This 20 minute overview from the Acid Horizon comrades is excellent. Well worth a listen.
Jumaat, 19 Ogos 2022
Rabu, 17 Ogos 2022
Losing Members is Bad, Actually
But I'm not interested in debating with cynics. They've demonstrated their priorities enough times. What I will take issue with is their celebration of a shrinking membership. Through a rightist factional prism, seeing their opposition leave the party makes it easier to win those internal elections and get their people selected for the right seats. Branch and constituency meetings are becalmed oases where the CLP bores can hold forth on bin bags and dog shit, while the careerists and wannabes blow smoke up the MP's arse. Politics proper is exiled to the pub afterwards. Having got their hearts' desires, is this worth it from a Starmer-loyal point of view?
There's the obvious consequence of losing money. The party went through a painful shredding of full-time jobs over the last year, including the junking of the community unit because a) they were "lefties" and b) don't understand (nor want to understand) how consistent campaigning on local issues now reaps electoral benefits later. With fewer people, long-term work becomes harder. It also means Labour has less money for by-election campaigns, and publicity drives for big policy announcements. Such as the recent bill freeze. What does this matter if Starmer can attract wealthy backers? There's little evidence of doing so, and even then their "gifts" (which invariably come with understandings attached) are not as regularised and predictable as members' subscriptions. There's a reason why the last time Labour did this it was perpetually broke. This also leaves the party open to an obvious political attack. For all the bowing and scraping to big business, the fact Labour is running a huge deficit can and will be used by the Tories and the press to attack Starmer as fiscally imprudent and an unsafe pair of hands.
And there is voting. 100,000 is a not inconsiderable number of people. Not because of their weight set against an electorate of 30 million or thereabouts, but because of their experience and networks. One of the main reasons why Labour did better than anyone expected in 2017, and why 2019 could have been much worse is because the huge party membership was an electoral factor in and of itself. Scores of thousands were making the case for Labour every day at work, down the retirement home, at the school gates, in the coffee shop. The party reached the point where virtually every family or social circle in the country had a member, or knew a supporter first hand. That level of embeddedness is what knits together seemingly spontaneous (and unexpected) support. Starmer could have chosen to cultivate these networks simply by not witch-hunting members and publicly dumping his pledges.
The polls report Labour ahead with healthy leads in the so-called red wall. What's the problem? Doesn't this show no one cares about their grievances and their reach is negligible - especially when the Tories are doing a good job of making Labour look better with every passing day? No one should pretend the next election is going to be a cakewalk. For all the times glassy-eyed shadcab members go on telly to say the party has a mountain to climb before winning office, Starmer and his helpers are acting as if it's in the bag. The electoral strategy the Tories are likely to pursue will be an attempted repeat of 2017 and 2019: get together the older, the retired, and the propertied on a culture war campaign reminiscent of Brexit and hope it's going to be enough. It's not a "centre ground" strategy, but one feeding off the polarisation the Tories have done more than anyone to bring about. To win, Labour has no choice but to mobilise and politically monopolise the other side of this equation instead of focusing its energies on Tory supporting pensioners. Every vote counts, especially under the new voter ID system and the new boundaries the Tories have gerrymandered.
Even with the stark polarisation of the cost of living crisis, there's no sign Starmer understands this. Chances are the Tories will move further to shield their base from the worst of it, and with a new face in Number 10 there's the opportunity for reinvention. By driving out the left, Starmer and the Labour right are decomposing the coalition they need to win. A hundred thousand actively using their networks to urge votes for alternatives, like the Greens, or suggesting people should stay at home instead. This could easily be enough to lose tight marginals, and with Boris Johnson gone there's no guarantee the effects of antipathy would be overridden by tactical voting.
Losing so many left wing members isn't a boon for Starmer, but entirely avoidable and potentially a disaster in the making.
Image Credit
Isnin, 15 Ogos 2022
Starmerism Vs Nationalisation
If Starmer's price cap sounds familiar, it's because it is. Ed Davey announced a near identical policy last week. And in turn, that's very similar to the SNP position on bills. Interesting that the main opposition parties all share the same policy. But there are problems. Firstly, £1,971 is already unaffordable for millions on low incomes and even the retention of Sunak's targeted help plus Labour's meter tariff pledge would still leave them out of pocket. Second, as was entirely obvious, Starmer sidestepped nationalisation. Pressed on BBC Breakfast, he said freezing bills is a better way of immediately helping people than compensating shareholders for the confiscation of their assets. Starmer certainly isn't dim enough to not know this is exactly what he wants to do. Therefore, nationalisation - raised by Gordon Brown, of all people - is off the table.
For someone at pains to distance himself from anything resembling a new social democratic settlement, Starmer's going to have problems when March comes around and bills remain at unsustainably high levels. £29bn has to be conjured up by Labour's number crunchers again, and then presumably again when that half-year has elapsed. Not the sort of prudent financial management he wants Labour to be known for especially in the lead-up to an election. Why not simply nationalise the energy supply at the market figure of £58bn? The case for is persuasive. The chief advantage would be a permanent government subsidy that could keep bills low without having money getting creamed off to shareholders. It would allow for more efficiencies instead of the hapless, fractured energy market we have presently, and allow for more seamless planning when it comes to renewables, carbon capture and storage, battery construction, and the decentralisation of energy generation. It would also be politically popular; two thirds support the utilities (and Royal Mail) being entirely in the public sector. And as argued previously, punitive nationalisations would be a smart populist move.
Except Starmer does have a point. Nationalisation in and of itself would not reduce wholesale prices. Taking energy into state ownership on market value means shelling out £58bn (though this could be done for nothing by replacing shares with gilts, for instance) and then subsidising bills - a huge sum. Therefore nationalisation isn't a magic bullet, and those who want to see it should not pretend otherwise. The costs of gas, oil, and coal are only going to increase in the short term - but this is precisely why nationalisation is necessary. First to shield people from exorbitant bills in the here and now, and second to use energy generation policy and state control of the network to transition to low cost alternatives as quickly as possible. Something that the current regimen and its primary concern with profiteering does not have an incentive to do. The left have to be clear that this is why nationalisation is necessary, because it's the only way that enables us to do what needs to be done: transitioning away from fossil fuels to their alternatives.
This would be the "tough choice", so naturally Starmer ducks it and goes for the headline pleasing option. But is that all there is to it? In the clever-clever land of Labour policy generation, there are two reasons why, to them, this is preferable to nationalisation. As Starmer said in his interview, it's immediate help that will benefit everyone and is "fully costed". In a political culture where having to explain a policy means you've already lost the argument, nationalisation requires making additional, complex arguments that the Tories and their press would happily pick apart. This is their take home from two crucial 2019 elections: our own, and what happened in Australia. A bill freeze is easy to understand and has maximal cut through. No complicated arguments to think about.
The second is the policy's "wedginess". I.e. Driving a wedge between the Tories and their voter coalition. For the LOTO high foreheads, nationalisation is "typical Labour" and would not positively catch their attention, whereas a freeze would versus what the Tories are currently offering. For them, getting drawn into a debate between Liz Truss's tax cuts versus nationalisation is overly ideological in ways tax cuts versus frozen bills does not. The latter can be judged by who's offering the most - Truss with her couple of hundred quid, or Labour who can make most energy worries disappear overnight. And because the Tories will be forced to act as the strength of extra-parliamentary opposition grows daily, in all likelihood Truss will be forced to offer a variation on the price freeze - allowing Starmer to scoop the props for forcing the government to adopt his policy.
This isn't just about point-scoring politics for Starmer. He and most of the figures in his shadow cabinet, including (especially) the shadow chancellor would only ever countenance nationalisation as a last resort, and even then it's so taboo they can't speak about it. But their reticence is ultimately a position staked in elite politics. As with so many things, Starmerism has never stopped debasing itself before capital and property rights. Even in the direst emergency, one that could lead to a very hot autumn indeed, Starmer and friends have to assure the institutional investors and big capital that they will be, like Tony Blair before them, Labour in name only and make no inroads into private property. They are committed to keeping ownership as an issue outside of permitted politics.
In all Starmer has won the day among the media, which makes it more difficult for him to get outflanked by the Tories. But this is the subordination of the general interest, our class interest, to electoral politicking. We have to keep making the case for nationalisation and a transformative programme because, again, the Labour leadership have demonstrated they're not going to do it for us.
Image Credit
Sabtu, 13 Ogos 2022
Is Enough is Enough Enough?
This reminds me of the launch of the People's Assembly in June 2013. There were rallies, there were demonstrations, and as well as having the usual leftist suspects on board mainstream trade unions were signed up. If memory serves, the TUC's Frances O'Grady either spoke at the launch rally or at the London demonstration. My politics at that point were quite melty, but the cynical eye cast over the project were a pretty accurate forecast. A series of set pieces and activism for activism's sake, but nothing more than that. However, I was wrong as well. The People's Assembly did not achieve take off, but what it did was build links between activists in various anti-cuts campaigns and trade unionists, and undoubtedly these networks fed into the Corbyn insurgency two years later - as Alex Nunns argued in The Candidate.
I think the similarities between the People's Assembly and Enough is Enough are superficial in character. Yes, it has been organised "from above" and presented to the left and the labour movement as a fait accompli. Though it's perhaps worth noting the "usual suspects" are conspicuous by their absence. Mick Lynch, currently the country's best known trade unionist, is effectively the figurehead. Reflecting the RMT's pre-eminence in the rail strikes, and his ubiquity on the media rounds, Eddie Dempsey is there too. Zarah Sultana speaks for left wing Labour MPs (no John McDonnell, Diane Abbott, or Jeremy Corbyn), and lastly the CWU's Dave Ward finishes the speakers' roster - undoubtedly thanks to BT Openreach workers taking action for the first time in 30 years, and with a postal strike extremely likely. The CWU is on the list of sponsors, along with Tribune, the Right to Food campaign, and the community union, Acorn.
Different people, same set up? Why might this be any different to what went before? There are several reasons, the most obvious being the political context has entirely shifted. Despite the defeat of Corbynism at the 2019 general election and Keir Starmer's mopping up operation in the Labour Party afterwards, the left as a whole is stronger, more rooted, more experienced, and has many more active participants than was the case a decade ago. Second, the People's Assembly was founded not just when the left and labour movement were weak, but when there was significant support for public sector cuts. The Tories successfully spun the 2008 crash as a crisis of state finances, and at the time Labour fell over themselves to support rather than contest this analysis. If all the official organs of state and the media are putting out the same line, an awful lot of people are going to swallow it. Today, I don't need to say much about today. The energy crisis, the NHS crisis, the economic crisis, the drought and climate crisis, the crisis of state capability, the crisis of the union, and the paralysis of official politics are doing their own work. A wave of industrial struggle not seen since the 1980s with significant public backing, growing support for strategic nationalisations, and as reported on Friday, some polling suggesting large numbers think rioting in the streets would be justified. With millions driven to breaking point, acute distress is finding expressions in sympathy and, as the strikes show, collective action.
Enough is Enough might be able to cohere the despair and convert it into an anger that can mobilise. But it has to become known, which is why the programme of localised rallies are useful. It provides an impetus for people to come together, start planning their own actions, and building a camaraderie - something Corbynism well understood. But again, the difference now is the much wider audience receptive to its message. It's populist in terms of setting up an us and them dynamic, its demands a commonsensical and punitive (where the rich are concerned) politics while steering clear of party labels, and is non-prescriptive. It's down to the local groups to determine what their priorities are, which might range from picket line solidarity, mobilisations against bailiffs (especially important if Don't Pay UK meets its million non-payer goal), through to mutual aid, targeted actions, and so on.
None of this is guaranteed, but we do know the confluence of crises aren't going to let up, nor will the resistance to them. Enough is Enough can give fighting back some coherence and, crucially, integrate layers of striking workers and the newly politicised into left and labour movement politics. Is Enough is Enough enough? No, obviously not. It's a beginning and won't ever stop being a work in progress, albeit one that could really into and catalyse the febrile mood. For this reason comrades should set aside their justifiable cynicism and get involved with their local groups.
Image Credit
Jumaat, 12 Ogos 2022
Labour's Energy Bill Farce
She announced that Labour would outlaw the higher tariffs charged by pre-payment meters. Naturally, this appearing hours after my suggesting it is complete coincidence. Though in truth, props should go to Dawn Butler who argued for it and got it adopted by Labour in 2016. In other words, the shadow chancellor has plagiarised already-existing policy. Though Reeves wouldn't be Reeves if she didn't give this welcome measure a weak-ass twist.
The harmonisation of pre-payment and direct debit bills would see energy companies compensated by the government via fixes to the windfall levy (introduced by Sunak at Labour's urging). This would cost £113m between October and March, while saving those on meters, who are overwhelmingly people on low incomes, £184 over the period. This truly is pitiful. For one, why should energy companies receive monies to make up for the loss? E:On, for example, announced profits of £1.2bn this week. For too long, the big six have enjoyed surplus profits by forcing their poorest customers onto pre-payment. Having hammered them for years, Labour should explicitly position this as a punitive measure. If Reeves thinks it's "outrageous", and "unjustifiable and morally wrong", why give them anything in return for ending an overly exploitative practice? I think everyone reading this knows the answer.
In and of itself saving households £184 in the context of a £2,500 price rise since this time last year with possibly another £1,300 rise in January to look forward to is insulting. But to be fair, this is one proposal among many Reeves has supposedly been working on with Ed Miliband and Starmer. But why announce this now as some kind of teaser trailer for a blockbuster destined never to arrive? I suppose the thinking of the professional politics brains at HQ is trotting out one policy after another gives it some publicity when Liz Truss has taken a Trappist vow when it comes to tackling energy bills. The problem with this clever-clever approach to the news cycle is people will look and see it for the pathetic effort it is. The Tories are keeping mum, and what Labour is saying is no one in the shadow cabinet truly grasps the seriousness of the crisis. Nor, for that matter, cares.
Image Credit
Khamis, 11 Ogos 2022
Masturbation is Not an Ethnographic Method
On this occasion, however, O'Brien has a point about this article. It's not that the author was writing "about his experiences masturbating to Japanese porn", it's what this pornographic content is. Andersson is undertaking a PhD examining shota culture, which is a subset of "erotic comics" whose content deals with young boy characters in sexually explicit scenarios. For "research", Andersson masturbated exclusively to this material for three months to help enter the subcultural mindset. After each session he wrote up his impressions as field notes, with the material presented in the article more a commentary on his enjoyment than reflections on them. These raise several questions.
Firstly, how the hell did this get published in a prestigious methods journal? Where were the editors' moral compasses and their common sense? As a contribution to understanding paedophilic subcultures, which is worthwhile only when it is bound up with an ethic of prevention and cure, this piece offers nothing. Andersson suggests his article is about "combatting loneliness", which seems to boil down to the fact other people enjoy this sort of content and therefore that knowledge helps overcome it - while imparting a frisson of eroticism. What a load of rubbish.
Second, it's a complete ethical failure on the part of the supervisory staff to not only allow this PhD to go ahead, but for Manchester University to fund it directly from their pot of money. This is not disinterested research: Andersson was the editor and publisher of explicit "arts" magazines that promoted the sexualisation of young boys and under-age teenagers. He said paedophilia was "far away" from the discussion of his publications, which by any sort of conventional or social scientific definition is obviously untrue. And yet here we have someone undertaking a PhD to, it seems, sate his particular proclivities. Why didn't this set the alarm bells ringing?
Going back to Bourdieu, he was very clear that all of us occupy intersections of power and struggle. Over the course of our lives, we cultivate stakes and interests in particular social fields - though often we're not fully conscious of this, nor of how the assumptions underpinning the rules of those fields condition and are assimilated into our spontaneous outlook. Anyone undertaking a social investigation will likely import those biases into the research and, by accident or design, distort their representation of the research object and the claims they make about it. Bourdieu's argument is any investigator must, as a scientific precondition, apply a sociological analysis to the coordinates they occupy in social space. A sociology of one's own sociology, if you like. This would highlight the systemic social advantages one has, the power that the researcher acquires over the researched, and crucially the material interests they have in the completion of this research. This reflexive practice does not eliminate bias, but by accounting for the stakes one has in a project a researcher is committing an act of sociological honesty and therefore enhances the scientific bona fides of their work. It is situated as an intervention in a claims-making body of scholarship, and if there are any distortions their lineage is visible.
This very basic methodological precaution is entirely absent from the article. It even states at the bottom that there are no conflicts of interest! Andersson says his research is about "desire and identity", a laudable and fascinating area of research - albeit one that has to be handled with sensitivity and where safeguarding and the understanding of vulnerabilities are necessities. But by adopting a position of faux objectivity in which his own sexual and material interests do not figure, this is nothing but a prurient exclamation of his socially unacceptable tastes, alibied by some light theory and academic poetry. This is the unacknowledged promotion of a legally dubious subculture, not edgy methodology that shows how hung up everyone is about sexuality. Second, it's obvious from this trash article that masturbation offers no insights - except into the tastes and the mind of the author.
Qualitative Research are undertaking an investigation, and the University of Manchester is also looking into the project. That such a thing could have got through the research and ethics committees suggest something is very wrong with their processes and procedures. But is not just the grotesque subject matter that stings, it's the complete reputational and political cluelessness on show. When the social sciences and humanities are under attack, taking on someone into abusive "art" to "investigate" paedophilic mangas is tone deafness of the most stupid, morally vacuous, and damaging kind.
The Inconvenient Gordon Brown
Nevertheless, as bourgeois politics goes, Brown is good in a crisis because he was good in a crisis. And now we stand at the crossroads of an economic and a political crisis, what Tony Blair affectionately dubbed the great clunking fist is grasping the moment by the jugular. Brown argues for immediate action. An extension of the windfall tax on bumper energy profits before monies are repatriated to foreign owners, and the uprating of Universal Credit now (by an unspecified amount) to meet the October energy price rise. For good measure he throws in a tax on City bonuses, and the closure of loopholes in Rish! Sunak's windfall levy. These measures, Brown reckons, could raise £15bn - enough to give the poorest just under £2,000 per household. Brown also backs it up with the sort of ethical argument entirely missing from Keir Starmer's prospectus: that people have a right to heating, and energy companies should not be profiting from a crisis.
Brown goes on to say he would prefer businesses work with government in holding prices down, and he also calls for a flat rate of pay settlements of between £2,000-£3,000 to stop people from going to the wall while the state doesn't pick up all of the tab. He goes on,
And if the companies cannot meet these new requirements, we should consider all the options we used with the banks in 2009: guaranteed loans, equity financing and, if this fails, as a last resort, operate their essential services from the public sector until the crisis is over.In other words, temporary nationalisation. And it has struck a chord. 50,000 people have signed a petition within hours of Brown's views being aired, and he's even received unlikely backing from right wing commentators. But what of the policy itself? The Brown plan is preferable to what Ed Davey is touting on behalf of the Lib Dems. He suggests expanding the windfall tax to cover oil companies as well, which could raise some £20bn. This would, with an additional £16bn summoned up from somewhere, then be used to cancel the price rises for all households, leaving the energy bills as they were in April - £1,971/year. There are a couple of problems. The first is this doesn't challenge the pricing mechanism, whereas Brown does. And second, the Davey scheme is conceived as a one off. If the state is going to do a furlough-for-energy-bills to the tune of £36bn this year, what about next year? It seems more logical to nationalise the whole kit and caboodle at their present collective value of £58bn than shelling out that money more than once. And this is without noting that the state gets to determine how much it's willing to compensate share holders for.
But what about nationalisation itself? One doesn't have to sneer to note global wholesale prices aren't going to pay much attention to the nationalisation of energy supply in Britain. Which is why Brown emphasises a package of alternative measures first, while dangling state ownership as a threat to enforce compliance. He is not pretending it's a solution in itself. And, if the last two Labour manifestos are anything to go by, the left would agree. Except that nationalisation is the necessary accompaniment to a range of market intervention measures. One at the top of any list would be the harmonisation of meter and standard tariffs, so the poor are not paying over the odds for electricity. It would allow for infrastructure upgrades, storage capacity, and new energy sources to be brought on stream in a coordinated way. And even better nationalisation is electorally popular. This isn't just because most people think it's a good idea, taking energy out of private ownership gives a good kicking to businesses who are widely despised because they monopolise a necessity and are profiteering off the misery of others.
Labour being Labour, Starmer and his coterie want to be nowhere near this. Brown's suggestions, that are well within the confines of permissible politics, are a step too far. As Jessica Elgot observes, this is not kite flying on behalf of the Labour leadership; these are Brown's suggestions alone. A point reinforced by Steve Reed this morning, in which nationalisation is ruled out. If this is the case, it's difficult to see where Starmer can go on tackling the crisis. With his cost of living speech moved forward to Friday, the coordinates of the big reveal must lie between Sunak's idea of ditching VAT on fuel (which is better than Rachel Reeves's current policy, which only shaves off a fraction of VAT) and Davey's discounted bills. That means it's not in the running before it's even left the gate.
The problem Starmer has is moments like this cannot have a quietest response. Not just because radical action is needed, but because the costs of not doing so are politically prohibitive. Right now Don't Pay UK has signed up a hundred thousand pledges to cancel their energy direct debits, and the union-backed Enough is Enough is galvanising have a quarter of million backing the campaign. An opposition is mobilising, and the Labour leadership are making themselves at best an irrelevance, at worst an obstacle to this movement. And as this will be the number one issue that Liz Truss has to deal with when the Tory leadership contest concludes, she could choose to outflank Labour. Conservatism in this country never got anywhere by being inflexible.
Therefore, Gordon Brown's intervention is inconvenient because he's produced a yardstick by which Starmer's plan will be measured. But that itself does not go far enough. If Starmer can't at the very least match what Brown has proposed, he might as well concede the next election to the incoming Prime Minister now.
Image Credit
Rabu, 10 Ogos 2022
Selasa, 9 Ogos 2022
On Don't Pay UK
Sitting tight and hoping for the government and opposition to come up with a workable solution will turn out to be another Waiting for Godot situation. When official politics is paralysed, it falls to others outside of the Westminster circus to take matters into their hands. Monday saw the launch of the Enough is Enough campaign, itself an expression of the growing confidence of the newly insurgent trade union movement. Within hours the website was knocked offline by heavy traffic, and in a day the campaign video knocked up almost four million views. That suggests more than a couple of thousand lefties watching Mick Lynch and friends on endless loops. It has what the self-identified insiders like to call "cut through".
This could cause the Tories significant problems in the long run, especially when it comes to shifting public opinion. But more immediately the establishment are affecting a lot of concern about Don't Pay UK, the campaign that has seemingly sprung from nowhere and is looking to get a million people to cancel their energy direct debits on 1st October if the price hike isn't cancelled. This is not some leftist initiative either - I first came across tell of the campaign three or four weeks ago on Conservative Home, where it got a sympathetic hearing from some Tory supporters. Presently, 95,000 have signed the pledge and 30,000 are registered as activists. It's also obvious DPUK is pulling in masses of people from all over the place, as per this Graun piece. And, more importantly, is making the establishment start to sweat. They know it could really take off and repeat the Poll Tax moment.
The boss of Ofgem is pleading with bill payers not to boycott payments. Pretending to be worried about the vulnerable, CEO Jonathan Brearley said non-payment would put up the prices for everyone and get people into more trouble. The debt charity Stepchange said money owed will simply stack up and the bailiffs could be sent round. There are risks to credit ratings and access to finance. Putting a Tory spin on the case against non-payment, CapX rides to the rescue to defend poor energy companies from a beastly monstering. These naïve fools, laughs the author, don't they know these firms have tiny profit margins and it's state interference in energy markets that are to blame?
These objections all assume DPUK is "preying" on people who don't know their own minds. What they cannot grasp is credit ratings and future mortgages are irrelevant to millions of people having to choose between food and warmth, and that keeping kids fed comes before realising shareholder value for the Big Six. Nor do they have much sense that a million non-payers can't be dragged through the courts, have the debt collectors sent round, and other strong arm tactics applied. We are many and they are few, to coin a phrase. The idea a boycott would drive up prices is risible scare mongering trying to drive a wedge between the won't-pays-because-can't-pay and those who do cough up the readies. In all likelihood further increases to costs would only succeed in creating more non-payers, and widen the gulf between the government and the public. Because let there be no doubt, neither a Truss or Sunak administration are going to do anything but stand four square with the energy companies. A gas and/or electricity contract is, formally, a private arrangement between a service provider and a customer with the latter paying for goods received, but this isn't a Netflix subscription: it's a necessity. The energy market we have now came about through political decisions. The Tories decided to privatise the utilities, the Blairites were evangelists for global energy markets, and the Tories again are pivoting more toward dependence on fossil fuels, downgrading renewables and, famously, exposing the country to price fluctuations by gutting gas storage capacity. Energy bills are a public matter, and are ripe for direct action.
It's obvious the Tories won't have an answer to energy bills apart from "pay them", and if past performance is any indicator neither will Starmer's "opposition". That leaves us with a very hot Autumn of trade union action and a mass non-payment campaign to look forward to. Something's going to have to give and, with millions of people inching toward political activity of some description, my money's not on the Tories being able to weather this crisis without conceding a great deal.
Image Credit
Ahad, 7 Ogos 2022
Iceland Volcano August 2022
When most education establishments were shut in Spring 2021, I got a little bit obsessed with something: the Fagradalsfjall eruption in Iceland. I found it soothing watching the volcano build itself up from small spatter cones to a lava geyser to a meaty shield volcano. And then it died just at the end of the summer just as the new term started and we all headed back to the coalface. Almost a year on, and just a stone's throw from where the old monster sleeps the ground has opened and magma has gushed out again. This time, the new eruption is pumping out three to four times more cubic metres of molten rock than last year's eruption and is threatening to fill the valleys its predecessor started working on. The site is about 20 miles from Reykjavik, is relatively remote, and chances are as the lava makes its way toward the sea it will give locals' homes a miss. The highway that wraps around the Icelandic coast? Probably not so lucky.
Anyway, here's some drone footage from a regular at this eruption and the last. It is absolutely stunning.
Anyway, here's some drone footage from a regular at this eruption and the last. It is absolutely stunning.
Langgan:
Catatan (Atom)