(0434) Please read item 1 today … then maybe even 2, 3, 4 and 5 … know you will but juss sayin’. For more rivetting “advice”, please see the next post. (0602)

 

5. Fulfilment

4. It’s straight out genocide, nothing else

3. A certain Matt Roberts at Lord Toby’s site writes

“Silly season no longer seems to arrive. Every summer now brings another existential crisis demanding constant commentary. Brexit negotiations gave way to Covid and lockdowns. Covid gave way to Ukraine. Ukraine gave way to inflation, leadership contests, small boats, riots and a seemingly endless succession of emergencies. Westminster has become a theatre in permanent performance. There is no interval, and the actors never leave the stage. There is only crisis.

In the midst of all these crises, each year there seem to be more calls for Parliament to shorten its summer recess. Ministers, we are told, should remain in their departments to deal with the latest furore. Increasingly, I find myself wishing the opposite. Not because the country faces no serious problems, but because so much of what now passes for governing consists of performance rather than the exercise of power: full of sound and fury, signifying… nothing.”

Not sure why any of us of a certain vintage should be surprised … we had our formative years, our “match and procreate” phase, our consolidation phase when we truly lived to the most, then our gradual irrelevance over some decades. I’m thinking that once we get to four generations there, anything else becomes a bonus.

“Silly season” was very much a net phenomenon in the mid 2000s, to the point Man in a Shed ran a competition to see who could come up with the silliest story. It would be nice if the civic mood were still “silly in summer” but there it is.

2. DAD at 1450

a) Following accusations of illegally leaking banking information relating to Reform UK, including transactions involving deputy leader Richard Tice, the National Crime Agency said on Friday that it has referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct for investigation…..

b) The French government’s new social media law is presented as a safeguard for minors, but critics warn it creates the infrastructure for mass identity verification.

c) Top French Bishop: “Catholic lawmakers’ who support assisted suicide should not receive Communion”.

d) France’s Autorité Nationale des Jeux [National Gambling Authority] has ordered internet service providers to block access to Polymarket.

e) French Protesters Target Ukrainian Troops At Bastille Day Parade In Paris.

1. Keep your friendships in good repair

… and while you’re there … your internet connection.

For those who were of that blogging era, LegIron has returned, plus Ripper has commented here under Sunday 6. In a trifecta, I found a youtube last night in which my stepfather’s military unit interviewed him in 2004/and he spoke of his war experience. It was him all right … he died I think in 2005/6, my mother years before, my dad eons before that.

I do have photos of those three here but we’re talking twenty plus years now. Last night, I tried contacting two ladies attached to Leggy and neither had working DMs nor emails … at least not current ones … maybe they want it that way, we don’t always know.

The love of my life when I was fifteen wrote to me on the 10th of this month, which is a major thing to me, plus one I’ve known since I was ten, plus my most recent “bereavement in the world of love” in 2008. So I have “sort of” kept them in repair but the world just now, particularly our immediate world, is racing to oblivion.

Leggy’s story is sad and I’m thinking is going to soon become increasingly frequent … farmer wanting the house back. Actually, same happened to me in Russia in 2008 … so even if nothing else had happened, they wanted their flat back. My headmistress who had signed my invitation to come over and whom I got along with well was hit by a passing tram a couple of years before that. New guard, I was unknown to the new admin … why was I there?

My university faculty head who was the key person employing me was ousted in a “palace coup” in 2007 and the rest just followed … do they call such things “quantum shifts”?

Also, note who’s making all the noise now on the world stage … it’s the ones called Gen X, innit? So heaven help any of the Gen they detest … the Boomers. As for anyone even earlier … we still have DAD here, seemingly fighting fit.

Keep your contacts in good repair, as that list slowly reduces in size.