I lived here for many years. Worked hard. Played harder. Drink and jazz and mountains and surfing and brass-banding and drink. Foundational geoscience and drilling. I made the best friends and learnt to love our industry. I was with Talisman and CNR, both solid, low-cost and dour.
The Oxford English Dictionary notes dour as “characterised by severity, sternness, or grim fortitude; hardy, robust”. Yet sternness is a strength, and fortitude is survival. Is Aberdeen dour? It has certainly survived. Just.
Aberdeen has been the Schrödinger’s economic centre for the UK for over 50 years; the essential gateway for national wealth whilst simultaneously expendable to the whims of global politics and corporate decisions. National politics barely feature: Laissez-faire in the good times, deckchair arranging on the Titanic in the desperate times.
The title of this article is from the multivariant and routinely hatcheted quote: “You may not be thinking about politics, but politics is thinking about you”. Misattributed to Pericles. Prior to working in Aberdeen, I scraped an MSc at Royal Holloway and in the local village, I bought a shabby, softened-by-use, leather-bound copy of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Dante is also a regular victim of misattribution, but I do like his / not his: “The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis”.
There will be no neutrality from me today.
As the USA and Israel attack Iran, we have seen oil prices double due to yet more global insecurity, just as we saw gas prices rocket in February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine for the second time. Heads of companies and countries will be meeting to position, protect, consolidate and identify opportunities. Most will be impotent.
I miss the naive simplicity of yesteryear when George W Bush took a sheep-like coalition into Iraq on a single, well-presented lie. We mocked his mildly mangled wordplay. Yet we forget two things: His 2008 congratulation speech on Obama’s victory was delivered with genuine, non-political respect. His stunned incapability on the morning of September 11th 2001, whilst reading to second-graders. At that moment, he was giving his time to the youngest of the nation. Bush: An unexpected beacon of eloquence and compassion.
When did we last see Trump visit a school, a rehabilitation hospital, or a retirement home? Though, to be fair, regarding the schools, there may well be safeguarding issues.
In time, the big and brash, such as Trump or Putin, always prove themselves to be everything we try to bring up our kids not to be: Humourless, bullying, Dunning-Kruger ignorant. Conversely, the gentle, such as Zelensky of Ukraine and Carney of Canada, demonstrate that quiet is not the same as weak.
Back to Aberdeen.
I have plans this week to work hard and play hard. To meet people. Aberdonians by birth, by loyalty, by capability. Those who have kept the machines running, the discoveries coming, the bits turning, the black-gold, revenues and royalties flowing. Cogs in our creaking, wheezing industry. I’d like to say essential, irreplaceable cogs, but such parts are routinely discarded whilst the creaking and wheezing continues – attacked from outside by politics, cannibalised from inside by those demanding more meat, more meat, more meat.
Tough times make tough people. Aberdeen. Exemplar, not exception. Right across our UK economy: Tayside, Tyneside, Wearside, Teesside, Humberside, East Anglia, Essex, Merseyside, Barrow in Furness. Nietzsche said, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Really?
