positive note, I spotted some (relatively) local news of an act of remembrance for three submariners who lost their lives during a training exercise in a midget submarine in Loch Striven, just off Port Bannatyne on the Isle of Bute.

Operation of the X Craft was hazardous at best, but on March 5, 1945, even routine testing was to prove fatal. On this day, three of the crew of XE11 were lost during a routine operation.

A test dive, to calibrate the depth gauge was to be carried out. two crew would normally have been sufficient, but on this day, three extra crew were being carried to gain experience. Rising in 10 foot increments from a depth of 100 feet, the craft struck the keel of the Boom Defence vessel Norma, stationary and silent, just at the moment her screws began to turn. The craft’s pressure hull was ruptured, and she sank to 210 feet. When the hatch was opened, two crew members were swept out by the escaping air and recovered on the surface. Sadly, the remaining three crew members were unable to escape. Their bodies were recovered by divers the next day, along with the craft, and laid to rest in Rothesay cemetery.

At 210 feet, the event is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the deepest unaided ascent from a sunken submarine.

In 2005, a small memorial garden was opened during other events on the island, held to mark the 60th anniversary of VE-Day. The ceremony was attended by the surviving crew member who related the story of the escape, Bill Morrison. (His personal account is the source of the date given above, March 5.)

In 2008, for the first time, those in attendance included the widow of ERA Les Swatton.

Those remembered:

• Lieutenant Aubrey Staples SANF (V), commanding officer
• Able Seaman J J Carroll
• Stoker E Higgins

Those who survived:

• First lieutenant, Sub-Lt Bill Morrison RNVR
• ERA Les Swatton