It’s still hot unsurprisingly but it could be worse – as long as the fridge works and Mercadona doesn’t run out of booze I’m pretty much sorted. To Current Affairs; I see Thierry Breton has appeared over the parapet again. This time gloating on Twitter that Ireland has double vaccinated more people than the UK – by 1%! Firstly, it’s not a race and the key metric seems to be 70% at which point herd immunity apparently kicks in. Secondly, it’s blatant dead cattery as the French equivalent figure is 59.5%. And thirdly, perhaps relative population sizes may have an effect as Malta & Belgium are the other 70%+ countries. But Thierry? him and Clement Beaune are the type of Frenchmen that I would happily cross a busy road just to punch them in the mouth – and I’d kick them in the balls on the way down too! The way Thierry peers over his glasses while explaining that it’s perfectly OK for France to subsidize Air France (after all they did give up some parking slots at Charles de Gaulle airport that they no longer needed) while frothing at the mouth at any suggestion that the UK might do anything that violates Thierry’s definition of the Level Playing Field. And to our friend Clement. Frothing about France being placed in Amber Plus without the scientific evidence to support it. Well Clement it’s probably political – because France did exactly the same thing to the UK in January when our case count was lower than theirs, oh and there’s the small matter of shipping over illegal immigrants as fast as they can get them into boats. To be clear, I am emphatically in favor of providing asylum for genuine refugees and as a reasonably prosperous First World nation I think we have a moral and ethical duty to support this. That’s not the case here though is it? These are economic migrants that have been able to raise the money to pay the people traffickers and they are depriving the deserving applicants of their chance. It’s the same in the Mediterranean where the burden falls disproportionally on Greece and Italy – two of the countries least able to cope. What’s the solution? If you were to opt for the least loss of life I’d say sink the boats. Use drones, Naval vessels whatever and for a month you sink anything that crosses a line. Then the traffickers have to find new routes – and they will – but you will have closed that one down. It may sound harsh but people are dying as they attempt to cross anyway so this may actually save lives.
The really, truly scary thing here though is that Climate Change has barely got started and the effects we are seeing are already extreme – just consider North America – the recent heat wave, the massive drought, the rapidly emptying reservoirs, or Germany, Belgium and China with the flooding. In my opinion, it’s no point banging on about ‘Net Zero’ – I mean yes it’s laudable and we probably should be heading in that direction rapidly same as we should be reusing and recycling more but all any of these things will do is slow the rate of increase. It’s too late for that, we need to be looking at living with and mitigating, where possible, the effects so stop building houses on flood plains, increase reservoirs look at controlling forest fires by natural means – controlled burns, firebreaks etc. Oh, and stop deforesting the f*cking Amazon you bastards!
So Katarina Johnson-Thompson is out of the Olympics with an injury. She did the best she could this was not in her control. My heart bleeds for her sometimes fate or luck is so cruel.
I’ve been listening to my father’s funeral music as there is a CD here in Spain – it seemed to vanish from my PC back in the UK. I’ve been bawling my eyes out remembering them both but it’s all good and part of the healing process. Honestly hugely grateful for them and how great they were – everything I could have needed as a child – some things weren’t possible but his quiet calmness – just taking everything in his stride and generally having a humorous take on it was just spectacular. And Bethli, the Swiss Farm Girl, so much more than that and with the superpower of making connections – part of which I seem to have inherited and how that has helped me in life is just wild.