2016 — 7 July: Thursday
This morning's daily dose of toad-to-be-swallowed comes from a web site I've never been to before, and contains some horribly unpalatable1 truths.
First, the ruling elites not only have no solution to the crisis — their actions over the past eight years have only created the conditions for a new and bigger financial meltdown — and second, any measures they do adopt will bring ever-worsening conditions for the working class in Britain and across Europe.
In the words of that old song:
It's the rich what gets the pleasure, It's the poor what gets the pain.
Today's pleasure being my lunch date. But it's my turn to pay.
Save us!
One can, if one is so inclined, watch and listen to Oliver Letwin explaining all the things he is and isn't doing to prep the UK for Brexit. (Link.)
In Marina Hyde's words: "it shows Letwin being asked about both the total and utter lack of contingency and the apparent total and utter lack of plan even after the event, and is a piece of footage as profoundly disturbing as it was surreally incomprehensible." What could she possibly mean, I wonder, by "twinkly eyed wonkstain"? The mind boggles. (Link.)
Ever have the feeling...
... that some things never change?
Governor of the Bank of England, Gordon Richardson, speaks depressingly of the vast balance of payments deficit and forecasts years of economic austerity for us "perhaps until 1984". His remarks coincide with the pound's fall against the US dollar to its lowest level yet.
A mere three years...
... to the day since tracking down, and ordering, "Home Stretch" — a CD of Mozart's Coronation Concerto (somewhat, erm, re-engineered) and some themes based on Brian Eno music by Timo Andres & Metropolis Ensemble that I'd heard a track from played on "Late Junction" — I decided I'd like to hear it again. But where are the MP3 files? "T" for Timo? "A" for Andres? "M" for Metropolis? Don't be silly!
The process of tracking them down — but not finding them because, well, I never actually ripped the CD when it eventually arrived2 from across the Pond — took a while, but shows that my CD CaseLogic folder filing system "sort of" works. So now the Linux "Asunder" program has been ripping CD #2376 "asunder" as I type. I could always just play the CD, of course, but where would be the fun in that?
[Pause] Now all I have to do is to remember to untick the FLAC and WAV encode options next time, before I run Asunder. I thought it was being a bit sluggish!
A mere thirty three years...
... to the day since I exchanged my first email with my friend Carol in New York I've just drafted and sent my latest reply to her latest batch of news. We both got fed up of numbering the things (literally) years ago and now simply use dates instead. But the whole lot is sitting on my little webserver behind the firewall. All 7,276KB of it!
