so horsmouth and howard plan to meet up sunday. it's half term. maybe they'll get on with some music (or maybe howard will be too knackered).
it's the birthday of harry everett smith promulgator of the necronomicon of americana, of american primitive, the anthology of american folk music.
yesterday was the anniversary of the recording of live at the village vanguard again - john coltrane, alice coltrane, pharoah sanders and rashied ali take two tunes we think we know (naima and my favourite things) and show us them reconfigured. curiously horsemouth's favourite thing is jimmy garrison's solo double bass introduction to my favourite things.
last night horsemouth watched spasmo (1974) which is an umberto lenzi giallo with a reliably excellent morricone soundtrack. umberto was an uncharacteristic italian director in that he was an anarchist rather than a communist. it's the usual diet of carnage and cut off before we got to the end (but it made a change from ronin movies).
at last! a seriously wrong headed article from the LRB
'he (cummings) put less stress on the repetition of the same mistakes, the same prevarication, in the second wave.'
well er. no he didn't. and horsemouth can say this because the day before yesterday he sat there and watched all 7 hours of cummings testimony.
cummings laid government dithering out clearly in the first wave and then equally as strongly and with added exasperation on the second. in the first wave there is some excuse the government didn't know what they were dealing with, the plan just wasn't there and there was little or no testing available. none of these excuses works for the second wave there the blame is solidly with boris for in person refusing a circuit breaker lockdown. at least in cummings telling of it.
'in response to a series of adroit questions from dean russell about the structural and institutional lessons that might be derived from his experience, he could only return to johnson’s personal flaws.'
er. no. cummings whole position is that westminster and the civil service are dysfunctional. he went on at length about this. in comparison the committee was more interested in discussing barney castle and the rose garden and any a.n.other off topic bollocks that they could bring to mind.
the writer is hostile to cummings physicist-king project and presumably is happy to accept the kind of death tolls inflicted on us by the bumblers of westminster to resist it. democracy is not failing to purchase PPE because 'that's not how we do procurement' that's just lethal fucking incompetence. what is anti-democratic is to let them get away with killing us (the people, the demos) in these kinds of numbers.
and of course it's pointless to think that anything is going to happen as a result of this investigation or the covid public inquiry later.
there is no one sensible around to make use of the information (same with the grenfell inquiry). hopefully cummings testimony might delay unlocking until what is going on with the indian variant becomes clearer (which would be a good thing in terms of keeping the deathtoll down).
what it won't do is depose matt han(d)cock (who is being kept around to be the scapegoat at the actual public inquiry). if hancock was responsible and failed and so should go then logically boris was responsible and failed and so should go also. it will be the work of the public inquiry to show that it was entirely matt hancock's fault or to take so long that no-one cares any more.
and then he can go.
or maybe they'll declare themselves blameless.
next week. beaucoup babysitting. howard get his second jab. the week after horsemouth gets his second jab.
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