covid, brexit and whatever they could remember (get out of that one horsemouth)

horsemouth (as you know) has a tendency to say yes to more beer. last night he went out for beers with steve. (steve works in IT). steve still has work but his workplace has evapourated (that's one cost gone) leaving only team building events.  nonetheless (based on his bike rides through it) he says the city seems to be warming up again.  

as usual their topics were covid, brexit and whatever they could remember from their science degrees way back. horsemouth will pass over this last topic in silence because it is not of general interest. 

on covid steve was wondering if it was not in fact the russian flu that rampaged about the world in about 1890. out in the town nobody was wearing masks. it seems to horsemouth (110 people a day) a shocking level of death to be sanguine about. and yet that level of infection and death seems strangely low to horsemouth now (even though it simultaneously looks high to him). people seem to be willing themselves to ignore it. 

that said horsemouth was up the pub, he did have a conversation with a stranger at the bar (about his 16 year old dog), and afterwards he did go for a falafel wrap. they sat outside (as a concession to safety). only one of the bar staff  seemed to be wearing a mask. 

now on the topic of brexit and immigration steve and horsemouth disagree - but they can agree on the manifest failure of the census to find all the people and thus ensure that sufficient resources are allocated to meet their needs. this is a case where the government profits from not finding the people. 

now horsemouth wants low paid work to be well paid work, he wants people lifted out of poverty, he finds it ironic that business are being whipped by the tories to fix the low pay problem that they didn't create, or rather they were obliged to create by the invisible hand of the market in a market formed as a result of government policies. truly in politics there is no such thing as gratitude. 

are the tories having a lexit? of course not.

boris's rhetoric is always a bit random - this fairy story of a high-skill, high-wage economy pulled effortlessly out of the present like a rabbit out of a hat is manifest nonsense. what  it does do is bring in a debate about how to run the economy for the benefit of all. 

and place internationalists and supporters of immigration like horsemouth in the position of fans of low wage demeaning work (as steve pointed out to him). get out of that one horsemouth.

meanwhile (back in the real world outside the tory conference) galloping supply chain and energy problems are likely to drive up inflation and eat up that new high pay and further impoverish the vast majority of people on the old low pay (the pay so low that half the people on universal credit are actually working full time jobs). 

and horsemouth is on the no pay (and dependent on savings which are subject to the depredations of inflation). one of the invoices for a booking he accepted (but was ultimately cancelled) has come through and so has the first cheque from his works pension (that he is taking early). by themselves these two would probably just about pay his rent for one week of the month. still it is better than nothing. 

horsemouth is still sitting in the seaside towns even though he no longer needs to do so for work and (indeed) it would almost certainly be cheaper for him to live elsewhere. he has not quite completed the first stage of his evil plan (to make sure he can get at all of his savings and then live (largely) of them in a managed decline away from the world of work until he hits state pension age. 

today horsemouth's head and stomach seem to be ok. outside it is grey (the weather for the day is predicted to be rubbish throughout). horsemouth will attempt to get on with the things he has promised to do.  saturday horsemouth will be minded by a child.