Today I’d like to suggest the following as one of the unbreakable underlying laws governing the universe, like gravity, magnetism or Tory stupidity. Matt’s bus law: when you’re waiting for a bus but it never comes. You wait and wait and wait, telling yourself that it could arrive at any moment. Then, the moment you decide to go and find another bus stop or another route to wherever you want to go, the bus arrives. Apparently your decision to leave the stop made the bus come, almost as if your presence there was somehow actively preventing the bus from arriving. Then, as soon as you realise your mistake and start to go back to the bus stop, the bus moves on. A variant of Sod’s Law, only far more annoying.

I think I’m going to nickname my personal assistant Serkan grandma. That’s not because he looks anything like my late grandmother, or has fallen into the habit of randomly tearing my glasses off my face to clean them. I’ve started to call Serkan Grandma because I bought him a pair of Marigold gloves today. Even now, the person that I associate most with marigolds is my grandma: when I was growing up she was almost always wearing them, and seemed very fond of them. She was quite a quirky, unique person who had so many odd little attributes, from always wearing rubber gloves to constantly whistling strange, unrecognisable songs. I still miss her.

This morning though, I was watching Serkan put on a pair of disposable rubber gloves to do some cleaning. It occurred to me that marigolds would be so much better, and decided to buy him a pair or two. At least then we can wash and reuse them, rather than throwing endless pairs of disposable gloves into the bin. Yet, almost automatically, the memory of my grandma came instantly to mind, as if it reignited one of those unbreakable childhood associations. It’s just an odd little connection really, probably hardly worth noting, as long as Serkan doesn’t start insisting on cleaning my glasses when they aren’t dirty or whistling tunes nobody else knows.

As soon as I saw this technology-related news earlier I knew it was too terrific for me not to blog about. Rolls-Royce has started trials of a Jet engine which runs on hydrogen rather than jet fuel. I know that doesn’t have anything to do with the kind of things I usually blog about, but I’m just as concerned about the environment as anyone else. If we can get our aircraft running on hydrogen instead of fossil fuels, I think it would be a huge step forward. Even I know that all you need to make hydrogen is some clean water and an electric current, and the only kind of exhaust you get is water. Thus if we can find a safe renewable source of electricity – and we already have plenty of those – surely this is a huge step forward, particularly given how much jet aircraft currently contribute to climate change. Of course, this research is still in it’s early stages, and the boffins still have a great many questions to answer, but I think this sounds very promising indeed.

I can be a bit of a prick sometimes. The entry I posted here earlier today was completely misjudged. I initially intended it as an in-depth follow-up review of Whose Voice Is It Anyway, but I ended up letting loose, going too far and being unnecessarily critical. Rereading it just now, it was appalling. At the end of the day, Katie Caryer’s film is a good, solid piece of art which I had no right to be so mean about. I have therefore deleted the entry, and I apologise for any hurt or offence caused.

There may be a tendency to zone out after a while when we hear news of the war in Ukraine, but I think things like this really put what Russia is doing there into perspective.

This cannot continue. Russia’s illegal war must be stopped.

I know I shouldn’t simply direct people to random Youtube videos on here, but I’ve recently been wondering why the sport we call football here in the UK and the one they call football in America share the same name, and whether they share their origins. I just tapped ‘American football history’ into Youtube and found this succinct little explanation. Together with Rugby, it seems that they do indeed come from the same, fairly ancient place, the sport most of the world knows as football, but split about 160 years ago. When Rugby split from Football/soccer in 1863, it became popular in America, where they then went on to adapt it to form their own sport. Technically, it should have been known as American Rugby, or by it’s alternative name, Gridiron, but Americans insist on calling it football, causing endless confusion across the globe. That’s why we have three very different sports, all sharing the same name. Just a tidbit of random trivia for a Friday afternoon.

I really need to flag this exciting, space-related news up today. Paralympic sprinter John McFall has been chosen as the first disabled astronaut by the European Space Agency. He lost his lower leg in a motorbike accident when he was nineteen. I think this is great news, and quite a huge step forward for disability representation. At last, people with disabilities are seen as just as capable of participating in the exploration of space as anyone else. Who knows where this will lead: maybe one day people like me will be able to go into orbit too! (mind you, given how I drive my powerchair sometimes, letting me control a multi-billion-dollar rocket may not be a good idea).

I just rewatched a piece of television which I find extremely problematic. It’s the kind of problematic TV which I feel compelled to write something on here about, but don’t want to say much for fear of upsetting anyone or stepping into a political minefield. Jews Don’t Count by David Baddiel was broadcast by Channel Four a couple of days ago, and to be honest it rather wound me up. It’s not that I disagree with everything Baddiel says in it; there is no doubt that Jewish people are an oppressed minority who have been treated despicably over the centuries. It’s just the way in which Baddiel seems very enthusiastic indeed to emphasise his Jewishness, as well as to differentiate between Jewish and ‘white’ people puts a nasty taste in my mouth: he seems very keen to label himself, to distance himself from being straight, white, male and able-bodied. Baddiel seems to want to be seen as ‘other’ when the fact remains that he will not have experienced a fraction of the discrimination someone with a physical disability or someone with black skin have had to put up with all our lives.

As I understand it, while it has cultural aspects, Jewishness is a religion: like Christianity or Islam, it is a set of myths one can believe in or not. Thus, unlike having Cerebral Palsy, you can consciously choose to define yourself as Jewish or not. I cannot one day decide not to have CP. The same goes for christianity or islam: they are all sets of iconography which you can choose to observe or not regardless of ones skin colour, sexuality or physical ability. Yet Baddiel somehow claims to be both Jewish and an atheist; he wants Judaism to be seen not as a religion but as a race, and something inherently different from being ‘white’. Putting aside the fact that the concept of race is biologically baseless, I really dislike how keen he seemed to classify himself as other, as if being a straight, white, able-bodied man wasn’t cool any more; it’s far more politically and culturally fashionable these days to be a member of an oppressed, sidelined minority. A guy like Baddiel, however, won’t have faced a fraction of the discrimination disabled guys like myself, gay guys like my pal Serkan or immigrants like my friend Dom have to put up with on a daily basis, so this political stunt, in emphasising an aspect of himself which he could easily keep hidden and which nobody gives a fuck about anyway, seems highly misplaced.

I know I’m a day late, but I think I need to point out that yesterday saw the twenty-sixth anniversary of the release of Star Trek First Contact, the film I wrote the most about in my MA and still one of my favourite films. I still remember going to see it with my family in Stoke: I seem to recall that we weren’t that impressed, although I was really taken with one specific scene…

I wouldn’t really call myself a sports fan. Of course, I enjoy the occasional cricket or football match, but I’ve never been into sports to the extent that I’m into cultural things such as James Bond, Star Trek and the work of Tolkien. I do, however, have a great fascination with sport on a cultural level, as a cultural phenomenon: Sports events have a great, and probably unique, capacity to bring people together. People from all over the world converge onto one spot to support the team or athletes representing their country. The world’s media joins them at such events, so that for a time it seems that the entire world’s attention is focussed onto one geographic spot. This gives places the chance to show them selves to humanity, giving them the opportunity to step onto the world’s stage and big itself up. What interests me is how places use that opportunity to present itself to the world. London had it’s turn with the 2012 Olympics, and we’re currently seeing it happen in Qatar.

In hosting the World Cup, Qatar has the opportunity to hold the World’s attention. By selecting Qatar to host it, FIFA effectively awarded the tiny Middle-Eastern state a form of recognition it probably craved. It’s like when a city is chosen to host the Olympics: in a way it becomes a ‘world city’, a global big-shot. That’s what interests me so much about such decisions: they carry a lot of power, and can say a lot about which places are doing well, or are in the global good books. By giving the world cup to Qatar, however, FIFA has given it a type of global green light; it has given a tiny country with some completely anachronistic human rights laws the okay to behave in front of the world as if it was any other modern, progressive, liberal state. It can perform it’s opening and closing ceremonies for us while brushing the fact that it still has the death penalty and totally regressive LGBTQ laws to one side. It has been asked to join the club of advanced, tolerant democracies which are capable of hosting such events as if the fact that it is a tiny dictatorship doesn’t matter.

To be honest that appalls me, and I can’t help but smell the acrid whiff of corruption behind this selection. FIFA obviously want us to forget about politics and just concentrate on the ball-kicking; yet I don’t think you can disentangle one from the other. By making Qatar the temporary centre of the world’s attention, Football’s governing body implicitly also gave it the world’s approval. While it could be argued that we should respect the views of people in other places and not force our values onto others, I cannot approve of a theocratic dictatorship with utterly abhorrent human rights laws; surely some values must be universal when it comes to global events. Frankly, part of me seriously thinks that the English team should not be there, as we are just implying that we believe such countries have just as much right to global centre stage as anywhere else. While admittedly I’ll probably watch England’s matches just as I watched their match earlier, it will be with a very nasty taste in my mouth. Sport may have a great ability to bring the world together, but as when Berlin hosted the 1936 Olympics, that ability can be usurped and bent towards something far more insidious.

Massive Bond fan that I am, I’m keeping a very close eye on the speculation over who will next play 007. If you ask me, Daniel Craig left two very big shoes to fill: at least four of his five Bond films were smash hits, and his cold, brutal interpretation of the character has surely left a lasting impression on the series. His was the 007 to outplay Le Chiffre, and the one who went rogue and take M to Skyfall. Arguably most stunning of all, Craig’s was the Bond who escorted the late queen to the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, surely securing the phenomenal position of the Bond franchise in our culture. After Craig, it would be harder than ever to argue that the Bond films are just another bit of popular culture; they are very much part of British national identity. How, then, could any actor pick up the baton from him?

Whoever the producers select, they will come under massive media scrutiny. They will have been asked to portray a character who has been part of our culture for over sixty years and to carry on the legacy of twenty-five films and the six actors before them. Frankly given the cultural footprint that the Bond franchise now has, it would be an impossible task; the pressure would be unbearable.

How could anyone possibly follow Craig without being compared to him? It was bad enough when Craig took over from Brosnan. Whoever is chosen, they will be expected to stun us in the way Craig did in Casino Royale. Everyone will be looking forward to being reacquainted with an icon who, by then, we would not have seen for a while, and expecting them to do great, great things. I fear the expectation will be so immense, largely thanks to Craig, that whoever they choose is almost automatically doomed to fail.

There is, however, a solution which quite a few people are now pointing out: Bonds tone needs to change. To avoid any comparison, positive or negative, with Daniel Craig’s Bond films, there needs to be a complete break from them. The franchise needs to be reset, which means any new films have to be totally different from what went before. Whoever next plays Bond needs to give a completely different performance to Craig: where Craig’s 007 was a cold, brutal government assassin, perhaps we now need to see a more jovial, lighter, more humorous character. After all, as I found when I watched the series in order, portrayals of Bond have always changed – it’s one of the things which makes the series so interesting.

Thus if Craig’s Bond can be best paired with Connery’s or Dalton’s, what we need to see now is a return to Roger Moore’s. His was the camp Bond; the Bond of the raised eyebrow and witty one liner. The Bond who inspired Austin Powers rather than the one who gave rise to Jason Bourne. As explained very well in this Den Of Geek article, ”James Bond needs to have fun again” with lots of weird gadgets and contrived, totally unrealistic plots.

I must admit that at first I did not like this idea. I come to Bond from a pretty straight place: to me, he’s a cold, brutal government assassin capable of awesome things and who always gets his way. Nobody – absolutely nobody – does it better. Thus when I came to Moore’s films, I didn’t like them one bit: the character he was playing didn’t seem to have anything to do with the one created by Fleming. The 007 I knew did not make jokes or do circus tricks. To be honest I thought Moore was just using the figure of James Bond to project his own persona onto. Yet as time went on I realised that James Bond is just as open to interpretation and reinterpretation as anything else – that’s why he’s so interesting, and why he has endured. After Craig perhaps we need another reinterpretation, another reset. Casting a similar actor would probably feel like ”more of the same”, or like the producers had just opted to keep using their tried and tested formula. We now need something lighter, which doesn’t take itself too seriously. With the world as it currently is, we all know we could do with a bit of fun right now.

I just checked the BBC news website, saw this and instantly decided it needed flagging up here. People could be actually living on the moon within the next ten years. “Humans could stay on the Moon for lengthy periods during this decade, a Nasa official has told the BBC. Howard Hu, who leads the Orion lunar spacecraft programme for the agency, said habitats would be needed to support scientific missions.” I honestly find that jaw-dropping: to think that within ten years people could be living on the moon is incredible. Stuff usually only found in science fiction has become reality. This sort of stuff fills me with excitement, and I can’t wait to see if it actually happens.

I didn’t watch much TV last night, but if I had been I wouldn’t have been watching Children In Need

Children need to be supported properly, and the best, most efficient way to do so is through the state, not via nauseating television campaigns asking people for money they might not really have.

Today I have something very interesting indeed to flag up. I came across this short film yesterday, but wasn’t quite sure what to think about it. Having just rewatched it though, I think it’s safe to say that it is actually quite bold and brave. It stars my old friend/associate Katie Caryer playing two different people, who both have Cerebral Palsy. Both aged forty, one is a pampered, closeted woman who is highly infantilised and treated like a child by her parents; while the other woman is depicted as rebellious, independent, and fond of drinking and partying with friends. Thus we are quite nicely shown two completely opposite perceptions of disability: all too often I experience being spoken down to like a child, as though people assume I have the mental aptitude of a child; yet in reality I am a guy with a MA who enjoys a beer in a pub and James Bond films. So I really think Caryer’s film says something which needed to be said quite well. At just five minutes it’s only short, but is very well made thanks to Channel Four. Through it’s use of a rather unsubtle juxtaposition, it articulates a reality which guys like me face all the time: the mismatch between how people see us – as mentally incapable overgrown children who need to be spoken down to – and the complex, mature, fully formed people we actually are.

I just have another question to post here today: The Beeb for some reason chose to base it’s coverage of the autumn statement in Gloucester this morning, so there were quite a few people on breakfast TV speaking with West Country accents. It automatically reminded me of the character Samwise in The Lord of the Rings. When he was reading the book to me and my brothers as children, my dad always gave Sam a West Country accent. I think it really suited the character. Interestingly, when Peter Jackson’s film adaptations were made about ten years later, the actor playing Sam, Sean Austin, also gave him a west Country accent, despite being from New York. Thus I can’t help wondering: did Tolkien ever state what sort of accent Sam had? We know he based the character on the down to earth men he met in the trenches of World War One, but did he ever note anything about his accent? As I say, the rural, down-to-earth inflexion seems to suit him; and the coincidence between my Dad’s childhood reading and the accent used by Austin, perhaps most memorably in this scene, is enough to arouse my curiosity.

I haven’t been sleeping that well recently and got up ridiculously early this morning, for me at least. I’m now very pleased that I was though, because I turned the news on just in time to watch the Artemis launch. It cheered me up instantly: today marks the beginning of humanity’s return to the moon! Being into space exploration, it thrills me to see that sort of thing. It is an initial, unmanned mission, but All being well, it won’t be long before we’re watching people walk on the moon for the first time in over sixty years (although we can already expect fools to start saying it didn’t actually happen pretty soon afterwards). I find the prospect of that thrilling, as well of the prospect of humanity one day going even further, perhaps to Mars. Today thus marks the start of something awesome, and I’m glad I was up in time to see it.

Today being the last reasonably nice day for a while apparently, I decided to take one of my favourite walks along the river Lee from Canning Town to the Olympic park. As I’ve said before, it’s a lovely trundle along a well maintained path. I wasn’t going very fast and took several detours to explore various places, so it took a couple of hours for me to get up there. My plan was to then take the tube back from Stratford. However, crossing the bridge to get to the station, I passed the man I wrote about a few days ago in this entry. At first I thought I would ignore him and press on, but as luck would have it, a couple of policemen were walking past at the same time.

On the spur of the moment I decided to stop them. I explained that I didn’t have a problem, but rather would be grateful if they could ask the man nearby if he knew about the support he was probably entitled to. The cops seemed to think it was a good idea, and obliged.

The conversation they had with the man didn’t get very far: he didn’t seem very communicative. Five minutes later I was on my way again. Yet I’m glad I tried; I’m glad I took the opportunity to resolve something which had been bugging me. Who knows whether what I did earlier is going to make a difference to the man, or even if he had any interest in being helped to begin with. I suppose the best case scenario is that those policemen will now put him into contact with social services, who could find him a home etc. Perhaps I should have said nothing, kept to myself and carried on my way, but I needed to make sure that the man knew he is entitled to the help I am. I will probably  never know whether I made any difference at all, but at least I tried.

Huge England cricket fan that I am, I just spent a nail-biting couple of hours glued to the world cup final, but now that it’s over I have to say it’s great to see English cricket back on form. To tell the truth I didn’t watch much of this year’s world cup due to it being in Australia and the time overlaps that causes, but I just had to make an effort for the final. It definitely helped my breakfast digest. Mind you, the match really came down to the last few balls, and I’m sure Serkan had no idea what I was getting so excited about as I started to shout frantically at my screen. Now that it’s over, though, cricket fans all over the country are probably breathing a huge collective sigh of relief. Alongside their triumph in the fifty-over game, it now looks like English cricket really is going through a peak. It feels like an age since an English national team in any sport won anything so big; of course, England being England, whether we can keep it up remains to be seen.

Well Done England!

It’s a bit long, but if anyone feels like watching a fairly interesting summary of where the world currently is vis-a-vis physics and cosmology, I think this Youtube video is worth checking out. I’m no expert of course, but I think it gives a pretty good explanations of concepts like space and time. As someone interested in the subject in general, I find it witty, eloquent, relaxing and intriguing.

I have now been reliably informed, following my entry two days ago, that Iphone and Ipad charging sockets can be found on busses in at least two places outside of London: Northwich and Darlington (wherever that is). I suppose that puts my question to rest, then: I really must try to remember that London is not the focal point for all progress in the UK. However, another bus-related question is still bugging me. I never got to the bottom of whether wheelchair ramps on busses outside London have been made automatic or are still manual. I’m now used to the ramp coming out of a bus when the driver presses a button in his cab, but outside of London do drivers still have to get out and flip the ramp by hand? I would hope automatic ramps would be ubiquitous by now, but I suspect it’s a case of some areas having them while others still have slow, manual ramps which make you feel like a pain. As cool as Ipad chargers are, as a wheelchair user I think this is a far more important question, as it is surely a sign of how much a council is willing to invest in ensuring people with disabilities have access to public transport.

Just to follow up on this entry from a few weeks ago, I was heading to the station at Stratford today. There’s a large, wide footbridge between the tube station and the shopping centre there where people often beg. Crossing it today I passed a man sat in a wheelchair begging. He had no legs below his knees so he obviously needed the chair. What troubles me is, why would he be forced to beg, or feel he had to? Nobody should be forced to beg in this country, particularly if they can’t support themselves due to their disability. I can’t help imagining what life would be like if my benefits and support were suddenly cut and I was forced to sleep on the street.

He was talking to a friend and I don’t think they were using english: might he not have known about the support systems available in this country? If so should I have tried to do something to help? But what could I have done? Trying to stop and talk to him on my iPad would probably have got nowhere: even if he had understood what I was saying, what advice could I have given him? I thus just continued past on my way home, but I still find the issue very, very troubling. At the end of the day, though, instances like this go to show that we must make sure that all immigrants, with or without disabilities, know about the support they could be entitled to.

The question on my mind today is, is London the only place in the country which has mobile phone and tablet charging sockets on busses, or have they cropped up elsewhere too? I began to notice them a few months ago: every seat on a London bus now has a socket which you can plug a mobile phone charger into. This includes one for the wheelchair space, not that I’ve ever used it*. Pondering it today, I realised that its probably a sign of how affluent London is becoming: it’s a city of middle class executives who all have devices that they need to charge on their way to and from wherever they are going. The question is, therefore, do we see such signs of contemporary technological affluence happening elsewhere, or do we only encounter such obviously not cheap yet ultimately unnecessary additions to public services here in the capital?

*Mind you, putting a powerchair charger there would sometimes be useful…

Would somebody please tell Boris Johnson that he isn’t UK Prime Minister any more, isn’t the world-revered statesman he obviously now thinks he is, and has absolutely no business being at the climate change conference at Sharm El Sheikh. Honestly, when I saw reports of his appearance there earlier, I found it physically nauseating. The arrogance of the scumbag is sickening: he stood in front of an audience there, reportedly lecturing actual world leaders on why it is vital that they take action on climate change, bigging himself up as a maverick who, as PM, lead the world on the issue, when not that long ago he was denying the problem even existed. The self-importance of this discredited little worm really gets on my nerves; he should be brought back to the UK before he embarrasses himself, the country and Humanity even further.

How about this for an epic, hilarious fail by the morons at the Daily Fail? They quoted the famous spoof twitter account Sir Michael Take as support for their spurious claim that the Tories are somehow acting sensibly in dumping sewage onto Cornish beaches. “The Daily Mail’s dependability for reputable, well-sourced journalism took another hit this weekend after the newspaper quoted a parody account in an article about sewage dumping at UK beaches…..Reporting on the latest discharge in Cornwall, the Daily Mail chose to quote Sir Michael Take (Mickey Take) in their coverage after he posted these comments on social media.” Take had Tweeted “You’ll see the beach is empty so NO ONE is being harmed. This would of course have been stopped by the nit picking EU. Brexit means we can now employ such SAFE procedures. Good news!” You really couldn’t make it up. Only the Fail could stoop so low. Mind you, you have to worry about the state of British journalism when one of our most popular daily newspapers resorts to citing such an obvious spoof twitter account to back up it’s arguments: they’re so eager to maintain their pro-Tory, pro-Brexit, anti-EU agenda that they clearly didn’t even bother to check their sources.

I just decided to tap out a blog entry about Twitter. It is obviously in the news quite a bit now Musk has bought it, so I thought I’d write a quick entry explaining that, while I occasionally put a screenshot of a Tweet I agree with on here, as a rule I tend to stay away from Twitter. Before starting to type though, I thought I’d do a quick search to check what I have said about it before, and found this entry from April. It is, pretty much word for word, exactly what I was about to type. Apart from an occasional screenshot, I still find Twitter pretty much useless: nobody can really say anything significant on it, but it’s just a free-for-all of short, abrupt statements. Twitter is to writing what a McDonald’s burger is to food, or what Bud Light is to beer. It may be one of the most used websites on the ‘net, but I’d far prefer to keep rambling on my blog and leave the Twits to it.

London shrank a bit more for me last night. A few days ago, my parents invited me to a meal out with them, my brother Luke and his wife Yan in Hammersmith. It’s part of the city I had never visited before and looked rather complicated to get to, so although I said yes I was a bit hesitant about the idea: the western part of London is still pretty much unknown territory for me. However, when I came to look at it yesterday morning, I found, to my relief, that Hammersmith is only two tube lines away with a change at Westminster, all of which were marked as accessible.

I needn’t have worried: getting there was remarkably easy. I use London public transport with more and more ease and confidence these days as it’s gradually becoming more and more accessible. I got there a few hours early to fond that Hammersmith is one of those jaw-dropping parts of London which has obviously had millions spent on it, with a pedestrianised central square surrounded by expensive-looking shops and bars. The tube station itself is obviously quite new: it’s more like it’s own fully-formed shopping arcade, where, conveniently enough (and thanks to WiFi) I found Mum and Dad waiting for me in the Costa.

The rest of the afternoon was spent with them. They were, of course, in full on parent mode, buying things like aprons and socks for me. Then, at around five, it was time to go to the restaurant to meet up with Luke and Yan. What followed was a lovely family evening, being fed some absolutely delicious meatballs while being updated on all the family news. It was great to see them and certainly felt long overdue, although I think you’ll understand if I don’t go into too much detail.

I must say, though, how awed I was by Hammersmith. It was modern, pedestrian, hip, and colossal amounts of money had obviously been spent on updating the area. I now want to go back there soon to explore it under my own steam. But then, it’s a similar story all over London: new buildings are being built and areas are being renovated and gentrified all over the place. For example, I went to check out the new-look Battersea Power Station a few days ago: on the one hand, it was all very sleek and modern; I found I could get around the power-station made shopping mall in my powerchair very easily. Again I was in awe of what London seems to now be capable of: you could once tell it was once a very different, brutal, industrial place, but had been completely transformed into somewhere commercial, accessible and bright. To be honest the emergence of such unique, quirky places almost makes it feel like I’m living in one vast amusement park. On the other hand, it was obscenely bourgeois: all the shops were high end, ultra-expensive, jewellery and perfume stores, of absolutely no interest to me but catering for the kind of rich urban snob with too much money and no grasp of reality who seems to now make up a large proportion of London’s population these days. If I’m honest if felt slightly sickening when you remember that so much money needs to be invested in other parts of the country.

Yet it’s the same story all over London. It’s as if the city has more money than it knows what to do with. Vast amounts are clearly being ploughed into updating and gentrifying areas of the city, from Hammersmith to Battersea to Kidbrooke, and I can’t help but worry other parts of the country are being left behind. Yesterday I had dinner with my family in one of many such suburbs in this modern, sleek bourgeois metropolis, travelling on an ultra-expensive tube network unique in the country. As fast as London is hurtling into the future, I can’t help worrying it’s leaving the rest of the country in the dust.

Given that I blogged about the Brazilian election yesterday, some may expect me to say something about the election in Israel today. After all, what happens in Israel is just as important to world politics as what happens in Brazil, or anywhere else. The thing is, I know how thorny Israeli politics is; I know what a minefield going anywhere near the subject can be. Over two decades on the web has taught me that saying anything about it, positive or negative, automatically opens you up to all sorts of accusations. It is an issue which people get so emotional and worked up about that whatever you say will probably offend someone, and you’ll be accused of siding with one group or another. Thus, as critical as it is, Israeli politics is a subject which I learned long ago not to go anywhere near.

I know next to nothing about Brazilian politics so I don’t think I can comment much about this, but I must say it’s quite a relief that Lula De Silva appears to have beaten Jiar Bolsonaro in the election there. From what I hear of Bolsonaro, he’s a complete right-wing nutcase who makes Donald Trump look sane: his continued presidency would have been a total disaster for Brazil and indeed the entire world, given how much we all depend on the Brazilian rainforest, both biologically and economically. Perhaps with a more sensible head leading it, Brazil can get back onto a more worldly, wiser path. I must say too how happy I am for my cousins who live in Brazil, as well as my good friend Paulo who comes from there too. Globally I think this is a step in the right direction, one which we all needed badly. Mind you, the fact that Bolsonaro is yet to concede defeat might be a cause for concern – he might do a Trump, refuse to admit he has lost, and cling to power until the very last.