nineveh_uk

* There are some A4 home-printed notices on the local high street promoting "RELEVANT EDUCATION for humanity's transition" and an awful lot of small print. This is obviously a cult. Nonetheless, they probably have a greater grasp on reality than the present Conservative government**. Call me naive, but I don't think borrowing etc. to the extent you crash the pound rather than tax energy companies that have even said they're willing to pay, is quite the way to run an economy. It is all too depressing for words, and that's before we even get to international politics.

* The Meeting of Doom that has occupied almost my every working minute for the past three weeks, plus some extra time and then the general tiredness, was held yesterday and went well. Phew! All I have to do now is write the report, and be very, very clear - as are a number of colleagues including senior ones - that we can never do it like this again. And I am absolutely not going to flog myself to get the report done, either. Other things are important, and I can't keep up the pace. I've been fortunate that after an unimpressive August my health more or less held up in September at a level that I could just about handle it, but it was ridiculous.

* Unfortunately, going into work twice last week - and since I had to be there on Wednesday afternoon a leaving do at which the willpower to keep my mask on failed in the face of champagne - meant I spent Sunday playing "teeth or ENT infection?" which resolved, as it always does in the latter. Happily not too bad, but I'm glad that I asked for some mometasome on repeat prescription at the GP last week. It says much that my sinus surgery while not perfect, did have an effect that I'm not on the stuff every day, and it had dropped of the repeat list. It is only a very minor sniffle, but I would prefer not to have it. There is a new an exciting leaflet with the spray that warns against it in cases of TB or nasal herpes.

* I have Friday off! Booked well in advance of the MoD as a reward. It is forecast to rain, but at the moment not until mid-afternoon, so I am planning to go to town and wander around clothes shops and have a sense of what is around at the moment. And then still have a two-day weekend to do things like write or sew or some art or fandom and have time and energy for it. I would like to be able to use my brain in my free time, please. (Also look into radiators and loft insulation, but one can't have everything.)

* We have passed the equinox. It is getting Dark.

* In advance of the Winter of Discontent, I have acquired a new flannel-and-fleece dressing gown from the Lands End sale. It looks like someone skinned a sheep, and is by far the least stylish garment I own, but it is light and warm and I would have been very glad of it on multiple occasions over the past two years. It is for wearing over clothes collapsed on the sofa in the evening, thus keeping my favourite dressing gown for when I actually have nightclothes on. Alas, I can't cosplay anyone in this.

* On a cheerful note (except for the climate change segments), Frozen Planet II is as magnificent as it should be. I am almost tempted to nominate - but not write - it for Yuletide. Last episode we had both "huddling for warmth" and "she makes a gesture of submission". I look forward to polar bears in a Canadian shack.

* I know I've done this before at some point, but it really is great. Have some cheering Magnificent Seven music.



** Except for the ones who are insider trading, of course, who know exactly what they are doing.

I see Sunak and Javid have left the sinking ship. Truss remains 100% behind the PM of course. Which is admittedly a much safer place than being in front of Chris Pincher.

On 22–23 February 2014, the last night of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, in which the Russian state had run a systematic doping operation that saw it top the medal table, Putin convened a meeting with the security services, and kicked off the invasion of Ukraine and ultimate seizing of Crimea. Having received minimal sanction for either of these offences - the latter obviously more serious than the former, but the two of them in no way unconnected - it shouldn't be surprising that Putin and the Russian government decided to do the same thing again. Why change a winning formula?

So now everyone who ought to have seen this coming is talking about ooh, maybe this time around the sanctions might a little bit tougher, but are they going to be tough enough to really hurt Putin? Right now it seems unlikely. It's true that it takes time to pull such things together (start sooner then?) and it can be worth taking that time to make things work, but FFS! It's time for a lot more serious conversations doing things that will be painful for the UK, Europe, the US, and other states, but that need to be done. Because it would be a lot better to do them now than waffle for 6 months and then do it in October rather than March for e.g. stopping purchasing gas. Or have to fight a war in Estonia. And though we will never know, it could be hurting a lot less now if more had been done 8 years ago. Or earlier than that, or later than that, when Russia was invading other countries. One must give credit to Ukrainian's President Zelensky, who four years ago was scarcely a politician, and ironically in recent years probably one of the people who has had least power to do anything about being next door to a man with delusions of being the new Peter the Great, or whatever, and who seems to be doing a very decent job of not dashing off to exile.

But it is all such a depressing mess, and the more depressing because some at least of it was probably preventable, had a damn been given a lot time ago.

The Prime Minister claims to have attended a garden party with alcohol and party snacks for 25 minutes without having a clue that it was anything other than normal workplace activity. Well, it certainly gives an insight into what he considers to be 'work'. Hmm, workshy or a flaming liar? I'll go for both. Note, this is only the Tories. Other political parties have individuals who have made mistakes or behaved illegally during Covid, and Margaret Ferrier is being prosecuted, but this systematic law breaking belongs only to the Conservatives. They are not 'all the same': the Alliance Party, DUP, Greens, Labour, LibDems, Plaid Cymru, SDNP, SNP, Sinn Fein, none of them have had successive incidents of this kind of law-breaking not just condoned but organised and attended by the leadership, and then lied about in parliament. This is all the Conservatives. Aided and abetted by the Metropllitan Police, of course, whose idea of 'security'is apparently to have no idea whatsoever that significant illegal activity is going on on premises that they are presumably meant to be secure. And then when it becomes apparent, not to investigate as a matter of policy.

Looking at my diary for 20 May 2020 I see that I was in peak denial about not recovering from Covid as I should be despite the fact I wasn't able to do more than 4 hours work in the day or start before 10, and reporting being able to write in my diary without pain as a triumph. Um. Possibly if I'd been able to spend any time legally with someone in the preceding two months they might have told be otherwise, but of course I wasn't. If only I'd thought to hold a work meeting! A feeling that must be infinitely stronger among those who didn't hold a wake, a hospital visit, a home visit for a dying relative or friend. Which is why the idea that this can be got over on a technicality is a delusion, because the experiences of millions of people around the country are not a technicality and this isn't about coming up with a brilliant wheeze to get one over on the headmaster.

Mind you, there is one upside for the government, which is that chuck in Prince Andrew as well and it's a great day for an high court judgment that the 'fast track' PPE procurement process by which ministers bunged contracts to their friends was not lawful.

I wish I had known as a 12 year old painting fantasy landscapes that traditional Chinese landscape painting is not intended to be literal depictions of places in a mode of realism, but symbolic and imaginary*. I would have been so into it. As it is, I know naff all, so apologies to the art tradition.

Anyway, this is what you get when you combine watching the final couple of episodes of Nirvana in Fire** with current British politics. In this famous work, Two men atop a waterfall we see the tiny figures of two men, one yellow-haired, as they grapple beside a castle above a cascade. Is it a battle or a rescue? Surely one will plunge into the depths? But which? Though considered crude in execution, the work is one of many of this moment of symbolic importance.



*That is putting it extremely crudely because I only understand it thus. I want to read a book. Or better websites.

**An ending successfully pulled off, thoughts to follows

Day 1 has involved Boris Johnson getting booed as he left his surprise visit to Addenbrookes* hospital, and a five minute impromptu speech to the media by a medical student who suddenly found herself confronted with him (and of course moved away for not playing along). 23 year old Julia Simons was definitely someone who knew what she was talking about.

You can watch both here.

Schadenfreude as such incidents bring, there is a serious point, and that is that a general election campaign doesn't allow the PM to hide. He can shirk PMQs, he can shirk parliamentary committees, but a PM in an election period has to expose himself to the public and to the TV cameras. He can't do it solely in controlled conditions, because that is obvious too. And as we've already seen, for all he may have been the toast of the Eton sixth form common room**, without that adoring audience, Johnson doesn't do especially well.

*The Cambridge university hospital, a major teaching facility.

**The very definition of an easy crowd, it seems.

I have - given that the local train line is closed for engineering works - bought myself a coach ticket to London for the Brexit march on Saturday. Words can scarcely express how much I do not want to do this. I am getting myself there on the combination that I will feel guilty all day and long after if I don't, and that I will (hopefully) meet up with friends I haven't seen in a while to see myself through it. But I really wish I didn't have to. It's a minor hardship compared to what many people are going through with this complete mess, but it shouldn't be happening at all. I am beyond furious with the whole thing.

Fuck knows what is going to happen in parliament in the next 48 hours.

If there's one thing that tells you how cut-throat academia is, it is that my employer has people who have moved here from continental Europe to start work within the past 3 weeks. Because when it comes to the risk of Brexit vs never getting that job chance again, the job wins.

So now Jo Johnson's resigned, though somewhat vaguely and not actually from the Whip. Managed to dig out a grain of conscience somewhere in the back of his skull, perhaps.

I suppose it makes a change from being constantly interrupted by email or phone calls.

Working from home to write a report undisturbed by email, phone, or nice colleagues just asking a quick question. Naturally this would be the day that my stereo decided not to switch on any more. OK, there are other options in these modern times so I am procrastinating working while listening to CDs on the computer instead, but it will be annoying to replace, not least because I like that it still has a cassette player on account of being a present in c.1999.

Of the "£*$&ing elections I shall not speak (much), but gosh was the email I received yesterday as a party member from my Labour MEP really, really forthright in placing the blame for this on the leadership. Interesting times etc...

Right, stop procrastinating!