Duty Calls

In 2008, Randall Munroe published a cartoon called Duty Calls. It is memorable because most of us will have encountered people who feel that duty calls and that they must answer it immediately by correcting somebody online, and then carry on correcting them until they make their adversary see sense.

   The cartoon hits a nerve because, if we are honest, most of us will have felt the call of that duty ourselves at some time. I believe I have resisted it admirably over the years, although I once attempted to do battle with members of a religious cult when they added a lot of nonsense to a Wikipedia page I had painstakingly overhauled on their behalf. Personally, I thought this was an act of considerable generosity on my part, but they seemed to disagree, repeatedly. This taught me an important lesson: if you spend your afternoon arguing with a religious cult online, you have probably reached the point where you should go out for a long walk.

   Since then I have tried to follow a simple rule. If something on the internet annoys me, I scroll past it. If it annoys me more than that, I close the page. If it annoys me so much that I find myself composing a reply in my head while brushing my teeth, I take this as a sign that I should put on my walking boots. And then, about two months ago, I came across Mick Bean.

   Now, I am sure Mr Bean is a very nice chap. I imagine him as the salt of the earth: intelligent, artistic, capable of refined thought and feeling, and probably the sort of man who helps elderly neighbours with their shopping. But he has a blind spot. My blind spots include Strictly Come Dancing and golf. Mr Bean’s weakness happens to be historical integrity. And this is slightly unfortunate because he regularly posts on a Facebook group devoted to the history of my home county of Sussex. Here, he shares AI-enhanced versions of genuine historical postcards and photographs.

   At first I ignored him. Then I became mildly annoyed. Then I became considerably annoyed. Then I found myself composing a reply in my head while brushing my teeth. . . . This is how trouble begins. Nobody wakes up one morning and says, ‘Today I shall become an obsessive internet pedant’. But later that day you are sitting at the kitchen table explaining to your wife that someone you don’t know is misrepresenting two men who, a hundred years ago, rode a horse and cart up Burgh Hill at Etchingham.

   I don’t know Etchingham particularly well and I certainly never knew the two men. But it struck me that they were real people who had actually been at Burgh Hill on that particular day in front of a photographer, presumably with no expectation that a century later artificial intelligence would decide it didn’t like their faces.

   Unfortunately, the venerable old gentleman with the beard was replaced by a younger, clean-shaven whippersnapper, while his slightly frightening looking companion was transformed into a more rounded and jolly-looking fellow.

   Their alteration is a pedantic point, I admit, but good history is pedantic. You might as well say that the Battle of Hastings happened in 1067, because it is close enough. You still get the general idea that it was a long time ago. But it was 1066, and there is no point having a historical record if we are going to ignore it. Replacing two real men in a horse and cart at Etchingham is little different from discovering that somebody had restored the Bayeux Tapestry by inserting a few better-looking Normans.

   

 

   So I did my duty, and I commented, and there followed a spirited discussion. I gave Mr Bean a bit of a hard time, I confess. To give him his due, he explained that enhancing old black-and-white, grainy photographs—sharpening them, colourising them and generally making them look more immediate—helped him gain a greater and more immediate understanding of the past. Presumably it is like watching Mel Gibson at the cinema and feeling you’ve got to know the real Braveheart. I can understand this to a certain extent; some people have an imagination, and some don’t.

   Eventually, with the help of the admins, we reached a compromise, and as everyone knows, if nobody is entirely happy, there is a reasonable chance that it is the correct course of action. Mr Bean agreed that whenever he posted an AI-enhanced postcard or photograph, he would make this clear. And peace broke out.

   He now posts both the original and the enhanced image, arguing that those who don’t like AI images don’t have to look. It is rather like the adverts for Nordic Socks I have to scroll past. And then he posted a photograph from a newspaper, probably taken at Rottingdean early in the twentieth century--enhanced by AI:

AI-enhanced

And he grudgingly included the original to keep the purists and pedants like me happy: 

 

Original

   Comparing the two pictures is fascinating. It is as though an historical re-enactment society has arrived to recreate the original photograph. They have done their best to match the actors with the people who once stood there, although the resemblances are necessarily approximate. The biggest problem seems to have been that they were one person short, and rather than admit this, they decided to replace one man, apparently called Colin Burnham, with a bathing-machine.

   Presumably the re-enactors happened to have several bathing machines to chose from, and selected the one which looked most like Colin. Unfortunately, two of the rejected bathing machines have been left in shot.

   The production also appears to have run out of rope for the recreation of the winch that is centre stage, so somebody has substituted a length of hosepipe. This gives me the nagging suspicion that the whole thing was staged in a garden centre.

   I happened to mention to a friend my problem with Mr Bean’s re-creation of the past, explaining that it risks tainting the historical record. Because that friend is a Beatles fan, he responded by sending me a photograph in which the heads of the four Beatles had been seamlessly swapped onto the bodies of the four members of the re-enactment society. I thought it was quite funny, but I studied it for a while and suddenly I understood Mr Bean’s point of view. Perhaps there is no point fighting AI? Perhaps history can be tidied up, improved and made more ‘relateable’:

 

The Beatles in Rottingdean

 

If Mr Bean complains that his photo has been altered, I shall point out that he doesn’t have to look at it if he doesn’t want to—he can just scroll past. Or perhaps he would prefer it colourised? My friend also sent me a version with sixties psychedelic tints that really bring it to life, man.

   What may have brought things to a head was me posting the following photoshopped version:

 

 

Photoshopped

I asked the Admins, silent until then, how many figures from the historically correct photo had to be replaced by bathing machines before they took a picture down. They responded, not unreasonably, by deleting the original post and the whole discussion.

   In the future, my posts require pre-approval from the Admins, which strikes me as reasonable.

A Few Thoughts on a Conspiracy Theory

 

 

I read a social media post today stating that new EU PPWR legislation creating yet more problems for small, independent businesses is once again the result of undue influence from big business (Amazon, etc). I have no knowledge to confirm or deny this, but I would like to suggest that most conspiracy theories tend to credit institutions (and sometimes nefarious individuals) with far greater organisational skills and real-world competence than they actually possess. This does not mean that some conspiracies don’t exist, but the more likely explanation for most events that appear sinister is often simply incompetence, and decisions that have unintended consequences. 

  Take, for example, what has happened to small businesses in the UK trying to sell products into the EU since Brexit. There is no point here in analysing the rights and wrongs of Brexit, but it was always going to impose customs, tax, administrative, and regulatory friction between Britain and its closest neighbours.

   (As well as not discussing Brexit here, I won’t mention the varying degrees of weirdness in dealing with the US which randomly imposes ever-changing tariffs and fees.)

   For a small UK-based independent publisher selling to the EU, we now have to contend with:

1. Every book posted requires customs paperwork and clearance. This additional obligation shouldn’t have been any different from exporting to other countries, but…

2. Couriers and postal operators now add customs-clearance and/or administration fees. And . . .

3. EU countries now impose tariffs on imports from the UK. Each EU country imposes a different rate, and the postal service/ country adds an admin fee to the tariff charged.

4. In theory, all UK businesses ought to have had an EORI (Economic Operators Registration and Identification) number to move goods across international borders. This is now required to post to the EU. Additionally . . .

5. Books may be zero-rated for VAT in the UK, but EU customers can face import VAT and associated charges. Every EU country has different VAT rates. To allow for this . . .

6. UK businesses ought to obtain an (IOSS) code, allowing you to report and pay VAT. Although you can choose just one EU member state to register in and file a single monthly electronic VAT return for all EU-wide sales, because Great Britain is outside the EU, you cannot register directly with an EU tax authority, but must appoint an EU-based intermediary to handle the registration, filing, and payment of import VAT on your behalf. If you sell through an online marketplaces (like Amazon or eBay), they manage IOSS compliance, but it means the time, expense and restrictions of registering and selling with them. Additionally . . .

7. EU Rules of Origin legislation needs to be considered if component materials originate outside the UK! And . . .

8. The EU General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR) now applies, and a GPSR EU representative is required (based in the EU, not the UK). And recently . . .

9 The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) applies to packaged goods placed on the EU market. A UK publisher exporting books therefore needs to consider the source of packaging materials, and their recyclability, as well as explain how a customer in the EU will dispose of used packaging.

On top of all the above, every postal authority handles imports differently, meaning . . .

a. EU tariffs vary between countries, varying from £0.50 to £8 (Norway.)

b. Most countries will allow the seller to pay the import tariff in advance, but others will not (e.g. Ireland and Slovakia).

c. If a customer is asked to pay fees and/or tariffs, this is not only additional hassle for the customer, but postal authorities don’t seem to like it. There has always been a problem of postmen in certain countries (in our experience, Germany and Spain are the worst) returning parcels stating they were unclaimed when customers never received notification there was a parcel to be picked up. Today, some don’t seem to want the bother of claiming a payment from a customer.

 

 

Now, all of the above means that you can’t just wrap up a parcel and add a stamp and a simple customs form.

   If you have a Click and Drop account with the Royal Mail they make you type in the name and address, and you have to add the customer’s email address and phone number (even if a parcel is not sent tracked.) The payment of tariffs and fees is confused, opaque and sometimes impossible. You print out your own labels (including an A4 customs form that has to go in a pouch.

   If you use Click and Drop online without an account, the website is better and more user friendly. But having typed in all the information once, if you hand it in to a Post Office, they insist on typing it all in again. (They don’t at a sorting office or elsewhere.)

   Technology and international diplomacy (or lack of) means that posting a simple parcel takes twice as long as it ever did. And presumably the additional requirements are a reason international post is more expensive than ever.

With every new imposition, from EORI and IOSS numbers, requirements for GPSR compliance and now PPWR legislation, we have pulled our hair out and have expected the worst. But on the whole, we’ve just kept posting books, absorbing the increased time and expense required, and most parcels do seem to get through, despite the best efforts of the administrative forces of darkness. Slightly more parcels than usual seem to be returned, but high-handed international legislation rarely allows for all the extra resources to enforce it.

   My gut feeling is that a lot of the legislation like GPSR and PPWR is there to retrospectively prosecute bigger businesses when they have been selling unsafe goods in environmentally unfriendly packaging.

   But, please remember, this is a personal perspective and does not constitute legal advice!

We remain open to orders internationally . . .

 

www.tartaruspress.com

A Few Thoughts on The Salt Path by Raynor Winn

 

Full disclosure: I decided to read Raynor Winn’s best-selling The Salt Path (2018) after I had seen all the controversy about the book. Stories published in The Observer newspaper since July 2025 suggest that important elements of Winn’s memoir have been fabricated, and authors of unreliable autobiography interest me. Primarily, I am fascinated by why they misrepresent themselves, then how they react when this misrepresentation is discovered. I am also interested in why some people are willing to continue reading authors whose integrity has been fatally undermined.

 

For those who don’t know the book, The Salt Path tells the story of how Raynor Winn and her husband, Moth, undertook a 630-mile walk on the South West Coast Path in England, having been made homeless at exactly the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal degenerative brain disease. Winn recorded how, together, they endured all kinds of hardships, and had positive and negative experiences on the way. By the end of the book, Moth seems to have benefitted, against all the odds, from their arduous undertaking. Many readers felt the book showed how living closer to nature resulted in nothing less than a miracle. It may not have been a literary masterpiece, but it sold well because it hit the zeitgeist and was inspirational for many.

 

But Winn’s honesty has since been questioned. She says they lost their home and their livelihood, all their money and possessions, through no real fault of their own, and reading her account you can’t help feeling sorry for them. She is self-deprecating, and even admits that going for a 630-mile walk is an eccentric response to homelessness. The Observer, however, claimed that the couple lost their home not through bad luck, but after Winn stole £64,000 from her employer, then borrowed £100,000 to repay it, the sum secured against their house upon which they already had a £230,000 mortgage. When the debt was called in, they lost everything.

 

It is understandable that Winn would not have wanted to record all of the above details and, despite her own part in precipitating their misfortune, she would still have felt genuinely aggrieved they had lost everything. The alleged theft does not reflect well on her, but the revelation doesn’t have to derail the trajectory of The Salt Path—deciding to walk the South West Coast Path having found themselves homeless. However, it appeared she and Moth had not lost everything; The Observer has also reported that when Winn claimed in the book to be down to her last few pennies, she and Moth owned a house in France which they had been unable to sell. 

 

The publishers of The Salt Path described the book as an ‘honest’ account; therefore, pleading absolute poverty stretches the term ‘artistic licence’. Doubtless, when Winn was writing The Salt Path, she could never have imagined her book would be such a success that it might invite close scrutiny. 

 

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the book, though, is not Winns’ misrepresentation of their financial situation, but her claims about Moth’s medical condition. This is personal, and will have elicited the sympathy of the majority of her readers. If Winn lied about Moth’s diagnosis of degenerative brain disease, it would be very difficult to explain as ‘artistic licence’ or ‘stretching’ or ‘embellishing’ the truth. Since The Salt Path has come under scrutiny, a number of specialists have cast doubt on Moth’s terminal diagnosis, and the apparently miraculous recovery he has made. It is quite possible, of course, that he originally received a mis-diagnosis, and something horribly debilitating has gone into remission. It is nothing but good news that he is, apparently, much improved and still alive. It may seem very ungenerous, if not downright callous, to question any aspect of Moth’s illness, but as it is remarked upon with such great frequency by Winn in her book, questions are not unreasonable.

 

There is a telling passage in The Salt Path when a man called Grant tells a tall story about his own past. Winn remarks:

I thought about Grant’s tale and why he felt driven to tell it. When you tell a story, the first person you must convince is yourself; if you can make yourself believe it is true, then everyone else will follow. Grant wanted to be the person he created; hard done by, struggling through life’s adversities.

Did Winn believe her own story (stories)? It is possible. Was she being hypocritical when she revealed that Grant had tried to deceive her? It would not be the first time in the book she could be accused of hypocrisy. Early on in their walk, when she and Moth were in Glastonbury, she saw a beggar who was successful in part because of his cherubic looks. When he was revealed to be a fraud (somehow, she knows he is an Etonian), Winn rightly condemned him, but one can’t help considering that claiming abject poverty, while owning a house in France, looks like fraud on an even larger scale. 

 

One can make excuses for ‘artistic licence’ over finances, and maybe there has been a genuine misunderstanding of the true nature and probable course of Moth’s illness. But apparent misrepresentation of their experiences means that people have been forensically dissecting her book, even questioning whether they undertook the walk at all. But Winn has not helped her case by making other claims that seem to be clearly false. For example, Winn claimed The Salt Path was her first book, and in 2019 she won the £10,000 Christopher Bland Prize for debut writers. Unfortunately, it now appears she had previously published a book under the pen-name Izzy Wyn-Thomas. One can understand Winn thinking that The Salt Path was her first proper book, but to accept a literary prize on false pretences was not just a technicality.

 

Raynor Winn has not appeared in public since the allegations against her emerged, although she issued a statement calling The Observer’s claims ‘grotesquely unfair’ and ‘highly misleading’. Despite writing on 9th July 2025 that she was seeking legal advice, after over a year one assumes she finds herself unable to take any action against the newspaper,

 

**

The degree to which Raynor Winn falsified her story in and around The Salt Path is primarily a matter for her own conscience, and the reporters at The Observer have implied there are more revelations to come, but I was equally interested, after listening to a BBC Sounds podcast about The Salt Path, in the reactions to the newspaper reports about Winn from her readers.

 

I have written elsewhere of my bewilderment that when followers of religions and spiritual gurus discover demonstrable mistakes, if not downright lies, at the foundation of their belief system, they continue following the same course, seemingly undeterred. In many cases, I assume it is because they are so ‘invested’ that they can feel an attack on their spiritual or religious leaders is just as much a personal attack upon them. It is difficult for anyone to accept that something of fundamental importance to their lives may have been a sham, and it is natural to think you are being accused of being stupid or gullible.

 

The BBC was able to talk to people who still feel The Salt Path is an important, even an inspirational book. They had undoubtedly got a great deal from it, just as many did from Rampa’s The Third Eye, or L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics, and it is still possible to profit from the teachings of frauds and liars. But perhaps there is even more to be gained from acknowledging when you have been fooled, and learning from the experience. We all make mistakes, and it takes a great deal of strength and humility to admit to them. Such an admission can be part of the learning process, and it is sometimes possible to salvage a certain amount from the wreckage of a swindle. But, the first part of the process is to admit the deception.

T. Lobsang Rampa, and Other Characters of Questionable Faith by R.B. Russell is available as a limited edition hardback, trade paperback, POD paperback and ebook.