Grim if expected news on the Cumbria coalmine ' decision'. A political disaster for Whitehaven. My tuppence ha'penny on what happens next. 👇 1. Today's decision grants planning permission for the mine. The Government was acting in a quasi-judicial capacity. That decision is judiciable and we will now have a well funded legal challenge to it which will create landmark case law on down stream emissions.

After a year of weird weather tonight feels like an almost archetypally clear Winter's night. The heavily waxed Moon and Mars (?) is really helping with that no doubt. A visual prelude to tomorrow's cold snap and meditation on Advent themes. Today is one of our parish's two patronal festivals. I wanted an art house shot of St Nicholas' Tower with the stunning Moon and Mars. I secretly quite like that my phone camera is useless at sky shots. The human eye isn't redundent yet.

Crises like these hold up mirrors to societies. The really disturbing senario is the UK Government is right. That we don't have the attention span, social capital, economic structures or will to maintain disruption long enough so pushing back social distancing is the right call. That's my problem with this. You don't need conspiracy theories to explain why the UK Government is doing what it's doing. The UK Government has just been quite open about that. Critics need to contest the two central premises of the decision not suggest there is a secret one.