It’s wet but not cold…

Posted on November 19, 2022 by Guthlac

Only a few weeks ago this pond was bone dry… now it’s not

Such is the crazy world we now live in.

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What a SHITTY autumn this is turning out to be…

Posted on November 11, 2022 by Guthlac

So October was all about COVID: catching it, enduring it and recovering from it. November has now disabused me of any notion that I am finished with COVID. Instead I have been suffering from fatigue. I caught what was probably a cold and instead of taking a couple of days to clear has now taken the best part of two weeks and I still don’t feel right. The last time I actually captured a photograph in anger was back on the 24th October. I now have to plan my day around the fact that should I do some form of exercise, say go for a short walk, I will probably feel not fir for much afterwards. It is getting better but it is so frustrating.

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Post COVID Day 7…

Posted on October 25, 2022 by Guthlac

These past few days have seen the weather change and then change again. The autumn leaves are being washed from the trees and plants by the wind and rain we have endured – we even had very explosive thunder and lightning storms the other night as well (I know nothing compared to other parts of the world but for Britain in mid to late October they were something). The upshot of this is that the images I have captured reflect this. Perhaps I should get out a bit more!

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Post Covid Day 6 ….

Posted on October 22, 2022 by Guthlac

Grand opening of a new Dunkin’, not sure what happened to the Donut? – Probably Brexit or a Romainer problem. In the real world things are entering into a total meltdown and yet the world goes on.

Only 9 days to the end of October … wonder how many Prime Ministers we’ll got through by then?

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Post Covid Days 2 – 5…

Posted on October 21, 2022 by Guthlac

I think I’ve said enough about the madness engulfing what passes for our political class apart from to make one observation…over the past few days I have head and read that Britain is fast becoming ungovernable … this is not the case. The Conservative Party are now ungovernable and not wishing to be a stickler for detail they don’t represent the country as a whole. Indeed, our crazy voting system, at least at UK level, means that the Conservatives in in their Johnsonian pomp never had anything like a majority in the country as a whole. Just a point I thought worth making.

The rest, as the saying goes, is politics which is what I was listening to whilst capturing these images.

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This Won’t End Well for Anyone … Pt 2

Posted on October 20, 2022 by Guthlac

So she has gone … thank you for everything you did for the country … Liz Truss you’ll not be forgotten in a while! So we will have yet another Leader of the Conservative Party by this time next week (This isn’t a hostage to future striff at all!?!) who will no doubt make grandiose claims about unity, the honour of it all, the hard work ahead … and and and no one will be listening. He, I think it will be he (see below), will have as long as it takes him to cross Downing Street before the Conservative Party will collapse around him. Will he last as long as Liz Truss? It is not such a silly question.

The Boris Question

Will he Won’t he run? I’m sure there are parts of the Conservative Parliamentary Party (CPP) who get all hot and excited at this thought but my guess he is enjoying becoming very rich to bother with being Prime Minister again – plus he just doesn’t have the votes. So I don’t think he would run.

What About the Bakerite Wing of the CPP?

Last night Steve Baker was touring the TV interview booths talking as if he was a senior member of the Government, he’s not. Baker’s power has always been his ability to disrupt. He simply doesn’t have the votes to take a candidate into Downing Street. This means that the likes of Suella Braverman is unlikely to be able to get elected. I suspect that Kemi Badenoch won’t even try to run but rather save herself for the fights to come – the first being trying to keep her seat in a General Election in 2023

PM for PM?

The ever popular Penny Mordaunt has got to be a strong candidate. She certainly performs well at the dispatch box; she has a competent TV appearance but, and this is why I don’t think she’ll be elected, she hasn’t actually done anything. Yes she was defence Secretary for a few weeks but nothing more. We are heading into a winter of great confusion and strife so having a PM who is untested at the highest level really isn’t an option plus she couldn’t beat Liz Truss at the last CPP elections in the summer.

Time for Rishi

Cometh the hour Cometh the man – possibly. Rishi Sunak does have the advantage of coming a surprisingly close second to Liz Truss and he did warn everyone listening of what would happen under a Truss Premiership so of course he is bound to win – right? Well I’m not at all sure and even if he does whole sections of the CPP despise him for numerous reasons. If he does win then he will have to be very, very, lucky not to cause another crazy Tory war the moment he walks through the door at No. 10. I don’t any Tory has that luck anymore.

A.N. Other or None of the Above

Given the crazy nature of things at the moment a Gnome for PM may make as much sense as anything else that is going to happen over the next week. Meanwhile the world outside SW 1 is looking on and thinking …how did it come to this? The contempt that the CPP is showing to the electorate at large is breathtaking and I suspect the pressure from outside will become way too much. Perhaps not an election before the end of the year but I can’t see this holding together beyond the end of the year … maybe not that long. Over to His Majesty.

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Post COVID…

Posted on October 17, 2022 by Guthlac

That was two weeks I’ll never get back but I have come out the otherside with few apparent long term issues (this may be tempting providence…I hope not but…). During this time of isolation I have sat about a lot and not really done much at all – other than get over COVID which is not an achievement to sniff at. So to mark my release I have decided to undertake one of the most cliched photographic project – take a photograph a day for the rest of October. To add just a small twist I have decided to only use one lens per day so today it was my 85mm f1.8. Let’s see how long this lasts!

PS…I know that there are four photos…I didn’t promise consistancy!

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This Won’t End Well For Anyone….

Posted on October 16, 2022 by Guthlac

A few weeks ago I stated to my friend that I thought Liz Truss would be in deep trouble by November … boy did I get that wrong! I think as I write this she is still the Prime Minister but the way that the new Chancellor of the Exchequer (I believe he is the third in 3 months!) Jeremy Hunt is charging around the place I’m really not so sure this morning. This is a disaster of unimaginable proportions and I can’t see it holding together for very long – perhaps November was the right month after all?

Jeremy Hunt is hated by many people in the parliamentary Conservative Party. He tried to run for Party Leader in the summer and failed miserably so why he thinks he can do what he is doing is beyond me? The first cabinet meeting is going to be something to behold as many of the Hunt haters are sitting around the table and I am sure they will not be shy coming forward with their complaints – after all there are also many around that table who also wish to replace Liz Truss so it is not in their interest to let Hunt get away with the things he has this weekend. If this is correct then we are in an even bigger whole that we were when Hunt was appointed: Truss has no authority; the Cabinet will be in open revolt and the Parliamentary Party will be trying to come up with crazier and crazier fixes. In short by the end of the week we may well no longer have a government at all. Yet the world moves on and the vultures of the money markets will smell the decay and try and make matters worse for their own financial benefit. Forget the Halloween budget by then we might have no government to talk of at all.

I have listened to many talking heads, read many articles and examined Twitter in detail and the truth is no one has any real clue how to get out of this mess – no one (That includes me!). However, there is one person who can relieve the pressure and that is the King. It is the King who dissolves parliament, normally on the advice of the Prime Minister, but what happens when we don’t have a Prime Minister or the largest party want to hold yet another leadership contest to try and identify their new leader which will take another 3 months (I don’t believe the guff about there being some form of a single candidate being brought forward, a la Theresa May, so they don’t have to go to the members for their conformation). How could the country endure this? Indeed why should the country have to? If as, I fear, the government collapses then there is only one solution: A General Election. The only way we will get that is by the King intervening. Will this happen? I haven’t the first clue but it makes more sense than yet another Tory Party leadership contest whilst at the same time there are blackouts, a flu epidemic, the NHS collapses, interest rate rises, possibly riots at home…I could go on but it is just too depressing…

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Karl Marx and Covid….

Posted on October 7, 2022 by Guthlac

Well that was an interesting weekend. Great company, great Lunch, great walk amongst the Victorian Vallahal at Highgate (I’d love to claim that as my idea but John Betchman got there first!) and then catching COVID – not great. Although by my calculations I didn’t catch COVID whilst I was in London but probably a few days before but this last week hasn’t my best.

Not sure what Karl Marx would have made of COVID but I suspect somewhere a Phd thesis is being written discussing that very point – perhaps by some unknown Chinese student as there seemed to be a number who were or wanted to visit the grave. Sometimes it is hard to remember that the Chinese Communist Party is a Marxist organisation but clearly the young students studying in London haven’t and Marx must have been a real hero in their education.

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£ 65 Billion…So far…

Posted on September 29, 2022 by Guthlac

Last week I wrote…

I wonder how today’s financial announcements will go? Probably reasonably well but, and this is not beyond the realms of possibility that, it too could start to unravel very quickly, especially when it becomes apparent that the numbers just don’t add up then who knows what will happen? It is a good job that Liz Truss is such a smooth, empathetic, and effective communicator in public…oh no ……….

Less than one week later the Bank of England has had to buy £65 billion government bonds to prevent the private pension industry imploding and then goodness only knows what might have happened. Yet the government and especially Liz Truss is insisting nothing to see here. This morning she did a round of radio interviews with BBC local radio, I’m assuming the thinking was she would get an easy ride, well that didn’t do well. I think it would be unfair to trainwrecks to describe these interviews as one.

This afternoon the Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has deemed to make a statement again claiming nothing to see here now please move on yet how can we when people are worried about Pensions, mortgage rate rises and whether the economy will still be functioning in a weeks time (this is perhaps a bit overblown but…). Wonder what the Conservative Party Conference will bring this weekend?

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