Opening ceremony

 God, that was fucking dreadful.

My back yard

When Barak Obama was elected there was a magazine (I forget which one) which posted a large photo of him on the front cover, a giant bulls-eye with a hair-line, gunsight cross covering his chest. 

I found it quite shocking when I first saw it, because it showed that an assassination of the first black Democrat President of the USA by the right-wing was almost to be expected, and the magazine seemed to fall just short of encouraging it. Well, it never happened.

I was quite shocked by the attempt on Donald Trump too. His supporters were furious with the media present at the time, because they blamed the hatred and vitriol aimed at him by half of the news reporters as being the all encouragement needed by the young man who put a hole in his ear. They do have a point, and now even the ex-President himself is saying that the negative heat should be taken out of campaigning in general. It's a bit rich coming from the man who specialises in dividing the nation though.

Here comes a shameful admission. When I heard that the boy with the high powered rifle had missed from a mere 150 clear yards, it occurred to me that he must have been a very bad shot. Later I found out that he had tried to join a local shooting club but they refused him precisely because he was such a bad shot, and I let out an involuntary rueful laugh. Just the one. It would have been better if they had a notion that he might be mentally unbalanced enough to do what he did. Trump gives credit to Almighty God for telling him to move his head at the last second. The bullet still killed someone though.

So now it is even worse, with Biden's state of mind made even hazier with a bout of Covid and Almighty God telling him not to stand down. I fear for the world.

Not gloating, just laughing

Apparently, Jeremy Corbyn would now be Father of the House if only he hadn't stepped aside in the queue to allow Sir Edward Leigh to go in front of him when they both signed up as new MPs all those years ago in Westminster. That's our Jeremy - gracious and generous to a fault.

It isn't all bad news, though. Diane Abbott is now Mother of the House, having entered Parliament 37 years ago as a young woman. Diane and Jeremy were very good friends once, I am told. It would have been perfect if they could have stood beside each other as Mother and Father.

My MP is a German woman - Wera Hobhouse. She is beginning her second (at least?) season of serving Bath as a Liberal Democrat. The Lib Dems ousted Chris Patten (Conservative) and have never looked back. Tories don't stand a chance here for the foreseeable future.

When Sir Chris was our MP, I was his next door neighbour in a little hamlet just outside town. I really liked him. He was one of the last of the real Tories and we may never see their like again. He served under Margaret Thatcher and called her 'The Wolverine'. He tried to mitigate her more inhuman policies and upset her so much that she made him Junior Minister for Northern Ireland, no doubt hoping he would be killed in the line of duty. He wasn't, and went on to be the last Governor of Hong Kong. He wept when the Union flag was lowered. I used to get Christmas cards from him signed, 'From Chris, Lavender and the kids'.

I am not as elated as others are depressed by the inevitable outcome, I just feel as though I have been holding my breath for the last 14 years and can now let out a very long sigh indeed.

The Mystic Old Git's prediction

The Labour majority will not be as large as hyped. Lib Dem will take more seats in the West and South though, and Reform will get 2 seats in Parliament. I don't know or care about Scotland. None of my business.

Bright New Future

Anne Widdicombe is now a spokesperson for Nigel Farage's Reform Party. At last, something to fill a gap which isn't Strictly. Nigel says that he has had enough of the BBC.

You don't have to be left-wing to dislike the far-right, and you don't have to be right-wing to dislike the far-left. You get what I am saying, I am guessing.

All it takes to help extremists get into power is to take your eye off the ball by abusing democracy and allowing half of your country to be thrown into comparative poverty by facilitating a prolonged period of short-termism during which anything of true value gets stripped while it still can be.

When we wake up to a bright new Labour future on Friday morning, things are going to get far worse.

The liver is evil

Have things ever been so bad in U.S. politics? In the U.K. debate between Starmer and Sunak, a young member of the audience asked, "Are you two the best we have to choose from?" How would she have reacted to the Trump v Biden debate of yesterday?

At least here in the U.K. Parliament has the power to get rid of Prime Ministers if they prove to be irresponsible or a danger to the nation, or stop them from running for office if they have criminal convictions and are proven liars, but I am told that the only person who could get Biden to stand down is Biden himself, and the person with the most influence over him is his wife. In any case, in a year or so he will be too old by law to continue as President if re-elected, so will have to stand down anyway. If Trump gets elected he will just pardon himself immediately.

The current fashionable illness to have here is an E. Coli infection. I have a version of it which has some alarming symptoms which I mistook for cancer, so when I looked them up on the NHS website you can imagine my relief when found that they correspond nicely with those that are experienced by 50% out of a survey of 150,000 cases of the latest strain.

The only way of catching this nasty bug is to eat the shit of infected animals. I am usually quite adventurous with food - and I don't kiss dogs, let alone cattle - but I draw the line at that. I always wash fruit and vegetables before eating as advised, but have been buying a lot of ready-to-eat salad from a top-end supermarket recently.

The packets say, washed and ready to eat, but they do not say what they have been washed in. Some say, washed in spring water, but they do not say how many animals use the same spring.

Up on Solsbury Hill (of Peter Gabriel fame) there is a small stream fed by a spring which rises on one side, where I found a lush little bed of watercress growing amongst the stones. I was about to gather some when I noticed that sheep were grazing close by. There is a bug in sheep's urine which can destroy your liver by eating away at it over quite a short period of time, so I left the watercress.

I once saw a t-shirt for jokey alcoholics which read, 'The liver is evil and must be destroyed!'

Unusual colours

I am not usually one for flower posts, but just look at the colour of this Buddleia I saw yesterday. I love Buddleia - when it is not destroying buildings.

And how about this for an unusual colour. I don't know what you call them, but here in the West of England they are sometimes known (by children) as Choochypegs. They are normally a drab grey.