I love the eccentrics of Kentish Town: as examples, two old boys on the pavement consulting a tattered A-Z (none of that phone rubbish), and then a woman outside a supermarket advising entrants that all will be well. I hope she is right.
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Occasionally I write something on name-dropping. Although I do it myself, I still take pleasure in observing when others do it. Mary Wakefield (aka Mrs Dom Cummings) writes on the use of tracking devices for monitoring the movements of one's children eg sewing an Apple Air Tag into your child's school blazer. Apparently Snapchat has a 'map my friends' function.
Wakefield muses on being in a library and finding on an app that a friend is also there. But this is not any ordinary library, so: 'If, for instance, you are in the London Library* [my italics] and you see that a friend is there too, you can meet up for a matcha latte'.
Ok. I'm off to Soho House for brunch.
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News that civil servants are being trained to avoid micro-aggressions eg eye-rolling. After the cigarette ban, could we see legislation on this anti-social behaviour? You have been warned.
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Matthew Parris comments powerfully on the Tory right protesting about the proposed cigarette ban legislation. I cannot do justice to his piece, but it points out the phenomenon of buffet beliefs (my language but his analysis). The usual suspects - he names Liz Truss; Sir Edward Leigh; Philip Davies; Sir John Hayes; Danny Kruger - have denounced the proposal as an offence against our freedoms. Parris then points out that all of these individuals, apart from Truss, voted against the same-sex marriage bill.
I wonder how those individuals would have dealt with (again my language but Parris's citation) Lord Shaftesbury's 19th century social reforms.'Dammit, what's wrong with a lad shinning up my chimney to sweep it? That's part of my right as an Englishman to protect my castle (sorry, home)'.
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'So that this will never happen again...'
How often do we hear this statement? Yet we know that 'this' will very likely happen again. So why say it? The sceptical will suggest that the statement, when made by a body that could direct a societal response, is a performative reaction designed to make us believe that the statement comes from both the will and the ability to fix the problem. Less sceptically, it could merely be vocalising aspiration and hope for a solution; human beings depend on hope for the chance of positive experience in their lives.
More than that would need someone better than me to philosophise on the issue.
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Hawksmoor advert: 'Valentine's Day plans?'
Answer from many of us (and aimed at restaurants generally as I like Hawksmoor): 'No, where it involves being sucked into an overpriced menu in a venue where you sit like museum exhibits in a band of "romantic couples" '.
My prescription: go out on the 15th. It can be just as romantic, if romance is in your life, and a darnn sight cheaper.
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Vocalising hope and aspiration. I thought of this again when hearing the undiminished calls for 'Bring Them Home'. The real world folk will point out that Hamas will not release what is left of their hostage prizes without concessions that Israel (Netanyahu hostage to the right-wing of his Cabinet) will find it difficult to meet. Yet the families cannot allow this rationality to be processed in their minds. The call for a return of their loved ones is emotional, visceral - it cannot be other.
What scares me, and I hate even articulating this, is the thought of how many of the hostages are still alive. It would be totally Hamas to bluff bargain. And when a hostage is released, what condition will they be in, both physically and mentally?
It seems to me that as Hamas treats Palestinian casualties as collateral damage pawns, its carefully thought out strategy of identifying Israeli political and military weakness, then planning for and launching 'October 7th', and so provoking an Israeli military response played out under global media scrutiny, shows that its leaders are much smarter than Bibi and his buffoons.
And if you ask how Hamas can tolerate loss of life for its own forces, you have forgotten the terrorist philosophy of martyrdom for the cause.
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Who cares if you can't remember when your Veep term began and ended? Or when one of your sons died? Or if you call Macron 'Mitterand from Germany'? Or if you confuse Helmut Kohl with Angela Merkel? Ot if you describe the President of Egypt as the President of Mexico?
Hell people care! You're merely planning to run again for President of the US...
It was notable that Biden sharpened up only when stung by Special Counsel Robert K Hur's characterisation of him as a '...sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with poor memory'. Adrenaline can do it, but not for long.
You can have all the medical support in the world, but in ageing it will come down to your genes, and the orange one (who no doubt nevertheless doses on any snake oil meds available - remember the 'Covid cure'?) is winning there hands down.
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Sevington Centre near Ashford was built in 2021 as an 'inland border facility' to, per The Guardian, 'conduct import inspections on goods of plant and animal origin from the EU'. It was also, per same article in January 2023, a white elephant, with the Minister for Brexit Opportunities, Jacob Rees-Mogg, delaying the start of checking inbound goods four times, possibly as he was busy creating exciting opportunities elsewhere.
It appears that the facility is finally being brought into play, although the Dover port authority appears to think that there are severe risks of unsatisfactory goods slipping through and out and compromising the UK's biosecurity.
'inland border facility'. It reminds me of when Manston Airport on the Isle of Thanet, 70 miles from London, was touted as being renamed 'London Manston'. It didn't last.
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In this year's General Election, so much will depend on the thorny and subjective issue of trust. Labour have done pretty well here thus far, but are going to take a blow even after removing Mr Azhar Ali from their slate for the Rochdale bye-election on 29th February. It seems, um, implausible that he fell for an antisemitic online conspiracy theory. If he did, then his incompetence as a politician makes him unsuitable to be any party's candidate.
When teaching junior lawyers I bring up the issue of trust between client and solicitor. We reason out that when a client trusts you they act on your advice. That's the primary one. The other is disclosure. If they trust you they will be willing to disclose even sensitive information, because they know that you will not abuse that trust. If they do not trust you they will hold back. This latter one is also a lesson for life.
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I like Chris Patten. He strikes me as someone you would go to for wise advice. He is also a role model for a breed of politician that appears to be declining in the pursuit of polarisation.
In an interview on his retiring as Chancellor of Oxford University he said this on retirement ages:
'I don't think that the assumption should be that you get to your mid 60s and then retire. We're going to live longer. Mae West was correct: ageing is not for sissies. It's either your knees, or not sleeping so well. Realising you can't drink as much as you used to. Or actually getting ill.'
But I intend this as realism, not negativity. Patten, at 80 this year, has a full to do list...
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One of the curses of the Jewish community, and I mean it firmly as a curse, is that relative to its numbers worldwide it punches above its weight in terms of contribution to public life.
Why a curse? Because, I have concluded, it induces the envy of others, and this contributes in a large way to anti-Jewish sentiments (when are we going to abandon the oblique 'antisemitism'?), or as one of my Jewish friends bluntly terms it, Jew hatred.
Try this in relation to composers and lyricists of Jewish descent creating popular early 20th century American music:
George Gershwin (born Jacob Gershwine); Stephen Sondheim; Oscar Hammerstein; Lorenz Hart; Jerome Kern; Irving Berlin (born Israel Beilin); Kurt Weill
And if you want to quip that many Jews changed their birth names to hide their heritage and give themselves a better chance in life, conjecture on how Blessed Cliff Richard would have made out if he had stayed Harry Webb (same for the rest of the entertainers whose origins are embedded in pub quizzes).
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Staunton v Badenoch. Fought out in the court of public opinion. Whom to believe on the alleged facts from either side? Credibility of a party, something that juries and judges have to decide day to day. Who of the two is the more plausible?:
Could be alleged against Staunton: bitter and wounded after being sacked.
Could be alleged against Badenoch: bitter and wounded by someone who did not go quietly; angry at a boulder in the path towards post-General Election leadership of the Conservative Party.
You might characterise it as City grandee v politician. Whose stock is lower at present?
But you might consider the position of the Government, magnetically drawn into repeated claims of direct contributory responsibility for the management of the Post Office compensation process, leaving aside suggested oversight culpability for the actions of that corporate national treasure.
If it were Bates v Badenoch or Hamilton v Badenoch, it wouldn't even warrant ten seconds of deliberation.
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Lo and no. Now prominently appearing in drinks offerings. Having for various reasons had a dryish couple of months, I am delighted that there are options other than orange juice, apple juice and Coke, as squashed into a dark corner of the menu.
However, wine-dispensing institutions are getting scared. Pre my drier spell I put in some solid work in checking prices after the pandemic for bottles of wine in restaurants. My experiences were that prices had rocketed. I get it that places still recovering from the Covid earthquake had to somehow recover their margins. But consumers have a choice. Personally I will be experimenting with the G&T (slimline tonic of course) - enough of an alcohol kick, and volume-wise enough to get you through to being content with water (tap of course) for the rest of the meal.
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Even without the alcohol, I put on a few pounds over Christmas. However, that is only a technical putting on of weight in that the overall context is my maintaining the level of reduction I hit by 2021 (and anyway I have now lost those pounds). Guess where I learnt that line...
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Israel/Hamas/Gaza has become a political plaything for UK politicians. But as we witnessed the late Christmas Pantomime of Lindsay Hoyle and the Three Motions, it took Israeli journalist Anshel Pfeffer (not a Netanyahu stooge) to bring us back to earth. Talking on BBC Newsnight, he observed that whilst Israel listens to the US, it takes little notice of the UK. Less so even after the Hoyle farce.
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Sometimes you see le mot juste, or in the case of the words below, l'expression juste. Lloyd Evans writes of a food bank parcel: 'It looked like the contents of a dead bachelor's pantry'. Think powdered stuff. Brilliant.
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The author is a writer, speaker, historian, occasional tour guide, and former Managing Partner of a City law firm.