topical – Page 10 – don't confuse the narrator

500 million

After several days of glorious summer, the solid rain that woke me early this morning reminds me that “bad governments bring bad weather” and here in the UK it’s the day to head to the polling station.

Fifty pence coin sufragette commemorative issue

The BBC website reminds us:

On 22-25 May voters in the EU’s 28 member states will elect their representatives in Europe. Their choices will affect 500 million EU citizens.

The futures of 500 million people is a big responsibility; under our current system it is also a shared responsibility. I wasn’t really thinking of the bigger picture when I sent off my postal vote a few days ago; now I rather hope some of those voters in other countries are thinking more about me than I did about them.

news at the cutting edge

swiss army knife and pearl-handled penknife

There’s been a lot of talk this past week about “Tory knife crime plans”. (The plans under discussion are for mandatory prison sentences for anyone convicted twice for carrying a knife.)

News websites change rapidly, so one headline that particularly caught my attention – “Clegg attacks Tory knife crime plan” – is no longer to be found. I’d made a note of it, though, as that badly chosen verb “attack” bothered me.

For a bored subeditor, making up punny headlines can be fun, but I think there’s a point when serious news should be treated seriously. (True, my post title is slightly frivolous, but this is a personal blog not an official news provider.)
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news and views

Two snippets from the news have caught my eye this week.

Firstly, I gather from this tweet from the Independent that I must have missed something about new government policies on euthanasia:

Tweet: "pensioners to be told how long they have left to live"

I wonder how much warning they intend to give before carting us off to be processed into Soylent Green.
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little red books

I’ve said before that this is not a political blog, but today I was saddened to hear of the death of Tony Benn, one of the great politicians of my youth. Ed Miliband has apparently paid homage, saying:

[Tony Benn] will be remembered as a champion of the powerless, a great parliamentarian and a conviction politician.

I’m not sure what a conviction politician is, but I suspect the world might be a better place if a few more politicians were convicted.

In 1990, I was given four of Benn’s Diaries, all autographed in red pen.

I admit I haven’t read them, although the earlier – and shorter – Arguments for Socialism does look well-thumbed. I have, however, been happy to know they are there on the shelf.

I’ve just checked to see that the damp hasn’t got to them (it hasn’t), and find them suitably placed alongside Prince Peter Kropotkin, Engels and E.P. Thompson. (All of them little read books.)

If I believed in such things, I would probably be hoping that Mr Benn might find himself in such company tonight.

red weather, rainbow weather

The weather continues high on the list of conversation topics in the UK: in the last few days, I’ve seen snow, sleet, hail, rain and wind.

Right now, listening to the wind worrying and wuthering outside my window, and knowing this area is by no means the worst hit, I’m really not in the least surprised to hear that the Met Office has issued a red alert for high winds.

Still, in the midst of all this wild weather, we have had a few spells of utterly glorious sunshine. Unsurprisingly, then, we’ve also had rainbows.

A photo snapped through a rain-dotted window can hardly do justice to the one I saw this afternoon, but it will serve as a reminder.

And of course, the Bible tells us that that is precisely what the rainbow is: a token of the covenant between God and earth, a reminder that “the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.”

This may be hard to believe, given the recent flooding, but there is a certain comfort in re-reading the part of the story after the flood has resided, when God makes the promise to Noah:
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