First they vote for you, then they laugh at you, then they complain about you, then you win

[I wrote this before the updated 'Political Declaration' was published today. Nothing in that Declaration changes the situation, in my humble o.]

Theresa May’s Brexit plan can't possibly win a 'meaningful vote' in the Commons next month, and yet in the end May will get what she wants. The Brexit deal she's agreed with the EU is the one we've got. 'Hard' Brexit, a renegotiated 'Harder' Brexit (aka Canada), a 'Softer' Brexit, a 2nd Referendum and Remain are all pretty much zero probability now.

May wins, simply by dint of ignoring what everyone else wants, and ploughing on regardless.

The Guardian covered this in more detail yesterday, but basically while May is PM she holds all the cards. The EU negotiate with the PM, not with Parliament. Parliament can reject her deal and tell her to renegotiate it but they can't specify the terms.

The following will happen. It's inevitable.

1. The PM will return from Europe with a deal, including a political declaration on the future relationship which is a million miles from what the Brexiters inside, and outside, Parliament want.
2. She will lose the 'meaningful vote' - there are simply too many Tory rebels, and even if half of them abstain, the loss of 70+ votes won't be offset by a handful of Labour rebels (and a lone Lib Dem MP).
3. But the result will be a lot closer than suggested by all the noise over the last few days - 'empty vessels' and all that. Everything Cabinet Ministers are now saying about the possibility of a 2nd Referendum, or Remain, is designed specifically to spook Brexiters in both main parties to support her deal, or at least abstain.
4. Having lost the 'meaningful vote', May will do precisely nothing, thus rendering it meaningless.
5. The Conservative MPs will not seek to replace her as party leader (they may well, eventually, get to 48 votes, but she'll easily win a confidence vote) and Conservative MPs will not trigger a General Election. There's zero chance of them giving Corbyn what he wants. They might be stupid and venal, but they aren't suicidal. 
6. 'Remain' Conservative MPs such as Jo Johnson, Dominic Grieve and Sarah Wollaston will flirt with the idea of a National Unity Government, under the Premiership of someone like Keir Starmer, Vince Cable (lol) or, er, Dominic Grieve. They'll come to the conclusion that the inevitable outcome of this is a General Election in 2019 and, having stared into the Abyss and seen John McDonnell staring back at them, they'll do ... precisely nothing.
7. Corbyn will bluster, bumble and do ... nothing. To be fair to him, he doesn't have the votes to do anything. Anti-Corbyn Labour MPs, having been burned once, aren't going to unseat him.
8. At some point in the New Year May will return to Parliament with the same deal dressed in slightly different clothes, and faced with the inevitability of crashing out if they vote against it again, MPs will vote it through.

May's biggest fear is that the ECJ will rule, 'before Christmas', that Article 50 can be unilaterally withdrawn by the UK, in effect delivering Remain (for the foreseeable future). But I don't think any of that changes the above. The Government, not Parliament, would have to tell the EU the are withdrawing their notification under Article 50.

This PM will never do that.

Jo Johnson and co. simply don't have the cahonas (if you'll excuse the phrase) to replace her with someone who would.

Checkmate.

Counting to zero

List of Tory MPs who have, as of tonight, said, or strongly hinted, they will vote against Withdrawal Agreement in whatever form it is present.

1. DD
2. Andrea Jenkyns
3. Peter Bone
4. Conor Burns
5. Bernard Jenkins
6. Bill Cash
7. Steve Baker
8. Charlie Elphike
9. Stewart Jackson
10. BJ
11. JRM
12. IDS
13. Mark Francois
14. John Redwood 
15. Sarah Woolaston
16. Justine Greening
17. Jo Johnson

Plus Kate Hoey, one of the Labour MPs who the PM might expect to rebel, has come out strongly against. 

Only 7 Labour MPs voted with the Government last year. 

1. Ronnie Campbell
2. Frank Field
3. Kelvin Hopkins
4. John Mann
5. Dennis Skinner
6. Graham Stringer
7. Kate Hoey

If the DUP abstain, the only conceivable route to a Parliamentary Majority for the PM is for most of those 17 to abstain. If they vote against (or most of them do), it can't pass. If the DUP vote against, it can't pass.

For: 315 - 17 (and counting) + 6 (maybe) = 304

I could imagine a situation in which Corbyn whipped Labour to abstain, given that he wants Brexit to happen. But he wants a General Election to happen far more than he wants Brexit, and the only possible route to a GE is for the Government to collapse over Brexit. 

Against: 258 (including Field) - 7 (maybe) + 35 (SNP) + 12 (LD) + 1 (Green) = 298 

Add 10 DUP to that number and/or 7 rabid Brexiteers and/or 7 Tory 'Remoaners' and the deal falls.

How does PM secure DUP vote? And even if she can, can she secure enough Labour rebels to offset inevitable defections by some or all of the 17 listed above, plus others who are less media savvy or just quieter? 

Of course, this is all rather irrelevant if she can't get the deal past the Cabinet tomorrow.

Bang

Those of you more familiar with Queensbridge Road will be well aware that you can avoid the traffic lights at the bottom by using Dunloe St. Last Saturday I was picking up a Zipcar and I decided to use the Dunloe St Run to save myself the 23 seconds I would have spent waiting for the lights to change.

Bang.


Followed, fractions of a second later, by...

Bang.

The first bang, I think, was me clipping the curb as I turned into Queensbridge Road. The second was the tire blowing.

23 seconds. I had gone from saving 23 seconds into a whole world of delay.

Note. If you are ever changing the wheels on a VW Golf, do not be fooled by the star-shaped holes at the centres of the plastic caps on the wheel nuts. Simply lever these caps off with a screw-driver. There is no screw thread on the caps themselves, so finding a star-shaped fitting will not aid you in removing them but will waste bloody ages of your time.

The AA man came. He was great. He showed me the lever-the-plastic-caps-off-while-ignoring-the-star-shaped-holes trick, and replaced the tire in under a minute. To be honest, I was very proud of myself for getting the car jacked up. I'd never jacked anything up before. Not even my body.

Zipcar were also great and found a replacement car. So we got to spend the night at Whipsnade afterall, and saw the Rhinos. 

In the dark

It's ironic that, in the end, it was a blackout that did for me. A blackout, and a pathological inability to get a haircut until my hair is way beyond the point that it needs to be cut.

My job is to support investment in energy technologies. It's what I do, my job, when I'm at work. Electricity is very much part of what we look to drive innovation in. Particularly so-called 'Smart' technologies which mean that we can better match supply with demand, without having to worry (as much) about costly network upgrades and backup systems.

I needed a haircut. The fact that the power had failed across an entire city block was neither here nor there. The barber's door was unlocked. I'd used him in the past. He knew my head, or my scalp, at least. He looked doubtful, but the light was still good, and his clippers were in the stand. Charged. No need for working mains electricity. We could do this.

F. & J. went first. They were as much in need of a cut as I was, and school starts again on Monday. The place on Hoxton Street is friendly and tolerant of squirming children, but they always come out looking like Jim Carey from Dumb and Dumber. Whereas Mr X (who will soon be opening a new place called on Shoreditch High St) does an excellent cut, and is equally tolerant of children.

Mr X ploughed on. The boys were done. He raised an eyebrow, but I was determined. So he started.

It's a job of work, my hair, when it's at its peak. Thick and luxurious, if I saw so myself. The clippers were doing sterling work, but I could sense a change in tone. A deepening. Lower notes. Mr X struggling hard and harder to shift the thatch. I began to perspire. Surely, I though, they would make it through. Surely.

But at around the halfway mark they gave up entirely. Mr X shrugged. What could he do? He thinned the top out and trimmed the most egregious ear and nose hairs.

I didn't even have a hat to hide my half cut head. I just pulled my fleece up and fled in red faced shame. No idea how I made it home.

Now I'm just going to have to sit here, in the dark, and wait for it to grow out.

See you in two months.

For what it's worth

Genuinely bemused, and worried, by current state of the negotiations.

EU have consistently said that without NI backstop there is no deal.*

PM seems to be in total denial. Keeps saying (I paraphrase), "I'm afraid my Parliament won't agree (to the thing I've already signed up to)."

We are heading towards no deal, simply because the PM refuses to realise that the EU aren't going let us back-slide on something we agreed in December.

For her to go to the EU this week and not have anything new to say is genuinely staggering.

The deal is done, at technical level. If there's no political will to agree to it, no amount of further negotiation or summit meetings will help.

Real concern is that we stagger on like this until the economic consequences are so bad the PM, or her replacement, has to fold. By which point we will have done significant, perhaps irreversible, damage to UK economy. Damage which was entirely avoidable.


* I suspect this is at least as much to do with "You signed this in blood in December. Now you want to renege. If we let you renege on this what else will you try to renege on, later?" as it is with the genuine need for a backstop. But the reason for this EU red line is not really the point. The point is that it is a red line.

Creative Block

Not the most inspiring name for a school outbuilding designed to get the old juices flowing. Actually, I think I’ll leave the juices out of it. 

Anyway, I wouldn’t want to do Art in a Creative Block.

To be honest, Art was always my least favourite subject. I’d didn’t much like English, and had little interest in poetry (a state of affairs which persists to this day) but at least, when writing prose, I could say something. In Art I felt both unskilled, and uninspired. White other children were crafting brilliant geometrical things from clay my sculptures came out as something Picasso would have rejected on the basis that they were too figurative. And crap. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I hated Art, but I can’t think of a single thing I created in the 3 years I had to study it – before I could ditch it and focus on GCSE Music – that I’ve kept. Or would want to keep. 3 years of creative block and not being able to throw a pot.

As usual, I digress. Here I am, back in school. Music school, to be precise. Haggerston secondary school, which on a Saturday is taken over by the Hackney Music school (“School for gifted middle-class children including Milo, Juniper and Electra*” to give it it’s full name). Where weekly we force Fergus and Jonathan to imbibe no only musical theatre lessons (I Can Sing!) but also 30 minutes of music theory. They have been learning about crotchets, minims and the dotted variety of these species.

3 hours of music school (with various breaks between vocal, dance and theory sessions) is a good opportunity to catch up on correspondence and the gaps between sessions offer a small window to make headway on Jonathan’s homework. Of which there is far too much for a 6 year old, in my view.

Both the boys take Saturday mornings with remarkable good grace, all things considered.

Right. Music theory has finished. Time to free Jonathan from purgatory. He’s done his maths already, so he really is free.

* all real names of pupils at this school

Cliff

My mind veers between the mundane (Office moves, the view from my window, whatever I am listening to (Boards of Canada, since you ask) to the catastrophic (Brexit/Trump/Putin/Broader break down of world order and liberal tolerance/Climate).

Today's instalment is catastrophe. Brexit, specifically.

Charles Grant (Director, Centre for European Reform) tweeted* (I am obsessively following David Henig's Twitter feed, despite not being a tweeter myself)

"... EU may well be wrong to assume UK will cave in. Many of Britain's politicians don't put economically-optimal outcomes first. They are a Romantic lot who get emotional when faced with what they perceive as bullying." 

Which made me think that the basic issue we have here is that both sides keep assuming the other side will act 'rationally' while they themselves are behaving 'irrationally'. (I realise this is not a particularly profound thought, but bear with me).

The referendum itself was a triumph of an 'irrational' desire to be free of the EU trumping to obvious economic benefits that EU membership brings. A triumph of the political over the practical.

Since the referendum our entire negotiation strategy has been based on the assumption that, although our decision to leave was basically an emotional one, the EU would react with logic, rather than emotion, and we could easily end up with a compromise deal that suited both parties. The idea that the decision on what the relationship with the UK will be, post-Brexit, would be based on political rather than economic considerations seems to have entirely escaped us. Despite the EU repeatedly saying that the unity of the EU was a more important consideration for them than any short-term losses of €.

And if, as Grant suggests, the EU strategy is based on wishful thinking that May and co will, at the last moment, "see reason" and cave in, then the risk of No Deal Brexit is very high. Both sides are behaving politically/emotionally, yet believing the other side bases their decision-making on simple calculations. This shows a remarkable lack of self-awareness.

It is equally possible, of course, that the EU has genuinely come to the conclusion that "no deal" is less bad, in the long term, than Chequers, and therefore is willing for "no deal" to be an outcome. If this is the case then (a) they'd better be damm ready to take rapid action to deal with the consequences of this, particularly for the economy of Ireland and (b) this is, of course, a very bad state-of-affairs if you are British. Particularly British and working in a factory that exports stuff.

Finally, "everyone" seems to believe that global financial catastrophe is on the horizon. If that is true then presumably a no-deal  Brexit would be a more than big enough economic shock to trigger another contraction.

Moving down

Within a month I'll be clearing my desk and moving to an identical desk four floors down. It's not a job move. It's the periodic office re-stack. (Without them the trash that builds up in the office would reach dangerous proportions. Hopefully, during the tidy up, I'll be able to pick up some cuff-links, a blazer and perhaps a wearable pair of shoes left behind by some predecessor or other.)

I will miss the view we have up here on the sixth floor, particularly on days like today.

Free coleslaw

I watched Michael Gove stroll into Pret a Manger today. Or should that be, I saw Michel Gove embraced by the all-consuming tentacles of Pret a Manger this morning? I digress...

I got a free portion of coleslaw at lunch today, when the dude on the till failed to realise that the shredded vegetables I had heaped upon my plate was not part of the fixed price "cheap-looking fish-cake and four crummy "new" potatoes" deal. The coleslaw was considerably tastier than the rest of the meal.

Could these two, seemingly random, pieces of great fortune be unrelated? Do they, in fact, signify some greater future ahead? I find it hard to ignore these signs, though divining what they signify is difficult.

It's been an interesting week or so. Last Monday I visited Port Talbot Steelworks. It is difficult to come up with objectives to describe the sheer scale of the thing. "Big" will have to do, I think. So big, in fact, that it's impossible to get an idea of exactly how big it is. You stand at one end of the rolling mill and see what you think what might be the other end of the rolling mill in the far distance, but your eyes simply aren't used to looking at things that big, and then you nearly get hit by 34 tonnes of red hot steel shooting along a set of rollers at implausible speed and have to stop peering into the distance and start obeying the safety instructions.

At the weekend I mixed sand and mud to form an appropriate substrate for our tortoise table. Prior to this the tortoises were living in straw which is not a proper substrate. They seem a lot happier to have sandy soil to root around in. I also built them a small humidity chamber to prevent pyramiding but it remains to be seen as to whether they want to spend any time in it. I need some sphagnum moss. Sphagnum. There's a good Scrabble word.

I must put sphagnum, and Michael Gove, and rolled steel, and coleslaw to the side for a week, however. These things must be parked, for the onset of sukkot means, for our family, the onset of birthday parties, and these need careful planning. All my mental energies (when not focused on Energy Innovation) must be directed to pass the parcel and where to source a piñata. 

If I blog again before Sunday remind me not to. That parcel needs wrapping.

Not all Greek

Red figure vases, Assyrian relics and Egyptian mummies were the highlights.

The kids enjoyed it.

In case of rain, break art

The parthenon friezes. Arguably the outstanding example of human artistic expression. A masterwork combining imagination, a mathematical understanding of perspective and supreme craftsmanship. The crowning glory of ancient Greece.

But will 4 under 8s see it that way?

What could go wrong?

A free haircut.

Well, the youth have to learn on somebody's head, so why not mine? I have an /extremely/ fine head of hair. Thick and lustrous. With a hint of of the sensual. Er, OK.

My experience thus far is sitting and waiting but I did overhear "I'll just fetch a plaster" which wasn't all that reassuring.

If you don't see me in public for weeks feel free to assume it didn't go well.

Referendum addendum

“In the unlikely event of Jeremy Corbyn having a heart attack and Chuka Umunna taking over, he says the objective is to be in the European Economic Area. Why would we refuse?”

I want a referendum (which I don't want)

Everyone else seems to have written a screed on Brexit, so why can't I?

Oh.

Okay then.

[There's a baked-in assumption here that Brexit is, net, bad for the UK (in the short and medium term, at least). Feel free to disagree]

A referendum. A gritted teeth referendum. Referenda are stupid. I suspect we need another one.

Not, I hasten to add, a referendum where UK membership of the EU is on the ballot paper. We had that one. 'We' lost.

I hope that, in the not too distant future, we join the EU because Parliament decide to. (Assuming that they let us. Assuming that the EU still exists to let us.) I don't want another EU membership referendum, any more than I want a referendum on the death penalty, or MPs pay, or tax policy, or anything. No, thank you.

Any referendum where EU membership is on the ballot is lose/lose, I think. If Brexit won it would be a waste of time. If they lost, Farage, Johnson and Co. would be able to indulge in the 'stab in the back' myth they so desperately crave. They want to lose. None of the ardent Brexiteers is in the slightest bit interested in the UK, post-Brexit, which is why Johnson and Davis walked away to snipe from the side-lines, and Farage spends most of his time trying to impress Steve Bannon.

They want to be martyrs. (Living, of course). Martyrs for the nationalist cause, like Yaxley-Lennon.

'Remain' winning a re-run would be worse, for the fabric of my country, than losing. I think. I think this because it would give all the shits a cause to rally around. Too horrible to contemplate for long (thankfully it is cooler this week so I am sleeping more soundly).

So, to re-cap, yes/no, again, is toxic.

There is, I think, another way out. The EU is willing to offer the UK membership of the EEA (assumption - EEA members could be persuaded to let the UK join). This is A.

The EU has already stated it is willing to offer a free trade deal, presumably along the lines of the one that Canada has. This is B.

In a functioning democracy you'd think that Parliament would be able to weigh up the pros and cons of A and B, and decide. The current Government can't do this because to admit that A & B are the only options that are really on the table is to tell the public it can't have everything it wants without consequences, and getting elected is all about telling the public 4 incompatible things before breakfast (yes, you can have a fully funded NHS, a triple-lock state pension, low taxes and we'll slash the deficit!). Plus half of the Tories want A and the other half are so virulently opposed to the concessions that A would entail that they are willing to be very nasty to the PM indeed, and perhaps even subject her to a leadership challenge she'd win.

It's not clear* if Her Majesty's Opposition believe they can negotiate the economic benefits of A but the freedoms from EU law offered by B, or are just pretending that they can for political reasons (or for a laugh, though Jeremy doesn't seem like a very witty guy), but the effect is the same. Neither party, right now, is in favour of A or B, but rather favours the not very common 'free gym membership' model where you quit and stop paying but still want to use all the machines you liked from before, when you were a member. And the showers. But not the personal training sessions. Except on Tuesday's when they aren't fully booked. Also, we want the floor re-tiled by our mate Darren, who is pretty good at that sort of thing.

I never go to the gym.

So we can have A or B. MPs, of both parties, want MAGICAL THINKING because coming off the A/B fence would cost them votes. And Theresa has held on to her job by sitting on that fence so hard she, er, has physically metamorphosed into a metaphor for someone who spends a lot of time sitting on a fence. Like a stylite. But without the glamour.

Which is why, regretfully, I get to the point. And why, regretfully, I think an A or B referendum is the most sensible way out.

You can hardly scream betrayal if we've left the EU, like we voted, and then the same electorate votes for a relationship with the EU which you don't like. Furthermore, a referendum on two very clearly defined relationships with the EU doesn't (so far as I can see) need to be held in some insane rush between now and March 2019. Barnier could offer us B (with some form of Irish backstop**) with the option to move to A in 2021 if we decided to in time (presumably mid-2020?).

The referendum to end all referenduasae? I doubt it. But it might be a way to move to a sensible*** (i.e. broadly status quo) arrangement in a way that is equally democratic and transparent to the stupid vote**** that got us here in the first place.

And if Farage kicked off we could tell him, "Please don't thwart the will of the people." (I was going to write something ruder there, but I think being scrupulously polite to Farage and his ilk is essential. He drinks in a pub I like. I was going to stop going there, but what would that have proved?)

So, to wrap up, er, yes. We should join the EEA. It will take a national vote to get there. I think that's a better outcome than trying to re-fight the referendum. And if 'Canada' beat 'Norway' in another vote, we'd all have to suck it up and make the best of it.


* when it comes to "Her Majesty's Opposition" very little is clear, I think.

** Hey! I may be a Civil Servant but I never claimed to be an expert on international trade law!

***  If you think such a thing is more sensible that Canada, or no deal. You might not.

**** A vote I thought was not a bad idea, having not, like David Cameron, thought the consequences through.

Failed public drinking

I'm afraid I've spent a significant chunk of time on SouthWest  Trains today yesterday with nothing but my phone and a notepad to keep me company. So there's rather more Blog output than usual.

For starters

Me: "Doom Bar?"
Trolley Man: "Nope. Tanglefoot?"
Me: "Cider?"
Trolley Man: holds up horrible looking fruit cider
Me: "Urgh. Gin and tonic?"

Trolley Man: holds up tiny tin of pre-mixed Gordon's - there is no obvious ice or slice in sight
Me: "OK. I'll have a Tanglefoot please."
Trolley Man: hands me a Tanglefoot. "Cash or card?" 
Me: waves phone
Trolley Man: frowns
Me: getting desperate "Card?"
Trolley Man: "I'm sorry sir. It's the weather sir."
Me: ?
Trolley Man: helpless shrug
Me: passes Tanglefoot I never wanted to drink anyway back
Trolley Man leaves
Me: "Well, that was a waste of time"
Passenger next to me: grunts

Current affairs

Sometimes this thing writes itself.

At 8.45am on Wednesday I was feeling OK. Sure, the school bell rings at 8.55am, and we hadn't left the front garden (it has 3 rose bushes in it, ergo it is a garden and not merely a bit of paving the stops the house from bumping into the pavements) but we were outside the front door, I'd already extracted my bike from the bike shed and I hadn't forgotten my keys. We can do front gate to school in 7 minutes flat. This was running like clockwork.

Then Jonathan, looking slightly pained, told me he'd swallowed a battery.

I immediately rush off to get water, which he rapidly drains. He looks better.

I'm in the front garden. I have two boys. Fergus needs to be in school in 9 minutes. Jonathan's situation is unknown. I google "child swallowed battery" on my phone. It can, if it is lodged in his oesophagus, burn a hold in it. I am pretty sure that it is no longer in his oesophagus but no so sure I am willing to risk it.

Fergus gets his long cherished wish to walk to school on his own. I get him to the other side of our street, which is the most dangerous one to cross, and he skips off. I cross my fingers.

The Uber takes longer to arrive than any Uber has taken to arrive anywhere, ever.  On the plus side, there isn't any indication that a battery is burning a hole in Jonathan's oesophagus, or anything else.

I don't want to tell the drive that Jonathan has swallowed a battery in case he decides that means a 5 year old is about to throw up in his car, and turfs us out. Jonathan doesn't throw up. The Uber driver is friendly but not overly chatty, which is good, as my nerves won't take it.

The hospital is thankfully devoid of patients. Children's A&E is virtually empty. We are seen by a student nurse and a staff nurse. The staff nurse pulls out an airport-style hand-held metal detector (we clearly aren't the first, or even twenty-first). It beeps when she holds it to his stomach. For the time being, the oesophagus is safe.

The rest is tedious, but extremely kind and efficient. Jonathan is examined and has his temperature and pressure taken. A paediatrician is consulted. We are sent to X-ray. We sit there for a while, then get X-rayed, and returned to A&E. The paediatrician is re-consulted. The X-ray image is transmitted electronically and doesn't get lost, so everyone who needs to look at it can. There's the battery. Right there. Small intestine.

We are discharged with some laxative. I don't get anything. Not even gin. Despite protests Jonathan is back at school in time for lunch, and I am, somehow, in work by 1pm. Kate gets the pleasure of taking Jonathan back for another X-ray the next morning, to check that the battery is progressing through the intestine. It is. Slowly. Keep taking the laxative.

The end.

I came late, to an early game

[warning. Contains sport]

Sitting, watching England B blast long balls in the direction of Jame Vardy. Depressing and dull.

The performance in this game means little, in that England aren't going to pick anything close to this XI in the next game (neither are Blegium, for that matter). What's depressing is the gap in skill levels between the England second-choice and their Blegian peers. The Lowerlanders look far more comfortable on the ball, and able to get forward far more quickly. Except for Michy Batshuayi, who just punted the ball into his own face.

Does little to dispel the notion that English football is about 2 decades behind the best.

I'm unconvinced that England proper are going to win this, or that their convincing 6-1 victory over a hapless Panama means any more than the unconvincing scramble against Tunisia a few days previously. Still the draw, if we lose this game, is kind. If England reach the semis, anything can happen. Particularly in the absence of Germany and the likely imminent demise of Argentina.

Russia won their first 2 games easily, scoring 8 in the process. England are better. I'm not sure they are much better.

The beautiful clarity of raw text

It's a nostalgia festival here. Not only do I have Elastica's debut, eponymous album (I'll buy a doughnut for anyone who can name their second, and final, album without resorting to a web-search) playing - I bought it yesterday - but also, thanks to the hard work of wadh0196 and others, sable is back.

Now you won't find me kicking against the technology that allows us to generate web content with graphics, and frames. Generating a blogpost that juxtaposed Patrick Vieira and Roy Keane over caption "Angry men" is one of my proudest (web) moments. It's useful to be able to see a picture of the USB adapter you plan to buy before purchase, given the ridiculous proliferation of interfaces new computers simply refuse to recognize. And ASCII porn is limited in range.

But, let's face it, the modern WWW is a cesspool, and form (in the form of pop up adds for holiday's I've already booked, and less useful information) has triumphed over content. For me, the primary purpose of the web was to communicate with friends, and connect with new people. Perhaps I've lost track of that. Perhaps reverting to text will help rediscover that. I dunno We shall see.

And also...

Insert very long post about how I'm totally not interested in the wedding, with strand about how outraged I am that I'm not allowed to say this.

Grenfell

Am very disappointed by media fixation on flammable cladding. As Hackett said in her report, problem is that Building Standards are not enforced. Fixation on single element let's Government off the hook.

The Building Industry is rotten. Standards, whether fire, energy or ventilation are not enforced. Retrofit that makes homes worse, not better, is fitted every day. Will the Government bring in a regulator with teeth and fund an enforcement regime that changes this?

Can't see anyone in the media demanding that. So we ban flammable cladding and in a decade realise people are dying of avoidable cold and damp because we ignored the real, and known, problem. Epic example of missing the point.

Ten years

May 4th 2008. Kate and I got married. We are celebrating a decade together with cake.

There is Rosemary flowering in our garden today

Good morrow.

• Tinsley Towers
• GUITAR! FECK OFF, GUITAR (thanks Dan)
• Cooking sherry.
• R.U.B.B.E.R.Y.
• Crouched around a badly tuned radio listening to Jam on Radio 1
• To be, comma
• Chegwin
• Felix Nachos!
• SATIRE KLAXON
• "Janet, can you reach into the back seat for a bottle of water.... Yeah, but try not to disturb the *FHWMP*"
• DougStock 2
• DougStock 3
• Exercises in Song
• Other People's Milk
• SAMOSAS 4 EVA IN ARE HARTS
• "rositer doisters" and young "whippersnappers"

and innumerable other times you made me laugh, sigh or laugh-while-trying-to-drink-and-it-all-going-down-my-front.

Thanks for everything, J-P. As I said, see you in another part of the Universe, I hope.

The Sound of Carpet

It's Record Store Day. I never go to a Record Store on Record Store Day, because (a) it's a Saturday which means the only shop I visit is 'Clark's Shoes' on Mare St, to get new shoes for the boys, and (b) the Record Stores around here are rammed with live sets, DJ sets and other stuff, which means you can't get near them. I'm too old for crowds of young* people crawling over piles of vinyl, like ants on a discarded lolly.

* Record Store day does throw up a number of interesting questions, however. Such as, do young people actually buy vinyl (I suspect not - If you're saving for the deposit on a Dog kennel do you have £22.99 to spend on a Vinyl Japanese re-issue of C. Memi's only solo album? Particularly when you can by a copy of 'Headlines and Deadlines' for 20p on Amazon).

Shoes. I can't believe how rapidly their bloody feet grow.

I'm pretty happy with the state of my music collection. It's broader, in terms of genres, and narrower, in that all the CDs are in the loft**.

**We have a loft! For 4 years we were scared to look. I'm not sure why. When we did look it was pristine. It's now full of CDs


Recent additions include Body Count, Unreal by Bloodstone, and Hot on the Tracks, by the Commodores. I live in Hackney. You can't move for second-hand funk, soul, jazz and hardcore. Hot on the Tracks is bloody amazing.

But, and there's always a but, my music collection tails off pretty steeply in 2010 and pretty much expires post 2013. Despite my curmudgeonly ways, I suspect there is good music that has been released since then (I'm aware of Syro, and also Run the Jewels). So my mission going forward is to ensure far more representation from the current decade. Any suggestions welcome.

Also, farewell Monsieur Wenger. Words cannot do justice to what you did for Arsenal.

Botanicals

 Took the boys to Oxford. 

 Climbed trees.

 Saw the sights. Used the toilets. That sort of thing.

Looking back it's so bizarre

A period of reflection. How did I go from writing 58 posts in 2010 to a mere 8 in 2012? 2013 was worse, with only 7. Did I really have so little to say?

Fatherhood, or becoming a parent, or whatever it is that happened, has of course been a major factor. On the one hand having children gives you loads more experiences. On the other hand, many of the experiences are deeply banal (J was sick the last two nights running. We think it might be a reaction to chocolate. Or the cold he has. We are both knackered) or private. Or both. You don't want to know about my feet, and I don't want to share it.

[It's a constant battle between the cats and foxes in our neighbourhood  right now. The poor cat with a bell round its neck is at a huge disadvantage]

On blogging, it doesn't help that I only feel my creative juices flowing when I've drunk something, and I then lose the energy about two paragraphs in. Plus blogging about blogging (or lack thereof) is pretty thin gruel.

I deleted my Facebook account. I don't have Twitter. No one emails me anymore. You can't have an emotionally satisfying exchange via WhatsApp (though it turns out you can't organize a camping trip via a blog). This is all I have. This is my outlet. I'd better use it.

Happiness

In The Doric Arch (not quite the pub it was when it was The Head of Steam - no bar billiards) with Elaine and, until a moment ago, Robin and Victoria.

Castle Rock Harvest Pale. Yum.