we all know I have no life, so:

In the early 90s, my mum and I met up with a family friend who’d been HM Consul in Washington and then led the Vetting Service. She complained that the government had decided that the end of the Cold War meant they could halve the budget as there’d be fewer traitors.

“But it’s worse now,” she said.

Jon Roga has been slavishly liking and reposting my posts to the point where it felt odd.

Then one (informed) disagreement with his anti-civil service rant and he’s butt-hurt.

👋🏼

An article in the Times today by Kathleen Stock in which she claims, incorrectly, that ‘when the gay rights cause first got going, the ideal was toleration’.

To correct the record:
The gay rights movement I was a part of in the 1980s and 90s was not aiming for ‘toleration’.
Mere acceptance was not enough.
How would that help the isolated queer kid?
No. We wanted that child to know they would be loved and celebrated just as they were.

Joel Bodmer for Croydon East A blog about Labour movement, trade unions, pensions, housing and councils.

I enjoyed this… www.johnslabourblog.org/2023/10/joel...

I also like Cardenfreude (the pedestrian’s petty pleasure when walking past miles of stationary traffic).

My dad was a civil servant (FCDO), I was a secondée to HMT for two and a half years and I know one ex perm sec personally.

Slurs about elites don’t help the conversation.

Civil servants serve; ministers lead and should be accountable. And parliament should hold ministers to account.

On the one hand, yes we can argue about specific subjects of our choice.

On the other hand, how are we choosing our battles? What arguments are erasing themselves?

I’m a bit Foucauldian on this (in a very sketchy way).

“Hey Siri, who is in charge of everyone in the UK?”

Oh yes.

Olly Robbins waiting for the gunman to march into the committee room and shoot him.

#WWDS

(what would dad say?)

Index of Poems I Shall Never Write (Don’t Tell Me About) Your Brand New Podcast p. 42 At the Alphabetti Spaghetti World Championship Final p. 32 Bad Hare Day p. 40 Easy Peelers are Not the Only Fruit p. 52 I’m in Love with the Woman in the Green Cardigan in the BBC Question Time Audience p. 58 Kim Kardiganashian p. 45 Life Hacked p. 60 Linked In, Dropped Out p. 27 Mister Krankie Meets the Clambake King p. 14 Nocturnal Blossoms: Petals of the Moon p. 18 On Sleeping in a Dudley Travelodge p. 68 On Waking in a Dudley Travelodge p. 3 Poem for Silt Awareness Day p. 6 She Never Did Care for Hollyhocks p. 23 Shit! It’s Jeremy Clarkson! p. 1 Sixty-Four Failed Attempts to Guess a Wi-Fi Password p. 64 Taking Cocaine with Wendy Cope p. 9 Ten Unexpected Items to Find in a Bagging Area p. 50 The Last But One Will and Testament of Brian Horatio Bilston p. 55 Third Wordle War p. 47 Untitled p. 21 What We Currently Know and Don’t Know about Gnomes p. 31 Whither the linnet? p. 10 Yes, I Know It’s Called ‘Petrichor’ p. 34 Your Spatula p. 37 Brian Bilston

Today’s poem is called ‘Index of Poems I Shall Never Write’.

This is awful. In 1996, I took on an existing project. I was cautious and wanted to flag it as amber until I’d checked it out. My boss told me not to, and to “just get on and deliver it.”

The project was fucked and I spent six miserable months managing it until I was removed and the project killed.

Ah, ‘toleration’. “We don’t like what you dirt perverts do with each other but as long as you don’t show us or tell us, we will put up with you.”

I told him that as I was 62 years old, everyone else looks young, and as I’m 6’2”, I’m not a good judge of ‘normal’ height.

I also told him how hard and wonderful teaching is, but agreed with him that engineering would be a fun (and better paid) career.

I think I dug myself out of the hole.

Awkward conversation. yesterday. Fresh from shooing out four giggling 8-year-olds who were trying to avoid going out to morning break, I asked a boy in the Year 5 classroom why he wasn’t outside.

“I’m on work experience,” he replied.

I was mortified. He’s Year 8, “But I’m quite short for my year.”

I dropped out of mine in the late 80s because a tenured lecturer told me that there wasn’t a great future for History posts. And those were the good old days.

It’s that healthy time of year - spinning, swimming, sauna and over-engineered breakfasts
(0% strained yoghurt, strawberries, low sugar granola, cherry compote, hazelnuts, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds)

Note to self:

Or his brother Denis?

When people get excited about it, I smile and nod.

I just found it odd and tedious.

A friend, now working as a barrister on the infected blood inquiry, was previously a registrar specialising in all things respiratory. He said that every chest infection adds to the long term ageing of our lungs (and added that the lung damage is only the most visible sign of Covid damage).

There’s an obvious contender to replace him.

(she also comes with cyber protection on her mother’s side)

My oldest friend raised her son as a single mother (he’s now mentoring me in my philosophy studies); my son-in-law’s mum did the same. Single parents rock - but also come in varying flavours.

That is waay more tragic than my story! Bloody hell! How has therapy been?

Those interested in the ‘Kindertransport’ might want to read up on the rescue of around 15k German-speaking Jewish women to the UK on domestic service visas; and around 4k German-speaking Jewish men to Kitchener camp in Sandwich in Kent. All 3 group rescues funded & organised by the same aid agency.

This is the most important thing you will read today – and probably the whole year, honestly.

We cannot let the AMOC collapse. For one thing it will make Iceland uninhabitable, and I would really like my children and grandchildren not to become refugees. But the effects will be almost everywhere.