Happy Friday! The 2020’s are not doing well for optimism about the state or the future of the world! I do kind of feel that there is no good news and I’m more than a little worried about what our leaders aren’t doing…which is a long winded way of saying that the links at the top of this are to be skipped if you can’t bear the news right now, just start after the picture of the dahlia and I will perfectly understand!
Who will pay for the failure of water bosses? Everyone but them. 16 years ago my water bill was £240-ish (£23.80 a month for 10 months), this year it £540-ish a year. With it due to rise 20% next year and the year after. Thames Water has been used by it’s various owners as a cash cow and now it’s paying its senior management retainers to get around a law prohibiting excessive bonuses. By any measure its a failing business and privatisation of a monopoly was never a good idea. As I have to pay higher prices for an essential service and I have no choice over who I can buy my water services from, then I would prefer that it was just nationalised.
James Cleverly to return as shadow housing secretary in Tory reshuffle. Two things. First, you have got to be in a whole heap of trouble if Jimmy Dimly is an answer to your issues, second, while I have been banging on about housing for years, it’s not exactly a prominent front bench position, she’s got Jenrick at Justice and Dimly at Housing – it doesn’t ring true of a leader with no fears of competition does it?
As an NHS GP, I can now prescribe weight-loss jabs – but a quick fix for obesity is not what we need. Like with most of things in the world that are at or approaching crisis, we need to change society not just that bit. It’s not just food, it’s not just education, it’s not just housing, it’s not just the NHS, it’s all of it. We need to change all of it.
A broken housing market is driving inequality right across Europe – and fuelling the far right. I know this to be true, I’ve been saying it for over 20 years, but it’s never a crisis when it’s working class kids, it’s a crisis now it’s the middle class.
‘We faced hunger before, but never like this’: skeletal children fill hospital wards as starvation grips Gaza. It’s not Hamas, they aren’t lying, there is no food and that’s on Israel not letting it in.
I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It. It’s a genocide, it’s not just killing Palestinians, it’s killing everything good in Israel. I’m going to recommend Ami Ayalon’s book, again.
Starmer under pressure from cabinet to recognise Palestinian statehood. I can’t tell citizens of other countries what to do (or actually even other people in my country) but I’m sick and tired of my government sitting on the fence on this one. We need to recognise Palestinian statehood and stop supplying arms to Israel. I know why we aren’t but sometimes you have to face down your ‘friends’ when they are supporting bullies…
The radical 1960s schools experiment that created a whole new alphabet – and left thousands of children unable to spell. I found all the examples of ITA easy to read. Ok it looks like middle English but I can see the sense in it.
‘Look how well-read I am!’ How ‘books by the metre’ add the final touch to your home – or your image As a known book hoarder, this is a world I could never live in, I do dream of a library but it would never look perfect!
The secrets of self-optimisers: why ‘microefficiencies’ are on the rise. I don’t know if it’s a microefficiency but I have one of those detergent filled scrubbers in the bathroom and I use it on the tiles in the shower after I shower and then use the window vac on them. I also use it every night on the sink after I’ve brushed my teeth, so now the bathroom is more or less, always clean.
‘Like a warm autumn walk in the woods’: the best supermarket runny honey, tasted and rated The best honey I’ve ever had came from my plot neighbours bees, got me through my last bout of COVID!
I was one of those men who couldn’t stop talking. Here’s how I learned to shut up and listen
Nic Dempsey 