Cold Showers..

Continuing on the energy theme I was thinking it might also be wise to try using less. My biggest indulgence is cleanliness. Whether it's my body or my clothes or the utensils I prepare food with I like things to be clean. So I'm probably guilty (in fact I'm definitely guilty) of overusing warm water.

It's slightly irksome (and also amusing) that the people that were telling us to wash our hands every five minutes are now telling us not to worry about showering and using the washing machine. Still, I can't really use this as an excuse to completely dismiss their arguments.

Anyway, yesterday I thought perhaps I can try a cold shower. I have zero intention of completely replacing warm showers, but maybe if I have one a week it'll make a slight difference. So yesterday I tried one. It actually wasn't too bad. I didn't think I'd be able to manage it, but I did - just about.

Obviously it's one thing having a cold shower in late August. It's quite another having one in mid-December. So that might be beyond me.

My main issue isn't so much the cold though, it's more the cleanliness. I think you need warm water. Try washing the dishes with a sink full of cold water. You need that energy to lather up, break things down and remove grease. So I'm not convinced you'll get nice and clean with a daily cold shower.

It's a balancing act though, so I should at least try to make some compromise.

My thinking at the moment is that perhaps I can replace a warm shower with a cold one once a week, on a day where I don't have much to do. On the lazy days where I don't need to leave the house for long periods. I'm definitely not having a cold shower before I go out to work that's for sure.

I might try another one in a few days time to get some practice in. Perhaps there might even be some benefits.

Hellish Energy

I've been looking at solar power and other such like things, from a consumer point of view. Not with anything major in mind, more just looking to see what gadgets are available and how useful they'd be.

If the lights do go out this winter it'd be handy to have at least some alternative to the grid, even if it's just to charge a phone. The solar power banks you can buy don't look too impressive though from a solar point of view. I think they'd be next to useless in the UK.

Looking at these things it really becomes apparent just how much energy we use. Boiling a kettle is a seemingly minor thing and doesn't take long, but you're literally boiling water, it takes a fair bit of energy. Some little solar panel ain't gonna get close.

It makes you appreciate fire. Combustion.

GO nuclear.

As an aside I've also came to appreciate and understand nuclear power a lot more over the last year or so. Things finally clicked when I was reading about how radioactivity beneath the Earth's surface drives volcanoes. Nuclear power is often presented in popular culture as this scary, complicated - almost magical - thing; and magical in a malign way. It's a real world voodoo that humans shouldn't play with.

However, using uranium isn't really that different to using coal. Fire - combustion - itself is a chain reaction, only using oxygen. We start things with a spark then the fire self-perpetuates. Like a house burning down. It's similar with nuclear, it's just a different type of chain reaction. Instead of a spark we start things by firing protons or whatever. Then once it gets going the fire burns itself. Only it's not fire, it's fission releasing the heat - the breaking down of the uranium fuel. (So a meltdown is not unlike a fire that's raging out of control.)

This isn't a very technical explanation, but my lack of technical knowledge aside it does bring things down to earth a bit. Nuclear power isn't magic, it's just chemistry and nature. The nature that's under our feet. (And I say chemistry instead of physics purposely, in an attempt to remove it from the abstract in the minds of people reading.)

Of course, it's still dangerous. In many ways we're bringing the hell that's below the Earth's surface to the surface 😈. Again though, it's not entirely dissimilar to digging for coal. We dig down to get coal and oil - to release that energy that's been pressurised under the weight of the Earth. With nuclear we're just going for even denser things. Really heavy metals.

So seeing things like this I'm now much more open to using nuclear. It doesn't seem as unnatural anymore.

Returning to my plans..

That detour aside, and going from one extreme to another, as far as my own plans go I think the first thing I'll do is buy some candles. It's old technology, but it's dependable. If the lights go out it's a sure fire way of getting some illumination.

Then secondary to that I might get one of those little wind up radios. The claim is that they can be used to charge a phone, so that's the main appeal. They also have a little solar panel, so it'll be interesting to see if that makes a blind bit of difference.

I'm more optimistic that the wind up hand crank will work than the panel - at least it's something to do in the cold anyway ..the devil makes works for idle hands. I'm not overly optimistic either will be much use in any real sense. It's a relatively cheap way to experiment however, so it'll be a fun little purchase. I'll give an update if and when I get one.

The Jury Is Out

I'm shattered today and I have no idea what to write about, so I think I'll just mention the fact that Mary Elizabeth Truss recently replied "the jury is out" when asked if Macron was a friend or foe. This made me really laugh out loud when I first saw it pop up on Twitter. The reply was so unwittingly blunt and accurate, and annoyed all the right people.

It looks like she's a shoo-in for leader now. If so it seems the people who ousted Boris now have a replacement they'll equally abhor. If this is the case I don't think she'll get much of a honeymoon period from the press. It'll be all hands on deck from the get go.

The 'cost of living' crisis is building up steam nicely. I'm starting to see threads on Twitter with graphs and tables - put together by people who think they're Jeff Goldblum's character in the movie Independence Day. Imploring the public and government alike to take heed of their doom-laden analysis - and of course to follow their sage prescriptions for action.

It's exactly like with Covid, and boringly so. The crying of wolf almost mind-numbing in its repetition.

The only thing stopping me from mocking it completely being the knowledge that cold winters do indeed kill people in the UK. The elderly and the homeless being particularly at risk every winter, so perhaps it'll be more so the case during this one. The hype and fearmongering is obvious, but that doesn't mean that the bills and blackouts will not be real. So I'm trying to force myself to think beyond my initial instinct.

Orange Economy

In many ways it brings to mind the thoughts I was contending with when I was writing about how you "can't grow oranges on a laptop". 

People having access to computers and the internet has led to an abundance of digital produce. It's often said that modern people are lazy and that they "don't want to work", but there's an endless supply of memes and music and art and articles and so forth online - all made by people who've made the effort to do it, with no whip at their back forcing them to, and generally little chance of making money.

So ..it seems if you give people free (or super cheap) online "space" they'll be super productive with it.

However, physical produce - food, energy, goods, etc - requires physical space - and that's what most people generally don't have. Getting a few rooms to eat and sleep in (i.e. a home) is hard enough.

My argument is if you want physical abundance you need to open up physical space to people. People need gardens, workshops - places to do things. To grow things, to build things - to experiment and to create..

Do you really think people wouldn't make the effort to chop down trees for wood if they could this winter? To warm themselves by the fire just as their ancestors did. People can't just go out and get resources though - not because they're lazy, but because they're not allowed to. Modern society is so complex and things (like energy) are delivered at such a scale that people simply can't endeavour to warm and feed themselves as individuals

The problem with food and energy, especially for people living in the city, is that you have very little opportunity for self-reliance - because you have very little space. We live in a network of a thousand Romes - if the grain gets cut off we're all sitting ducks.

We have empty highstreets galore though, so it's not like we don't have spaces and places. We just need to make space work for people.

So when I think about energy I think long term we need innovation, space and more self-reliance. More capitalism, - more local market.

This Winter..

Pretty visions aren't going to help in the immediate future though I guess. So we just have unpretty problems at the moment. Personally I would bail out the people that need bailing out, but aim to do it in a way where that cash doesn't advance the ideologies that make us less free and more state dependent in the long run. It's easier said than done though. Especially when it's hard to know where the hype stops and reality starts.

....

(So much for being shattered - I've went from casual commentary to setting out policy plans lol. The idea of energy self-reliance, or a least a degree of it, is something that really interests me though. I feel like I have the spirit of Archimedes bursting to get out. Obviously things like solar and wind are limited, but in a way it's a shame that these technologies have become the preserve of the big state. With more freedom-loving people tending to dislike them. We seem to have this dichotomy of big business vs big state. Of course, we need industrial scale energy production to supply industry and warm homes, so it's sensible and understandable to think in terms of large operators, but who knows how much we could dent reliance on big providers by encouraging real personal innovation and self-sufficiency.

It's like with food: if you can grow some food locally it gives you a cushion. It also provides a potential pathway for scaling up.

Anyway, you can tell how tired I am by how much my focus is wandering, so I'll leave it there for today.)

Twitter trenches.. boxing not so clever

Well, yesterday's post was accurate. In fact, it was almost like a premonition. I've spent pretty much the entirety of yesterday and today arguing on Twitter about lockdowns and coronavirus deaths, the lot - and it has brought out the devilish side of me. I think I probably have overstepped the mark a little too at times - I was getting a little offhand with people. Being a little too cocky.

It doesn't bring out the best in me, and in my tired state (it's actually exhausted me a little lol) I'm not sure it was worth it all things considered. I seemed to have hit a nest of avid lockdown addicts - all of a sudden yesterday afternoon I started getting a flurry of replies to my tweets. It was like coming across a bunch of Japanese soldiers that hadn't realised World War II had ended. All the old arguments about lockdowns and Covid deaths - replete with graphs with spikes - started flooding back. I dusted off the old Wuhan images and at one point even shared a video of Yuri Bezmenov. It was like a little trip down wu-flu memory lane.

Again, I probably could've been a bit more considered. Many of the people I was debating were no doubt just genuine people who'd simply been swept up by the Covid narrative. Telling these people that 'Long Covid' is just a varying combination of post viral fatigue, psychosomatic issues and other health conditions wasn't that enjoyable for me. All they hear is me saying that their ailments aren't genuine.

The question, as per yesterday's post, is whether it's worth upsetting and disconcerting all these people in the name of puncturing the narrative. As I type I'm now not sure it is. As earlier, they seemed like hold-outs from a bygone war that no one is fighting any more --- now it's all gas prices, strikes, Ukraine and inflation. Coronavirus almost seems a little old hat.

It might have been better just to leave these people be. Safe in their narrative. Though if the prospect of lockdowns and mask mandates does reappear it could've been time well spent.

A guilty feeling..

The one thing that really niggles me is that when I was arguing I resorted to using an example from real life to illustrate how Covid deaths were misrepresented.

I first noted that anecdotal account here back in May 2020: This Brutal Lockdown

Back then I was honestly reporting, I was quite measured and thoughtful, but today I was just using the story to make a point. It was wrong of me to do this. I only knew of this death through second hand information - it wasn't a death of a person close to me, so I had no right using it like this. The people that push the Covid narrative are so relentless in their use of such stories and appeals to emotion though, so I couldn't resist firing some reality back at them. It's left me with a guilty feeling. Doubly so as I'd actually used the story on Twitter before in the heat of arguing (about a year ago I think) and I promised then that I wouldn't do it again after I'd realised what a lapse of judgement it had been.

I think the lesson I should take from today is that I need to exercise a bit more self-discipline. It's so hard to act like an adult though when the impishness takes over 😈

(As I finish typing this I've just received a notification for another reply - this time from a guy claiming China had a "great strategy" and that "masks are a zero impact way of saving lives". I need to resist the urge to reply. I need to settle down and get some sleep. I have work tomorrow. Self-discipline!!! )

Boxing Clever

I've mentioned many times before on this blog how Twitter brings out the devil in me.

I kind of feel like a boxer who enjoys boxing, but who feels a little guilty about punching his opponents once he's outside the ring. Should I be arguing/teasing/winding people up like this? Is it wrong that I get a degree of pleasure from doing it?

Yet on the flipside I'm also thinking: "They chose to get into the ring. No one forced anyone to box. They were trying to punch me too."

So there's a mix of feeling. Of course, as ever with things you want to be balanced. It's good to debate ideas - and to have a bit of cheeky banter - but you don't want to cross the line into outright hostility. The problem though is defining that line, and also acknowledging that the line may be different according to circumstance.

Anyway, what got me thinking about this again was observing the state of affairs in China regarding the coronavirus. When you watch some of the extreme footage from China it's clear that many of the normal people there are enthusiastically - and believingly - going along with it all. The mindset is ingrained much more so than here. It made me think that things wouldn't be so bad in China if the people had more exposure to opposing viewpoints.

By challenging the narrative vocally, both online and in real life, you can break down the groupthink - or at least undermine it and lessen its forcefulness. So it's always worthwhile voicing opposition in this regard. Things would be much worse here in the UK too were there not an adequate counternarrative.

So returning to Twitter, as I deem lockdowns and the other coronavirus measures so egregious I tend to go much harder on the people that are pushing them. Again, I don't always feel good about how robust and blunt I've been with lockdown advocates, but in all honesty I genuinely feel things are better for it (at least in an overall sense).

Plus, I'm just tweeting, whereas these folk are actively abusing the basic rights of people. So it's hardly disproportionate.

Sometimes I feel I'm going too far, and that I enjoy my sparring with these opponents a little too much. This then leads me to reflect that perhaps I should turn over a new leaf and start being gentler with people. At the moment though I'm leaning towards the idea that I should keep up the good fight. As if it wasn't for me and others like me it'd be much more like China now.

(And finally, for the record, I should reemphasise that this doesn't mean that I think it's fine to just outright abuse people or be mean. I'm bad on Twitter - much less measured than I am on here - but I'm not that bad (I don't think 😬).

[If anyone want to gauge this for themselves feel free to visit my Twitter profile and click on the 'Tweets and replies'.]

The porridge is the right temperature..

I'm falling behind a bit today. I've just spent some time posting on my other blog. It was just some little notes I wanted to make. It would've been easier to just post them here, but the themes were a bit too esoteric and history-orientated for this blog. I like to keep this one about me, us, today's politics, the here and now. In fact, I was reading some of the old posts on this blog back. I like how light and breezy they are. The shortness, the lack of overthinking. It's a nice halfway house between writing actual articles and posting on social media. The porridge is the right temperature.

MAN U 2

Two posts today. As promised I'll give an update on the $105 of Manchester United shares I bought yesterday. Firstly, as expected, they did go up in value - about 5 or 6 percent, I can't remember the exact figure. Then secondly, yes, as expected I did miss out on most of that. I was back of the queue when the markets opened. Plus I'm guessing out of hours trading gets factored in the minute the market opens, so things adjust before regular people just trading on apps like me can get in on the action.

I was reading up on out of hours trading after yesterday's post. I still have little idea how it actually work, but it was a little education and a step up for me.

Setting my buy for 'at market' before the market opened cost me too as when the buy finally actioned there'd already been a big increase. So as the price dropped back down I was in negative territory for a while. If I'd have just waited and bought a bit later at my own leisure I'd have been better off. Though it's all hypotheticals as I might have chosen not to buy at all had I felt I'd missed the hump.

All this said though I did find myself in the green by the end of the day. Then on top of this the price has risen about 2.5% so far today too. So at the time of writing the shares I bought are nearly 3% up. This has been helped by talk that Sir Jim Ratcliffe (he's a rich guy apparently) is interested in buying the club.

Party Prime

This morning I saw the footage of the Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin partying.

https://twitter.com/visegrad24

My initial response was "not impressed". Not so much because I have a problem with people letting their hair down in private, but more because she looked like a stereotypical vacuous good-looking woman - not that there's anything wrong with being a stereotypically vacuous woman, but it's not what you want for a leader.

So my thoughts were that she must be another young, handpicked world leader. Competent and naive enough to be a handy frontperson for progressivism. (I've talked about this "young leader" fashion recently - freckledmonkey.blogspot.com/political-princes ). I was vaguely aware that Finland had a young female Prime Minister, and a lot of other female cabinet members, but aside from that I had no real idea who Sanna Marin was though, so my prejudice aside I thought I should really take a deeper look before hardening my disdain.

Anyway, I've watched her speak a bit and done a little bit of reading about her and I've reassessed my opinions a little. I was kind of half-right.

My reassessment.

Having watched her she's clearly very intelligent, and she comes across as very nice. She's definitely not vacuous.

She's another record breaker, being the youngest person in Finnish history to become prime minister, at the age of just 34.

I was hoping to discover what her opinions are - does she have any controversial opinions, or strong defining convictions? However, I didn't really get a sense of anything. Like many of these other young leaders - the Arderns and Trudeaus of this world - they don't need strong opinions as they fit so seamlessly into the current left-of-centre progressive landscape. They're swimming with the tide. In fact, they're of the tide. It's just taken for granted that the progressive narrative is the correct narrative. So there's no need to think, and no need to be an outsider politically in any sense.

Again though, she comes across as very nice and likeable in all the footage I've watched, so I don't doubt her political views are sincerely held.

She's a vegetarian apparently, which gets a tick in my book. I'm tempted to see this as a sign that she has some strong personal convictions, but vegetarianism and veganism are so fashionable now it's hard to tell. Also she was raised by her mother and her mother's lesbian partner - her mother and father split up - so in the interests of balance I should note that it clearly hasn't done her any harm. She's obviously turned out very educated, intelligent and successful.

[A few weeks back I was criticising the idea of gay people raising children - specifically gay men, my point being that children need a mother. In fact, I got into an argument on Twitter about it. I was accused of being a horrible homophobe which is par for the course. The person I was debating shared the following article in support of their point, which assessed studies on the well-being of children with gay/lesbian parents:

https://whatweknow.inequality.cornell.edu/topics/lgbt-equality/what-does-the-scholarly-research-say-about-the-wellbeing-of-children-with-gay-or-lesbian-parents/

Aside from all the studies being very limited a large proportion were specifically just assessing children raised by lesbian parents - which is naturally a more common occurrence. So I thought it was typically disingenuous that a picture of two gay men was used to illustrate the article.

It's my personal opinion that it's ideal for a child to have a mother and a father, but there's obviously a huge difference between having lesbian parents and gay parents. As men and women are clearly different - a woman can actually give birth and nurture a new born child in a way a man simply cannot.

Again though, being raised in a same-sex home clearly hasn't hindered Sanna Marin, so in fairness I should note and acknowledge this.]

Party Out.

Anyway, my initial reaction to the footage of her partying was wrong, and on reflection I have no issue with it. Maybe you could even say it reveals a genuineness in her. I'm still of the opinion though that these bright young things have been helped into their positions of power because they're fully on board with the progressive narrative and are easily guided. I'd prefer to see this woman as a prime minister at the age of 54 with some real experience and gravitas.

Sleeping Giants

I had a really good nights sleep last night. Sleep is great, and you really feel the difference when you get a good dose of it. I had some quite vivid dreams though, which is the downside/upside - I'm never quite sure which.

Anyway, I woke up, sleepy-headed, and lay there scrolling through Twitter, as a kind of half-step into the day. What caught my attention was that Elon Musk was tweeting - jokingly - about buying Manchester United football club.

I own a few shares in Manchester United: 9.5 to be precise - that's about $120 worth. I'm not a Manchester United fan, but I love football, so I couldn't resist buying some. I like things where my interests intersect. In this case my interest in football and stocks overlapping. It kinda makes everything doubly interesting.

I was toying with the idea of buying some more, putting a buy order for when the US markets open, but I fear with all the speculation now rife I'll be back of the queue - I'm still so inexperienced and have no real idea how these things work, so it's really better just to sit back and watch. Though saying this if I don't put a buy order in I won't see how it pans out, so maybe I should stick $100 in and make it interesting. Hmm.

In fact, I'll do that right now..

[Intermission]

Okay so I've put an order in: $105 'at market'. (I've also made a cup of tea.) So let's see what happens. It'll be a mini education.

Obviously I'm expecting the price to go up with all the Elon-hype. His tweets were just joking, and he did say that..

However, he did then add this:

This seems like a smart way of testing the waters as United fans will view this and be like "He's a United fan too !" So it endears him to the fanbase potentially.

"I wish he wasn't just joking!!"

Anyway, we'll see what happens, I've had my little gamble. I'll provide an update tomorrow.

Enough is never enough..

On a side note when I re-visited Twitter to screengrab the Musk tweets I noticed "Enough is enough" was trending. So that's continuing unabated it seems.

Four For

Little update: I was back in work yesterday and the results from the pay rise vote was in. I only heard it second hand, so I don't have exact figures, but apparently about 97% voted against accepting the offer, and only four people voted in favour of it.

I abstained, so none of that includes me. I'd be interested in hearing why the four voted in favour of it - perhaps they have similar concerns to me, or maybe they just want to take the cash and avoid any further hassle. It's a big place though, and so far everyone I've spoken to has been in that 97%. (I need to improve my social skills to get more information, I'm always on the peripheries of any gossip.)

Again, it all seems rather mundane though. I think there's just more arbitration now - I can't see it ever getting to strike action or anything like that. It's mainly the wider 'cost of living' drama that makes me wary. Ninety-seven percent is fairly unanimous though.

Cat, Collar Dove, Moon and Middlesbrough

I'm gonna be lazy today (I think I've earned it after staying up late last night) and just post some pictures. They were taken today though, so I'm not cheating - that much.

(click to enlarge)

This first one is of two collar doves in the garden (I think they're collar doves), and the next two are of the Riverside Stadium under a blue sky. We were running late so there are no people in the shot, but it was fairly full and noisy inside - not that you'd know from the images. I still haven't quite mastered the phone camera yet, so I never quite capture what my eyes are seeing. Modern phone cameras tend to make everything seem more far off and less intimate to me, but again it might just be my inability to use them.

I had a similar problem when I was trying to get pictures of the August summer moon a few days back. It looked so big and impressive as I was walking home, but the camera could only render a white spot in the sky. The zoom making little difference.

With my own eyes I could see the 'rabbit in the moon' with crisp enchanting realness. A reminder that a picture is not reality, and that the online world will always be inferior in its beauty to lived reality.

I also caught this picture of a stray cat catching some shade in the garden a few days back. British wildlife in its nearest and dearest form.

People talk about 'rewilding' Britain, but wildness is not the way. We're creating a garden paradise here, where every bird, cat and hedgehog is a pet-like citizen free to come and go as they please, but tamed by the human presence.

The Orchard of Ideas

I'd completely forgot about this today. I've had a nice peaceful day of reading and watching football, intersected only by a brief walk in the summer sunshine to the supermarket. I only remembered I needed to do this about an hour ago, so I'm now sat here after midnight typing. I'm feeling tired, so I'm a little worried I'm going to miss the window of sleep and end up awake with heavy eyes 'til the early hours. I'm determined to post something though as I really feel sticking to the habit is worthwhile.

I started posting daily [on my days off work that is - I'm not that determined] about a month ago and I now have fifteen blog entries to show for it. I really believe that if you show a little self-discipline and just keep doing something things soon build up, even if oftentimes you don't really do that much, or don't have a clear notion of what you want to do. Just making the effort gets the wheels moving.

Sometimes you have nothing to write and nothing comes. You just end up with a paragraph, but still it's something - a little entry in the journal that can be used for reference. Other times you have nothing, but it quickly spouts into a waterfall of other things. A good example being now as I reach the third paragraph from a position of no idea whatsoever.

Some blog posts end up being better than others, most will be average or largely unimportant on their own, but if you don't make the effort you don't get anything. So now, thanks to doing something, I have a little journal that I can refer back to, plus one or two posts that are essentially articles that I would never have written had I not started this endeavour.

It occurs to me that I started in reference to the Tory leadership race, but it's quickly wandered from that. Though that and the wider politics is always in the background. In fact, this summer in the UK has actually been fairly normal all things considered. Old normal normal. It hasn't been too bad at all as far as everyday life has went. So I should pause and show a bit of thanksgiving.

Before I started this post I briefly visited Twitter and a tweet from a US media outlet popped up stating that England was experiencing a drought and apple farmers were fearing for their harvests. It couldn't seem further from my reality. Though I'm sure there are no doubt some problems caused by the warm weather. It was likewise similar yesterday evening as I caught the news and saw hysteria about water levels and lack of rain. It just seemed mad and out of touch with reality. There was also a part where the chancellor Nadhim Zahawi was being interviewed about the 'cost of living' crisis and the interviewer was basically screaming at him asking him what he was going to do about it. Literally yelling animatedly. Again, it just looked like something from a parallel universe where everyone has lost their mind.

(It must just be down south)

The media are now incapable of calm and poise it seems, and are branching off from basic everyday life.

(I think that should do for tonight - again, it's amazing how easy things are once you start.

N.B.

Oh, and finally, there's a little note I wanted to make. When I visited the supermarket I bought a copy of Fortean Times. I haven't read this magazine in a long while, so it was enjoyable reading it again after a long hiatus. Anyway, in the Classical Corner section it's noted that:

"In Plato's Apology, Socrates mentioned you could buy a copy of Anaxagoras's only published book for one drachma [..]"

The idea that people were buying books in ancient Greece caught my attention, so I need to look into this. (This is another benefit of posting regularly, it's a good way of making notes and keeping track of things).

Cringeworthy Days

I just re-read an old post I penned on a different blog. It's from over ten years ago, and my opinions have shifted a fair bit since then, so I felt a hard shudder of cringe as I read it back. Fortunately it was quite short.

I'll repost it here for context, though it pains me to do so.

It's the royal wedding today and as an Englishman I feel I have a duty to say that I don't support this sort of thing. In fact, I feel quite embarrassed about the whole affair. To see grown men and women getting in such a tizz over a wedding between two people they don't even know is just depressing. I can only apologise for the behaviour of my fellow country people.

I recently saw a poll showing that 63% of the British population support the royal family. How sad that so many can support an institution that essentially flies in the face of the notion that all people are created equal. I've come to realise that it's now likely that I'll probably live all my years and die under a monarchy. As a child I never realised just how stagnant Britain is. I had hopes, but when there's so much popular support for the status quo it doesn't offer much room for optimism.

https://birkhallsmiscellany.blogspot.com/2011/04/royal-wedding.html

I'm by no means an avid monarchist now, it's more that I've just came around to the idea that it has pragmatic value (plus I feel a little more sympathetic to them personally on an individual level). I think it's more the tone that jars though. It sounds so stereotypically left wing.

If this was written by someone else and I read it now it would probably really annoy me lol. So it's slightly disconcerting to read it back. It also makes me wonder if what I'm writing here will be equally cringe-inducing when I read it back in another ten years time. Or even if I'm more wrong now than I was back then. Perhaps those two paragraphs are great and I've since erred from the true path? 😬

Scary thoughts. It is useful though to see the path we've took over time. It is after all natural for people to become more pragmatic and conservative as they grow older. It also reminds me to be a little kinder to others who may just be on a different part of the path. Though that patience and good grace rarely lasts long with me.

It is good to reassess these things though. Maybe I'm becoming too conservative now and need a reminder of who I used to be?

Also, reading it back my dismay at people "getting in such a tizz" over a media event is still true to form. So some things never change. I'm still just as anti-social and unwilling to enjoy the party. I haven't strayed from the path in that regard. Though I will at least wave a union jack now.

Hot Enough Is Enough

I'm in a somewhat more chilled mood today. I've just seen that 115,000 postal workers are going on strike for four days in the UK (that's not why I'm chilled, I just am - though I'm tempted to joke I probably won't even notice they're on strike). My knowledge of this came courtesy of another campaign group that have recently came on my radar - one called Enough is Enough. They have a website called wesayenough.co.uk.

I'm not sure how old the website is, but the Twitter account launched in July 2022. So it's another new campaign on the block, focused on the 'cost of living' crisis. Apparently over 200,000 people have signed up to support its demands, so like Don't Pay UK it's really taken off quite quickly. It also has the support of Labour MPs Zarah Sultana and Ian Byrne.

There's a momentum building. Or at least I think that's the aim. It's very hot though, so I think I might head out to the garden and continue reading my book about Captain Scott and Antarctica.

(Also, on a side note, isn't 'enough' an odd little word. It might just be that I've typed it so much now, but I'm starting to question if I'm even spelling it right. Enuff is Enuff would be easier.)

Painted Chaos

I've been a little annoyed today. We've seen a continuation of the 'cost of living' hysteria, and watching so many people get hooked into the 'crisis' narrative has been disappointing for me. The sheep are easily spooked - and I'm not just using that term pejoratively; a lot of the supposedly 'awake' people are just as guilty of being easily herded. I guess it's those people in particular that are so annoying me. They don't learn. It's like living in the land of the goldfish.

It reminds me of the Leonardo da Vinci quote: There are three classes of people: those that see, those that see when shown, and those that cannot see.

I really need to be a little nicer and more patient towards the people in that second category. (I could perhaps do with being a little less arrogant too - I'm obviously placing myself in the first category, but maybe I'm not as wise as I think I am.)

I've been lazy and offhand with people on Twitter, not that many people notice the tweets anyway. I often come back to this topic of how much of a dick I am on Twitter, and always wonder if I should change my ways or stop altogether, but at least it's something. Perhaps my dick-ish opinions cause the odd worthwhile ripple in the hivemind.

Occasionally I do attempt to start tweeting in a politer and less alienating way, but it never lasts long.

Self-focus.

I also often wonder if I should focus fully on my own life. Just stay outta the political soup completely.

I mentioned a good while back that I was working on my fictional novel. I can't remember when I last gave an update on here, but that's coming along very nicely. I've finished the second draft of the first book, and I've recently managed to flesh out the overall storyboard for the second book - yes, it's an epic two-parter. I'm really tempted to just get lost in that. It's a really enjoyable little realm I've created.

So I may just plan for a winter of work and writing. If we have crises and energy lockdowns so be it. I survived the corona-mania, so maybe I should just let everyone get on with things and make my own plans. A peaceful ship on stormy waters. The beautiful art of knowing how and when to fall asleep on the battlefield.

I'm saying this though, but the chaos is also enticing. In 2020 we had a kind of dark order to things. The narrative was fixed and awesome to stand in opposition to, but now all the narratives are fragmenting quickly. In spite of my earlier bemoaning of the people that are hooked into some of these narratives. It's mayhem in truth. I see a lot of forces trying to make order out of chaos - but it really is chaos now. Back in 2020 it was order out of order, painted with the countenance of chaos.

Little Miss Left vs Mr Mean Right

A slight shift in tone today. A few days ago a tweet popped up from the child transition charity Mermaids. They'd knocked up some images based on the Mr Men series of books to promote/celebrate trans ideology. Obviously they got a degree of backlash and ridicule online for these images.

(One of the images)

(For the tweet see here: https://twitter.com/Mermaids_Gender )

They caught my attention because back in 2018 I'd made similar images for a blog post about another Mr Men themed furore. That time inspired by the politician Emily Thornberry calling the Little Miss book series sexist.

(This was one of my

attempts at the time)

It's so easy to predict these trends. You can mock them before they even happen. It's also slightly funny as at the time Emily Thornberry and others took issue with the name "Little Miss" itself - as it implied that women were less than men. Whereas Mermaids clearly don't take issue with that, and use the term themselves. Though I'm sure if someone from the left pointed out how "problematic" this was they'd happily change it.

The images are quite cute and fun though, so you do feel a little mean mocking them.

..a nice narrative

This once again though has just reminded me that there's a natural dichotomy in all these left/right debates.

On one side we have the "nice" narrative - the "Yes, you can!"

On the other the "strict" narrative of "No, you can't!"

So the right-leaning people often come across as nasty (sometimes they actually are, and revel in their nastiness), whereas left-leaning people get to be the nice guys, who never say "No", but also never take responsibility.

It's like two parents. One parent says "No, you can't have a candy bar, it's tea time soon", so the child naturally feels resentful and views that parent as "bad". Then the other more lenient parent comes along and says "Go on then, have some chocolate, just don't tell mam" and the kids think that parent is great.

It's not really fair, especially as the first parent is trying to be responsible and do the right thing. Though as ever with these things sometimes the strict parent can be too strict so it works both ways.

I found myself on the strict-parent side of the argument about a week or so ago, when I was arguing that gay men shouldn't be raising children. I felt bad being so mean. I understand that people naturally want to have a family, and I appreciate how bad it must be for people who can't do this for whatever reason. Be it issues of fertility or just the simple fact that someone hasn't found the right partner to settle down with.

Being gay is one of these unfortunate circumstances. Two gay men can't make a baby. This is just a simple fact of life that people have to live with. It'd be nice if I could be the "nice" parent and say "Yes, of course you can have a baby", but nice though that would be it's just too irresponsible. So sorry, I have to say "No". It's not that I want to, but someone has to.

A child needs a mother.

We all grew up having the benefit of a mother, and those few unfortunate people that didn't know only too well what they missed out on. So who amongst us can truly say - hand on heart - "I have a mother, and that relationship is the cornerstone of my life on Earth, but you little child, you can do without."

And of course, as two gay men cannot make a child, the only way they can get one is by removing a child from its mother.

People may say "..but ah, no, the mother is giving the child to these men." Or that the mother carrying the child is simply the child's surrogate, but all these things are just plain wrong in my opinion. A woman should never want to give away a child she's carried for nine months. Normally women only do such a thing when they're in truly desperate circumstances and see no other option.

Again, the reply may come:

"No, you misunderstand. This is a great act of kindness. This woman wants to help these men have a family."

But again, my reply would be that it's wrong for a woman to care more about the happiness of two grown men than the happiness of the child she's just given birth to. What sort of woman says "I care so much about the happiness of these two men that I'll happily never see this little child again." If your mother isn't going to love you above all others who in this world will.

I'm being a little harsh on these surrogates here of course. I understand only too well that they've been conditioned by modern society to believe they're doing something wonderful. Likewise it plays on a women's natural hormonal desire to have children. In fact, if the situation was flipped and there were two lesbian women wanting a child and I was given the opportunity to have sex and be the father, from a purely biological point of view I'd be very tempted, as most men would. Even though obviously, from a wider moral point of view it would be fundamentally wrong to father a child you had no intention of taking responsibility for.

Ultimately it just all shows that people are putting adults before children in our modern world. Again, it's understandable, and I completely have sympathy. People want to believe that they can have all the things they want in life, including their own image of their perfect family - and too few people are prepared to look mean and say "No, you can't always get everything you want from life. You can't just get a child like you get a pet dog."

I've wandered quite far from original topic, but we're now in a world where children have the right to switch gender when they please, but have no right to a mother. We need to say "No" to the adults that are cultivating this. I know I sound mean, but hopefully I've articulated myself well enough that anyone reading will understand that I'm not just being mean. Whether they disagree with the points I'm making or not.

Union City Blues

I'm back to not having anything to write.

The main thing I've been thinking about is strikes. Where I work the union has recently been negotiating the latest price rise for workers. I won't go into detail but the increase offered is less than inflation so people aren't too happy. The union is recommending that the offer be rejected by union members.

I'm a union member (mainly because I was offered the option to join when I started and I didn't want to be the only person in the room not to). So I have a little decision to make.

On a personal level I'm not massively fussed about it all. I'm lucky though as I don't have bills piling up or a family to look after. I think any sort of strike action is fairly unlikely. If the offer is rejected I think it just goes to arbitration and further wrangling. Still, the implication that there could be some kind of walkout lurks visible on the far off horizon.

My initial instinct was to just accept the offer, or - given how unhappy everyone else is - just abstain. However, after hearing other people talk about bills and price rises I just don't have the heart to do that. So eventually I was like "Okay, I'll vote against it too if that's what everyone else is doing."

You never know, perhaps we'll all post our "nay" ballot and it'll result in a slightly better offer.

The Countrywide Politics

I also had to force myself to supress my wider political opinions too. In my opinion the offer is bad primarily because of inflation - but inflation wasn't caused by the company we work for. It was caused by us locking down the country for two years and printing endless streams of cash.

Pretty much everyone in the country supported this. In fact, many of the unions were not only supportive of it, but actively demanding it. So it's a little frustrating to see people complaining about the consequences of the very actions they begged for.

However, again, like at work, I really need to remind myself:

All the regular people up and down the country - like all the good regular folk I work with - were terrified into demanding the Covid response; and no one ever explained what the costs would be in a calm and rational way. So regular people really aren't to blame, they've been put through the wringer these last few years.

This brings me back to the spectre of strikes though, and also to the Don't Pay UK campaign mentioned previously. Are we going to have more engineered chaos this winter that makes the country even poorer? Is this another example of people being led into supporting action that isn't in their interests?

Are there similar murmurs of discontent in other workplaces around the country? Edging employees towards industrial action. Am I being irresponsible in going along with this, albeit in my small little way?

To bring things back down to Earth though, the truth is a strike where I work is very, very unlikely, and I think the muttered mentions of one are just idle hyperbole. Nothing more. So maybe I'm guilty of worrying too much about the big 'political' things, when I should be more concerned with the immediate problems facing the people around me, who have energy bills to pay and children to support.

Late Night Energy

So last night after I posted that last post I watched some more of the 'cost of living crisis' content. Namely some of the stuff from the Fuel Poverty Action YouTube channel and the Martin Lewis interview on the Tony Blair Institute channel.

The Fuel Poverty Action people did indeed seem sincere, if a little woolly. In fact, there was a youngish girl/woman called Alexa from the organisation who seemed really lovely. Her comments on standing charges swayed me a little.

The Martin Lewis interview was a little less endearing. He was complaining about the UK political system - stating that we can't get anything achieved because of the confrontational nature of British politics. He lamented the seating arrangement in the House of Commons, where the governing and opposition parties are facing each other down.

We've heard this attack before on the mainstream media. I think they'd prefer some type of communist assembly where everyone just politely sits and listens to the headmaster.

A particularly telling moment came when Emily Maitlis asked:

"So, should green policy be embedded without anyone asking? Should it be like fluoride in your toothpaste - you just don't get the choice because as a wider society we just acknowledge it is fundamental."

Lewis replied that people should be "pushed" and "rewarded" into choosing green options. Though it was hard to tell if he genuine believed this or if he was just responding affirmatively to the henpecking.

That section clipped for Twitter.

The full interview can be found here:

The Cost of Living Crisis - Martin Lewis in conversation with Emily Maitlis

Don't Pay ..Attention

I haven't abandoned my daily posting, though that was a tempting prospect. I've spent a lot of time in work over the last week or so, plus when I was off I came down with a mild case of the flu - ironically given my last post was titled 'eradicating flu' - but no, I'm continuing.

Anyway, I've came back just at the right time as I finally have something to write about. I've been seeing a lot of this "Don't Pay UK" stuff on Twitter and in the media. It's basically a campaign aimed at getting people to not pay their energy bills - a protest in response to the super high energy prices we're seeing at present.

Naturally I'm somewhat suspicious. Who are these people? What are their wider political values?

Yes, we're all worried and unhappy with the rising cost of energy, but is this the right way to go about things? And perhaps more importantly, is there a wider agenda at play?

As far as I can tell the entire social media campaign only began in June. So it's went from nowhere to national in an incredibly short space of time. They're also quite fixated on invoking the spirit of the "Poll Tax" protests. In fact, their very first Instagram post specifically states they're "building the UK's biggest non-payment campaign since the Poll Tax."

This "Poll Tax" line has since been repeated by numerous others, including the TV savings guru Martin Lewis, who's been doing the rounds on the media warning that winter is coming. (I also notice he was speaking on the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change YouTube channel - on the same theme, though I haven't watched it. Connecting another dot.)

When I scrolled back through the Don't Pay Twitter feed I also noticed that they'd retweeted tweets from an organisation called "Fuel Poverty Action". I jumped the gun a little on this one on Twitter as I thought it was the first thing Don't Pay had retweeted - my phone wouldn't let me scroll back further annoyingly, so I assumed it was their first tweet, and hence a window into their origins. However, once on my laptop in preparation for this post here I soon realised that the tweets went back further. So not quite the lead I thought it was.

Still, that organisation is campaigning for a band of "free" energy for all households to cover basic needs. Paid for by people who are using "more than they need".

This begs the obvious question of how these things are determined. Who decides what we need? How is this implemented? It doesn't sound a million miles away from things like carbon credits and UBI.

However, for balance I should state that on inspection the online presence of Fuel Poverty Action seems much more genuine and well-established than I'd originally assumed. They have a YouTube channel with just thirty-five subscribers that has videos going back ten years. So I have no reason to suspect they're not sincere campaigners who are passionate about the things they advocate.

I'm all for people openly pushing their solutions, and sceptical though I am I'm happy to hear these ones out and give them consideration. After all, poverty is a real issue, so it's not like everything's tickety-boo.

Returning to Don't Pay their planned mass non-payment begins on October 1st, which is right on cue for the new Prime Minister. The leadership result is announced on September 5th, and the new PM should replace Boris the next day. Meaning they'll be walking into the next "Poll Tax" crisis if Don't Pay UK get their way.

Though I don't quite see Extinction Rebellion faring too well in all out riots.