A wilding

Nice review, but I sincerely hope that you intend to stop after book 3.

As far as I can tell there seems to have been a complex mixture of immigration factors affecting Brexit. Partly there was a fear of EU migrants taking jobs. This one has relatively little basis in fact, with studies showing that these migrants are a net positive by just about every measure. Partly there was a fear of immigration by people from outside the EU entering it with the ultimate aim of getting to the UK. This was fuelled by the reporting of people attempting to smuggle themselves aboard vehicles making the channel crossing from France. It is not clear to me how exiting the EU is supposed to improve this. But partly there is a fear of direct immigration from beyond the EU, particularly from the Indian subcontinent - the thought of large unassimilated populations constantly refreshing themselves with new immigrants, and with the spectre of Islamic terrorism lurking. This of course has nothing to do with the EU, but still seemed to be conflated with "taking back control of our borders" by the Brexiteers, in my opinion deliberately.

Though he is apparently bored and thinking of a return to politics ... I suppose he might even have had a long term comeback plan with the idea that after the disaster of Brexit people would be willing to turn back to him. With luck that one will backfire on him though - anecdotally I have heard many people all over the spectrum disparaging him either for holding the referendum in the first place or for running away immediately afterwards.

The Daily Mail cannot, of course, be relied on a a news source. But the interesting thing is that, after its recent change of Editor, it seems to have moved from the Brexit camp to the Remain one. Probably it is just thinking about being able to churn out years of easy headlines about how disastrous Brexit turned out to be, now that it will no longer be able to blame the EU for everything ...

Saying that NDAs in these situations also include protections for the employee is basically saying that the employee is frightened that their powerful employer might vengefully blight the rest of their careers. And indeed they might, but given the typical power imbalance, and a veil of secrecy, how much protection is a piece of paper really going to give them against an off the record whisper? For example, did all the people who signed NDAs over Weinstein's behaviour escape him negatively influencing their future careers? Personally, I would think that it is possible that the two NDA signers who came out as wanting them to remain secret are still frightened of what Green might yet do to them, NDA or no, and are hoping that supporting him over this will cause him to think of them kindly.

My guess is that the tipping point was when he finally had to admit publicly, and I think at the same time also to himself, that the show was going to overtake the books. It felt that there was a real change of tone about then.

It is not so much how deep the Telegraph's pockets are, more that the wealthy think they should have the right to stop the media reporting on their activities. Whether Hain was right or wrong, it felt that Grieve was more or less openly proclaiming that the purpose of law is to maintain the privileges of the wealthy and powerful, while apparently thinking that no one could possibly object to that.

Lawyer and ex Tory Attorney General Dominic Grieve had me swearing at the radio on the way home tonight. He was pontificating about Hain undermining the rule of law that allows anyone to go to court to assert their rights - in this case to silence people you have threatened/bribed into signing NDAs. Not "anyone" you berk Grieve. Only the 0.1% (which you are so much a part of that you forget anyone else exists) who can afford the legal fees to do so.

Thanks, but I have to admit it was not exactly frightening. Us being English, it was more shocking and embarrassing than anything else.

We went on the march today, we wanted to stand up and be counted, despite rather doubting it will make any difference. There were indeed an enormous number of people there - it was more like a queue than a march, we were over two hours behind the front of it and nowhere near the back, but still didn't get to the end at Parliament Square until after the speeches had finished. What struck me most was how peaceful and good humoured it all was. And this the more so because the standout event of the day for me was the Brexiteer who accosted Mrs W and me when we were walking across Hyde Park to get to the start. I won't dignify his vitriolic death threat laden rant by repeating it, but it really felt that he was pretty close to violence - attempting something like trying to drive a car into the demonstrators. If I had any doubts about being there, that ended them, when your opposition is driven by propaganda fuelled hate like that it really makes you feel on the right side.

Oh well. I guess I will just put it in the Oxfam pile ...

I have been doing some sorting out and came across a copy of a comic book called Here that someone gave me as a present some years ago. At the time, I remember, I was somewhat annoyed at feeling that my relative had been conned into buying this sight unseen by succession of reviews such as this one, all proclaiming it as a work of genius. Looking at it again, I still don't get it, and doubt that there is much to get, despite a fair amount of positive comment online. It takes what I consider a trite and unoriginal idea - how would the view from a fixed point change over time - and expands it to a several hundred page comic book. There is no overall story, just some vignettes and lot of jumping around in time. (Okay, in some cases the characters in one scene might be older or younger versions of the ones in a scene 50 pages earlier if you can be bothered to check, which I couldn't be.) There is no theme or point that I can see, the ones in reviews - "moral purpose", "human insignificance" - feel to have been brought by the reviewer. Has anyone read this? Did they like it? Have I missed something?

As has been pointed out by many people, there are a lot of parallels between Boris and Trump, and the popular appeal of both in the teeth of the facts is not dissimilar. In both cases their potential support seems to come largely from disaffected people harking back to a mythical idealised past who don't follow the mainstream news, though, this being the UK, Boris' fan base is not so far to the right. That said, Boris, while being equally self centred and egotistical, is much cleverer than Trump, though still incapable of hard work or pursuing a long term strategy. Hence his frequent "zany ideas", as month after month he comes up with a new tactic to advance himself toward his goal of becoming PM. Despite May's many and glaring faults, I think she genuinely convinces herself that she is doing the best for her country. Boris, of course, does not give a sh*t for anything other than himself.

And that is just a failure to understand the scientific method. Assume for the sake of argument that we have "reliable facilities". Assume further that evolution predicts we don't have them (though personally I think you would have a lot of difficulty coming up with a definition of "reliable facilities" for which both those assumptions are true). Congratulations, you have found a limitation in evolution, an edge case where it breaks down. But that does not entitle you to discard the whole theory! The reaction of any scientist is to ask "so how do we modify the theory to take these new observations into account". Only someone with an agenda against it would do otherwise. For example take Newtonian mechanics again. A century or so ago it was found that it breaks down when trying to deal with the very fast, the very large and the very small. Despite that we did not abandon it and return to a pre-industrial society. Instead we went on to develop relativity and quantum mechanics.

And your point is ... ?