On the front page of yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph, a Conservative source is quoted as saying:

The Government was democratically elected on a mandate to stop small boat crossings. It is a fundamental threat to our democracy if an unelected overseas court is stopping that delivery and leaving the European Court of Human Rights must be on the table if it is the only option to uphold that promise to the British people.

Small boat crossings weren’t mentioned in the Conservative Party’s last election manifesto, so I’m not sure where that mandate came from.

The phrase ‘get Brexit done’ appeared an astonishing thirty-three times. Jeremy Corbyn received thirteen mentions—his plans were a ‘recipe for chaos’, something we can hardly claim to have avoided. Even the phrase ‘We love Boris’ appeared once—the clownish egotism promised by its inclusion was delivered in buckets.

Migrants crossing the English Channel, however, didn’t make the cut. For what it’s worth, small boats in the Mediterranean were mentioned in Labour’s manifesto, even if they weren’t on Conservatives’ minds.

On the other hand, human rights made six appearances in the Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto, including this committment:

Getting Brexit done will allow us to do more on the international stage. We will continue to be an outward-looking country that is a champion of human rights.

Threatening withdrawal from the world’s most effective international court on human rights would be a peculiar approach to keeping this promise.

Things have reached a pretty pass when a Government seeking re-election can’t accurately recall what it promised last time around.

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.

I’ve mentioned local artist Mul a couple of times in the past, but never mentioned this eye-catching piece which I walk past most days.

Covering the entire exterior of the Barca Art Bar on Gosforth High Street, this is Gossy Disco, created in July last year.

There are more and better photos here.

Yesterday, I changed the battery in one of the office clocks. I am the person in the office with the lowest tolerance for stopped clocks, so this job often falls to me.

When I removed the AA battery, I was surprised by how light it was. On further inspection, it turns out that it’s a carbon-zinc battery. I don’t recall seeing one of those before. The displayed manufacturing date is February 2004, so someone must have found it in the back of a cupboard: I’m not sure my current employer bought it!

Wikipedia tells me that ‘zinc-carbon batteries today have been mostly replaced by the more efficient and safe alkaline batteries’, which raised some questions. ‘Alkaline batteries offer up to eight times the battery life of zinc-carbon batteries’: so why not use them in the bloody clocks and save me up to seven jobs?

Anyway, I found the brand’s website. I perused the ‘frequently asked questions’ section. In response to ‘How should I dispose of carbon zinc batteries?’, they offer ‘It’s safe to drop them right in the household trash.’

The battery has the crossed-out wheelie-bin symbol right there on it. Batteries shouldn’t be dropped into the household trash. Not only is there a high risk of causing fires, but, in many places, they’re classified as hazardous waste.

So next time you’re browsing the battery aisle and wondering whether to choose an Eveready / Energizer product, remember that they choose to encourage their customers to dispose of products irresponsibly. Consider whether that’s an approach which really has your best interests at heart. Then, make whatever choice you feel comfortable with.

Here’s a question: what’s the price of the cheapest 500g bag of plain flour at your local supermarket? Here’s what I found:

That might not be as you’d expect: it’s not what I expected. I popped into Asda with the intention of buying a 500g bag of flour, and after seeing the price, walked over to M&S. I was so disbelieving of the price that I confirmed it later on the Asda website.

In fairness, Asda does sell much bigger bags of flour in a range starting from 70p, but I didn’t want a big bag. I am surprised that their premium for a small bag is so disproportionately high.

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.

A few weeks ago, a family member, perhaps irritated by the timing of a phone call, asked Wendy and me whether we were watching Death in Paradise. We were not: I confessed that I’d never heard of it. We both assumed that it was a new TV series that had simply passed us by.

And then, listening to The Rest is Entertainment, I learned that it has been running for the better part of thirteen years, pulls in eight million viewers per week, and has sold to more than 200 territories around the world.

It’s astonishing how big cultural blindspots can be.

I caught this film in the cinema last week, knowing nothing about it in advance. It’s taken me a while to write about it simply because I’m struggling for anything to say.

The film is set in United States suburbia in 1960, and it follows the relationship between two mothers who are next-door neighbours after one of their sons dies. It’s described as a psychological thriller. The main characters are played by Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway, who by their names I recognised as very famous actors, but whose faces I wouldn’t have recognised. I did recognise The Good Wife‘s Will Gardner, Josh Charles, as one of their husbands.

The word that springs to mind to describe this film is ‘bland’: there’s just not a lot to it. The plot’s a bit silly, which I suppose is somewhat fun in a ‘surely they’re not going to… oh, they did’ kind of a way, but I didn’t feel invested in any of the two-dimensional characters. I kept looking at my watch with a sense of resignation.

I suppose this just wasn’t for me.

Judging by the sheer quantity of ‘think pieces’ that have been written on the subject, it seems that it is now mandatory for every living being to share their opinion on Beyoncé’s cover of Dolly Parton’s Joelene.

Mine is best summarised as: ‘meh’.

Beyoncé’s revised lyrics change the tone of the song from plaintive to combative, and it’s therefore a bit discordant to keep the same plaintive melody. It’s the Wonka / Pure Imagination problem all over again.

But, then again, perhaps the discordance is an intentional commentary on how plaintive feelings often find expression in combative language, particularly among those who are reluctant to admit vulnerability.

I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt… but neither version is really up my musical street and I have no immediate plans to listen to either version again.

Merely days after I read Dan Cullum’s post about ‘the first pancake rule’, Wendy decided that we’d make pancakes for breakfast this morning.

For the first time in my life, even the first one turned out perfectly. Maybe Wendy’s just better at cooking pancakes than me.

Sixteen years ago, in March 2008, I predicted that David Cameron was ‘cycling towards election victory’. I was wrong: the result in May 2010 was a Hung Parliament.

Nevertheless, it’s interesting to revisit that post with a 2024 mindset. My argument was that the incumbent in any election has an automatic advantage.

People inevitably like to vote for something known over something unknown. Political parties all too often forget that people don’t vote on the basis of promises, but on the basis of actions: Telling people you’ll do all of what they want can never rival the power of actually doing some of what they want.

On top of this, the incumbent has the advantage, by default, of being the more Presidential or Prime Ministerial figure – exactly the kind of figure one would want leading a nation.

And yet, there are rare moments where the incumbency becomes a millstone.

Now, in 2008, Labour’s greatest achievements no longer resonate. We’ve tired of hearing of the New Deal, the minimum wage is old news, and NHS reform has been done to death. It seems like this government has nothing new to do – it’s done it all before, and we’re comparing Labour’s current promises with Labour’s previous delivery.

Indeed, even systemic failures of government – such as the recent furore over MPs’ expenses – now enter the public consciousness as failings of Labour by default, as they are in government, even though they are often cross-party failings which should tar the Parliamentary machinery as a whole.

It’s easy to make a case that Brown’s lament has been inherited by Sunak. Perhaps Sunak doesn’t get a fair hearing as a result of the millstone of the Conservatives’ record dragging him down.

I think I was onto something when I talked about ‘comparing Labour’s current promises with Labour’s previous delivery’. These days, the litany of broken Conservative promises makes it challenging to set any store by Sunak’s pledges. I moaned earlier this week about passport price fluctuations indicating a lack of a plan, which I think feeds into the same narrative.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The image at the top of this post was generated by DALL·E 3.