Unfit to govern...

The US has now lost more people to coronavirus in the last three months - 60,000 - than it lost during two decades of involvement in the Vietnam war. From what I see and hear, Donald J Trump has crossed the line from being a divisive figure in the White House to being entirely unfit to govern. Will some White House staffer creep up behind him with a chloroform-soaked handkerchief?

Licensed this morning: another of the eco-houses at Findhorn...

Every little helps...

Licenced today, and for the best price this month...

Just coping...

Read this quote online this morning, by life coach Michael Bungay Stanier. “If you are not struggling a bit at the moment, you possibly haven’t understood the severity of what is going on. Our brains hate uncertainty – we associate it with risk – and now we’re being forced to live it. It’s important to be kind to yourself and not feel like we should fill this time with lists of new year resolutions. Just coping is enough”. That sounds like sense to me… so I’ll forgive him for calling himself a ‘life coach’.

Licensed today: the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford upon Avon...

Fatalities...

The daily press briefing is our new teatime ritual, when a member of the cabinet is wheeled out to offer sanctimonious advice and to announce the statistics for positive tests, hospitalisations and deaths. It was a solemn moment, on Saturday, when the number of UK deaths from CV passed 20,000. And yet these numbers are exceptional only for the fact that all these people died from a virus whose existence was unknown until late last year. To put this figure into perspective, around 600,000 people die in the UK every year..

Licensed today: Rick Stein's restaurant in Winchester...

Up the Junction...

Somebody somewhere wants a picture of the Junction pub in Otley... even though the price they paid would barely buy a round...

Blasphemy...

The Scottish government is about to decriminalise blasphemy, more than 175 years after the last case was prosecuted (a blasphemy case was brought against bookseller Thomas Paterson for “exhibiting placards of a profane nature” in his shop window in 1842), and twelve years after the blasphemy laws were repealed in England and Wales.

Blasphemy is a strange crime, designed to protect religions and deities against criticism or mockery. But it’s people who need protection from bigotry and discrimination; ideas - and beliefs - are reckoned, in the 21st century, to be able to look after themselves. Religious people demand respect for their own beliefs, but are seldom so vociferous in their demands for other religious beliefs to be offered the same rights. Such is the nature of religious exceptionalism.

Everyone in Britain now enjoys religious freedom: the right to worship one god, or many gods, in whatever way they see fit, and the law grants us the concomitant freedom to worship no god at all. The righteous are free to believe religious propositions on insufficient evidence, just as I am free to point this out.

The ruins of Elgin Cathedral, licensed yesterday...

Bassenthwaite Lake...

I watch some of the daily 5pm press briefings from Downing Street. There seems to be an ever-widening gulf between what we learn from whichever cabinet minister draws the short straw - Dominic Raab, Matt Hancock, Michael Gove or Rishi Sunak - and what we learn from the scientists and medical experts to their left and right. Raab looks like a startled deer caught in the headlights, Hancock looks increasingly out of his depth, Gove looks like something you’d buy with pocket money from a joke shop. Sunak at least looks competent, though the job he was tasked to do, as Chancellor, was to pile up debts which will take years, maybe a generation, to pay off.

Boris will no doubt be back at the podium soon, though he doesn’t inspire much confidence either. Despite all the promises, about PPE, testing, vaccines, etc, we are lacking a calm, reassuring presence at the podium who can offer more than the current platitudinous slogan: “Stay home, protect the NHS and save lives”.

Licensed today: a boat moored on Bassenthwaite Lake...