#going cheep

[goingcheep]

No, no, no...

I will NOT fall back into the habit of not posting anything here. It’s too easy - I’ve done it before. And it’s been a couple of days.

So, if you’re reading this - and to be fair, I have no idea how many do read it - you’ve my irrevocable permission to nag me to write something if I’ve skipped more than one day.

So, here’s something: I was talking to a bright 12 year old yesterday, the eldest daughter of one my closest friends. She’s a seriously bright kid, and it’s a pleasure seeing her grow up. But I was trying to explain what it was like to grow up in a time when the news primarily came from the scheduled news bulletins and newspapers. When, after ten at night, if I wanted to know what happened, it was either a radio bulletin on the hour... or waiting until the morning. And half way through our chat, it hit me... I can barely remember that time. Sure, I mean, I can recall it, but with difficulty, and lacking details, as if I read it in a book long ago. The actual ‘feeling’ of not being able to access news whenever I want? No.

It’s become a story, one I can tell, but one I don’t really have any link to. And they’re the worst stories; the worst stories to hear, and the worst stories to tell.

[goingcheep]

Reshuffles

It’s been quite a while since there’s been a full blown government reshuffle. And it looks like that’s continuing, since today’s reshuffle had already been briefed as leaving three top jobs untouched (Foreign Secretary, Chancellor, Home Secretary)... as well as leaving David Davis in place doing... whatever the hell it is that David Davis actually does.

I do sometimes wonder what American friends think of the head of government replacing members of the cabinet with others not necessarily because they’ve screwed up, nor had a scandal but just for the hell of it, to refresh the faces, to give one job to someone ‘to see if they’re any good’ or ‘to see if they’re ready’. Do Americans not understand this...?

Then I remember the way that US cabinet members get their jobs and who’s currently in the US Cabinet and you know, there are worse ways than a parliamentary system.

[goingcheep]

Well now...

Hello... it’s been a while.

How have you been? Well, I hope. It’s 2018, I’ve taken a year off from updating this and the blog, and it’s about time that absence ended, if for no other reason than I’ve got itchy fingers.

So, hello. Welcome back to a couple of hundred words on whatever hits me.

Well, what struck me today was watching the android that is Stephen Miller being interviewed on CNN. The more I watched, the more I became convinced that sometime in the past, someone for a bet got very very drunk before, while still astonishingly drunk, instructing Miller on how to be interviews on television. And Miller took every drunken word as gospel.

For all the complaints we have, and read, about the art of the professional politician interview, for every irritation at the polished interviewer who’s ready for every question, and has a crafted message that they can put over well, I’m sorry. I’d rather watch a Blair, or a Cameron, or a Clegg any bloody day of the week than whatever Miller is.

[goingcheep]

Twentysixteen minus 25: bedlam and the donald

Way back in the day, in a time thankfully long in the past, the mentally ill at the Bedlam Institute were displayed to those of the public who paid a few shillings, as if they were in a zoo. Wealthy patrons could roam the hallways; as a 1771 work put it: “Their conductor led them first to the dismal mansions of those who are in the most horrid state of incurable madness. The clanking of chains, the wildness of their cries, and the imprecations which some of them uttered, formed a scene inexpressibly shocking.”

For some years, one might have suspected that the closest we in today’s environment come to being as to those wanderers in Bedlam’s halls is when we watch the audition phases of Britain's Got Talent or X-Factor.

But no. Donald Trump proved last week, this week, today - and will no doubt prove tomorrow, next week and next month - what it’s truly like to watch someone as if they were in a zoo, performing for paying patrons and providing both macabre amusement and nausea.

[budgie]

GOING CHEEP On things remembered

[budgie]

GOING CHEEP On driving and viewing

[budgie]

GOING CHEEP on birthdays and leap years.

[budgie]

GOING CHEEP On political satire