Month: September 2019

An “electoral pact” is going to happen whether Boris agrees to it in public or not (which is why he isn’t agreeing to it (in public))

Steve Baker MP says that he struggles to see how Brexit can win the next general election, if Boris doesn’t do a deal with the Brexit Party:

I, on the other hand, think that I can see exactly how Brexit can win the next general election, if Boris doesn’t do a deal with the Brexit Party. And I reckon Boris does too. (Whether anyone can then “reunite the Conservative coalition” is another matter. Say I: one thing at a time. The task now is to get a Brexit Parliament, followed by Brexit.)

Farage definitely does get how to get that Brexit Parliament, election deal or no election deal.

This, which I spotted in these comments at Guido Fawkes, explains:

The important thing is that all Brexit voters need to know who to vote for in their particular constituency, come the day, to ensure Brexit. So, the Brexit Party just needs to tell them. If the Brexit Party campaigns for Conservative Brexiters who’ll win, but for its own candidates when they are more likely to win, the Brexit Party will get its deal. And Brexit will then happen.

All the Brexit Party has to do is impose its deal by keeping the Brexit voters fully informed, and the Brexit voters will do the rest.

Boris has no power to stop this.

But here’s the twist.

Assume that Boris truly wants Brexit. I think he does, if only because if he doesn’t get Brexit, both he and the Conservatives will be toast. Even if he’s a pure egomaniac, his pure egomania is now, surely, fully aligned with Brexit happening, on his watch. That’s the only way Boris gets to be Churchill 2, which is his not-at-all-secret fantasy.

And, if the above is correct, all that is needed is a general election, and Brexit will follow. Deal or no deal.

The reason Boris doesn’t want to do a deal with the Brexit Party is the same as why the London/Cummings wing of the Brexit campaign in the general election didn’t want to cooperate with Farage. Because, in the event of such public collaboration, there was and is a crucial slice of Conservative but only Leave-ish voters in the affluent south who would have been put off voting Leave, and would who would now be put off voting Conservative and would switch to the LibDems.

Ergo, it is actually Boris doing a deal with the Brexit Party that might jeopardise Brexit, rather than no deal. Just as the original Brexit vote would have been lost, if the Brexit voters had all feared that voting Brexit meant voting for Farage.

Remember, Boris is cleverer than me, and probably also cleverer than you. Boris must have realised all this, if only because Dominic Cummings must have explained it all to him, several weeks or months ago. To get a Brexit win in the next general election, Boris doesn’t need a deal, and actually would be better off not doing a deal. He just has to let nature take its course, with just enough behind-the-scenes nudging to make sure, e.g., that Conservatives who are going to lose don’t campaign too eloquently, and the odd phone call to/from Team Boris from/to Team Farage to make that little bit more sure that all this happens smoothly.

I know, what the hell do I know? This could all be oh-so-clever-clever bollocks. Good point. But, Steve Baker says he’s waiting for someone to explain how Brexit can win without Boris doing an election deal with the Brexit Party. I believe I just did.

Please note also that although my pro-Brexit opinions are probably very clear in the above, the analysis still works no matter which side you are on.

Red staircases at the top of the Heron Tower

So there I was in the City of London, during the early evening of November 23rd 2012, photoing all that there ever was of The Helter Skelter that never was, and in among all that I also photoed the Heron Tower. The one that used to be called the Heron Tower, which they tried to call the Salesforce Tower, but which remains the Heron Tower:

That being a photo that wouldn’t be worth showing here, except that the reason I photoed it was that it explained and supplied context for this next photo, which I had photoed a few moments earlier:

Let’s take a look at what we see there in more closer-upper detail:

I like how we have that bloke bottom right, telling us the size of everything. It’s bigger than I’d have guessed without him there.

It’s not often you get to see inside the tops of towers like that. It helped that it was early evening, because that’s the time when artificial light starts to assert itself, but there is still enough natural light outside for the outside of the building to be clearly visible also.

I went a-googling, to try to find out what was and maybe still is going on in there.

I found my way to this photo:

Curved red staircase, clearly at the top of a tower. That had to be it. And when I googled “red staircase heron tower” and that same photo came up, that settled it.

Two names kept coming up: Sushi Samba; and: Duck and Waffle. Had Sushi Samba perhaps closed, some time around 2017, and been replaced by Duck and Waffle. Sushi Samba sounds like the sort of one-off foodery that opens, and then closes; while Duck and Waffle sounds more like a tried-and-tested formula, of the sort that replaces one-off fooderies that are closing. Was that what had happened?

These people, who did the interior design for this place, explain:

This floating “culinary village” is set in a three-story crystalline volume at the top of Heron Tower, the tallest building in the City of London. The space is home to both SUSHISAMBA London, the renowned Brazilian/Peruvian/Japanese restaurant, and Duck & Waffle, a unique 24/7 restaurant that is inspired by British artistic and culinary traditions. A sweeping sculptural orange glass and metal staircase connects all three levels, decorated by a wall of street art.

So, both tried-and-tested business recipes and both happening there from the get-go, which presumably happened when the Heron Tower really was “the tallest building in the City of London”.

Another enterprise I learned about was the guys who actually built these staircases. And oh look, they also do roof clutter. Memo to self: get back to that site and have a deeper rootle around. For instance: they built/worked on that bizarre bit of roof clutter on top of the Guy’s Hospital Tower.

But the most enticing thing I found while scrabbling about trying to work out the SushiSamba/Duck+Waffle story was this very enticing photo:

That photo being one of these.

According to GodDaughter2’s sister, you can just go up there, with no airport checking-in crap, like it’s a regular place on the ground. I guess the Heron Tower isn’t reckoned to be “iconic” enough to merit counter-terrorism theatre.

Another memo to self: go up there.

Balls

Indeed:

I have had a busy day and have a busy evening ahead of me. So, for here, I needed just one photo to stick up. And preferably one that speaks for itself, so I wouldn’t have to add lots of complicated explanation.

So, there’s a photo, which I photoed in Regent Street, back in July, on the same day I photoed these photos and these photos.

The above photo does the opposite of speak for itself. It positively demands some sort of attached explanation. But, I have no idea what that explanation might be, so have nothing to add. Which means that it actually serves my purpose very well.

Have a nice evening.

That’s more like it (LATER: except that it wasn’t)

So far, Surrey have been doing well against Hants, who are now 120 for 8. At lunch, Hants were 60 for 5. And I love that those five wickets were taken by Clarke, Clark, Clarke, Clarke and Clark. That’s Rikki Clarke with the e and Jordan Clark without the e. Rikki Clarke has since got another, and has 5 for 21.

This is the game I’m talking about. Wickets are tumbling all over the country, so 120 for 8 may not (that sound you hear is of bets being hedged) end up being such a bad score. Yeah, now it’s 135 for 8. Morkel, now bowling, has 0 for 37. This year, Morkel is not the force he was last year. Even so, this makes a nice change from all this.

Surrey just brought Clark back on, and he now has three wickets. Jordan Clark. Hants 135 for 9. They were 26 for 4 at one early point. Not unrelated, I surmise, to the fact that they are starting county matches at 10.30am rather than 11am, now that it’s not summer any more.

TWO DAYS LATER: Well that was a hell of a lot less like it that it had started out seeming to be. Far from taking my mind off the England test team (currently 226 for 7 in their first innings in the final test), Surrey copied it. In the first test this summer, as I recall, England got eight early wickets, but nevertheless contrived to lose by a lot. Surrey have just done exactly the same, losing this game by a whopping 272, having started out by having had Hants 90 for 8.

I am a true cricket fan. I am unable to ignore cricket merely because it is going badly for the teams I support. Real fans don’t just enjoy. They suffer. It’s the rule.

LATER: Surrey coach Di Venuto holds forth and it’s not nice.

AAArt

I like photos that look like abstract art but which are really of something real.

To quote myself (underneath the August photo there, of London Bridge station seen from above):

I tend not to admire Modern Art. It takes itself far too seriously for my liking. But I love it when real stuff resembles Modern Art. Explain that to me, somebody?

Still working out the answer to that one.

So anyway, it would appear that these guys, agree with me. They call themselves AAA (they arrange the AAAs more aaartfully than this), which stands for Abstract Aerial Art.

Quote (from this):

Taken from a top-down perspective, every aerial photograph we take is of a real place on our planet. We like to compose our images as artworks rather than traditional photographs. Other than slight colour and contrast enhancements none of our images are manipulated in any way. As we always say, “the point is not to work out what it is, but to show how weird and wonderful the world can look from above”.

Actually, not quite my attitude. I like explanations, locations, etc. But, I still like these images.

Here are a dozen (I picked four, then nine, then twelve) that I especially liked:

Here’s the equipment the AAA guys use. Drones. Calling 6k. (The link at the top of this posting is to an earlier posting I did re another of 6k’s drone-photos.)

The new Google building in King’s Cross is taking shape

And the shape is the big green thing that someone has stuck in the middle of this photo …:

… which I found here. More about this building-to-be here.

On the right, King’s Cross railway station. On the left, St Pancras railway station, which is where the Eurostar trains go to and come from. It’s a pretty well connected sort of place. And proof that physical connection remains important, in the world of virtual connection that Google does so much to route us all about in.

A while back I was in and around all this with a friend, and just before I photoed these photos, I photoed these photos:

There’s something very appealing to me about the big concrete towers that signal a big new project like this one, towers ministered to by cranes, cranes which on sunny days often leave shadows on the towers. In a few months, all will be completely different. No sooner are these towers built than they are smothered in something else, after which some degree of permanence will return.

And whereas those earlier towers and cranes I linked to were for Brand X unaffordable apartments, the above towers are being built for one of the great economic and political facts of our time.

Three terrible photos of something interesting

Which is better? Three great photos of something rather boring? Or three terrible photos of something rather not boring? There are arguments for both, but here are three photos that fall firmly into the latter category. Well, they do if you agree with me that what is shown in them is interesting.

I photoed the three photos below while on a recent expedition to my local laundrette. I was in a hurry to get my camera operating, having been concentrating on my laundretting and surprised by what I saw through the front window of the laundrette, hence the terribleness of the photos:

It’s a lady, rollerblading along the road. And in the first photo I photoed of her, I didn’t even manage to include her rollerblades. But, in its inept way, that photo makes the point. If you only knew of this lady that she looked and dressed like that, would you expect her to be rollerblading? I guess the headphones are a clue. But otherwise? I wouldn’t.

In the first photo, as I say, no rollerblades to be seen. And in the second and third photos, she’s way off to the right of the picture. In the third, she’s even behind a street pole., which is, I think, some sort of sign. But, the point is made. A lady who looks like that is … rollerblading. And I can further report that she was doing it with practised assurance. For her, this is a routine. It’s how she gets around. To and from work, would be my guess.

There’s a lot of media frenzy about robot cars. Meanwhile, quietly, with no fuss, and with none of the eye-watering investment by big businesses betting their futures on their particular robot car, people are quietly attaching wheels to themselves, thereby making use of all that space in cities that is being cleared for bikers to bike around in cities, and in general to assume the rights and privileges of bikers, on regular roads, like this rollerblading lady. And it makes sense. Why buy a huge metal box with wheels on it, if you can have the wheels on your feet, in the form of a little skateboard with wheels, or a skateboard with wheels and a sticking up steering system, or just wheels, like this lady? What started as a childhood sport is mutating into a regular means of transport.

Well, I think this is really interesting. The only reason I don’t have many more photos here of people doing this kind of thing is that most of what I photo is stationary, or at the worst very slow moving and quite easy to see coming, so not a surprise. These mobile pedestrians are often gone before I can photo them, not least because I seldom hear them coming.

LATER: Sometimes I see the rollerblader coming and the photo comes out rather well.

Ashes to Ashes

In the Old Trafford Test, now nearing its end, which is a must-not-lose game for England, England have to bat tonight and all day tomorrow for a draw. They’ll need a lot of skill, and a lot of luck. And, they needed a good start.

In their first innings, England’s top scorers were Burns and Root. So, this was not what England wanted from the third and fourth balls of their innings:

At the crease now, Joe Denly and Jason Roy, who do not inspire confidence, despite having swapped positions, Denly now being 2 and Roy 4. A cricinfo commenter observed:

Roy faced his first ball of the innings before Denly. Poetic justice for Denly?

I thought that Jason Roy, what with him being class, would turn himself into a test match batsman. The Jos Buttler theory, you might say. I think Roy would do well, against lesser sides. But he has not done well against these Australian bowlers.