a million times a trillion more (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dolorosa_12) wrote2019-09-08 02:27 pm
dolorosa_12) wrote2019-09-08 02:27 pm
I saw the light in you going out as I closed our window
Well. Anything I could possibly say about the week that was in British politics will likely be out of date by the time this post goes live, so I'm not sure it's worth even trying.
We seem to have reached the Shakespearean backstabbing portion of the thirty-year Tory psychodrama about the EU — and really, while the left certainly has its circular firing squads, no one stabs each other in the back quite as viciously as conservatives when they've realised they've got nothing left to lose. At this point we seem set to have one resignation a day (all expressed in the most knife-twisting language), the attorney general has popped up to say that he's had to have a conversation with Boris Johnson to remind him that as Prime Minister he is expected to follow the law, and Dominic Cummings is wandering the halls of Westminster with a glass of red wine, screaming drunken abuse at any MP he encounters.
How this will translate in electoral terms (when the inevitable election materialises) is anyone's guess. I don't trust any polls, and I literally do not know a single person who voted to leave the EU, nor do I go out of my way to hang out in Leave spaces or interact with Leavers, so who knows what Leavers make of all this. I certainly think it's a mistake to think of all Leavers as a unified bloc, but I don't know enough of their internal divisions, or how this is likely to translate in a general election, or whether their votes will change depending on whether an election is in October prior to leaving the EU, or later in the year after an extension. I was talking to a work colleague on Thursday, and she mentioned her elderly, Leave-voting mother, an English woman who has lived in rural Wales for decades. Her mother normally votes Lib Dem, but given that party's Remain stance she's felt unable to vote for them. She would never vote Labour, and would probably have been happy to vote Conservative when Theresa May was leader, but loathes Boris Johnson and doesn't want to leave the EU without a deal. Apparently this woman is completely at a loss as to how to vote in any upcoming election. This kind of Leave voter is not the noisy no-deal-at-all-costs troll screaming abuse on Twitter, or making a visible nuisance of themselves threatening to string Remain voters up on the nearest lamppost (as happened at a rally in London yesterday). Because they're quiet, it's hard to tell how many there are of them, what they think of the current situation, and how they will vote, if they vote at all. And there are all these kinds of unpredictable elements in the mix in any upcoming election. I think anyone who thinks we will emerge from it with a Corbyn government with a majority is completely deluded, but I think pretty much anything else is a possibility.
We're in interesting, and dangerous, and, frankly, terrifying times.
Somehow amid all this mess, I've managed to have something approaching a weekend. Yesterday Matthias and I hopped on a train, meeting up withnotasapleasure several stations down the line, and had lunch with our friends L, C, and their baby daughter in a pub in Wymondham. The pub's beer garden and interior were very pretty, and I think the beer drinkers enjoyed what was on offer, but the food wasn't particularly impressive. I was there for the company, in any case, and it was nice to be out of town, so I didn't really mind.
Today Matthias and I got up early and walked out to Grantchester in the cool stillness of the morning, in order to have breakfast at the tearoom there, which is within a beautiful apple orchard. It was still warm enough to sit outside, and the walk there and back was lovely. We picked apples and blackberries on the return journey, and I'm looking forward to eating them later today! Here is a photoset from the trip.
I also wrote a review of The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson, one of my most anticipated books for 2019, which I enjoyed immensely. You can read the review here, and as always, if you've read the book (or are interested in reading it), please feel free to comment either here on Dreamwidth or at the review on my Wordpress blog.
A while back (so long ago that I no longer remember who made the recommendation), a rec for an absolutely brilliant Good Omens fanwork crossed my feed. I don't want to spoil the premise too much, but suffice it to say it features Aziraphale and Crowley, Babylonian tablets, fake academic footnotes, and even an appearance by Ea-Naṣir. The work is here, and I love it so much.
We seem to have reached the Shakespearean backstabbing portion of the thirty-year Tory psychodrama about the EU — and really, while the left certainly has its circular firing squads, no one stabs each other in the back quite as viciously as conservatives when they've realised they've got nothing left to lose. At this point we seem set to have one resignation a day (all expressed in the most knife-twisting language), the attorney general has popped up to say that he's had to have a conversation with Boris Johnson to remind him that as Prime Minister he is expected to follow the law, and Dominic Cummings is wandering the halls of Westminster with a glass of red wine, screaming drunken abuse at any MP he encounters.
How this will translate in electoral terms (when the inevitable election materialises) is anyone's guess. I don't trust any polls, and I literally do not know a single person who voted to leave the EU, nor do I go out of my way to hang out in Leave spaces or interact with Leavers, so who knows what Leavers make of all this. I certainly think it's a mistake to think of all Leavers as a unified bloc, but I don't know enough of their internal divisions, or how this is likely to translate in a general election, or whether their votes will change depending on whether an election is in October prior to leaving the EU, or later in the year after an extension. I was talking to a work colleague on Thursday, and she mentioned her elderly, Leave-voting mother, an English woman who has lived in rural Wales for decades. Her mother normally votes Lib Dem, but given that party's Remain stance she's felt unable to vote for them. She would never vote Labour, and would probably have been happy to vote Conservative when Theresa May was leader, but loathes Boris Johnson and doesn't want to leave the EU without a deal. Apparently this woman is completely at a loss as to how to vote in any upcoming election. This kind of Leave voter is not the noisy no-deal-at-all-costs troll screaming abuse on Twitter, or making a visible nuisance of themselves threatening to string Remain voters up on the nearest lamppost (as happened at a rally in London yesterday). Because they're quiet, it's hard to tell how many there are of them, what they think of the current situation, and how they will vote, if they vote at all. And there are all these kinds of unpredictable elements in the mix in any upcoming election. I think anyone who thinks we will emerge from it with a Corbyn government with a majority is completely deluded, but I think pretty much anything else is a possibility.
We're in interesting, and dangerous, and, frankly, terrifying times.
Somehow amid all this mess, I've managed to have something approaching a weekend. Yesterday Matthias and I hopped on a train, meeting up with
notasapleasure several stations down the line, and had lunch with our friends L, C, and their baby daughter in a pub in Wymondham. The pub's beer garden and interior were very pretty, and I think the beer drinkers enjoyed what was on offer, but the food wasn't particularly impressive. I was there for the company, in any case, and it was nice to be out of town, so I didn't really mind.Today Matthias and I got up early and walked out to Grantchester in the cool stillness of the morning, in order to have breakfast at the tearoom there, which is within a beautiful apple orchard. It was still warm enough to sit outside, and the walk there and back was lovely. We picked apples and blackberries on the return journey, and I'm looking forward to eating them later today! Here is a photoset from the trip.
I also wrote a review of The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson, one of my most anticipated books for 2019, which I enjoyed immensely. You can read the review here, and as always, if you've read the book (or are interested in reading it), please feel free to comment either here on Dreamwidth or at the review on my Wordpress blog.
A while back (so long ago that I no longer remember who made the recommendation), a rec for an absolutely brilliant Good Omens fanwork crossed my feed. I don't want to spoil the premise too much, but suffice it to say it features Aziraphale and Crowley, Babylonian tablets, fake academic footnotes, and even an appearance by Ea-Naṣir. The work is here, and I love it so much.
no subject
This sentence. Just, this sums it up, doesn't it. The utter madness we're experiencing.
I'm feeling pessimistic about the mood of people who voted to leave, tbh. Judging by some of the bits I've seen on the news, I suspect that a large number will support Johnson and just want Brexit to happen no matter what. I think that's the message Johnson and his supporters are setting up for an upcoming election. People vs Parliament and all that.
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I think it's more unpredictable than anyone really knows, and I think a Labour majority is impossible. My wildest dream is for a hung parliament with Labour the biggest party, needing to be propped up by the Lib Dems, who make revocation or a People's Vote a condition. I think that's too optimistic, but I'm not certain it will be a hard Brexit landslide.
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Your wildest dream sounds nice. I just keep thinking of how many unlikely things need to happen for that to become reality. It's not impossible! Just relatively unlikely.
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The list of medicines which may be in short supply was even more depressing. With that and the threat of fresh food shortages I don't understand how people would still want things to go ahead, but my mum who usually is suspicious of news and voted remain STILL thought it was scaremongering rather than actual facts which is beyond frustrating.
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It's an absolutely terrifying state of affairs. It's a game being played with people's lives, by people who will likely never suffer the consequences. And, as a migrant, married to a migrant, with most of my friends being migrants themselves, everything leading up to and resulting from the referendum has been personally traumatic, living with this sense that all of this horror and chaos happened because voters were appalled at the fact that me, and people like me, live in this country, and wish we would leave.
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