Well yeah obvs. I meant in the present and future. I was still a kid when we won last, and I’m old af now.

This is genuinely the closest we will ever get to a Eurovision win, ever.

I first got harassed on public transport when I was 11. For years getting on public transport involved being hyper vigilant and trying to hide. And it’s fucking exhausting. I shouldn’t have to be relieved that I’m too old to harass, and really it’s no relief because it just means they’re harassing someone else.

I have been harassed and abused by white men waaayyy more than I have by black or brown men. And that’s even with living in very diverse places.

Immigration is not the problem. Men are. But I guess you’re going to get triggered by that kind of broad generalisation huh?

As much as I support the Palestinian cause, and abhor the Israeli government, I’d feel really uncomfortable in an audience where I was being asked / told to give a standing ovation to flags. Particularly as he also threw the Ukrainian flag in there. Just because someone supports one, they might not support the other. And just because sometimes supports a nation of civilians in a conflict, doesn’t mean they’d support the government represented by the state. I don’t think anyone deserved abuse for not being coerced into doing something they didn’t want to do. I just really hate being told what to do though.

I’m thinking that in Hull they surely say “scurn”, so maybe they say “curn” for cone?

Our voting system sucks, the media on the whole leans towards the right wing, and in general the population isn’t very politically informed / literate and is easily swayed by fearmongering and misinformation. Plus the good old fashioned selfishness of the people who are well off or comfortable.

I still hold that a lot of the anti mask conspiracy theories were fuelled by those who have financial and political interests in facial recognition surveillance. I have no evidence to base this on, it just makes sense to me that they would be threatened by everyone suddenly masking up.

And yet when disabled staff request home working in many organisations (including the civil service) they face a battle.

You think pronouns are stupid? How do you feel about verbs, and adjectives?

So I read this article recently, and it suggested that some American breeders think there’s specific issues with the breeding line of XLs that are bred in the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/aug/16/the-alarming-rise-of-american-bully-xl-dogs-if-one-gets-hold-of-you-youre-in-trouble

Wut?

I mean I can’t, you’re right, but the government and HMRC can. If the government actually wanted to.

We need more wealth taxes, increased public spending, and wage increases for the public sector and the lowest paid jobs. And we really need to be putting serious effort into introducing some kind of universal income. That’s how you share wealth.

I’m Gen X and benefitted hugely from university fee support, student grants (although these were coming to an end and I also had loans), unemployment benefits, back to work incentives and schemes, and the availability of social housing (I’m still in my housing association flat now) back in the 90s. It’s not like being on the dole back then was amazing, but fuck me it wasn’t as brutal as the current system which is intentionally cruel. And the fact that young people now have to take on huge debt to go to university, and have virtually no hope of getting an affordable rented home through social housing, is just appalling. These things are so crucial to getting a chance to start off in life. Each generation seems to be getting fucked over harder than the one before.

Stayed at my brother’s last night, have been enduring 2 hours of the most annoying Minecraft YouTube videos with my niece. I think my brain has melted.

This is how it was designed to happen. It’s heartbreaking that by the time people realise that the NHS has been privatised it will all be a done deal. It’s in its death throes now. And then when it’s gone we’ll be gaslit into thinking it was always this way, or it’s the fault of socialism or something.

I’m probably Festering.

Coming out of the tail end of Covid (my 3rd go yay!), I got stuck at my mum’s for a week and only managed to get home Weds night. It was a bit of a trek and wiped me out so I’m just going to continue yesterday’s routine of lying on the sofa watching TV with occasional feeding breaks. My flat is a bit of a state so I might try and do little bits of sorting that out. After a week of quarantining in a tiny bedroom at my mum’s, and having to look after both of us while being ill and trying not to make her ill, a few days of lying on my sofa and tidying my flat is actually heaven.

Disintegration, The Cure. Not only does it have some of their most beautiful songs on, the production is incredible.

Was that an intentional reference at the end there to the film where a sudden ice age overwhelms the northern hemisphere, cos if so, nicely done.

Had a crappy night’s sleep because I’m full of anxiety and low self esteem. I’m 99% sure my ex is out dating / hooking up again, which is nothing to do with me I know, he’s not doing anything wrong, but it’s brought up a whole mess of emotions around rejection and not feeling wanted that were going on in our relationship for a quite a while before it ended.