Love seeing Paddy running in the field. And glad he comes back!
As you can imagine, pre-election tensions are high here. I’m still getting over the worst flu I’ve had in probably 15 years so I didn’t vote early but here in NJ thousands are voting early. My parents had to go twice because the place was so mobbed. I may just wait for Election Day since I vote across the street from my house and it’ll take me less than five minutes.
I’m voting for Trump this time and I’m surrounded by people who hate him and say terrible things about his supporters. However I had a discussion with a good friend from high school who I thought was going to disown me for voting red but we ended up having a great discussion over it. We talked about how terrible all of the broken families and friendships have been. I stay off of FB now because it’s disheartening to see family and friends behaving like this. This doesn’t have to be this way.
Highlights of the week is Trump pulling up in the garbage truck 😂. Also the AP admitted that the White House altered Biden’s garbage comments. Shocked that they are admitting it.
It is the polarization which shocks me. The tribal gleefulness and the determination not to accept results they don't personally approve of.
I have no idea who is going to win. I can understand why people are voting for both btw. People need to weigh things up and make their choice. Whoever is elected will hopefully govern for all.
The apocalyptic rhetoric has been off the scale. They have succeeded in terrifying people and that is not good.
Trump is a showman. What he does, he does deliberately. He has developed a specific personality which many in the electorate have responded to. I wish I could find the break down of voters but it was like a third of Phds voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. One tactic has been to imply that you are ill-educated if you vote for Trump which is strategic essentialism and not born out if one looks at the stats.
Biden has always been vindictive. He campaigned that he'd stop the chaos and rule from the center. He didn't and the sense of loss of control may sink Harris. Biden did what he always does and went to the center-left of his tribe, the Democrat party.
From discussions I’ve had, beyond the prices of goods, the two things people are most upset about are crime and immigration. Ukraine war after that. They see Biden/Harris as just handing money to everyone but Americans. Also as far as the suburban mom brigade, gender ideology and DEI in school is a huge divider. All of this plus hateful rhetoric has pushed many people to the right. I did not vote for Trump the other times but I can’t imagine another four years of the current administration.
Biden was awful from day one and never intended to really bring people together. I’m glad to see him go regardless.
The Democrats early on were warned about the problematic nature of Gender Ideology. They chose to double down. It may be one place where they strayed too far from mainstream opinion.
Ditto with the DEI -- as someone said in the UK what is this obsession with being the First? There has already been an elected female World Leader in the West -- namely Margaret Thatcher. Just sticking female portraits up and going on about the first female Chancellor as Rachel Reeves has done simply shows the emptiness of the rhetoric.
Whatever happens, I hope the GOP get control of the Senate and the House with a big enough majority that they can ignore some of the cranks.
I see some big corporations dumping DEI, too. Many are losing money and can’t afford to keep the positions staffed when there is zero contribution to the bottom line.
It did not do what it promised, partly because the McKinsey research was flawed.
It is an easy place to cut over paid staff. DEI was a growth industry which knew its recommendations were not working years ago and did little to correct. They are now facing a reckoning.
Hey Alison! I’m also in NJ, in the Oranges. I voted yesterday and was lucky that I was in and out in under 5 minutes!
I absolutely roared with laughter over Trump in the garbage truck. Epic troll. I think he’s an inarticulate boor but he certainly can put on a show. And his policies were solid in office.
Biden, otoh, has never been very bright, and has always been a lying, abrasive asshole.
Hi! That’s good you got in and out! There were lines out the door at this place. I’m in Bergen County! I’m in your neck of the woods for baseball tournaments a lot!
Don’t you think it’s possible that those early voters are for Trump? I mean do you think kammy has such a groundswell of support that people are chomping at the bit to vote early for her?
Wouldn’t it be a hoot if Trump’s landslide was including jersey AND he got the popular vote? I mean there’d be a heck of a lot of brain matter and blood to clear up from all the exploding heads, but it’s a small price to pay for all those exploding heads.
This time around there are way more Trump signs, flags, etc all over so it’s possible it’s for Trump but still this state and my area are very blue so frankly it could be either way.
Canada? It seems Covid broke that place. The demands by authoritarian leadership for conformity and surrender to masks, distances, jabs was too great there. And 99% of the populace and corporations fell in line, intimidated and too afraid to speak out.
From my US perspective, Canada always seemed so full of excessively "nice" citizens, some of whom had the good sense to migrate to the southern US in Winter. We'd see the cars streaming southward in I-79 a stone's throw from me. But apparently that niceness covered a timidity of spirit so when the Covid fear was spread infectiously in 2020-2022 most fell right in line. Truckers and other brave souls from Western Canada stood up, only to be financially crushed by Canadian banks and internet sites who cowed to the demands of Fidel Castro's son (Trudeau, but he is not fooling me on his lineage - just put up pictures of Justin between Pierre and Fidel adjacently and you will see what I mean).
I understand that Trudeau is now quite unpopular in Canada. But the parliamentary system there seems to give him cover for quite a while yet; not sure how they set up elections there. In part I think it is the old French vs English tension that keeps him around.
No offense intended, Michelle, but to read a denizen of the UK suggest that another country is becoming totalitarian caused me to roll my eyes. The law in the UK apparently criminalize opinion and speech - and maybe even thought - such that folks have been jailed for their expressions. Yikes.
We have two rather execrable Presidential candidate in the US. But I will vote for Trump - for the two reasons of (1) he is a disrupter and the bureaucracy needs serious disrupting and, mainly, (2) Free Speech. The right to dissent is critical in the US. It should be everywhere but we know it is the exception. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely they say (well some wise person wrote that once upon a time). We saw the corruption shutting down speech during the Covid Fear. Trump is as capable of punishing speech as anyone, but he is surrounded by people who understand the need for dissenting voices. Fingers crossed.
i'll be asleep long before the talking heads on the news shows next week make whatever claims they do. Sometime about your Friday "This is Northumberland Calling" post, we should know the outcome.
I believe that the public resistance in Canada broke when the truckers were prosecuted for protesting the COVID mandates and donation accounts were frozen. I live near the canadian border and what they did to ordinary citizens up there during COVID was beyond even fascism imo. A well respected doctor who protested the COVID vax mandates up there was forcibly taken to a mental hospital and kept there for sometime before his colleagues could get him out. Lots of scary stuff like that happened and I only heard about a tiny bit of it.
We don't have assisted dying yet. It is a huge debate in the UK at the moment because of a Private Member's Bill. I hope they don't bring it in as the palliative care is not v good.
Canada has gone further on certain things than the UK.
Yes, yes. I did not mean to suggest UK was Canadian-esque. The Assisted Suicide approach of Canada is beyond dystopian. To me, Canada is lost (until it is found which will likely happen). UK still has a respect for individual autonomy to survive and protect liberties. But as I fight the bizarre obedience of some in the US I suppose I’m ever more alert to falling for the lie of trading security for freedom - as to powers of govt.
It is an odd mix where the blind obedience lies. For example, you are not required to show photo id in the UK. Because of the legacy from WW2 and the Nazis etc, they refuse to sanction identity papers. There are many reasons why it would be a good idea, but people won't. Photo driver's licenses are not compulsory. You can still drive on the paper ones.
The Southport thing smells and has all the hallmarks of a brewing scandal -- who knew what when. I suppose we will find out in January when it comes to trial.
The response to COVID was draconian. Over here, you rarely see anyone wearing a mask. They haven't done so really since Hancock was caught on camera with his tongue down his mistress's throat.
Very sad and shocked about Valencia. I had not even heard about it. 😢
Loved learning the term spanieling. Is Paddy’s recall improving? I just got a treadmill for my monsters. The malinois has figured it out and can really book right along on it. The Doberman is still afraid to get on it. He is the world’s biggest drama queen.
Paddy's recall is getting so much better. He is not perfect (yet) but it is absolutely amazing.
I am impressed that yours go on a treadmill.
The whole Spanish situation is terrible. Apparently you can tell the helpers because they are the ones wearing clean clothes. It may do for their Socialist government.
And the Conservatives have a chance of rebuilding if they choose Kemi.
I missed your stack last week -I think-so don’t know if you were aware of the rally in Reno Nevada to save women’s sports. It was held after the volleyball team elected to forfeit vs play SJSU with a trans member. UNR was the 4th or 5th team in their conference to do so but I think was the first to state why. The school admin did not back them. They had to move the rally from its original location because it was much bigger than initially anticipated. Riley Gaines spoke.
Awesome news about Paddy’s spanieling and a lovely pic.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and news Michelle.
I did send one out but was away visiting my youngest in Edinburgh.
Right now it is v much go Kemi!
I happened to see the Falklands Play (from 2002) on Prime which showed the run up to the Falklands war during the last week. Highly recommend I suspect Kemi will come close to Margaret Thatcher who truly was magnificent in her determination.
Your mention of Lady Glenconner stoically enduring the cold reminds me of eight days I spent in Edinburgh, Scotland in March 1973. I and a companion were guests of the late computer scientist and artificial intelligence researcher Donald Michie, who had worked at Bletchley Park during World War II cracking German encryption codes. At the time of my visit he was director of the University of Edinburgh's Department of Machine Intelligence, where I had come to give a talk on the chess-playing computer program I was working on.
Michie put us up at a residence that he used for entertaining and housing visitors, but was empty at the time. As an American this house had some amusingly incongruous features. Although it had a dishwashing machine, it lacked central heating. It was still pretty cold there in March, so we slept under a mound of blankets. Waking up in the morning meant climbing out from under the blankets, scooting quickly over to an electric space heater, switching that on, and then crawling back under the blankets until it warmed up enough so we could get up for real, dress warmly, and face the day. For breakfast I remember eating Weetabix cereal with milk delivered fresh from a local dairy.
The ancient stately building housing the University's Machine Intelligence Department also lacked central heating, and students and faculty doing fairly advanced AI research (for the time) had to bundle up warmly while entering sophisticated programs into their computer terminals. I remember visiting a bathroom down the hall that was probably just several degrees above freezing (but better than having to go to an outhouse).
I enjoyed my time in Edinburgh, but sometimes I felt like I had one foot in the relatively modern high-tech 20th century, and the other in a movie set in a medieval world of knights and drafty castles (don't think I saw any actual knights though).
I recall someone mentioning during my visit that Scotland was starting to convert to the luxurious pampered convenience of central heating, which involved installing furnaces, ducts, etc., and also double glazing the windows to improve their insulation.
Oh that is really interesting. Thank you for sharing. I love social history like.
Secondary double glazing is a thing -- basically a window is put behind the window to keep out the draught. It maintains the integrity of the older windows. We have had to do this with this house which was built in 1908.
In some places you can still get milk delivered every day. Weetabix do remain a thing for some people.
I think the floods in Spain have not been well reported in the US which is gripped with election fever. Just really upsetting. They told people too late and people died trying to get their cars to higher ground. They do not know how many people are in those underground garages.
I will let you know about our Kemi.
I was so pleased to learn about the Northumberland Wildlife Trust taking over ownership -- it is a beautiful area up around Rothbury. Fingers crossed for pine martens arriving in due course.
I forgot to tell You, Michelle, that I really enjoyed the article on Lady Glenconner. She's really something else.
I also forgot to mention that I read the Slow Horses books by Mick Herron. (The Slough House novels and novellas.) I really enjoyed them also. TY for the recommendation.
The Conservatives have another woman leader and the first black leader, before that champion of Identity Politics, the Labour Party, has a woman or even an ethnic minority leader. They keep going for the white male leaders who spent time at Oxbridge.
Mick Herron is great isn't he? I am so glad you enjoyed them.
I’m just curious. I’ll hang until my sub expires in April.
I’ll check out your books.
Anyway. Wouldn’t it be great if Trump and Kemi won? It could be a reprise of Reagan thatcher. Then all that would be needed is for Pierre Poilievre to consign Justin to the ash heap of history a la the USSR
I renewed partly because of the stuff they are doing with the Centre for Peace Communications and partly because I forgot to cancel.
Kemi would be a breath of fresh air but she won't have a chance to be prime minister until 2029. Labour have far too big of a majority -- people were just v sick of the Conservatives and the mess they made (I suspect much was because of what is the Wets).
Having read all 7 essays on the state of Canada, I do think Trudeau needs to go. So many unintended consequences. Because Harlequin (my publisher) is based out of Canada for historic reasons (they used to be owned by the Toronto Star who had to do a fire sale in 2012 -- Harper Collins bought and was shocked at the money earned) I do pay attention to what is happening in Canada to a greater or lesser degree.
They updated the death toll in Valencia and now over 400 are feared dead. It is v grim reading.
https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/valencia-spain-floods-death-toll-hrg2jc9tr
Sounds like the aftermath of Helene
Worse I think because it seems like the Spanish are even less prepared (if that is possible) than NC.
You might find this op ed from Nigel Farage about the Southport situation interesting. It is not over by a long shot. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/01/parliament-has-a-right-to-know-the-truth-about-southport/ or https://archive.ph/KT80x
Love seeing Paddy running in the field. And glad he comes back!
As you can imagine, pre-election tensions are high here. I’m still getting over the worst flu I’ve had in probably 15 years so I didn’t vote early but here in NJ thousands are voting early. My parents had to go twice because the place was so mobbed. I may just wait for Election Day since I vote across the street from my house and it’ll take me less than five minutes.
I’m voting for Trump this time and I’m surrounded by people who hate him and say terrible things about his supporters. However I had a discussion with a good friend from high school who I thought was going to disown me for voting red but we ended up having a great discussion over it. We talked about how terrible all of the broken families and friendships have been. I stay off of FB now because it’s disheartening to see family and friends behaving like this. This doesn’t have to be this way.
Highlights of the week is Trump pulling up in the garbage truck 😂. Also the AP admitted that the White House altered Biden’s garbage comments. Shocked that they are admitting it.
It is the polarization which shocks me. The tribal gleefulness and the determination not to accept results they don't personally approve of.
I have no idea who is going to win. I can understand why people are voting for both btw. People need to weigh things up and make their choice. Whoever is elected will hopefully govern for all.
The apocalyptic rhetoric has been off the scale. They have succeeded in terrifying people and that is not good.
Trump is a showman. What he does, he does deliberately. He has developed a specific personality which many in the electorate have responded to. I wish I could find the break down of voters but it was like a third of Phds voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020. One tactic has been to imply that you are ill-educated if you vote for Trump which is strategic essentialism and not born out if one looks at the stats.
Biden has always been vindictive. He campaigned that he'd stop the chaos and rule from the center. He didn't and the sense of loss of control may sink Harris. Biden did what he always does and went to the center-left of his tribe, the Democrat party.
From discussions I’ve had, beyond the prices of goods, the two things people are most upset about are crime and immigration. Ukraine war after that. They see Biden/Harris as just handing money to everyone but Americans. Also as far as the suburban mom brigade, gender ideology and DEI in school is a huge divider. All of this plus hateful rhetoric has pushed many people to the right. I did not vote for Trump the other times but I can’t imagine another four years of the current administration.
Biden was awful from day one and never intended to really bring people together. I’m glad to see him go regardless.
The Democrats early on were warned about the problematic nature of Gender Ideology. They chose to double down. It may be one place where they strayed too far from mainstream opinion.
Ditto with the DEI -- as someone said in the UK what is this obsession with being the First? There has already been an elected female World Leader in the West -- namely Margaret Thatcher. Just sticking female portraits up and going on about the first female Chancellor as Rachel Reeves has done simply shows the emptiness of the rhetoric.
Whatever happens, I hope the GOP get control of the Senate and the House with a big enough majority that they can ignore some of the cranks.
I see some big corporations dumping DEI, too. Many are losing money and can’t afford to keep the positions staffed when there is zero contribution to the bottom line.
It did not do what it promised, partly because the McKinsey research was flawed.
It is an easy place to cut over paid staff. DEI was a growth industry which knew its recommendations were not working years ago and did little to correct. They are now facing a reckoning.
Politics used to be more civil. I long for those days.
My partner always says the hardest thing she ever did was “coming out” as a Trump supporter when we were living in NorCal.
I hope you’re feeling better.
Thank you, LL.
I long for it, too.
Hey Alison! I’m also in NJ, in the Oranges. I voted yesterday and was lucky that I was in and out in under 5 minutes!
I absolutely roared with laughter over Trump in the garbage truck. Epic troll. I think he’s an inarticulate boor but he certainly can put on a show. And his policies were solid in office.
Biden, otoh, has never been very bright, and has always been a lying, abrasive asshole.
Hi! That’s good you got in and out! There were lines out the door at this place. I’m in Bergen County! I’m in your neck of the woods for baseball tournaments a lot!
Don’t you think it’s possible that those early voters are for Trump? I mean do you think kammy has such a groundswell of support that people are chomping at the bit to vote early for her?
Wouldn’t it be a hoot if Trump’s landslide was including jersey AND he got the popular vote? I mean there’d be a heck of a lot of brain matter and blood to clear up from all the exploding heads, but it’s a small price to pay for all those exploding heads.
This time around there are way more Trump signs, flags, etc all over so it’s possible it’s for Trump but still this state and my area are very blue so frankly it could be either way.
Canada? It seems Covid broke that place. The demands by authoritarian leadership for conformity and surrender to masks, distances, jabs was too great there. And 99% of the populace and corporations fell in line, intimidated and too afraid to speak out.
From my US perspective, Canada always seemed so full of excessively "nice" citizens, some of whom had the good sense to migrate to the southern US in Winter. We'd see the cars streaming southward in I-79 a stone's throw from me. But apparently that niceness covered a timidity of spirit so when the Covid fear was spread infectiously in 2020-2022 most fell right in line. Truckers and other brave souls from Western Canada stood up, only to be financially crushed by Canadian banks and internet sites who cowed to the demands of Fidel Castro's son (Trudeau, but he is not fooling me on his lineage - just put up pictures of Justin between Pierre and Fidel adjacently and you will see what I mean).
I understand that Trudeau is now quite unpopular in Canada. But the parliamentary system there seems to give him cover for quite a while yet; not sure how they set up elections there. In part I think it is the old French vs English tension that keeps him around.
No offense intended, Michelle, but to read a denizen of the UK suggest that another country is becoming totalitarian caused me to roll my eyes. The law in the UK apparently criminalize opinion and speech - and maybe even thought - such that folks have been jailed for their expressions. Yikes.
We have two rather execrable Presidential candidate in the US. But I will vote for Trump - for the two reasons of (1) he is a disrupter and the bureaucracy needs serious disrupting and, mainly, (2) Free Speech. The right to dissent is critical in the US. It should be everywhere but we know it is the exception. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely they say (well some wise person wrote that once upon a time). We saw the corruption shutting down speech during the Covid Fear. Trump is as capable of punishing speech as anyone, but he is surrounded by people who understand the need for dissenting voices. Fingers crossed.
i'll be asleep long before the talking heads on the news shows next week make whatever claims they do. Sometime about your Friday "This is Northumberland Calling" post, we should know the outcome.
I believe that the public resistance in Canada broke when the truckers were prosecuted for protesting the COVID mandates and donation accounts were frozen. I live near the canadian border and what they did to ordinary citizens up there during COVID was beyond even fascism imo. A well respected doctor who protested the COVID vax mandates up there was forcibly taken to a mental hospital and kept there for sometime before his colleagues could get him out. Lots of scary stuff like that happened and I only heard about a tiny bit of it.
It is quite unnerving. The re-education of Jordan Peterson is also astonishing when you consider the 1960 Canadian ideals.
Canada was v bad during COVID as was Scotland. I think NZ may have been the worst but it is a close run thing.
We don't have assisted dying yet. It is a huge debate in the UK at the moment because of a Private Member's Bill. I hope they don't bring it in as the palliative care is not v good.
Canada has gone further on certain things than the UK.
Yes, yes. I did not mean to suggest UK was Canadian-esque. The Assisted Suicide approach of Canada is beyond dystopian. To me, Canada is lost (until it is found which will likely happen). UK still has a respect for individual autonomy to survive and protect liberties. But as I fight the bizarre obedience of some in the US I suppose I’m ever more alert to falling for the lie of trading security for freedom - as to powers of govt.
It is an odd mix where the blind obedience lies. For example, you are not required to show photo id in the UK. Because of the legacy from WW2 and the Nazis etc, they refuse to sanction identity papers. There are many reasons why it would be a good idea, but people won't. Photo driver's licenses are not compulsory. You can still drive on the paper ones.
The Southport thing smells and has all the hallmarks of a brewing scandal -- who knew what when. I suppose we will find out in January when it comes to trial.
The response to COVID was draconian. Over here, you rarely see anyone wearing a mask. They haven't done so really since Hancock was caught on camera with his tongue down his mistress's throat.
GO KEMI GO!!! Fingers crossed for her!
Very sad and shocked about Valencia. I had not even heard about it. 😢
Loved learning the term spanieling. Is Paddy’s recall improving? I just got a treadmill for my monsters. The malinois has figured it out and can really book right along on it. The Doberman is still afraid to get on it. He is the world’s biggest drama queen.
Paddy's recall is getting so much better. He is not perfect (yet) but it is absolutely amazing.
I am impressed that yours go on a treadmill.
The whole Spanish situation is terrible. Apparently you can tell the helpers because they are the ones wearing clean clothes. It may do for their Socialist government.
And the Conservatives have a chance of rebuilding if they choose Kemi.
I missed your stack last week -I think-so don’t know if you were aware of the rally in Reno Nevada to save women’s sports. It was held after the volleyball team elected to forfeit vs play SJSU with a trans member. UNR was the 4th or 5th team in their conference to do so but I think was the first to state why. The school admin did not back them. They had to move the rally from its original location because it was much bigger than initially anticipated. Riley Gaines spoke.
Awesome news about Paddy’s spanieling and a lovely pic.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and news Michelle.
Great news about your book and
GO KEMI!
I didn't know about the rally. Great news!
I did send one out but was away visiting my youngest in Edinburgh.
Right now it is v much go Kemi!
I happened to see the Falklands Play (from 2002) on Prime which showed the run up to the Falklands war during the last week. Highly recommend I suspect Kemi will come close to Margaret Thatcher who truly was magnificent in her determination.
Your mention of Lady Glenconner stoically enduring the cold reminds me of eight days I spent in Edinburgh, Scotland in March 1973. I and a companion were guests of the late computer scientist and artificial intelligence researcher Donald Michie, who had worked at Bletchley Park during World War II cracking German encryption codes. At the time of my visit he was director of the University of Edinburgh's Department of Machine Intelligence, where I had come to give a talk on the chess-playing computer program I was working on.
Michie put us up at a residence that he used for entertaining and housing visitors, but was empty at the time. As an American this house had some amusingly incongruous features. Although it had a dishwashing machine, it lacked central heating. It was still pretty cold there in March, so we slept under a mound of blankets. Waking up in the morning meant climbing out from under the blankets, scooting quickly over to an electric space heater, switching that on, and then crawling back under the blankets until it warmed up enough so we could get up for real, dress warmly, and face the day. For breakfast I remember eating Weetabix cereal with milk delivered fresh from a local dairy.
The ancient stately building housing the University's Machine Intelligence Department also lacked central heating, and students and faculty doing fairly advanced AI research (for the time) had to bundle up warmly while entering sophisticated programs into their computer terminals. I remember visiting a bathroom down the hall that was probably just several degrees above freezing (but better than having to go to an outhouse).
I enjoyed my time in Edinburgh, but sometimes I felt like I had one foot in the relatively modern high-tech 20th century, and the other in a movie set in a medieval world of knights and drafty castles (don't think I saw any actual knights though).
I recall someone mentioning during my visit that Scotland was starting to convert to the luxurious pampered convenience of central heating, which involved installing furnaces, ducts, etc., and also double glazing the windows to improve their insulation.
Oh that is really interesting. Thank you for sharing. I love social history like.
Secondary double glazing is a thing -- basically a window is put behind the window to keep out the draught. It maintains the integrity of the older windows. We have had to do this with this house which was built in 1908.
In some places you can still get milk delivered every day. Weetabix do remain a thing for some people.
Spaniel on, Sir Paddy!
He will and he does. The Spaniel brain is a thing of wonder. And Spaniel humour is quite something.
Ooooo, books on sale! You said the magic words!
Hello Northumberland! Good to see You.
I hope Your Kemi will win on Saturday.
I hadn't heard about the floods in Valencia. A years worth of rain in eight hours. Incredible.
And the articles are right. Trudeau's Canada is a cesspit. And his "trans-rights" policies are as bad as those in the U.S.
You're very lucky to have The Wildlife Trusts and Northumberland Wildlife Trust to buy the estate. It's a great project.
I'm glad to hear You got another tranche of money on Your new book. Good luck on the writing.
And Paddy looks great.
And TY, as always, Michelle.
So lovely to see you JT.
I think the floods in Spain have not been well reported in the US which is gripped with election fever. Just really upsetting. They told people too late and people died trying to get their cars to higher ground. They do not know how many people are in those underground garages.
I will let you know about our Kemi.
I was so pleased to learn about the Northumberland Wildlife Trust taking over ownership -- it is a beautiful area up around Rothbury. Fingers crossed for pine martens arriving in due course.
I forgot to tell You, Michelle, that I really enjoyed the article on Lady Glenconner. She's really something else.
I also forgot to mention that I read the Slow Horses books by Mick Herron. (The Slough House novels and novellas.) I really enjoyed them also. TY for the recommendation.
Have a good weekend.
And it's Kemi Badenoch!!!!
The Conservatives have another woman leader and the first black leader, before that champion of Identity Politics, the Labour Party, has a woman or even an ethnic minority leader. They keep going for the white male leaders who spent time at Oxbridge.
Mick Herron is great isn't he? I am so glad you enjoyed them.
Way to go Kemi!
And, yeah. He's great.
This is a profile of Kemi from the Times because I know you are Team Kemi.
https://archive.ph/pljLR
It is a historic moment.
Great article. She's great. TY, Ma'am.
Michelle. Have you abandoned the FFP?
I’m just curious. I’ll hang until my sub expires in April.
I’ll check out your books.
Anyway. Wouldn’t it be great if Trump and Kemi won? It could be a reprise of Reagan thatcher. Then all that would be needed is for Pierre Poilievre to consign Justin to the ash heap of history a la the USSR
I renewed partly because of the stuff they are doing with the Centre for Peace Communications and partly because I forgot to cancel.
Kemi would be a breath of fresh air but she won't have a chance to be prime minister until 2029. Labour have far too big of a majority -- people were just v sick of the Conservatives and the mess they made (I suspect much was because of what is the Wets).
Having read all 7 essays on the state of Canada, I do think Trudeau needs to go. So many unintended consequences. Because Harlequin (my publisher) is based out of Canada for historic reasons (they used to be owned by the Toronto Star who had to do a fire sale in 2012 -- Harper Collins bought and was shocked at the money earned) I do pay attention to what is happening in Canada to a greater or lesser degree.