Emptying my Feedbin and stumbled across this epic from Christmas Day 2022.
The one where Matthew moves out of Sawtell because it’s too posh and goes to live sober in a homeless shelter in Melbourne with a Croatian who speaks no English (or does he?).
TV SHOW OF INTEREST
Finally got around to watching the pilot episode of Person of Interest last night. Took a little while to get going and I almost gave up. Not a comedy at all, but I couldn’t help feeling it was somehow a little like Minority Report meet Police Squad!, and not in a bad way.
Only another 102 episodes to go…
Academics in Europe are continuing to work with Chinese counterparts on “clearly problematic” artificial intelligence #AI research in areas like biometric surveillance, cybersecurity, and military fields, a new analysis has found. https://sciencebusiness.net/news/ai/europe-still-working-china-military-and-surveillance-uses-artificial-intelligence-report
____This is why I chose to rewatch #PersonOfInterest recently. By the end of season 3 a true hellscape is unleashed.
SPUDS UP!
We harvested the last three of eleven potato bags at the weekend. A decent crop, and very tasty.
Highlights were regular watering and earthing up (using homegrown compost) with my kids, and big kid’s tenth birthday party where his friends got to (among other fun activities) harvest the first three bags and take home a potato bag each.
Fond memories of going potato picking with my mum in the Lincolnshire Wolds in the early 1970s.
Well, the super secure new lock on our super expensive new front door failed catastrophically today.
I couldn’t get my key out of the lock. We couldn’t lock the door.
The local locksmith arrived within fifteen minutes, diagnosed the problem (“you need a new lock, £180”) and proceeded to spend the best part of an hour removing the broken extra secure lock (finally, reminiscent of the birth of my second son, “it’s out, I’ll have to charge a bit extra…").
£265!!!
Thankfully the lock is under warranty, but not the labour.
Big Kids' Sports Day.
England. Always different, always the same.
Labour’s self-imposed, arbitrary and “binding” “fiscal rules” are the same as the Tories' Austerity policies.
Political choices.
The same choices.
So much for change.
Original link to the article from 11 years ago:
My polling station was empty when I went to vote around 1:30 pm.
My nearly ten year old looked at the TWELVE names on the ballot.
“Don’t vote Labour, Dad”.
He looked some more.
“There’s Joe!” he said.
“VOTE FOR JOE!”
ELECTION FEVER
My inbox is full of people asking for my opinion and personal experience of this UK general election campaign and who to vote for.
(Un)fortunately, as I sat down to type the words from my fingertips, my four year old decided he needed to express his thoughts instead.
It’s obviously not to scale (he’s only four!), but you can clearly see the Labour supermajority in red, and the Tory wipeout in blue. That they are a ‘uniparty’/two cheeks of the same backside is encapsulated in the red triangle atop the blue square in the centre.
The Green surge in vote share (in green, on the left) isn’t reflected in seats won, of course. In pink, you can see the rise of the independents, black is the Workers Party, and to the far right (in grey) is Reform.
The Lib Dems are an irrelevance (except in the South West) in yellow (this is where we had to stop, as he got very upset at the lack of orange).
New e-scooter and cycle hire infrastructure in Southall Green.
[Edit]
Not the ideal location.
I used to be funny.
Bushmen came to cut the communal grass and fill my compost bin with the cuttings. #Winning
THE CUCKOO'S NEST
Ealing Genocide Supporters Club (aka Ealing Labour Party) held their Southall Branch meeting yesterday at the Dominion Centre in Southall. Under the guise of a “Your Town, Your Voice” community get together, our local elected repellents gathered on masse in all their finery. I couldn’t help myself as they posed for a group photo all gurning inanely as the photographer encouraged them to “say cheese!”. “Say genocide!” I offered. “Genocide supporters!”
Cllr Dr Murtaza of their number aggressively reprimanded me. “What evidence do you have that we support genocide?” he demanded to know. Well, I told him, my main piece of evidence would be that you have done nothing to oppose it.
Ooh! There’s Cllr Martin! Our locally elected anti-Traveller racist! “What evidence do you have to support that?” Well, here it is.
Oh, and while you’re at it, Cllr Dr Murtaza. Next time you are chauffeuring our glorious leader around in your Porsche, try not to park in a cycle lane, please.
Then there was illegal samosa factory proprietor Cllr “I own half of Southall” Anand.
I hadn’t realised until yesterday quite how visceral my revulsion for these people is. The grand cuckoo in the nest arrived about half way through the event. I would have confronted him myself, and previously I have done. Maybe I was just worn down from a week with the ‘flu, but I felt like I really had to keep my distance for my own sanity. In any case, a few council officers made beelines for me and made sure I was busy answering their questions.
Interestingly, one officer suggested to me that resident-led ward forums would be the likely outcome of this event. Fantastic news, if that’s the case. Another officer I spoke to later, knew nothing about this idea, though, but took copious notes. A neighbour and friend told me that she spoke to the cuckoo himself who told her that this meeting was in fact the replacement for he old (councillor-led) ward forums. That’s that then.
The event itself was a repeat of several resident[pdf] surveys and failed plans over the past twenty years or so (for which I’ve seen records, or taken part in). The problems are always the same. The responses from the council are always the same. Nothing.
“…when you look at it on a personal level, if Nelson was your friend or your neighbour, you would absolutely agree that he should be given the immediate right to settle.”
You. Absolute. Bastards.
If anyone knows of a crowdfunder to support this man’s legal challenge, I would like to contribute to it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-69016539
One of the reasons we never visit the place where I grew up.
“I just have to share?”?
Natalie Elphicke said Labour can’t be trusted and doesn’t listen. She said the victim of her husband’s sexual assault was a liar even after he was convicted.
Does she really share Labour values?
Starmer: “I’m delighted to welcome Natalie Elphicke to my changed Labour Party!”
I’m so glad I ate my salad before reading about the Eunuch Maker.
FEAR AND LOATHING
I spent the best part of nine months in America in 1989-90 on an international student exchange programme. It was an experience I’ll never forget, mostly good, and certainly an eye opener.
There was a bit of a last minute faff getting my visa (I had misunderstood the requirements) and by the time I got to Gatwick Airport I was shitting bricks, having never flown or been abroad before. Lockerbie was also still fresh in the memory.
The plane I was on just happened to be Virgin Atlantic’s inaugural flight from Gatwick to JFK, and so we had the unpleasure of Richard Branson sexually assaulting us in stockings and suspenders to celebrate.
On arrival in the US, I had no clue what to do other than to get a “limousine” to Farmington, CT, and then a taxi from there. I had my dime for the phone call ready.
The limousine was a coach, and we arrived in a deserted Farlington coach terminal at 2 am. I found a phone booth, put in my dime and called a taxi. The operator couldn’t help me and hung up. There goes my dime! Why didn’t I have a Plan B dime? Fuck! Somehow, I managed to call another taxi and got to my student digs on campus at CCSU in New Britain.
It all felt utterly surreal to me then, like being stranded on another planet, adrift in my bunk bed, alone in the halls of a spacecraft, listening to the crickets and the ghostly sounds of train horns. From the initial induction for international students - “Americans can be outwardly incredibly friendly to strangers, and will almost certainly invite you to come to their house anytime for dinner. Whatever you do, don’t go! They won’t be expecting you!” - to the imposing vastness of the country and people, I was warned to expect culture shock.
Everything was big to me then, which meant that I felt small and insignificant. I found it hard to adapt and got so homesick that I booked a flight home for Xmas and New Year just to see my family and friends again. I didn’t really want to go back afterwards.
But I had already had some amazing experiences. My roommate, Mark, was totally into active outdoor life and we went climbing locally at Ragged Mountain, which was an exhilarating first for me climbing to the top of a cliff. Then we set up a ridiculously ambitious plan to climb Long’s Peak in the Colorado Rockies during the Thanksgiving holiday. We failed because we got hit by what was thankfully just a two day a blizzard as we set up our tents at basecamp. Once safely back down and showered, we had a massive breakfast at Ed’s Cantina in Estes Park the next morning before going skiing (another death-defying first for me).
Mark is still cycling, skiing, hiking and living off his memories of later climbing Mount Everest while selling toilets to pay for it all (which is funny in itself as I have never met anyone who can fart and burp constantly like he did back then). Mark’s wilderness pal Mike is still in the wilderness, and is now also a published author on the significance and synchronicity of owls as messengers from other worlds or dimensions in time and space.
We regularly ate at Pizza World in Farmington, where they made the biggest and best spinach and ricotta calzones. We drank pitchers of beer at Elmer’s, and got free slices of fresh pizza every evening at 10:30.
I trained with the Blue Devils' soccer team (with one eye on getting fit for our Colorado expedition), and made number 26 (out of 11) on the team, which featured multiple Geordie, Irish, and European failed pros on soccer scholarships, and coached by a Geordie and an ex-Bristol City player.
A group of us Internationals set up a satirical student magazine (A Connecticut Wanker) produced on a very early Apple Macintosh computer.
I even got to have a go on the student radio one morning and played Fools Gold by Stone Roses to our mystery audience.
That reminds me, Steve Albini’s untimely death yesterday - when I got back to the UK, I tried to get involved in the student union magazine and wrote a condemnatory piece about the naming of Albini’s new band Rapeman. I got slaughtered by the hipster editorial team for being unhip and not being into Marmalade, and I held a grudge against Albini ever since (despite grudgingly enjoying his work as a producer). So it was with mixed feelings that I read yesterday that he had recently noted the error of his ways as a young man and sought to hold his hands up and acknowledge his white male privilege.
When I somewhat reluctantly returned to the states in January, I ended up having such a blast I didn’t want to leave when my visa expired and tried (and failed) to get a new one so I could stay and work. We did more skiing (in Killington, Vermont), and watched Nelson Mandela walk free on the hotel TV. (Almost exactly thirteen years later, I watched in shock and awe as the US bombed Baghdad back to the Stone Age on the hotel TV while on a skiing trip in France).
We did Spring Break in Miami, and the Florida Keys, but especially Key West.
We took a road trip to New Orleans via the Appalachian Trail, Memphis and the Mississippi. And we finished off with a road trip delivering a car from Boston to LA, taking in the Mesa Verde, and the Grand Canyon, along the way.
We did day trips to New York and Washington, DC.
When I say “we” in all of the above, we were a group of international students, quite a few of us English, but with some French, German, Italian, Cypriot, Bangladeshi and Canadian people in the group, too. Not everyone went on every trip, but I did.
We split up in Santa Monica as my two travelling companions wanted to go to San Diego, while I wanted to go to San Francisco (and I had run out of money, so my plan was to get a flight back to New Britain from there, and then on to my flight home to the UK). I ended up literally walking around San Francisco for a week with no money and staying in the cheapest hostel I could find. I spent quite a bit of time sitting on the dock of the bay looking at Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge.
One memory that always stuck in my mind was talking to a business professor at CCSU. I think I had signed up for his class before quickly dropping it because he insisted on too many formalities in his classroom that I felt had nothing to do with learning or even business (although what do I know about the latter?). Anyway, for some reason I can’t remember, this professor ended up explaining to me just how fearful, and loathing, and downright paranoid he was about unAmericans who - in his words - were “all out to get us”.
I didn’t really understand it then, I was just left gobsmacked that anyone could really feel like that in the richest and most powerful country in the world. But on the other hand, I knew that most of the Americans I had met had never travelled beyond their state borders, and never learned anything of the world outside of the US, and mostly were solely concerned with getting their degrees while having one massive keg party. A surprising (to me) number of female students were already married (or engaged to be married), and all wore so much make-up on a daily basis it’s like they were auditioning for Real Housewives sixteen years before it aired on TV.
The Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and a recent quote from a Jewish man born and raised into Zionist culture made me think about my paranoid professor and his culturally repressed students and the American people more generally, as it is the United States of America that is paying for and arming Israel. The US is, of course, founded by religious extremists fleeing persecution in their homelands, and who then inflicted genocide on the native American peoples as they colonised and settled on their lands. It’s a white European, male supremacist culture, very similar to Zionism, so it’s really no wonder the two are inextricably allied.
“Zionism is rooted in trauma and fear. It’s about survival and love for the Jewish people. But like any other ethnic nationalism, Zionism establishes a hierarchy: It’s about prioritizing our safety and well-being, even at the expense of others. It relies on an alternate historical narrative that justifies the occupation and rationalizes the status quo. And it cannot produce a just peace on its own.”
Via Zionism cannot produce a just peace. Only external pressure can end the Israeli apartheid.
OFFICE ABANDONED - SUN STOPPED WORK
Today’s office.
M.S. Panesar hit wicket b Panesar 0
Tbf, he lasted longer than I thought he would.
Today’s office.
TWO LITTLE DUCKS
Along with thirty-odd other parents, I saw my nine year old off on his big adventure this morning, a school trip away to Wales for three nights. Everyone was super excited and nervous, and so were the kids.
The teachers accompanying them were super-organised. We’d had several in-person meetings prior, as well as countless Dojo messages and crumpled lists stuffed into school backpacks telling what to pack and what not to bring.
One teacher checked all the kids into the school hall and gave everyone an identifying number to stick on their top. Another checked in all the sealed and named daily medication bags. A third handed out school prepared packed lunches. A fourth mingled giving out reassurances as required.
The coach arrived on time, and the teacher who handed out the numbered stickers announced that children would go to the bus in groups of five according to the names and numbers he read out - a bit like child bingo. Everyone put their suitcase in the hold and carried their backpack and themselves on to the bus. Finally they were all ready to go!
MIngling teacher then asked if anyone needed to go to the toilet before they set off, and I swear thirty-odd kids all got off the bus and went an did their last minute business before (hopefully) all getting back on board. A quick hand count (“only raise one hand each”), and the coach drove out of the school grounds to waves and sobs from parents.
A few minutes later, little Abdul emerged from the boys toilet… (well, I didn’t hang around to see that, I just hope that didn’t happen).
WHAT MARXISM TEACHES US
What Marxism teaches us is simply to approach questions of society from a material basis: how does human life persist? Through production of the goods and services needed to live.
How are these things produced under capitalist society? Through exploitation of the labor of the working class, that is, by requiring one class of people to sell their labor as a commodity to another class to produce values.
What is the result of this system? That workers are “alienated” from their labor, meaning from much of their waking life, constantly required to produce more and more with an ever-precarious access to the means of subsistence.
Via Jacobin.
STOP THE PLANES
My wife was born in Uganda. She’s Black, like our kids. She came to the UK when she was five.
She’s just told me she feels like she should put herself on a plane to Rwanda.
Then she said she realised she came here legally, she has indefinite leave to remain, and she’s a British citizen.
I asked her what was it that made her feel like she should deport herself.
Unsurprisingly, she said it’s because of all the anti-immigration rhetoric in the news. As she said,
It’s obvious no one wants my Black face here.