Observations from a Hill

So, the government is acting on its pledge to lower the voting age in the UK to sixteen from eighteen, a move that has created much debate amongst the chatterati and on social and linear media alike. For myself I have long thought that if you are considered old enough to work and pay taxes, join the armed forces and in years past, potentially fight and die for your country, you should at least be granted the courtesy of having the franchise to vote in governmental elections. No brainer. The Conservative pundits and Nigel Farage have said that the Labour government is trying to rig the electoral system in favour of the Left. Really?  Give the youth of this archipelago some credit for having political thoughts of their own - I know I did at that age, and the two years left before my enfranchisement kicked in changed not a whit of my thinking, nor has it altered since. Given that one's mental acuity peaks before the age of twenty, and even given a teenager's relative lack of expe...

I was taken, by a chance meeting with a very old friend this morning, back to the earliest years of our tenure here in Gogledd Cymru; some forty-plus years since. We were the foundation stones of the Gerlan Bohemia [blog posts passim], along with several other couples, all involved in the early days of the local food co-op, in which we shared bagging-up duties, banter, laughs and partying in equal measure: a little slice of true communal endeavour that belied the Thatcherite ethos starting to wreak its - unfortunately long-lasting - havoc in the wider world beyond our semi-rural idyll. We were, it has to be said, escapees - or so we supposed - from the increasingly fraught world of Mammon out-with our particular slice of paradise. Of course, we were youthfully optimistic and probably quite wrong that the world wouldn't catch up with us eventually, but there you go. It has to be said that we are still making a fight of it, forty-odd years later, nevertheless, despite the attrition a...

There's currently a lot of traffic about Trump, the Epstein papers and the DOJ. Trump's MAGA support is faltering because of this one issue: the DOJ's not releasing of the 'papers' related to Jeffrey Epstein's operation and criminal activities regarding sex-trafficking and abuse of minors. From Trump's standpoint, he says there's nothing here to see, and his '...it's quite boring actually, sordid but boring...' attitude, would suggest one thing, alluded to by his erstwhile buddy, Elon Musk. As far as MAGA are concerned, it would seem they are up in arms about it, but not for the reasons one might think. It's not because they feel affronted at the President's apparent passive defence of Epstein, or that the accusations of his complicity in Epstein's criminality might actually be real; but rather that they still wholeheartedly believe in the entire Democrat/Pizza Parlour/Sex Trafficking/Alien Lizard King conspiracy. They now seem to...

On our way up to Junction 10 of the M56 to meet up halfway with Kev for Jane's visit to her family in Carnforth this week, we were listening on Radio Four to Mark Kermode and Ellen E Jones on the film programme, Screenshot. The topic of conversation was centred on Wong Kar-wai's film of 2000, "I'm In The Mood For Love", which apparently is finding a cult following amongst new cinema-goers born around or after the film's actual release; which can't be at all bad: bringing young people back into long-form media can only be a good sign after the last few years of mind-sapping insta-this and insta-that short-term bollocks. Add to this that the film is unashamedly romantic and emotional, and you have a ray of hope in the current wilderness of disconnected humanity. Films mentioned in the same breath that might also be current favourites with this new generation of romantic cinephiles were "Casablanca" and "Brief Encounter"; both similarly ab...

I got a link through on a feed this morning to a piece on the blog "The Conversation", about an article written eighty years ago by Vannevar Bush on information overload and its impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of academic research. In his original piece of July 1945, he argued that the sheer weight of information produced by academia in the form of papers, books and journal articles stood as a bulwark against the useful absorption and cataloguing of those data for re-use in future research. In those days, research was very much a case of sifting through physical catalogues and index files in order to make the connections between ideas and the concrete findings of individual researches to further advance knowledge. He argued that the volume - even then - of works which needed to be considered in any rational assessment of a particular subject's development was too onerous, given the very linear nature of the filing structures and access methods then available, t...

Tonight, a Lazy Sunday food post that is actually vaguely justifiable, as I've had to juggle cooking this meal and watch the Wimbledon Mens' Final at the same time. The fish won, as I missed the denouement of the match whilst tending this rather large slab of Scottish salmon fillet. The fish turned out rather well: in the pan to the left is olive oil warmed through with lemon thyme, chilli flakes and a Kaffir lime leaf, to serve as a drizzle for the fish. The pan to the rear holds a mixture of Camargue, brown Basmati and wild rices. We ate all this with a Greek salad, and very fine it was to be sure; very apposite, too, given the weather: very warm, humid and promising some manner of rainfall, given the appearance of some rather impressive cumulus clouds in the sky this evening. That's all for now, folks...