Today marks three years since the UK left the EU, and needless to say I’m not celebrating. What is there to celebrate in such an anniversary? Three years since we, as a country, shot our selves in the foot by cutting ourselves off from our nearest neighbours, spaffing our right to live and work across an entire continent up the wall. Three years since we opened the door to the most perverse, selfish form of capitalism, so that, unhindered by Single Market regulation, the rich, privileged few now have free rain to manipulate and exploit the rest of us as they please. Today marks the three year anniversary of the biggest mistake this country has ever made, the consequences of which are becoming clearer by the day. Of course, being the brainwashed fools they are, the outists will try to claim that the growing problems are due to Brexit not being carried out properly; but as the reality of brexit becomes more and more undeniable, it will get harder and harder to argue that it was the right thing to do, or that rejoining the EU is not the only sensible option let to us.

Just putting my trekkie hat on, the latest and probably final trailer for the latest and probably final season of Star Trek Picard is now online, and can be viewed here. Loads and loads of analysis of it has already appeared online of course, dissecting it second by second. I don’t want to go that deeply into it, other than to say that it has made me very excited indeed. There is only so much you can read into a trailer anyway. I’m sure I’ve written here before how I grew up watching Star Trek, particularly Star Trek The Next Generation, so to see this crew back together, in the roles they were in thirty years ago, is very meaningful to me. Of course, there’s an element of nostalgia to it, but it will be great to see these characters, who played such a major role in my childhood and adolescence, finally getting the send-off they never really had. The season will start to stream on 16 February, giving me just over two weeks to work out how I’m going to watch it.

I know I shouldn’t just post links to videos that I’ve just randomly come across on Youtube, but this one is rather fascinating. It puts to bed the mystery of why Brits drive on the left while French and American people etc drive on the right. The answer is more complex and interesting than you might think, actually having it’s roots, at least in part, in medieval jousting, gladiatorial combat and highway robbery.

I think I have a new favourite sport. Of course, I’ll always have a great affinity for cricket, but that’s the preserve of long, slow, sunny afternoons. Now, though, I have thought up something new to play: cripple chicken. It’s quite a straightforward game: it is played when two people in wheelchairs approach one another from opposite directions along a narrow path. The winner is the parson who holds their course and refuses to give way. You would be surprised how often it’s played; most of the time, competitors don’t even realise they’re playing it.. I’m pleased to say I’m becoming quite good at it, especially when I play against old people driving scooters (who barely know how to drive them anyway, but that’s another entry…)

(Remind me to never try to make jokes up when I’m riding home on a bus…)

I think I’ve made it clear on here over the years how much I like living in London. For the past thirteen years or so, I have lived in a vast, exciting, multicultural metropolis where you never know what will happen next. I love trundling around the city in my powerchair, getting on and off busses and tube stations pretty much at will, enjoying the culture of one of the world’s greatest cities, the same as anyone else. Having said that, I still see myself as a northerner: I grew up in a fairly small Cheshire town where pretty much nothing ever happened. I still have an affinity for the North-West, and would like, sometime soon, to pop back up there to visit – due to the pandemic and other factors, it has been a while since I went ‘home’.

I was therefore quite appalled to hear Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, talking on BBC Breakfast TV this morning. From the way Burnham described it, it sounded like the North has fallen tragically far behind London and the South East in terms of infrastructure and public transport. He said the rail network was still victorian, with vast numbers of services being cancelled at the last minute.

As he pointed out, that will have a hugely detrimental effect on the Northern economy. If we want the the rest of the country to achieve any form of parity with London, vast amounts of money need to be redirected and invested outside the capital. As I wrote here a few days ago, this imbalance really troubles me, particularly as a disabled guy and powerchair user. I can rely on public transport to get around London quite comfortably – it isn’t perfect, but it’s slowly yet steadily getting better. From what I hear, in the North-West, I would have to wait hours for a bus to get me anywhere; then, when it arrived, it might not have a ramp, and if it did the driver would need to get out of his cab to fold it out manually. How are disabled people expected to live rich, full lives with such poor services?

I suppose I have become a bit London-centric in the last few years, but this really gets to me. I know I’m bloody lucky to live where I do. A short bus or tube ride will take me almost anywhere in this vast, labyrinthine world city. But while London is flourishing and ever bigger sums of money are being spent on it, the rest of the country is being left to go to ruin. To be honest, not having been up north for so long, I find the picture Burnham drew of the sheer disparity between the quality of services in London and the rest of the country rather difficult to believe. It bothers me to think how I would be faring had I never moved here – would I still be pretty much confined to that quiet little town in Cheshire? More to the point, when is ‘levelling up’ really going to begin, so that we start to see the kind of expensive, world-class infrastructure commonplace in London appearing elsewhere in the country?

You might be expecting me to write something about the Nadhim Zahawi debacle today, but all I can really say is: what do you expect? Like all Tories, Zahawi is the type of person who thinks he effectively owns the country and should be free to exploit it as he wishes. They think the rules which the rest of us live by do not and should not apply to them. Thus they try to pay as little tax as possible, preferring to horde their wealth offshore to maintain their status as the wealthy upper class elite. Far be it for them to contribute to society or the ‘greater good’, least of all institutions like the NHS. After all, they don’t personally benefit from most of the schemes and structures taxation is used to maintain, so why should they be forced to pay tax to support them? I’m thus not at all surprised that a prick like Zahawi has been caught trying to hide his wealth from the taxman. For all their talk of going into politics to serve the public, Tories just look after their selves, their family and immediate friends; the rest of us can starve for all they really care.

Just to pick up on the issue of American gun violence again, I just heard something utterly chilling on the lunchtime news. It was so chilling that I really, really hope that either I misheard, or that it was a mistake in the report. I heard that the shooting on Saturday was the fifth mass shooting in America so far this year. How the hell can that be right? It’s only January. Surely that must be a mistake, as it’s too fucked up to be true. If anyone can clarify this for me, please do so.

Please tell me that this isn’t fake and actually appeared somewhere on the tube!

Time for a bit of this I think.

Today I just want to repeat what I wrote here a couple of weeks ago, as well as quite a few times before: when oh when will America get a grip of it’s gun control issue? We’re now hearing of yet another mass shooting, this time in California. “Ten people have died following a shooting at a ballroom dance studio in the Californian city of Monterey Park, near Los Angeles, police said. Police say another 10 people are injured and the suspect remains at large.” I realise that anything I write here won’t amount to much, largely because it’s unlikely that anyone who reads my blog will be in a position to do anything about this problem; yet I feel compelled to record how staggered and bewildered I feel at this news. How can America allow this to keep happening? Every month or so it seems there is yet another mass shooting, either in a park, shop or school. It’s heartbreaking. Why won’t they do something about this?

I always thought Newton was a genius…

We currently hear quite a bit in the news about the idea of ‘levelling up’ – the need to invest in the rest of the country to bring it more into line with London and the South-East. On the face of it, I fully support the idea: almost everywhere I go here in the east of London, I see new buildings being constructed and areas being redeveloped. It’s clear that hundreds of millions of pounds are being invested in the metropolis. Yesterday, for example, I met my parents for lunch at a lovely greek restaurant up at the Olympic Park in Stratford. Almost every time I go up there, I’m sure I find a new building being built: East Bank takes my breath away, with it’s fabulous-looking new theatres and museums. To think that less than twenty years ago that area was a forgotten, polluted wasteland really is incredible. It is now thriving with it’s huge shopping centre, olympic stadium and beautiful park laced with rivers and canals.

It’s a similar story all over London. Of course, the Elisabeth Line opened last year, the biggest, most expensive transport project in Europe. On top of that, on last night’s local news there was an item about the redevelopment of Brent Cross, yet another scheme costing billions of quid to rebuild an area of London. “One of the biggest regeneration projects in Europe, the Brent Cross Cricklewood scheme will see the comprehensive regeneration of 151 hectares to create a sustainable new town centre for Barnet and North London including substantial residential and commercial uses.” To be honest when I heard that, it struck me that it made ‘levelling up’ a bit of a joke: do we see construction projects like this anywhere else in the country? Are there the forests of cranes we find towering over London, towering over Manchester, Liverpool or Newcastle? How can anyone take the idea of ‘levelling up’ seriously if London is still getting all the biggest, most expensive projects? From what my parents told me yesterday, the rest of the country, especially small towns, is dying through lack of investment. I find this imbalance very troubling: for all this talk of ‘levelling up’, London still seems to be getting all the good stuff while the rest of the country is left to rot.

Just to update this rather old entry, I just came across this rather intriguing Esquire article on the possibility of Quentin Tarantino directing a Star Trek film. In it, Tarantino comments ” f I’m going to do it, then I’m going to do it my way. If you’ve seen my nine movies, you kind of know my way is an R-rated way and a way that is without certain restrictions” He goes on to say that there’s a chance he could turn out to make ‘Pulp Fiction in space. While the idea that the great director could get behind a camera for a Star Trek film has been knocking around the ether for a while, I think it still has legs. Indeed, a new director taking it in a new edgier, grittier direction could be just what the franchise needs.

We all ought to prepare ourselves to watch our human and consumer rights ebb away. The Tories have now started to strip away EU laws and regulations. ” Under government proposals, thousands of [EU-era] laws are due to expire automatically after December unless specifically kept or replaced.” Although they claim that things like workers rights will be protected, it is blatantly obvious that this was what Brexit was about all along: the sapping away of our rights to turn the country into an exploitative, capitalist hell. “The government says this process is an opportunity to make regulations more business-friendly, and rejects the suggestion that environmental or employment protections will be watered down.” But that’s clearly bull, as the watering down of such “protections” in order to make the UK more “business-friendly” is what Brexit has always been about from it’s very beginning. Outists were always moaning about how European human rights laws got in the way of them making money, and now they have been set free to dominate, persecute and exploit those less privileged than they are all they wish. In all seriousness I dread to think where this may end.

I’m still absolutely furious with Nicola Sturgeon. I just watched the lunchtime news, and the sheer audacity of the hypocritical bitch was stomach-churning. She is now accusing the UK government of “stoking a culture war” and causing division when it is mind-numbingly obvious that that is what she is trying to do. As I wrote yesterday, Sturgeon and the SNP brought their Transgender Rights bill up knowing full well the UK parliament would have issues with it, knowing full well it would be very problematic when it came to cross-border issues. That is the only reason the SNP drafted this bill: in reality it hass nothing to do with the rights of transgender people and everything to do with re-erecting ancient, outdated borders. If Sturgeon cared as much about trans rights as she claimed, she would have brought it to the whole UK parliament so trans people across the UK could benefit; but it’s obvious that, for all her liberal-open minded pretences, Sturgeon just cares about herself and her nationalistic thirst for power. She is just as much an arrogant disgrace to humankind as Farage. Watching her speak, pretending to be nice, tolerant and friendly when in reality she is a manipulative nationalistic cow who would screw most of us for her own ends, accusing others of fermenting division and rivalry she herself is knowingly stoking, really boils my blood.

I was just watching the BBC evening news, and it would seem a massive political can of worms has just been opened, one which covers two issues I feel very strongly about. The UK government has this evening acted to block the Scottish gender bill. Of course, the Scottish parliament wanted to make the laws around transitioning between genders more lenient: they wanted to lower the age at which one can transition from eighteen to sixteen, and make it so you no longer need a diagnosis of gender dysphoria to transition.

This is a very complex, thorny issue; one which I don’t feel like going into fully tonight. Of course, I wholeheartedly support trans rights. Surely everyone has a right to live however they wish. Yet as I explain here, I think that must come with a few caveats, especially when it comes to concepts like gender. Gender Dysphoria is a real condition and nobody has a right to cast doubt on that. But the key term there is ‘condition’, one which should require a proper medical or psychological diagnosis. If one is no longer necessary, I worry that people will begin to treat gender, being transgender and transitioning much more flippantly, as if it was something one could choose more or less to do on a whim, rather than the intensely uncomfortable often traumatic experience many transgender people currently go through. To a certain extent I think loosening the rules like the Scottish government proposes actually insults transgender people, as it makes transitioning a far less fundamental, life-changing decision, and treats what trans people go through far more flippantly than it deserves.

Thus, as much as it pains me to admit it, I actually side with the UK government (Tories) on this; they were right to block the Scots on this. This is something we need to be very cautious about and to treat with the upmost respect. It would also have opened up a minefield when it came to questions over who is which gender on which side of the border. But did Sturgeon and the SNP know that though, and is it what they were planning? Did they know this change in the law would cause so much trouble? Were they planning on it being blocked in Westminster? They obviously know how socially cautious the Tories usually are upon such matters; they also knew what a minefield it would open up. If that is true, then this bill had nothing to do with transgender rights or liberalising rules, and everything to do with fermenting division between Scotland and the rest of the UK. Now Sturgeon can turn to the Scottish people and say “They blocked our laws! Independence now!” She is effectively using the lives and rights of transgender people to achieve her own nationalist goals, something which I find utterly, utterly disgusting.

I defy any thinking, politically conscious person to watch this Owen Jones video bringing to light just how despicable and heartless the Home Secretary Suella Braverman is, and not think the bitch should be instantly removed from office. I know I shouldn’t just flag Youtube videos up like this, but I think what Jones says is very, very important. Braverman and the Tories have began to deliberately dehumanise migrants: They are trying to set up a narrative that there is some kind of army of illegal immigrants coming to invade the country. To hear Braverman’s comments as she responds to a holocaust survivor who points out that they too would have been sent back to the Nazis under the new rules is utterly chilling. What they are doing in their ‘war or immigration’ is no less cruel and inhumane than what fascists, imperialists and autocrats have done for centuries. For anyone interested in UK politics who wants to see the Tories for who they really are, watching this video is essential.

I didn’t think I would post an entry today, but I just watched the first fifteen minutes of Michael McIntyre’s Big Show and suddenly felt compelled to say something. I had seen it advertised a few days ago and thought it looked interesting. Would somebody please explain to me why something so awful, so childish, so base is doing on British television, much less being screened as the highlight of bbc one’s Saturday evening schedule. In the quarter of an hour I saw, McIntyre had ‘borrowed’ some dude’s mobile phone and was going through it, embarrassing him in front of the entire nation. It was somehow supposed to be funny – McIntyre and his audience seemed to find it hilarious – but all I could do was cringe, before getting up out of my chair and turning the shit off. If this is the height of mainstream mass entertainment in the UK, then surely we have reached a new low.

I just got some good news and some rather disappointing news. I now live in a set of three rows of freshly built flats, with two short roads separating each row. It is the type of residential construction which is now appearing all over London: compact, yet pleasantly communal. Each row has about sixteen flats, eight side by side and on two floors. At the end of one row, in the corner opposite to my flat, a space was left for a shop: rather than putting another flat there, the guys in charge decided to use it as a commercial space. It has never been used since I moved here though, and has been empty for months.

However, it now looks like the shop is finally about to open. People have been working on it for weeks, and each time I have rolled past it has looked more and more shop-like. This afternoon, coming back from a trundle, I noticed new signs had been put up saying that the store will open soon, and will sell groceries and basic products, including beer and wine. When I read that I automatically became more enthusiastic – it would make getting hold of my evening libations much easier. I then decided to take a closer look, and for the first time was able to look into the forthcoming shop.

To my total disappointment, I saw that, not only was the place tiny, but there were small flights of steps everywhere. It was only a quick glance, but from the looks of it, there’s no way I’ll be able to get in there. It’s a shame because I thought all new retail outlets were supposed to be wheelchair accessible. I found that very disheartening, and would have hoped that the people behind a new build like this, especially Greenwich council, would have been more thoughtful.

If working people, particularly in the public sector, do not have the right to strike, or if their strikes are rendered effectively moot by the need to carry on working anyway through ‘minimum service’ obligations, then they are rendered voiceless. Surely workers have rights which need to be defended. If we don’t, then what rights could the Tories take from us next?

Needless to say I’m still incandescent with rage over Brexit and all the barely literate halfwits who still support it. It is now putting peace in Northern Ireland at risk, something thousands of people had to negotiate for years for, ending a conflict which had cost thousands of lives. That fact alone should be enough to make any sensible person realise that leaving the EU was a total mistake, but to hear the Outist Imbeciles talk, it’s all the European Union’s fault for being belligerent and not letting them have their cake and eat it. When the issue was being discussed on Newsnight last night, I was literally shaking with fury: ‘Baroness’ Kate Hoey was trying to pin the problems on the EU, trying to con the public into directing our anger at Europe when it should be directed wholly and only at Brexiteers like her. We all knew that this would be a problem; we were warned that we would have to make peace in Northern Ireland all over again if the UK voted to Leave; so to hear those moronic enough to still support Brexit try to argue that this isn’t their fault really, really takes the piss.

The solution to the Northern Ireland issue is obvious. Leaving the EU means a trade border either in the Irish sea or on the island of Ireland. Neither is acceptable. The most logical thing to do is to abandon Brexit altogether, rejoin our neighbours and forget the stupidity ever happened. That’s the only way peace can be saved, and peace must surely come first. Of course, Outists like Hoey will never accept that because now they have their narrow-minded nationalistic way, their freedom to persecute and dominate those less privileged than they are, they won’t give it up. But if you ask me such people are fit only to be put into asylums and told to draw pictures; they shouldn’t be anywhere near the government of this country. Through their arrogance and stupidity, they have put the peace process under threat, and are now trying to blame someone else for it. That’s what makes me angry. It’s time to get a grip, ignore idiots like Hoey, and reversed Brexit.

I know I’m not anyone’s primary source of news, so by the time you read this, you’ll know what happened with last night’s launch. I just want to say how disappointed I am, and to commiserate everyone involved. However, this obviously isn’t the end of the story, but the beginning of it. Last night’s launch may have been a failure, but as people are already saying, there are many more such launches yet to come, not only from Cornwall but from other new space ports around the country. That’s what is so exciting: we are seeing the birth of UK space exploration; the first small steps into the final frontier. We are joining America, Europe, Russia and China in the exploration of space, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

I can’t help finding this news very, very exciting. “The first ever orbital space launch from British soil is getting ready to blast off. Monday’s mission will see a repurposed 747 jumbo jet release a rocket over the Atlantic to take nine satellites high above the Earth…. If it succeeds, it will be a major milestone for UK space, marking the birth of a home-grown launch industry.” While it is being done by Virgin – say what you will about Richard Branson and his cunning stunts – if this works it will surely open a new chapter in space exploration, not just for the UK but also in terms of ways to launch rockets and satellites.

Video of the launch will hopefully be online by tomorrow morning – it should be quite spectacular.

I just got back from the second part of a very interesting weekend- from an event where, for once, I wasn’t the strangest looking person in the building. I heard of RuPaul’s Drag Con 2023 a couple of days ago, and it seemed like it was worth a look. It was in the Excel Centre, meaning it was easy to get to, but it wasn’t something I would be disappointed about missing. However, when I headed over there early yesterday afternoon, I was instantly intrigued.

You might remember that I used to like to dress up in dresses and leotards: I suppose it was a form of escape or sexual exploration. I grew out of it though, and I haven’t dressed up in years. Boys clothes just seem so much more practical. However, I haven’t lost my interest in the cultural aspect of cross dressing, and that seems to have exploded: what was once my dirty little secret has now become it’s own subculture. The excel centre was filled to capacity with men in dresses and all kinds of exotic costumes, enough to make me wish I had made the effort and dressed up too. Of course this is probably due to the popularity of television programmes like RuPaul’s Drag Race, but I also think that the desire to be other, which I have written about here before, plays a part too.

People are becoming more sexually liberal, expressive and tolerant than they have been, which is obviously a good thing. Yet I think the desire to escape being perceived as normal also plays a role: being straight, white and able bodied is no longer politically fashionable, so people are now playing with aspects of their personalities which may have previously been hidden. Thus this weekend I saw all kinds of people, male, female, black, white, able bodied and disabled, wearing all kinds of costumes. It was quite fascinating.

While the event was largely about selling merchandise, there was a great atmosphere of camaraderie in the air, with people all over the place playing and joking with each other. I am in no position to judge, but I daresay that, while there were no doubt quite a few long term crossdressers and transpeople there, there were also quite a few people for whom this weekend was their first time expressing that aspect of their personalities. There was thus a sense of freedom in the air, as if events like this allow people to let them selves loose. The result is a new and growing culture, which allows people to explore and express desires which they have previously had to keep hidden. Where for me it was going to university which allowed me to experience the tug of tights, at a time when crossing gender lines was still rather taboo, events like Drag Con allow people to open up and play around, generating a new open, tolerant, welcoming subculture. Surely that can only be a good thing.

I know I don’t often comment on things like this, but when I heard about this news on the bulletin earlier, I let out a cry of absolute incredulity and astonishment. ” A six-year-old boy has been detained by police after shooting a teacher in the US state of Virginia, officers say….It is unclear how the child obtained the gun, but [local police chief Steve] Drew said the incident was not “an accidental shooting”.” I would defy anyone to hear that and not be utterly bewildered: How perverse does a country need to get were guns are so readily available that a six year old can get hold of one, let alone then shoot his teacher with it? How many tragedies like this have to happen before America wakes up and gets a grip of it’s gun laws?

I used to think Manchester was big. When I was growing up in a sleepy little Cheshire town, I used to think of Manchester as a vast urban metropolis to the north. After all, it even has an international airport. It amuses me how much that perception has changed. Now, after thirteen years living in London, my mind’s eye rather pompously casts Manchester as a sleepy little place up north, hardly deserving to be called a city. After all, London is where all the cool stuff happens; it is where all the arenas, museums and tube lines are.

I know I shouldn’t feel like this. It’s probably just an inevitable result of having lived here for so long and now having so many awesome memories and emotions to associate with the city. Trips like the one I took yesterday serve to remind me how vast and labrynthine London is, intriguing me even more. It has now reached the point where I can’t help finding it funny when people refer to Manchester as “Manchattan”, as if having four or five medium-sized skyscrapers mean that it ranks alongside one of the world’s great metropolises. Such people should come and see what’s happening in Canary Wharf, or even Lewisham!

Yet I don’t think this London-centrism is just confined to me, and that makes it a much bigger problem. It seems to be a cultural issue: people in London tend to look down on everywhere else, as if all other UK towns and cities are just tiny places which don’t really matter. We see it reflected in the investment being ploughed into London compared with everywhere else. I’ve become used to trundling around the capital on especially adapted busses and trains, forgetting that the infrastructure everywhere else is nowhere near the standard it is here. It’s easy enough to joke and dismiss places like Manchester as quiet villages, but the fact remains that the imbalance between London and the rest of the country is getting worrying.

Navigating around London can be quite confusing sometimes. As I wrote a few days ago, I spent a lovely Christmas with my parents at our family house up in Harlesden. Getting there isn’t a problem: I just have to get the jubilee line to Wembley, and a bus from there. I have to go all the way to Wembley, of course, because that is the only wheelchair accessible station at that end of the line.

However, glancing at the bus timetables on my way home last week, I noticed that the bus I had to take from Wembley, the 206, purportedly terminated at Kilburn station. If that was true, then it could have been very useful, as Kilburn is also a station on the Jubilee Line, but a few stops before Wembley. I know I went that way on a similar expedition back in October, but I now really want to get to know that area.

That, then, is what I decided to investigate today. My parents are currently up in Cheshire, so the house in Harlesden is empty; today was just about seeing whether I could get there any quicker and more easily. I got the bus to North Greenwich station, where I told the staff that I wanted to go to Kilburn. I was then escorted to the westbound platform and put on a train. No problem so far.

It took about half an hour to get to Kilburn, where a very helpful man was waiting for me with a ramp. (Using other similar stations in the future clearly won’t be a problem)  I got off the train and exited the station onto Kilburn high street. It was there, however, that things got silly.

I assumed that it would just be a case of looking for the right bus stop. I knew which bus I needed, but for the life of me couldn’t remember where the stop was: I don’t know that part is London very well, but I took it from the bus timetable I had seen that the stop would be just outside the station. I knew I’d been there once or twice before, yet I couldn’t find it anywhere, and my search gradually getting wider and wider.

To cut a long story short, I eventually found myself lost somewhere in Brent. My grandparents old place isn’t that far from Kilburn, but I couldn’t find it. I spent two hours wandering around, and was beginning to get slightly worried, when I suddenly came upon Kilburn Park Station and realised that the station the tube went through and the one where the bus terminated were two entirely different places. Things had suddenly become rather irritating, and I told myself I should have checked before leaving home.

On the other hand it was there that I finally found the bus stop that I had been looking for for the last two hours. I caught the 206 to Wembley, regretting having wasted so much time. However, rather than coming straight home, I got off the bus briefly to check on the family house, simply to make sure it was safe and secure. Although I hadn’t found the shortcut I was looking for, getting around the city is  becoming easier and easier for me: days like today show me that, no matter how lost I get, I can always get myself home. Thus I don’t think the trip was a complete waste of time.

Rather than taking the Jubilee Line all the way back, to round the day off I decided to change at Bond Street for the Elizabeth Line. I thought it would be quicker and quieter. It might have to simpler to go back the way I had come, but today was all about exploring and getting to know London a bit more. Today may have been a bit of a waste of time which took far longer than I thought it would, and I should have double checked where I was going before I left.. But days like this help me really get to know London; and at least  I now know that there might be more than one station with the same name.

I think I’ve mentioned on here once or twice the affection and respect I had for the late Queen. I am, of course, a firm believer in democracy, and hold that political and social authority should always be granted by a community. The notion of monarchy, where authority is inherited, obviously contradicts that. Yet it seems to me that the late Queen Elisabeth wasn’t so much a monarch as a maternal figure: she had always been there in the background, having become queen before either of my parents were born. She was benign and unobtrusive: she didn’t get involved in the day-to-day politics of the country, but we could always count on her to appear at major state occasions, or at Christmas to do her speech. A bit like David Attenborough or James Bond, she was one of those nice, inoffensive constants who had just always seemed to be there.

However, the same cannot be said of the rest of the Royal Family. Unlike the late Queen, Charles and his sons seem to appear regularly in the daily press: they more or less perform a royal national soap opera which was started by princess Dianna and has been going on ever since. To her great credit, the Queen always seemed to be above the farce, but now that she is gone all that we are left with is the daily trivia of an over-privileged, self-important family too used to airing their infantile bickering in the daily press. The way they are now giving interviews and counter-interviews against one another, and expecting them to appear on the evening news as if their petty family politics is of national importance, really is getting too much.

The question now is, do we really still want to put up with this bollocks? As a modern, educated democracy, is there really still a place for this anachronism? If we are a country of equals, why do we have to revere this family so much, paying so much attention to who says what about whom? Of course, the case has been made that the royal family acts as a type of limiting body for parliament: should a government ever go too far and become too extreme, the theory goes that the royal family, alongside the House of Lords, would hold it in check. Yet there are plenty of other, more democratic ways to do that, not least an elected second chamber.

I’m thus starting to think that it’s time to give the monarchy a serious reevaluation. To be honest, I had been thinking about this for quite some time: the Queen was cool, but once she went I knew my stance would change. I don’t think I’m alone in this: the great Ian Hislop articulated similar ideas recently, although I can’t seem to find the right video. Now we no longer have the great maternal constant which had been in our cultural background for seventy years, more and more people will start seeing the monarchy for what it is: a family of spoiled, arrogant snobs too used to being allowed to get away with anything they want, which we could easily do without. While I would be cautious about calling myself a Republican, especially not in the American sense, I suspect we’ll soon see a resurgence of republicanism in the UK.

Since I blogged about it at about this point a couple of years ago, I might as well note that 2022, like 2020 and 2021, was a good year for my absences. I still had a few of course, including one or two quite nasty ones, but they were few and far between. On the whole I feel quite positive about them and my health in general; it’s probably just a matter of maintaining a healthy, regular diet. Having said that, I must admit that my belly seems to have developed quite a bulge which I never thought it would.

This is a bit mean, but well put…