Time for a change in routine?

I haven’t been able to write as much as I would like for the last few weeks for a variety of reasons - holidays, domestic chores and, well, life. I’m sorry for the lack of content and it’s not like there’s been a shortage of things to write about.

There was the election of Donald Trump, which had seemed absolutely inevitable for at least the last year or so. Yes, there are apparently tens of millions of people in the US who actively want their nation to be led by a corrupt and unprincipled criminal who can barely string a coherent sentence together, but the Democrats own a lot of the blame too for their arrogance and complacency. And there we were thinking that a shadow cabinet that included Badenoch, Priti Patel, Chris Philp, Robert Jenrick and Mark Francois made the UK look like a laughing stock. We’ve a way to go yet to beat the USA in the risible politician contest.

There was the election of Kemi Badenoch as Tory party leader. It’s quite extraordinary to see the Tories pick such a shrill, unlikeable, and out-of-touch figure as their leader, after all the years of Tory blowhards endlessly portraying the left as such. If Badenoch ever makes it into power, it’ll probably be as the junior partner in a far-right Faragist coalition brought about by Keir Starmer’s unpopularity. 

Which brings us to Rachel Reeves deeply disappointing budget. We desperately needed a decisive move away from the austerity economics, privatisation mania, and managed decline that have blighted the country for decades, but even with their enormous mega-majority, all Starmer’s Labour is offering is a bit of tinkering around the edges of "more of the same".

And then there’s the festering sore of Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinians. It’s been well over a year, and it’s beyond clear that nobody with the power to stop it cares about the massive death toll, the war crimes, the forced displacements, the starvation tactics, the targeted assassination of medics, aid workers, and journalists, the systematic destruction of hospitals, universities, and sites of cultural and archaeological importance, or the repeated attacks on other countries in the region.

I could have ranted on about all of these issues, but would I really have been bringing anything new to the table by pointing out that Trump is appalling, Badenoch is an unlikeable weirdo, Starmer and Reeves are beyond disappointing and the Israeli atrocities are utterly depraved? Not really.

I'm feeling a little jaded with the world at the moment and I want to do something more than just write about current affairs from a fairly predictable perspective. My intention is to try to move away from day-to-day reportage for a bit, and dedicate more of my writing to the kinds of broader themes that will keep my blood pressure down and restore my somewhat off-kilter equilibrium. Our walks and anything that takes my fancy really. At least that's the intention and we'll just have to see how long I stick to that.