2013 — 23 May: Thursday
I don't know which is worse, to discover that the monarch's phone was tapped on the orders of his own Home Secretary1 or the fact that the news doesn't surprise me — only that it's actually been allowed out into the sunlight (as it were).
The newly released files, all highly classified, have been gathering dust for decades in a Cabinet Office basement. Lord Wilson, a former cabinet secretary, described how he
visited what he called a strongroom beneath his old office where he found "heaps of paper ... my eyes swivelled".
He said he decided to "grasp the nettle" and set up a review to look into the possible release of the papers. It was carried out by Gill Bennett, a former Foreign Office
official historian. She said the papers had been treated as "too difficult" to categorise. Officials were "not sure what to do with them", she said.
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
Tories and gay marriage
Appended to an entertainly well-written piece by Zoe Williams is a comment that I have slightly amended:
I think what I've enjoyed most about the last week is that, during the 1980s, I was of the view that [supply your name of choice here] was a loathsome,
malevolent, unpleasant and slightly mad arsehole. Yet lots of people, both in discussion and via the media, kept insisting that [supply your name of choice here] was
a serious politician, a statesman, an old and wise head of the Tory Party.
Yet it turns out that [supply your name of choice here] is, in fact, a loathsome, malevolent, unpleasant and slightly mad arsehole.
I was right!!!! The decades of denial make vindication all the sweeter.
Where's my bike?
I've just heard Chopin's Fantasy Impromptu in C# minor. A piece that my Dad would occasionally tackle. I recall he described it as "difficult".
Lunch at "The Bridge"...
... was followed by a useful hands-on demo of one of the early Kindle ebook readers alongside my Android Tablet's Kindle App. My mind is nearly made up. Meanwhile, I forgot to note one of yesterday's arrivals (the 'Jane Austen, Game Theorist' book) which was sitting patiently on my doorstep when I got back from the seaside. Today's lumps are the reliably-bonkers fifth season of "True Blood" and what, on so far casual listening, seems likely to be a curate's egg of a double CD; the re-recording of the 1979 album "The Wall".
[Appreciative pause]
"Bonkers" is barely scratching the surface of an adequate description of my latest batch of moving pixels :-)