Snippets and gleanings 2.0

Honest, guv
Recently, Rishi Sunak talked about having an 'honest conversation' with the British people - and then went on to announce he was 'scrapping' seven environmental policies that weren't even on the government's agenda. Strange sort of honesty! His performance was laughably transparent - this was nothing to do with honesty and everything to do with exploiting a potential electoral wedge issue following the Uxbridge by-election result. I don't know who he thought he was kidding, though. He was, after all, addressing the assembled British press and media corps, hard-nosed, cynical journos to a man and woman. He stood at the podium like an over-eager head boy addressing bored school governors on Founders Day. For their part, they looked like they were eyeing the clock ready to make a dash to the Dog and Duck for the buffet.

Don't cry for me, Argentina
Is Suella Braverman auditioning for the role of Eva Peron? Now her Met Police firearms officers have handed in their weapons in a strop after one of their number was charged with the murder of a Black man, she's bringing in the troops. Let's face it, she's probably been longing for this moment for ages. With the Peelian Principle of policing by consent officially defunct, what's needed now is clearly the smack of firm government. When she has Buckingham Palace painted pink we'll know we're in for some real trouble.

Trouble at t' spa
The genteel Yorkshire former watering-hole of Ilkley has become the unlikely backdrop for an unseemly spat over a new fountain. A public competition was held for a water feature at the top of Brook Street but the winning entry has proved controversial. A local supporter of the proprosed scheme, Prof Becky Malby,  told the Ilkley Gazette: “We have to hold our nerve, and not be diverted by the disruptive few masquerading as the voice of the people.” I'm sure they speak of little else at Betty's tearoom on The Grove. Prof Malby also leads the Clean River Group campaigning against sewage pollution of the River Wharfe. By 'eck, still watters run deep in them parts!

Another one bites the dust
As NASA celebrates the safe landing in Utah of its space probe to collect dust from the asteroid, Bennu, it transpires that the project was aided by none other than our own living national treasure, Sir Brian May. We know him as a singer-songwriter and legendary lead guitarist of rock group, Queen. But who knew he was also an astrophysicist? His stereoscopic images of Bennu helped NASA achieve a safe landing on the space rock for the OSIRIS-REx capsule and he has produced a 3D atlas of the carbonaceous clump. Another string to his guitar, one might say.

When two worlds collide
To witness, in real life and real time, an illustration of the enduring nature of the British class system one only had to be in Parliament Square in Central London last Saturday. Two protest marches coincided; a large one for Rejoin (as in the EU) and a much smaller one for Stop ULEZ (the Mayor of London's ultra-low emission zone rollout). Prof Henry Higgins would have recognised the scene as two social tribes experienced a rare close encounter. It was a stark example of parallel lives lived in the same crowded city. In dress, attitude, accent and, presumably, politics, education and life-experience, the two groups could hardly have been more different - or less simpatico. Seeing the sea of blue flags with yellow star circlets one ULEZ protester, shaved-headed and tattooed, shouted "losers" as he passed the genteel, late-middle-aged, largely white-haired (and white) gathering of Rejoiners. Sadly, we're all losers as a result of Brexit, 'mate', in our different ways.

Cruella rides out
Having signally failed to control 'illegal' immigration in the UK our Home Secretary, Suella Braverman (she who dreams of seeing a plane full of asylum seekers taking off from Heathrow for Rwanda), flies out to the United States to make a speech to a centre-right think tank, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) about the United Nation's Refugee Convention of 1951. She told her attentive audience that "simply being gay" for example shouldn't automatically qualify one to seek refuge from persecution. Unfortunately, in many countries, being LGBTQI+ is far from simple and can actually be deadly (Uganda, for example, has just extended the death penalty to practising homosexuality). Braverman's dream is a gay refugee's nightmare.

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