instantly everything is in ruins (once again) (the retreat from moscow)

 'there arises from a bad or unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind'  - francis bacon

sleep paralysis and the end of history

there are lots of games with time. (things are said to be stuck. things are said to be going backwards. things are said to be progressing keenly into the future. the characters are said to appear on the stage dressed in the costumes of the past. history is said to be over replaced by an era of universal social democratic beneficence)

'the lurch of what feels like dystopian science fiction (and or disaster film) into really existing actuality,'

wrote a friend of the covid crisis and the dragooning of the working class onto the death trains and off to the death factories while the middle class worked from home..

we have just had another lurch. 

the government had (of necessity, for perfectly reasonable reasons but woefully executed) racked up the debt during the covid crisis - and also realised it could not run another round of austerity to pay for it (because there has to be some economy on which to pay taxes). 

then the unfinished business in ukraine struck and all of a sudden there was a global gas shortage  - strangely the government elected not to pay for the ameliorating measures via windfall taxes on the energy companies (the sensible approach)  but by racking up more debt (and then, for ideological reasons they decided to bung in a few tax cuts for the ultra-rich while they were at it). 

the debt markets demurred and said they wouldn't be betting on this pony. and all of a sudden it all gets wonderfully more expensive. instantly everything is in ruins (once again). (it is like we were travelling in the time machine) because everything you see is made up of future earnings and debts to be paid at as yet unagreed interest rates . hard times produce their own demands for wage restraint and austerity (for penitential lent) but this may not be the feelgood party that capitalism likes but hey someone somewhere is making money out of it. 

what will happen? either a wonderfully executed pirouette or a death march into austerity and debt (the retreat from moscow). who knows things may be so bad that tory MPs elect to collapse their own government two years too early  and go to the polls and into political exile. (don't bet on it - parliamentary wages are good and the current chances of getting re-elected poor, they'll klingon). 

it is tempting to believe it is all deliberate (and that someone somewhere has a plan) but horsemouth doubts it. 

the weather is predicted to be a shocker for the weekend (but here it is sunny). a friend is off seeing other friends (this is good). there is a railstrike (hail the railway workers!). horsemouth stayed in last night (he was being good). he's due to go out tonight (being bad)). 

(p.s. horsemouth has been for a walk (it is sunny, autumnal and beautiful out there). his usual counter-clockwise route initially to the east. he has discovered he is interested in reading clarice lispector (because he has discovered that she is brazillian) after a quick stop to peruse his saved-from-a-dustbin copy of the FT.)