A Weak End

It was another thought provoking day at both national and personal levels. I was relieved from work 45 minutes early which was welcome but the next four years will be at best tedious and at worst ghastly. If I ever win the Euromillions they'll be lucky to get 30 seconds notice. I'll be gone; I won't be looking back. It was a nice day and I felt very frustrated to be headed for bed but necessarily so. My efforts of last night meant that I have a minimal workload tonight and can look forward to my two weeks leave with considerable enthusiasm. I am certain that our East Anglian destinations will produce plenty of interest and photographs. I continue to savour digital photography and am already considering my upgrades with the arrival of the exciting Panasonic FZ-100 foremost in my mind.

The Pope was in London today. I am not going to launch another attack on this flawed Hitler Jugend alumnus but I will say I object vigorously and always have, to the effects on our big cities of State visits and similar large occasions. The disruption to the population at large is, in this modern, mobile age, completely unacceptable. The Queen, The Prime Minister and their overseas peers should be made to experience exactly the same delays as the rest of us. They and their movements should not be afforded a status which creates an entirely false impression of their importance and relevance.

Yesterday, the head of MI5 made a speech carefully crafted to renew fear and suspicion amongst the gullible and to reinforce the justifications for the continuing existence of myriad intelligence gathering organisations and their nasty activities. If pressed, I probably wouldn't deny the existence of evil people who wish some or all of us harm but I am certain that the threat is elaborately exaggerated by the government and their agencies all to further their own dark and oppressive agendas. At least we understand that Jihadists and renegade Irish terrorists mean us harm even if we don't quite understand what they hope to achieve when the sane amongst us realise that they will never succeed. With the dark forces that lie behind our governments it is much less clear what they want to achieve but the mantra of the safety and wellbeing of the general population is only a facade.

With or without (artificially) elevated security concerns, the Olympics are going to be an absolute nightmare. I shall not be going anywhere near them. In yesterday's speech, MI5 head Jonathan Evans at least had the honesty to remind people that there is no such thing as 100% security and warned that "the British public were 'deluding' themselves if they thought that the extremists would never be successful". This is a rare bit of healthy thinking in his unhealthy world. So, the next time there is a 9/11, a 7/7 or whatever glib media created digits are used to sanitise mans inhumanity to man lets suck it up and get on with living. Let us not initiate another turgid, protracted, lawyer-bonus enquiry to last four years to conclude that 'shit happens'.

In between waves of fatigue, I got out today to pursue one or two photographic concepts I had but I was not vey pleased with the results. It was a weak end to a busy week.