January Update No.3

'Nother little update. I got my passport form all sent off. So hopefully I'll have a nice blue British passport soon. One job ticked off for 2020. Still haven't cracked on with the work of fiction though. Very lazy of me.

Corona Virus

In the wider world we have the Corona Virus doing the rounds in China, apparently. People walking around in face masks and so forth. Though to be fair I haven't seen any face masks as of yet in the UK. In fact, these things always make me acutely aware of the "face mask psychology" - and I do think it's largely a psychological crutch. (Surely denying yourself fresh air and wearing a damp, breath-soaked mask outweighs the benefits of any protection offered when wearing one out and about?)

The practice seems very commonplace in the East, but not so common in the West. I always wonder if this is a sign that people in East Asia are more impressed upon by their media and institutions.

In the West, whenever we see these "outbreaks" in the media there's a mini panic. Lasting a few days. A panic that most people completely ignore, but that some get swept up in. Meaning they may start taking extra precautions - buying face masks, hand washes, maybe avoiding crowded places altogether. However, it passes pretty quickly and the big "fear factor" is relatively short lived. It seems to me though that people in the East are continually in that "precautionary" state. I've even seen oriental people walking around the UK in face masks over the years. It's like a weird hypochondria - though I may be missing the significance and value in some way.

Labour Leadership

In the normal world we also have the race for Labour leadership. I have no idea how the process works, so I'm not in a position to make any predictions. It's interesting to follow though and I suspect whoever wins there could be interesting implications. Keir Starmer seems odds-on favourite with the bookies. With Rebecca Long-Bailey second and Lisa Nandy third.

Personally I intuitively prefer Rebecca Long-Bailey and feel she would be the best choice, but I'm not massively invested either way. I think if she loses there'll be a lot of homeless people on the political left though. So that will inevitably lead to something in a knock-on sort of way.

Updates #2

So, another quick post to keep things ticking over. It's amazing how lazy I've gotten since I stopped religiously posting daily. I've had the flu over the last week or so though :( so that has given me a nice excuse to take my foot off the gas a bit.

Where were we the last time I posted?

I mentioned getting a passport didn't I. I've actually filled in the form and gotten myself some passport photos so that has to go down as progress. Just need a counter signature now.

Also regarding my work of fiction I actually finished Chapter 4. At least the rough version anyway. I've started fleshing out the general story a bit more too. Kind of storyboarding it I guess. Not with actual graphics (though that would be fun - could I do a comic version!??), just in note form. I should start writing Chapter 5 ideally in the next few days.

General News

As for wider news it still seems to be Iran focused. Well, that and the royal drama anyway. I'm still not entirely sure what to make of the Iran situation. As for the royal drama I'm a little worried that it's all part of a wider attack on Britain in general. It seems like the media are just endlessly turning the screw on all the royals. It's not a huge deal really, and hardly on the same level as the Iran issue, but it's potentially an issue in the long run if it means constitutional questions start getting asked.

I've also largely switched off from the EU drama. At the moment I'm just picking up bits and pieces almost through osmosis. I saw a few days ago that the EU parliament had banned nationalistic symbols from the parliament. Meaning the Brexit Party union jacks had to be removed. It sounds incredibly petty. It's terrible PR for the EU if true. As it confirms in a very visible way what many critics of the EU have always claimed - that it is indeed a threat to the nation state. It would have been a smarter move to encourage EU politicians to bring their nation's flags. Creating at least the illusion of symbiosis. I guess they fear these "nationalist" tendencies too much to allow them any headway though.

Me - the latest !

I said I'd do a few little update posts to keep this blogging ticking over. So here goes.

Personally my main thing at the moment is getting a passport. It may be recalled from last year's posts that I've never had one. It's something I really need to sort out. Not with any particular excursion in mind. Just mainly to have some actual solid ID for general purposes. I said I'd get it done in 2020. So quite boringly that's the main thing on my to do list right now.

As for online activities I've been doing a few posts working on my phonetic alphabet. That can all be found on this blog; Oink - A Phonetic Alphabet: The Full Alphabet

And that's about it really.

One of my main reasons for dropping back with the content for this blog was to concentrate more on a work of fiction I've been attempting. However, so far I've done precisely nothing with that. The journey thus far can be found here; World Island: Home Page

Perhaps posting here will shame me into doing more.

In The News..

As for what's been in the actual news. Politics an all that. It's mainly been "world war III" hasn't it.

My thoughts on the whole Iran situation are very mixed and unresolved. I genuinely don't quite know what to think, or which side to take, if any. My thinking ranges from the prosaic to the wildly conspiratorial. Obviously it goes without saying that war is bad and that I'm generally against it - who doesn't say that. However, it's never so simple in reality.

Watching the media and social media commentary you tend to get a lot of people with strong opinions on both sides. Those demonising Iran. Others demonising the US and Israel. Life's easy when you're certain who the bad guy is. It can never be truly that black and white though. Can it?

Anyway, I'm just reserving judgement I guess. Hopefully things will head in the right direction.

Can I still call it "daily" ??

Also it's just occurred to me that the blog is still tilted "ya daily cyberia". It's hardly daily though at present. Should I change it? It still has the web address of "freckled monkey" anyway lol. So it barely matters really. Neither name is great. I should probably just leave it :)

New Year, New Projects

New Year's Day. So a bit of a fresh start. I've decided that for the next month or so I'm going to stop posting daily. I've been posting daily since about May and it's been quite a good exercise. However, I have other writing projects to get cracking with at the moment and this is eating into my time a fair bit. Plus, it seems very quiet on the political front at present. Eerily quiet. So it might be a good time to take a break.

I think I might try to post once a week for the foreseeable future just to keep things ticking over. I will start posting daily again at some point though as I deem it really useful. Perhaps I will use this blog to post little updates about what I'm doing elsewhere too.

Have a great new year :)

Sedgefield - Con Gain

Finally Sedgefield. Another Conservative gain.

(click to enlarge)

This was a slightly odd seat. Labour loosing huge ground. The Conservatives doing very nicely, and the Brexit Party seemingly helping out.

There's nothing too much to mull over in regard the other information in the table. Though one noticeable thing is that this time we have an independent candidate with (seemingly) very little social media presence (again, I couldn't find a Facebook or Twitter account when I looked). Concurrently they also have quite a low vote share. Gaining just under 400 votes. So we see that the independent candidates that had impressive vote tallies also had an impressive showing on Facebook, and vice versa.

It would be nice to see if this "Facebook niche" pattern was present right across the country. Shame I didn't do more seats really.