Rolling Stock

I had occasion yesterday to read the electricity meter on one of the cabins at the top of the garden and realised I had stashed a kite surfing land yacht trolley there which was given to me by a neighbour who no longer had a use for it.

Being hidden and out of the way, it had escaped Hay's (and my) attention and thus had avoided being sold. I had the idea of converting it into a launch trolley for the Topper sailboat. The problem is that it's rather bulky, would need extensive modification and would fill the entire back of the Ford Galaxy. What I really need is a collapsible trolley.

As luck would have it, a pal of mine from my old school, who made a career from selling water sport craft had read my blog and is in possession of such a collapsible trolley. He has offered it to me at a very reasonable price, plus shipping.

I must say I love the last bit of the boat's sail number...

A bit difficult to see in the photo, but it's 23666 - the number of the Beast.

Topper Tales

Went down to Starcross in Devon, on the River Exe, to collect a Topper sailing dinghy yesterday with Hay. 

I'd been waiting all week for a set of roof bars so I could put the Topper on top of the Galaxy. Got the roof bars on Thursday, but some idiot had mucked up the order and a some crucial parts were missing. I managed to effect a jury rig which held tight. Just to be on the safe side, I limited my speed on the return to 55 MPH, so as not to put too much stress on the roof rack.

I was after a 2 person sailing dinghy that can be sailed solo and is light enough to put on top of a car. After getting some advice from my mates who sail, the Topper came out tops, so to speak. I was initially considering a Laser 2, but they're so damned expensive - Toppers are generally around £200-£400 and this one was a bargain at £175. I'm going to enjoy rejuvenating it.

Here's a pic of one in action.

It's a 2 person job to lift it, so I really need to get a launch trolley if I'm intending to go solo. The sad thing, however, is that I made an agreement with Hay that the windsurfer would have to go, as I don't use it as much as I'd intended.

Here's another Topper, fully rigged:

The reason for going for a dual boat is to teach by sons to sail, but that may be a forlorn hope.

Tiresome Masks

So, Boris says masks are no longer necessary and care home residents can have as many visitors as they want. Just another example of him, throwing people under his Big Red Bus in order to satisfy his backbenchers and save his own, miserable, lying skin.

I would ask those who refuse to wear masks whether they would take a gaggle of unmasked friends round to a care home to visit their nan. I'll bet you a pound to a pinch of poo they wouldn't. So why can't the 'Freedom' warriors extend the same consideration to other people's nans in supermarkets? Because they're selfish shits, that's why!

It's getting rather tiresome hearing people saying that children's mental health is being affected by masks. There's not a scintilla of evidence that this is the case.

Yes, some kids may well show signs of neurosis when told to wear a mask, but it's not the mask itself that's causing it. Show me a kid who believes a mask is affecting their mental health and I'll show you, nine times out of ten, a parent who doesn't like masks for ideological reasons. Neurotic kids have neurotic parents, who pass their neuroses on to their kids. It's the same with kids who are afraid of dogs - it's invariably the parents who pass on this fear. There's much evidence to support this. Children of parents with anxiety disorders are four to six times more likely to develop an anxiety disorder in their lifetime.

It's no accident that it's mainly so-called, libertarian Tory MPs who are coming out with this garbage. They have to in order to defend the indefensible.

Here is a quick and intuitive visualisation of the current Covid situation - a heatmap showing infection age ranges over time to a couple of days ago. Blue is falling cases and red is rising cases:

It's interesting to note that cases are rising in school children and a rise is now also manifesting in their parents' age group, and there are very early signs of cases levelling off from a decline and starting to increase in the grandparent generation. Dropping the use of masks in schools is plain idiotic and ideological.

Masks increase your freedom and don't, in any way, restrict your freedoms. As I keep saying, they're pieces of cloth, not IEDs.

Waste

A few weeks ago I bought a couple of BIC, piezo-electric gas wands for lighting our candles, which we use at night in winter to give the living room a cosy ambience. Wish I'd checked them before buying them.

One ran out last night and I tried to refill it, only to discover it wasn't refillable - there's no nozzle to insert a gas cannister into. Looked again at the e-Bay advert and yes, they're advertised as not refillable.

Rather a waste of money and resources when they cost £3.99 a pop. I'm surprised BICC are allowed to make them. There again, many gas cigarette lighters are the same - this is just bigger and uses a lot more plastic.

Work-Life Balance

People are being ordered back to their offices amid a lot of publicity for claims that people's mental health is suffering from having to work from home.

A lot of people, and I'd say, albeit apocryphally, more suffer from working in offices. The office is a place of high intensity interaction and just the kind of place where bullying thrives. Clock-watching and presenteeism doesn't happen in the home environment. The daily commute is stressful in the extreme, in many cases and, if you use a car, highly polluting.

I worked from home for the last 10 years of my professional life and loved every minute of it.

The Cost of Living

Since hearing food campaigner, Jack Monroe (aka @BootstrapCook) on LBC, I've been following her Twitter account. The following was published last week and is an analysis of items the poorer among us would be buying and how they've risen by over 100% in many cases:

QUOTE:

Woke up this morning to the radio talking about the cost of living rising a further 5%. It infuriates me the index that they use for this calculation, which grossly underestimates the real cost of inflation as it happens to people with the least. Allow me to briefly explain.

This time last year, the cheapest pasta in my local supermarket (one of the Big Four), was 29p for 500g. Today it’s 70p. That’s a 141% price increase as it hits the poorest and most vulnerable households.

This time last year, the cheapest rice at the same supermarket was 45p for a kilogram bag. Today it’s £1 for 500g. That’s a 344% price increase as it hits the poorest and most vulnerable households.

Baked beans: were 22p, now 32p. A 45% price increase year on year.

Canned spaghetti. Was 13p, now 35p. A price increase of 169%.

Bread. Was 45p, now 58p. A price increase of 29%.

Curry sauce. Was 30p, now 89p. A price increase of 196%.

A bag of small apples. Was 59p, now 89p (and the apples are even smaller!) A price increase of 51%.

Mushrooms were 59p for 400g. They’re now 57p for 250g. A price increase of 56%. (This practise, of making products smaller while keeping them the same price, is known in the retail industry as ‘shrinkflation’ and its insidious as hell because it’s harder to immediately spot.)

Peanut butter. Was 62p, now £1.50. A price increase of 142%.

These are just the ones that I know off the top of my head - there will be many many more examples! When I started writing my recipe blog ten years ago, I could feed myself and my son on £10 a week. (I’ll find the original shopping list later and price it up for today’s prices.)

The system by which we measure the impact of inflation is fundamentally flawed - it completely ignores the reality and the REAL price rises for people on minimum wages, zero hour contracts, food bank clients, and millions more.

But I guess when the vast majority of our media were privately educated and came from the same handful of elite universities, nobody thinks to actually check in with anyone out here in the world to see how we’re doing. (terribly, thanks for asking.) Every time there’s a news bulletin on the rising cost of living, I hope that today might be the day that that some real journalism happens, and someone stops to consider those of us outside of the bubble. Maybe today might finally be that day.

(But seeing I’ve been banging on about this for a decade now, it’s probably not going to be. Thanks for reading anyway, I appreciate it.)

And just to add: - an upmarket ready meal range was £7.50 ten years ago, and is still £7.50 today. - a high-end stores ‘Dine In For Two For £10’ has been £10 for as long as I can remember. - my local supermarket had 400+ items in their value range, it’s now 91 (and counting down)

The margins are always, always calculated to squeeze the belts of those who can least afford it, and massage the profits of those who have money to spare. And nothing demonstrates that inequality quite so starkly as tracking the prices of ‘luxury’ food vs ‘actual essentials’. 😤

To return to the luxury ready meal example, if the price of that had risen at the same rate as the cheapest rice in the supermarket, that £7.50 lasagne would now cost £25.80.

Dine In For £10 would be £34.40.

We’re either all in this together, or we aren’t.

(Spoiler: we aren’t) Now, picture if you will, the demographic of the voter who has kept the current Party in power for the last 11 years. Imagine the Chancellor having to explain to them that their precious microwave dinner now cost almost four times what it did yesterday.

Yeah, didn’t think so.

I mean of all the things, the Prime Minister claiming that he’s cutting the cost of living while the price of basic food products shoot up by THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY FOUR PERCENT is the one I’m properly angry enough to riot over.

‘Cutting the cost of THE living’ ie starving enough of the proletariat that we entirely wither away or at least seek to patch up the gaping holes in the safety net with charitable handouts (ie not Govt coffers) is NOT the same as ‘cutting the cost of living’, FYI @BorisJohnson.

Thanks everyone who has amplified this thread. I’ve been tracking these price rises forensically for a decade and it’s nice to know I kept all the (literal) receipts for something. Not sure what the answer is, but collectively refusing to be gaslit by the Government is a start.

If anyone else is curious about my workings: 

45p/1000g = 0.045p/1g rice at 2021 price.

£1/500g = 0.2p/1g rice at 2022 price.

0.2 - 0.045 to find the difference = 0.155p/1g

0.155 (difference) / 0.045 (original) = 3.44

3.44 * 100 to get the percentage increase = 344%

Ukraine

Putin lacks internal support, runs a Mafia regime and is making unreasonable demands over Ukraine. NATO is a defensive organisation, not offensive. Therefore it's only a bulwark against possible aggression from Russia - the only credible enemy in the Europe and the reason NATO was set up in the first place.

The immediate admission of Ukraine to NATO - like tomorrow - would be a powerful statement and raise the stakes such that Putin's hand is weakened. No NATO troops would be required to be stationed in Ukraine (although Ukraine's troops would become de-facto NATO troops) - it's a deterrent that costs nothing beyond the normal cost of NATO.

Would Putin dare attack a NATO country? I very much doubt it - he wants Ukraine without a shot being fired and is hoping NATO and the EU will throw Ukraine under a bus. If he did attack, there would be overwhelming condemnation and a great risk of Russia being completely isolated and possibly being thrown out of the UN. The consequences are unthinkable for Putin and he won't want to be responsible for starting the next European war while risking internal revolution. 

If nothing else, it would buy more time. If Putin is appeased, there would follow a domino effect with the Baltics, Romania, etc, following very shortly, which is not in the best interests of anyone, except Russia. There is a deep moral argument for supporting Ukraine, but admitting it as a NATO member also solves the moral argument of sending other NATO troops there and putting them in danger.

Do nothing and the West is shown up as toothless and, by default, NATO too, despite Ukraine not currently being a NATO member. However, Putin could become sufficiently emboldened to next tackle the small NATO country of Latvia (population 2m), gauging that NATO would not risk war for such a small nation, which conclusion was reached not so long ago in a war games scenario. It's straight from Hitler's 1937-39 playbook.

Admitting Ukraine to NATO could work - there's to lose, except the possibility of showing NATO up as being toothless, in which case NATO is a useless deterrent and well past its sell-by date. Alliances have always been weak against a single enemy, as history has proven time after time. Only a brilliant alliance leader can prevail, usually by deceiving members of his own alliance (John Churchill being a prime example) into doing things they would normally balk at.

Even the demise of NATO could produce something far more potent - an EU Superstate with a combined military under a single command - exactly what Putin doesn't want; NATO is just an excuse - his real fear is Ukraine joining the EU and prospering. The effect of that on his own country would be destabilising to his own regime - which can only be a good thing for the Russian people.

The Illusory Truth effect

Repeating a lie ad nauseam in an interview does not make it true. It's called the Illusory Truth Effect, whereby you appear to make assertions true by repeating them at every opportunity, which appears to be government strategy at present. Dominic Raab was doing it yesterday on TV, several times, unchallenged, and Boris does it at every PMQs, rather than answering tabled questions.

 

- Fastest growing economy in G7 (actually 5th of 7 now, and the initial fast growth was a factor of being the hardest hit through late lockdowns - this was Raab's unchallenged assertion yesterday).

- Got Brexit done (and look at the damage, both nationally and internationally. The intent of Brexiteers is to destroy the EU - that also happens to be Putin's intent. Putin, however, doesn't necessarily want to destroy the UK - Brexiteers seem fixated on it).

- Fastest vaccine rollout (no longer, but then there's one of the highest death tolls in the world due to lamentably late reaction to compensate for that).

- Tackling the cost of living (you must be joking - prices are rising the fastest I've seen in my life, and I'm 66. The poor are being priced out of food!).

- Coming out of lockdown faster than anyone (we're not in lockdown, for God's sake. A mask is not an IED, it's a piece of cloth. Pure recklessness and not based on any scientific consensus. A mask does not harm you or the economy in any way, shape or form. You should have seen the ones your parents and grandparent had to wear - no doubt you'd have complained about your precious liberty being infringed while begging for a gas attack. I do believe we've reached herd stupidity in government).

- We're building 40 hospitals (giving a hallway a coat of paint is not building a new hospital, for heaven's sake).

- What the people are interested in is [insert something the government promised but is making a hash of] (no - we're interested in getting you charlatans out on your arses. Don't presume to tell me what I or the public is interested in).

- The Prime Minister has been working hard (don't make me laugh - he's notorious for slacking and having no capacity for grasping the essentials, let alone the detail. He evidently doesn't even seem to recollect the majority of 2021. I suspect that when Dominic Raab penned; "The British are the worst idlers in the world," he had Boris Johnson specifically in mind).

- I've never experienced bullying from party whips (that's because you've voted along with the government all your political life - loyal slaves who defend the indefensible aren't whipped. I'd guarantee a Venn diagram of the overlap between those MPs always voting with the government and those maintaining they've never experienced any bullying or blackmail from the party whips shows 100% overlap).

- Tackling voter fraud (the last, single, documented case was in 2017. What they've done is disenfranchise 2m of the poorest voters to their advantage. I'm waiting for Trumpian allegations of massive voting fraud to materialise and for Boris to assert he's actually got a 100 seat majority).

Some MPs are doing this unwillingly and you can see their souls leaving their bodies as they repeat the above mantras. It's straight from the Trump playbook.

Gigafactory

The proposed EV battery Gigafactory in Northumberland is projected, according to the blurb, to employ 3,000 workers. Being the cynic that I am in respect to any announcement by the Johnson administration, is this reality or the blurb to gain government funding?

The Swindon Honda factory, which made conventional vehicles, itself employed 3,000 people, and they were making an entire car, albeit that was was primarily assembly with many parts made elsewhere. Had it moved to EVs, then that number would have reduced substantially, as there are fewer parts in an EV.

There are currently four Tesla Gigafactories; three in the USA and one in Chine. The Tesla factory in Fremont California, which is the largest, employs 10,000.

I find it hard to believe that the proposed Britishvolt Gigafactory, with the potential for automation and robots, will employ 3,000 workers. It's interesting to note that the chairman of Britishvolt has stepped down when it was discovered he was found guilty of tax fraud in Sweden 20 years ago. If you want to get government funding, then inflating the number of jobs is a tried and tested strategy. 

Even if it does go ahead, and there's still a substantial shortfall in funding, then there are the associated risks with a monoculture, such as hit towns almost entirely reliant on coal, steel or cars.

Also, it's debatable whether batteries are the future of automotive transport - there are many obstacles and much research going into other alternatives, such as hydrogen. The aim, it is said, is to attract EV manufacturers to the area, but with Brexit, is that even viable without huge, taxpayer subsidies? If we were in the EU, such subsidies would not be necessary.

The chart below (click to enlarge) shows percentages and absolute numbers of EVs registered per country in Europe.

While the UK is around the middle in terms of EVs as a percentage of new cars registered, it's quite high in absolute numbers, which is a plus; however, the combined EU, with the borderless trade advantage, is surely a much better location for EV production, which is probably why there are 6 plants already making batteries in the EU and there will be a further 19 in 3 years time. 

Could this have been announced as part of the plan to save Boris? Sorry, re-announced, as it was first announced on 11th December 2021, before PartyGate. We shall see.

Let There be Light II

Apropos of yesterday's post - I had the bright idea (pardon the unintentional and illuminating pun) of embedding the base of the resined fabric lampshade test piece in a clear resin drinks coaster, for which I have silicone molds. I first cut a circular hole in the base of the shade, thus allowing the maximum amount of light from the LED display stand to shine through the coaster. Then I placed the shade into the mold and poured clear resin into the mold, giving the shade added stability from a wide base.

As you can see, it worked perfectly (you can see the clear resin coaster on the wooden LED base). Embedding the shade into a circular coaster means I can use a variety of shades on the LED display base and make it interchangeable.

Also, these display bases can be bought with multicolour functions controlled by a remote, thus a white shade can be lit in a variety of colours using the same display base. Another advantage of these USB powered bases is that you can place the base in just about any location and use a discretely placed USB powerbank to to power it, eliminating the need for electrical sockets and phone charger 3pin plugs.

I think I've accidentally stumbled on an excellent solution here. Time to start looking at the viability of different fabrics and identifying a suitable drying former for something a bit larger - something thin and tall with a 4 inch globe on top. I think I have the ideal globe; a 4 inch, clear resin ball that I used to use when I had a go at contact juggling and now sits on my desk. Covered in clingfilm it would be the perfect shape and size when mounted on something about 45cm high and very thin, enabling the fabric folds to develop naturally and not too close together.

Let There be Light

I remembered I had some tiny, battery operated, LED lights and used one to illuminate the small, fabric lampshade I made as a test piece, prior to trying to copy a Georgia Jacob table lamp.

Not bad, but then an LED display stand I bought on e-Bay arrived in the post, which gives a much better illumination.

It looks a bit bright in the photo, but it's quite effective and runs off a USB connection.

I then thought about using the display base to illuminate some Bohemian glass I have - to great effect.

Brilliant!

Classic Sun Tzu

I'm in a quandary. While ousting Boris would appear, at first glance, to be a success for the future of the country, and Labour, it's far from that for Labour.

If Boris is chased out of office, there's a non-zero chance that he could be replaced by someone competent. If the only candidates are those in the current cabinet, then there's little chance of that happening, although Sunak could feasibly perform well. But an old-style Conservative could enter the fray and 2 years is a long time in which to rebuild trust with the electorate. However, if he or she can, then that's a plus.

Leave Boris in place and it's guaranteed to result in 2 more years of misrule, as he's psychologically incapable of learning from mistakes. Everyone will eventually get sick of him, even those who are currently supporting him against their better judgement and compromising their immortal souls. Weathering the current storm would probably embolden him and make him even more reckless in his behaviour, to the detriment of us all.

Yes, there's the effect on the UK of his idiotic, anti-Woke policies for another 2 years, but they can be reversed. Also another 2 years of recklessness would cement resent in those who still support him slavishly, once the full consequences of his lies hits their pockets, as it's already starting to. That said, inflation is finite in extent and probably last much more than a year, but the effects of Brexit certainly will.

It's a simple trade off between short term vs long term gain - and, well, just strategy. 

I'm reminded of Sun Tzu's 3 way horse race advice to Tian Ji. He told Tian Ji to race his best horse against the king’s secondary one, his secondary one against the king’s slowest, and his slowest against the king’s fastest one. The result was that Tian Ji won two races and lost only one.

OK, this isn't a 3 horse race, but you're better off putting what you've got against the opposition's worst, and who knows what replacing Boris will lead to in terms of a competent Tory leader, if that's not an oxymoron at present.

If Boris remains, and ss time runs out, the parliamentary Tories may once again attempt to oust him, but time is a precious commodity. The closer to a GE his replacement comes in, the harder it will be to turn the Titanic around and miss the iceberg that's in front of UK Plc.

As for the Red Wall Conservative MP who has crossed the floor to save his skin, I suspect he will be viewed with intense suspicion by the local party and may end up being deselected before the next GE and replaced with a bona fide Labour candidate - probably the one who was a Labour MP before the last GE. The ex Conservative also, somewhat ironically, co-sponsored a bill to demand that crossing the floor should result in a by election. Can't see that being pursued. It's come back and bitten him in the bum.

Death Whips

Sad news - Railway, the feral cat we've been feeding, is dead. He'd been missing for about 4 days and a neighbour found him in the hedge a few hundred yards up the main road. 

He'd been hit by a car and the damage was quite extensive, so I can only hope it was instantaneous and someone threw him into the hedge. I went to collect him and Hay buried him in Pet Cemetery in the garden, where there is a couple of dogs and many a cat. Ours was the only home he'd ever known and he'd started to trust us.

We spent part of the weekend cutting willow whips from the willow arbour Hay and her sister created a couple of years ago.

We planted them next to the rear (or is that front?) patio to form a windbreak and to afford some privacy from the neighbours.

Some were planted vertical and others in between the verticals at a 45 degree angles. If they take (and it's rare for them not to), they'll form a lovely, thick willow hedge, or fedge, as it's called.

I bought Hay a book on living willow sculpture - making all manner of garden furniture from living willow whips.

Epoxy Resin

I took delivery of my resin kit last week and had a couple of small experiments before having a go at replicating a Georgia Jacob lamp in the not too distant future.

First off was using some silicone koi molds and gauging the curing time of the resin, which was well in excess of the advertised 12 hours - multiples of the curing time for car bodywork epoxy resin, but that gives you time to work of whatever you're making and tuning the shape.

I'd bought some orange and blue dye to colour the koi with - you only need a drop to get various shades - trial and error.

I then had a go at some fabric.

I covered it in a thin layer of clear resin on a silicone mat I have for baking.

I draped it over a makeshift former, but the material was too thin and it was almost impossible to prevent the folds from sticking to each other. Being thin material, it didn't really soak up enough resin to be really solid - it needs to be muslin or linen. However, it was a modest, initial success. I have to give careful thought to the shape and size of the former though - it needs to be tall and not interfere with the folds.

A small, LED display lamp is on order (the cost is just a few quid) to place the resin 'vase' on. I'll cut out a small aperture at the bottom for the light to shine through and see what it looks like.

I had the idea of perhaps making some display lights by making coloured shapes and drilling holes into which to insert a string of LED lights, rather like this set we bought years ago from IKEA and are no longer available.

SL500

Well, after my usual mechanic finally admitting defeat in over 3 years of diagnosis, I took the R129 SL500 to another garage and they miraculously managed to diagnose the misfire issue - after 2 months - they're convinced it has faulty wiring in the engine temperature sensor.

A new one was ordered from Germany and dropped off at the garage on Friday. The faulty wiring fooled the engine's computer brain into believing the engine was super hot, resulting in more fuel being dumped into it than it was capable of handling at the temperature it was actually at, with the result being a misfire when warm.

Keeping my fingers crossed that the diagnosis was correct and have ordered an MoT on that basis. It looks as if I may be using the car this coming summer, after which I may sell it, as it's doubled in price in the intervening 3 years. 

Overwhelming The NHS

I mistakenly published 2 days worth of blogs yesterday. Mea culpa! 

We keep hearing about the imminent collapse of the NHS, but what does that mean?

The NHS is like a water pump that usually works at a constant speed. Occasionally it speeds up slightly; occasionally it slows down a bit, depending on government tinkering. 

The problems occur, however, when the water it's being asked to shift increases beyond its capability. The pump still continues working away at its design capacity, but the build-up of water requiring to be pumped just grows and grows. The pump doesn't actually break down or fail - the metric of collapse occurs outside of the system.

There is no precise point at which we can say the NHS has been overwhelmed - it's a function of the queues that build up, and adjusting the metrics of permissible queue length can give the semblance of everything moving along without a problem.

Queues are building up and there are now 5.7m people waiting for operations, and the waiting list is growing - by any reasonable metric, the NHS has already been overwhelmed, but you wouldn't know it, as it just keeps limping along like Monty Python's Black Knight - although the Black Knight is not a valid analogy, as the Black Knight becomes incapable of functioning at all, whereas the NHS will keep functioning, but not fulfilling its full intention. A better analogy is a bus service which has too many customers and capacity isn't increased.

Staff absences are at record levels and staff are leaving in their droves through burnout, thus the NHS is now not even operating at design capacity, exacerbating the growing queues - it's severely wounded.

The following image is of a robot arm that was programmed to recoup leaking hydraulic fluid so as to stop it from 'dying'.

It was an art installation and the hydraulic fluid was dyed to make it look like blood. Created in 2016 by Sun Yuan & Peng Yu, they named the piece, 'Can't Help Myself' and it finally ran out of oil and died in 2019. This could be a metaphor for the NHS.

Reading

Overheard while walking with Hay (while I was listening to something on my hidden earbuds - under my beanie):

Hay: "Mumble, mumble mumble." Or at least that's all I hear.

Me; "Yes."

Hay; "Look at me!"

Me - I look at her.

Hay; "Do you remember Pam?"

Me; "Yes."

Hay; "You don't, do you?"

Me; "No."

For Christmas, Hay bought me a book called Between Past and Future, by Hannah Arendt, a political philosopher of the 20th century. She attended the trial of Eichmann in Israel and coined the phrase; "The banality of evil."

Now I'm no dullard (or so I like to think - others may differ), but I find the book infuriating. I can read a sentence (and her sentences can be quite long and convoluted), but not understand one iota of what she's trying to convey.

I've not come across many writing styles like Arendt's - I can only compare it to the writing of Bertrand Russell on an obtuse day, but if I read a Russell sentence or paragraph twice, I can at least get the gist of what he's trying to say. Not so with Arendt - it remains a mystery, no matter how often I go back and reread a paragraph. Yes, the words are strung together with perfect grammar, but the transfer of the idea or concept into my head is missing. She's trying to convey philosophical concepts in philosophical language. What I need is a master of analogy - like JVT - to put it into understandable concepts.

Nor is her writing style one where you can dip in and out of the book - which is my preferred style of reading (mainly because I tend to fall asleep when reading for more than 20 minutes at a time and prefer to accomplish the task in the horizontal position). It requires constant attention.

So, an annoyingly impenetrable book; so impenetrable that I can't be bothered to persevere beyond page 49. I'd love the opinion of any other readers of Arendt's work.

I'm also reading a book about the history of the Hittites. That's also proving difficult, but for an entirely different reason - the names of the Hittite kings, a) are unpronounceable, and b) all start with an H. This results in me confusing the names of the kings and entirely mucking up the timeline. 

The Horse's Mouth

I absolutely love Twitter now that I've started using it. What I especially like is that you can find experts and follow their tweets which are, from necessity, short and to the point and, because they're generally not known by the hoi polloi, you don't get stupid comments. You can get science, for example, straight from the horse's mouth, rather than it being selectively filtered through the media - and filtered it most certainly is.

Yes, you get the usual verbal graffiti from the odd moron, but nowhere near as much as on Facebook, where most of the argument takes place on media news sites about the accuracy of the news itself, which is invariably filtered by an agenda.

I follow people like virologists, epidemiologists and mathematical modellers, eminent historians, key journalists, the odd comedian (Mark Gatiss, Bill Bailey, David Baddiel, etc.), James O'Brien, Michio Kaku, Mark Kermode, Martin Lewis, The Secret Barrister, Joylon Maugham (The Good Law Project), campaigners (Greta, Gina Miller, etc.) and Dom Cummings - the latter is merely pick over his ramblings, there being the odd gem here and there, but it's mostly execrably written.

I'm seriously thinking for coming off Facebook, with the exception of using it for posting this blog.

Don't Look Up

With a few exceptions, the critics have savaged Don't Look Up! Yet the public seems to love it, and I include myself in that number, not because it's a particularly good film, but because of the message it's conveying, which is particularly relevant today.

I generally respect Mark Kermode in his analyses of films - if he recommends it, I generally have a favourable view after watching it myself. He's the chief film critic for The Observer, which I read every Sunday.

I wonder whether the critics who don't like it work for the newspapers and media organisations that support populist politicians and actively engage in an anti-science stance in favour of ideology. Makes you think. However, the Guardian's film critic, Peter Bradshaw, was lukewarm about it, so perhaps I'm off the mark. 

If you look at the Comments Section on the Daily Mail's review, DM readers generally class it as Woke and have more to say about the private lives of the actors than the film which, from the comments, I doubt many have even seen. 

The Express Comments Section on the film, dated over a week ago, doesn't have a single comment, suggesting the vehemently Anti-Woke brigade hasn't watched it yet.

Peak Parody

 I believe we've hit peak parody.

I have watched several satires of PartyGate and was initially convinced I was watching reality, not satire. I had to check on the names of the individuals to satisfy my mind.

The best one was Rosie Holt pretending to be a Conservative MP being interviewed about whether she'd attended the 20th May party. It's priceless and here it is:

I'd never heard of Rosie Holt before and was convinced she was a Conservative MP. I also saw an interview with Boris' Mini-Me (Michael Fabricant) and was convinced that was a satire, but it wasn't.

We are in the midst of a parody administration. It's not a case of if, but when Boris goes. The Red Wall MPs, most of which have only wafer-thin majorities, must be bricking themselves. I don't think it's an accident that my own Conservative MP, Luke Hall, emailed his constituents over a minor matter and managing to sneak into the email a poll of voting intentions at the next election. Mid term? The backbenchers are on the move and I can't see Boris lasting another week. To quote Cromwell; "In the name of God, go!"

I'm just waiting now for the Conservative leadership election to start on TV. Any cabinet member who is coming out now to support Boris must surely be excluded on the basis of lack of intelligence.

Global Britain - represented by Boris and Andrew. Phew, what an impression that must give.

Caravan Update

Work is progressing on the final touches for the caravan.

I poured epoxy resin on top of the logs I'm going to use for the outdoor surfboard seat in order to prevent waterlogging from the top. Rain landing on the surfboard will naturally run underneath it and soak the logs, weakening any bond between the logs and the surfboard. This precludes that.

I'll additionally drill some holes into the log tops and fill them with resin before using resin to effect the bond between the surfboard and the logs, thus giving a deep key into the wood and prevent the surfboard being prised off. Might even use a couple of recessed bolts to put into the drilled holes.

Talking of epoxy resin, I received the 1970s Georgia Jacob lamp I bought on eBay for Hay's birthday. Here it is lit up in an outhouse, where I'm hiding it till her birthday.

I cleaned it up and was surprised to discover the shade wasn't glass, but epoxy impregnated cloth. Intrigued, I watched some YouTube videos on making resin lamp shades and it's not that difficult, although none of the ones in the videos use cloth. 

The square of cloth is apparently soaked in epoxy resin, allowed to cure slightly and then draped over a stand so as to develop the characteristic folds during the final cure, using a heat gun to effect slight adjustment of the folds as necessary. I've ordered 2kg of clear, epoxy resin and am going to have a go at making one myself. The lamp bases are easy to buy on eBay for a few quid.

I've also ordered a few koi molds and am going to try to create a translucent koi lamp. Watch this space.

Hay might decide to use the Jacob lamp in the caravan (which was the intent of the purchase), although I doubt it, as it casts a wonderful, warm glow and would be perfect in the house - and it is a birthday present, after all. It's also a tad expensive for the caravan - one of my own home-made efforts might be more suited.

Another touch for the caravan living room was purchased yesterday from a workshop a couple of miles from me.

A stag's head on a piece of rustic oak. That's destined to go on the wall over the TV. An enterprising young local chap makes all manner of stuff from oak - tables, chargers, wall hangings, doorstops, etc. 

Just the art works we've commissioned from a friend are left to be done, but they may take a month or two to be completed due to prior commitments.

While rummaging around in the house, I came across the phone I bought a couple of years ago. The rotary dial is in the base. 

I somehow suspect Hay has plans to sell it - over my dead body! She has a horrible habit of selling anything that's not been used in the last 6 months. Calls them dust collectors - I call them vintage artefacts. 

We don't have a phone plugged into our domestic phone connection, as we rely 100% on our mobile phones - haven't done so for well over a year. I wonder if anyone else never uses their landline phone? 

Once our domestic, fibre internet contract expires, I'm going to change it to a 4G router connection, like we have in the caravan, which is cheaper, faster and can be taken with us wherever we go - even in the motorhome (depending on coverage in some of the out-of-the-way places we stay). I must check the power consumption of the 4G router and see whether we can run it off the motorhome leisure batteries through the inverter. Can't see it having much of a drain - it's essentially a stripped down mobile phone. Looking on-line, I estimate about 10 Watts max, which isn't much at all, but will check on the unit itself. Some of them can be run off standard batteries for up to 6 hours, allegedly.

In terms of bookings, we have already had two bookings over the recent holiday period and someone has booked a week at the end of June. Now is the slack period till half term.

Learn to Live With the Virus

Many are saying we need to learn to live with Covid, but without spelling out what that means, other than allowing the UK to become the source of the next variant. 

What's actually needed is for us to adapt our way of working such that the effects of the virus, and its spread, are minimised.

It strikes me that the various lockdowns, albeit lamentably late, have proven that many of us are perfectly capable of working from home - many more of us than did pre-pandemic.

Now the sector that's best adapted and most suited to working from home is the service sector, with the exception of the hospitality segment. IT, insurance, financial services, etc.

Now, what kind of economy does the UK now have in our post-industrial times? A service economy, and thus we're one of the best equipped economies to learn to live with Covid. Working from home also improves work-life balance and ensures parents are there for when their kids get home from school, improving the children's wellbeing. Some today treat education as a cheap form of childcare, rather than a setting for learning.

Manufacturing will, in any case, be taken over by robots and AI in the not too distant future, so manufacturing as a source of work has a limited shelf life anyway.

The fly in the ointment, however, is that exports of the service economy are best effected with close neighbours, if only from a time zone perspective. 

Oops! We've shot ourselves in the foot a bit there...

Warning - Trip Hazzard

It strikes me that the Far Right, Culture Warriors and Brexiteers have a penchant for tripping themselves up at every conceivable opportunity.

Culture Warriors excoriate people traffickers today, but seem indifferent to the same trafficking in the 17th century - and those trafficked then weren't gaining liberty, but going into slavery. They say slavery was perfectly legal then, but so is landing on our shores today and claiming asylum. 

"We don't mean those traffickers!"

They hate refugees, but they go on about Britain's contribution to WWII (if you listened to them, you wouldn't believe the USA and Russia contributed anything to the victory) and the way in which we took thousands of German Jewish refugees.

"We don't mean those refugees!"

One of the pillars of Conservatism is the rule of law, but the right seem intent on undermining the rule of law at every conceivable opportunity and subverting it to its own purposes. Even trial by jury is now in their headlights, which is enshrined in Magna Carta. So much for changing history!

"We don't mean those laws!"

As for statues, they're quite happy for the statue of the paedophile philanthropist, Jimmy Savile, to be removed from its spot in Leeds, but not a statue of a mass murdering philanthropist in Bristol that took over 30 years to be taken down because of right wing intransigence.

"We didn't mean that kind of statue!"

The right loves freedoms, but our government is currently engaged in the biggest grab of our freedoms since Cromwell. Bullying of regulators, stacking of boards, challenges to the independence of the media, criminalising civil protest, restricting the right to vote, attacking the independence of MPs, challenging the judiciary, curtailing its powers and reversing its decisions, abandoning the Convention on Human Rights and, more recently, complaining about jury verdicts.

"We don't mean those freedoms!"

Right wing (they're predominantly right wing) climate sceptics wax lyrical about; "All the money people are making from green tech, renewables and subsidies," when in reality fossils are given billions in government subsidies every year.

"We don't mean those subsidies!"

Brexiteers are no better. They claim record employment shows how well Brexit is going, but we also have record vacancies that can't be filled due to Europeans leaving the UK in their droves, and every vacancy unfilled reduces pre-Brexit GDP.

"We don't mean that GDP!"

Brexiteers also respond with Remain Lies. Remainers in the media came up with high projections, but the high magnitude was based on a hard Brexit, which was expected, but has not happened. The direction of the vector has nevertheless been 100% accurate, as evidenced by recent headlines in the Brexit house journals, the Telegraph and Express. Once harsh realities come to light as incontrovertible facts, the term of the argument change so as not to have to confront those uncomfortable facts. Hence we have Rees-Mogg and Gove moving the goalposts for the Brexit benefits to at least 10 or 50 years hence. If you stick with the original terms - a bonfire of rules and regulations and an immediate surge of competitiveness - it's been a colossal failure.

"We didn't mean that immediate!"

The cry of Sovereignty was loud. Sovereignty to to whatever we want. Like allowing water companies to continue polluting our rivers with sewage?

"We don't mean that kind of Sovereignty!"

They love freedom of speech, except when you challenge them, when they maintain they can no longer say what they want anymore, despite them clearly doing so. The truth is that what the Culture War Warriors are really fighting for is a right to espouse their views without dissent. They are not arguing for free speech, they are arguing that you should not have the right to challenge it by using your own right of free speech.

"We don't want that kind of Free Speech!"

Normal Weather For The Time of Year

You won't sell many papers with the above headline so, because a very small part of the country, predominantly the more hilly areas, is going to get snow, which is not abnormal at this time of year, we get headlines such as "Britain to Freeze in Blizzards", etc.

It's the same hunt for sensationalism that led to accusations of Covid modellers being rubbish for having the temerity to publish an upper limit to Covid cases, as well as lower limits bases on action being taken (which was), and certain media outlets focusing solely on the upper limit so as to sell more papers. 

Political Provocation

 Just a quick few observations about yesterday's post on the Colston 4:

1. There's a constant refrain from those defending Colston's statue that slavery was legal at the time, while ignoring that those who profited from it bought parliamentary seats to ensured its legality and why it took such a long time for abolition to come to fruition, and only then with massive recompense to the slavers. However, it certainly wasn't legal at the time the statue was erected - it was 1895, some 88 year after slavery had been abolished. 
2. It's probably no accident (cue my own conspiracy theory) that Colston's statue was erected only a year after the nearby statue of Edmund Burke, MP for Bristol from 1774 to 1780, who had criticised Bristol's role in slavery. Burke proposed a bill to ban slaveholders from being able to sit in the House of Commons, claiming they were a danger incompatible with traditional notions of British liberty (thus reinforcing the fact that while slavery was legal, it was considered repugnant at the time by many). 
3. Colston's statue was conceivably a deliberate act of political provocation by 19th century Culture Warriors who took exception to Burke's Woke attitude. How better to respond, than by commissioning a laudatory statue of a mass murdering slaver. As an aside, as an MP, Burke said; "Your representative owes you not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion."

When you get shit like the following image and ministers criticising trial by jury - which is enshrined in Magna Carta as one of our basic rights - then you know there's something rotten at the core or the right-wing media and their ministerial puppets.

Much as I detest Rees-Mogg for his cherry picking of data to support his preconceptions, at least he has the decency to voice support trial by jury. 

It's starting to feel a lot like Weimar, as the song goes. We live in dangerous times for freedoms.

Parallel Universe Proven

Although he doesn't realise it, Boris Johnson, from his comments about the case of the Colston 4, has proven to science the existence of a parallel universe.

What he said is; "Statue protesters can't change history." On first reading he's correct, but it depends on which history he means - the one contained on Colston's plaque, which I believe is what he means, or the real, documented history. 

It seems he hasn't read the plaque on the Colston statue, which reads as follows:

That's rewriting history. 

The Colston statue was put up by fans of Colston, primarily in response to the erection of a statue of Edmund Burke, who had criticised Bristol's involvement in the slave trade. It was therefore a political statement and a provocation. As for the inscription, that's simply wiping Colston's history clean.

We already knew Johnson inhabited an alternate reality where lies are perceived as truth by him and his followers, but this is the icing on the cake.

For an excellent analysis of the case of the Colston 4, read the blog of The Secret Barrister. 

Christmas Detritus

Anyone else got a box of Quality Street chocolates from which you've eaten all the ones you know you like, leaving well over three quarters of the box, which will stay there till gone Easter and then be thrown out.

I seek out the flat, round toffee ones and the thin, long chocolate covered toffee ones. Both are in yellow/gold wrappers and are easily identifiable. 

I do tend to choose my choccies by wrapper colour, meaning I have no idea whatsoever as to what the ones in a purple wrapper taste like, but they're bound to be vile, as everyone in the household believe too. It's the power of the colour of the wrapper.