h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So I have been spending the last month offloading books onto the Oxfam, and what do I do this morning? I go to a book sale. I bought a William Gibson, an Ackroyd, a Christie and a Carter Dickson, an Aldiss, and An Instance of the Fingerpost in hardback. Furthermore, I plan to go back to the sale some day next week.

Caius came to the sale, but was ver' self-disciplined. We had two lots of cawffee then he went off to do some - horrors - marking.

Driech morning turning hot the bucketty. I picked up a passport application form - I mean to get a UK passport ASAP, while I still can.

The Tories and the Libs were a sideshow in Scotland on Thursday, and a pretty demme insignificant one. The only story was Labour's collapse - one heckuva judgment on forty-plus years of complacent stagnation in the North; third-rate placeholders, and boroughs every bit as rotten as the worst of the early C.19th.

Have any of Blair's great initiatives not turned on his party? Devolution? The Human Rights Act? Gordon, the Iron Chancellor? Iraq? Afghanistan? HoL reform and the semi-Supreme (i.e. not really supremae at all) Court? The smoking ban? &c &c. Blair was all about misdirection - the quickness of the hand... He couldn't run a real Goverment, as the flood of memoirs showed (his own included), but he could run rings round the opposition. A trickster. A manipulator. An operator. Thursday was another manifestation of his legacy.

If they want to keep Great Britain together, the institutions of the Union will have to act - with speed tho' not knee-jerk haste; and meaningfully, in a manner that is internally consistent and coherent; but how? I haven't the faintest idea. These Scotch are prickly craitturs, but they have just done something hitherto unimaginable, and the old rules no longer apply.

Indian cairry-oot for tea. I had a bacon & egg butty for lunch.


Douglas

Dies am fer Geo.:

http://deadisland.deepsilver.com/agegate.php?req=http://deadisland.deepsilver.com/deadisland.php

Eh? What what?

The actor you recogniz'd at the start of ...1,000 Corpses was Michael J Pollard; a stalwart of 70s cinema. He was one of the gang in Bonnie & Clyde, IIRC.

Re. Monday - I have to go to the Uni in the afternoon to do something for the head of school, so I will be in touch to reschedule with you.

Dead Island looks good, what?


Douglas