Is spring coming earlier? I don’t know but this is the second year where it has felt very spring like at this time of year. Two years worth of anecdotal data is hardly conclusive, especially as the February of 2021 was colder and had snow on the ground 1, but as I walked across the fields around Willoughby Watersley in shirt sleeves and sleeveless fleece it certainly felt VERY spring like. Well if it is spring then that is not good in the long term but this afternoon it felt good to get some rays on my body.
1 The data I’m using are the previous three years of blogs I have written in February – a very scientific data set!
Life is brutal – politics doubly so. Just over three years ago the political party leaders of Britain’s main parties, in their own different ways, controlling all they surveyed. Now they are all gone. Some more quickly than others – does anyone really remember Jo Swinson? A few people perhaps but beyond the nerdy sections of the population she caused almost no ripples at all – this included the good people of Dumbartonshire who dumped her as their MP in 2019. The first to fall.
The next to go was Jeremy Corbyn who hung on until 2020 after leading the Labour Party to one of their greatest defeats in the 2019 election. Of course biggest beast was Boris Johnson who squandered the almost impossible victory he managed create from 2019 and was gone by August 2022. All gone.
Now the final party leader to go has just started to move towards the door. Nicola Sturgeon will soon have more time to spend with her nieces and nephews (this is a reference to her resignation speech). Of them all she was by far the most impressive political force. Yes Johnson was box office but as political operator he really hadn’t a clue and in many ways this lead to his own downfall. Sturgeon on the other hand was able to keep together the warring factions of the SNP together for almost 8 years after their greatest disappoint a feat few could’ve managed but she did. As First Minister of Scotland she ruled supreme but in the end these all things crumble and collapse. So it is with Sturgeon’s career. To rub salt in her wounds Rishis Sunak, a politician who would be much improved if he but 1% of Sturgeon’s political skills, should offer her a seat in the House of Lords.
So goodbye to them all. They were all there through some of the most insane moments of modern British political history. They are a hard act to follow … well perhaps not Jo Swinson!
‘..it’s a type of flocking bird...’ – David Tennant 1
So yesterday…what to say about yesterday? Well the best that can be said is that I was just not in the mood to do anything and so I just sat down and did a bit of doodling in a sketchbook I found on the shelf. Did it lift my mood? Not really but I enjoyed the process.
Call me someone stuck in the past if you will but I really do believe in localism. Gone would be the need to refer everything back to Whitehall for some form of rubber stamp before you can proceed. No I think that local people should make their own decisions and then implement them. This, of course, also means that the same local people have to live with those decisions whether they are good or bad.
The Hepworth at Wakefield is a great example of this. Here we have a gallery that caters for not only local residents, it is free for them to enter and also use the gallery as a ‘warm space‘ (a more damning indictment of years of misrule I can’t think of) as well as visitors such as myself from further afield who have to pay for the privilege. It’s exhibitions are always excellent even if sometimes they don’t really appeal to your individual tastes. Yet they always have a local flavour and rarely suffer from the bombast found at exhibitions in the metropolis. Every region or city should have such spaces and they should be celebrated, as the Hepworth is, rather than slowly run down.
So I would whole recommend a visit anytime you are in the area…I don’t believe you’ll be disappointed.
Ps…if you want a far more in depth review of one of the exhibitions currently on at the Hepworth then check out my fellow traveller David Manley’s blog.
A new month and new hopes? Perhaps. What I do know is that the 1st of February was a grey old winter’s day neither that cold nor that dry just one of those shrug of the shoulder days.
After the last few weeks we’ve had it was nice to get away for a few hours and enjoy some great art at the ever reliable Djanogly Gallery in Nottingham. The current exhibition, Sophie Ryder: Sculpture, Drawings, Prints, is a great snapshot of her work – including 100 Mexican rabbits – you’ll have to go to understand what I’m talking about.
On the way home I couldn’t resist a couple of images of the Ratcliffe Power Station – a long time muse..
Another day another scandal…Today we have the Chairman of the Conservative Party who is fighting for his political career after he was found to have had to pay a significant fine because he failed to pay his taxes. He claims it was a ‘mistake‘ but if reports are to be believed he had to pay a multi million pound fine – some mistake. Oh and by the way when he was negotiating this settlement he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the man responsible for collect all the taxes! You cannot make this up. He will have to go and it looks like the PM is getting ready to dump him – but not yet. Why you may also ask? Who knows but every minute he stays put he is doing more and more damage to the tattered reputation of the government and the Conservative Party.
Another fine mess coming down the pike is the is the local elections this year. This year we’re supposed to produce photo ID – stop voter fraud is the reason but many people suspect something more sinister is the real reason. Anyway, having to produce a photo ID is not widely known and you can guarantee there will be many elderly voters who will turn up and will be told they can’t vote because they don’t have photo ID. It has the potential for causing chaos ( you can picture the scene now ‘My great grandad fought the Nazi and he wasn’t allowed to vote..’ or something along those line). I suspect the Labour party will be on the lookout for such a case and boy will it make a stink when it hits the social media/ media. Who’s bright idea was this?
I don’t know if you can smell it but the wiff in the air is the carcass of the decaying Tory Government.
There was a time when I would get out and about before dawn to catch the light…There was a time! Now, whilst the spirit is willing the flesh, I’m sorry to say, is weak and the thought of leaving my nice warm bed for a drive out somewhere and then jumping through the mud and ice for that wonderful, well I think it is – your mileage may vary, photograph no longer fills me with anything other than discombobulation. Coco and slippers here I come!
Side note: This coal fired power station is supposed to be closed down by 2025…I’m not holding my breath on that!
Well the New Year saw me visiting the hospital a lot but thankfully that is behind us. However, it does help to remind oneself what is really important in your life and what is not. This blog was not high on my priority list which I’m sure you would agree.
So with things settling down it has meant I can get out an make a few images. Boy was it cold this morning – with wind chill -7 degrees C and it felt it at times. Now of course there are plenty of places colder than that right now but round here it is cold and that is all I’ve got to compare with.
I say ‘make‘ a few images well both of these have been made by me capturing them, then by the Adobe Lightroom A.I. stitching them together as Panos and finally me once again working on each image in Post Production. Is this the rise of Skynet? I doubt it, oh I hope I’m right, but in truth these are just new tools we have created for the world in which we live. How they will progress is fascinating but I doubt they will be the end of the world as we know it. No we are more than capable of doing that on our own without the help of any Artificial Intelligence.
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