August is always so shit. British weather really is such an unmitigated goddamn blowering shitshow.
Normally wouldn't care, but I'm going to an outside screening of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset on Friday at Somerset House and it is going to piss down all over us.
When I booked it, I had images of warm evening, long shadows as the sun goes down, glass of wine, my favourite film with other people who love it. But no, because bastard England.
So instead cowering under an umbrella, wiping rain from your face, shivering in the ceaseless fucking cold.
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Let's have an honest conversation about the election result: No party should secure 63.2% of MPs on 33.7% of the popular vote. And that's as true for Labour as it was for the Tories. shorturl.at/Yl3FK
Many seemingly contradictory things can be true at the same time. 1) the election result is a triumph for the forces of reason and progress 2) The Labour vote is the consequence of a conscious and extremely efficient campaign 3) this result is democratically intolerable.
We should also be honest about something else, uncomfortable though it is. Reform deserved more seats. They got 0.8% of MPs on 14.3% of the popular vote. The Lib Dems got 11.1% of MPs on 12.2% of the popular vote. That's not right.
First, we've no idea if that Reform number is right. Second, come on people what's the matter with you. After 14 years of the most egregious reactionary horror, we're about to get one of the most progressive parliaments in history.
Everything changes now. Everything. Not just the policies, but much deeper than that.
The values and the personalities of the people in charge will be entirely different. You might not like every position they adopt, but they will hold a bundle of decent, humane, tolerant progressive instincts which are completely opposed to what we've seen for the last decade.
Right. TV debates. Basically the worst possible way to spend an evening. I'm starting with this. I do not rule out escalating to rum and possibly arsenic.
Are they in some kind of 90s video game?
Sunak has a difficult message here: Starmer will do this (BAD) but also we don't know what he'll do (ALSO BAD). He really needs to settle for one or the other. It's rather a struggle to convince people of both contradictory things at the same time.
A little while back, Gary Frank, one of the greatest superhero artists alive, put my book on the cover of his comic.
My brain basically collapsed with joy. When I had put it back together, I asked him if I could buy the original art.
He said yes - except that he refused to sell it to me and instead asked that I make a donation to Veterans Aid.
Original comic art is worth a lot, especially for someone at this level - 100s of £, often more. It's a preposterously generous thing for him to have done.
I'm very sorry to hear Andrew Mitchell sell his soul on the radio right now. A formerly decent man with knowledge of his subject area who must know the nonsense he is spewing. He should hang his head in shame.
He insists there are functioning safe passages for Afghans to the UK through ARAP. Wrong. In reality, countless thousands of Afghans have been let down and betrayed by Britain. But even if it was true, you could then easily accept the amendment.
He suggests, in a truly lunatic argument, that calls for an independent assessment of Rwanda's safety verge on racism. In fact, they maintain some sense of objectivity by preventing the government from defining reality.