jaywalker

There are other reasons for posting. For me the opportunity is to clarify my own thoughts. And that is best attempted otherwise than as a solipsistic exercise even if the only beneficiary is, ultimately, me. Of course it carries Erdogan-type risks.

ego

I found myself overcome with emotional despair listening to May's deliverance speech this morning. Wisely decided to spend the rest of the day tending the garden (always reminds me a bit of Peter Sellers in Being There, but there it is). Of course if one doesn't get a grip on the garden at this stage in the face of so many threats it will run away with itself. Courageous acts of pruning are essential. The soil must be dug over and stones removed. The healthiest plants must be moved to where there is greatest light so that they can realise their full potential. Sickly plants must (with a heavy heart) be composted. Unruly and disorderly plants must be ripped out and sent for recycling. Emergent pests must be destroyed for fear they will multiply, especially anything non-native. The incursions of foxes and cats must be rigorously policed. The security of our plants (rather than those of our neighbours or those simply borne on the wind) must be steadfastly defended. To speak in favour of wild gardens or vermin is heresy and undermines good order. Parakeets, especially, must be prosecuted - they are not real birds. Gardens, like Society, Must Be Defended, as Foucault put it (with eviscerating intent).

kit

malumbu Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > When you say 'burn out' do you mean just 'blow'. > If so a loose connection in your wiring. > > If you learned combined science at the age of 12 > as I did you made metal peg boards where you > strethced wires, had bulbs, batteries, and even > made a fuse out of wire wool. Through this we > found out about circuits. That's enough to do > basic wiring. Google will help you test > continuity using a test meter. > > Alternatively save all the faffing about looking > for a loose connection and get an electrician in. I would be worried about this if I had no info on state of wiring/circuit/earth. Better to call in someone certified.

You need to hire an electrician. There is something wrong with your wiring. When I moved into my current ED home I inherited (missed by the survey) an electricity system dating from the 1950s or even 1939s. Not even earthed. Any circuit should support far more than the bulbs you mention. Also, do you have mice?

Otta Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38570960 Ah, but the government spokesperson will say 'I don't recognise the picture': even if it is by one of their officially appointed Regulators.

I wonder if the NHS is actually in greater crisis than even cynics like me ever thought possible. Really, how can one have a clue unless you know someone who works there? Any patient is a particular - of no significance to the general pattern: they may or may not get quick and good treatment. But if you know someone who is tearing their hair out because they cannot provide the treatment they were trained to give, that there is a complete failure of management ... It looks from leaks today that the government is entirely aware of the situation; I guess we will eventually call them to account ... This is another catastrophe on the horizon from a forthcoming 'crackdown on immigration' so we can get 'our country back' and return to 'the way we used to live' without the labour we need to help an ageing population.

Jenny1 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > ???? Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > This Forum is like the > > fooking Guardian > > Sometimes it is. I agree. But is it not also > sometimes like the fooking Financial Times? (and I > mean that in a good way.) > > But to be serious. I don't think this is about > 'left' and 'right'. Jenny1 is right, the FT rules (and has a reading age of about four years higher than any other paper - i.e. about 12). Today there is an excellent, truly first-rate, article by Janan Ganesh about the reactionary content of May's policies (and that, unfortunately, she is very far from being indecisive when it comes to pursuing a hard brexit). May is an isolationist whose dream of order is centred on controlling immigration - whatever the economic cost - and returning us to the 'family values' and 'shared society' she has such a nostalgia for. Like all such nostalgias the content is imaginary. So for me Jenny is also correct that this is not best thought of as 'left' versus 'right'. Here we have interventionist social policy (of an extremely narrow and reactionary kind) quite anathema to the liberal sections of both the Tory and Labour party (those who will join the forthcoming centre coalition when hard brexit materialises and Corbyn is forced out). This is independent of whether you are interventionist or laissez-faire on economics.

singalto Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > People do go to A&E who do not need to. and if he keeps going on about it there is a danger that people who need to won't. health care has always to balance type 1 and type 2 errors of this sort: there is no optimum (unless everyone is to take a medical degree and get years of further experience). As with juries, better that everyone goes to a and e with a wrong self-diagnosis (letting people off who did it) than that people with need of treatment stay at home (the innocent being convicted). a good principle for both juries and triage. I wonder if the Prime Minister has even the first idea about mental health. I think not. She is going to train teachers to spot it - well, good luck - and provide more internet advice for those who think they may have a problem - er, right! And this is worth headline policy news?? And to be clear in response to ianr, if you were in charge of the health service you would put in place pre-triage at all a and e sites, no? e.g. a GP on duty at each site all the time. But they haven't have they? So they want a standard for something "vital" but are too incompetent to provide its resolution without blaming the people who think they may need treatment. Dear God.

"Psychosis is a disorder that makes it difficult to distinguish between what is real and not real" We might think of psychosis according to more than one dimension. Most obviously, the literal versus the tropic. A loss of engagement with the tropic condemns the person to literal interpretations of everything. They are then lost in a human world that thrives on irony, metaphor, metonymy etc. This distinction would lead to the conclusion that there is a great deal more 'psychosis' out there than recognised. But there are other dimensions. One is the formation of the person in relation to others - a willingness to accommodate the difference of the other, literally conceived or not. On this dimension an unwillingness to accept the validity of difference means there is no possibility of gift. They are foreign, so we do not want them, etc. Again, rather more of this than the medical community can cope with I fear.

It seems the Chinese (the largest growth area we might have hoped for an alternative trade pact after the 'no bits left brexit' proclaimed by our great leader today) are distancing themselves rather quickly (FT main story this weekend). I can't think why.

reactionary

"it doesn't matter what the thread is- you remoaners have to turn it around to the brexit vote.....what you need to remember,and every now and then a church man or someone else with their finger on the pulse of the dispossessed and poor of the UK, is that it is the poor and poorly educated (thanks to destruction of the life-line of the poor- the grammar schools- destroyed by an evil public school Labour asshole who did it purely to keep the poor on their place and thereby make him feel better about himself.....)who suffer most when there is uncontrolled immigration...." was the Brexit vote uninfluenced by Russian propaganda? I thought it was very clear that it was, and that there is ongoing infiltration of the media by that atavistic nationalist dream factory. But their stuff is only slightly more stupid than the official orthodoxies. Basically, if you can spot an interest then Putin (like the USA) will be getting their fingers dirty. Britain leaving the EU not in Putin's interest ?? making blanket reference to 'the poor' is likely to over-simplify and stigmatise. this is not to disagree that the redistribution of wealth is key to a civilised state and that there is an absence of credible policy in this area: May's new 'sharing society' to replace Cameron's 'Big' one had me retching when I saw it on the news feed just now - Tories who go down that route are either deluded or lying: why, after all, are they Tories? Has she been reading Disraeli for God's sake? Or is this part of 'nudge' (a policy of which Putin would be proud). If she is genuinely going to adopt socialist policies to reintegrate our fractured sociality then she should cross the floor of the house and join Corbyn. the adverse consequences of grammar school education for social mobility are well documented. is it the case that you have some evidence to the contrary? the catastrophic consequences of preventing immigration (for the economy and PARTICULARLY for those most dependent on care or in need of housing) are such that no sane government will do anything at all except say they are stopping it when they are not. We have an ageing population used to a (very) high average standard of living: we will become ever more reliant on relatively cheap young labour that we are not producing ourselves. Excluding the highly educated (and culturally close) workers from the EU in such circumstances is just stupid.

illusion

lucky

books

absolutely agree rendel. hugely enlightening talk by Chris Patten on Heath's motivations on bbc Parliament yesterday: why he went the second mile to persuade de Gaulle and the rest of the EU in the early 1970s. Primary motivation: a distrust of the USA (one that stands in marked contrast to the later narcissism and stupidity of Blair) and the direct personal and tragic memory (shared with other cabinet members) of intra-European destruction in WW2.

yes, he is "just stepping aside" so that someone with 10 years of negotiating umph can take over now (at the beginning of "the process"). wonders of having people of the calibre of John Redwood and Nigel Farage dismiss this as an administrative efficiency :-(

herons distracted by drones

be safe. this substance is carcinogenic. wear gloves.

archive

the description of the 40 year decline is spot on. but I fear the hope of transfiguration from populist reaction is infantile. nothing structurally has or will change. the Tories are already plotting to neutralise the judiciary given the likely verdict on parliamentary approval for leaving the EU. Trump already has that power. In the UK, social services, the nhs, and the prison service are in terminal crisis. brexit will mean anything but brexit (you can tell this immediately from May's bluster) but will no doubt involve immigration controls that will severely constrain the economy. an already reactionary government will get more reactionary in the hope of appeasing populism. dark days ahead.

I am so glad 'my' Jay is back: last year she and her husband could manage two Brazil nuts each per trip. Now she has learned to take three! The most beautiful birds in south London and already well stocked for the cold of Jan and Feb.

Sir Ken Dodd, legend. Thought his 'Liverpool Hamlet' on TV doc tonight genius. In live performance even better.