two years of outlaw bookseller. thank you dude (it has all been very enjoyable). horsemouth is impressed with the gift and that both outlaw and bookpilled are making a go of it.
horsemouth and sten have just had one of their kitchen conversations (not the one where horsemouth remonstrates about the kitchen being a tip but the more pleasant one where they discuss the news/ collapse of the tory party/ state of the world). both horsemouth and sten nurture ambitions to be writers - though neither is clear, horsemouth would say, as to where their talents lie and how best to direct them.
horsemouth wakes up with a sore throat (and a number of mosquito bites).
yesterday a walk down through the burning streets of the city to the office of the communal endeavour to catch up with colin and participate/ observe a zoom meeting about the social housing regulation act and the current government enthusiasm for using the consumer standards model for this. horsemouth is not convinced that increasing the regulatory burden here will necessarily lead to better outcomes (personally he's firmly convinced that it won't but force majeure etc.).
the basement was nice and cool (for once horsemouth sees the sense in it).
a lot of the impetus for this comes post-grenfell. instead of focusing on the governments failure to legislate to ban inflammable cladding as they promised the coroner they would do after the lakanal house fire (which in all probability would have actually prevented the 72 deaths at grenfell) we have the misdirection onto the quality of housing services the residents of grenfell experienced before the fire.
this is the pseudo-problem the current legislation is designed to fix.
at the grenfell inquiry their inaction had to be explained when faced with the persistent complaints and safety concerns of tenants. housing worker attitudes were taken to be the problem when a discussion of the limiting of resources made available would have more clearly explained the situation.
really and truthfully the poor services social housing tenants receive derives from their being labelled 'chavs' and social failures - the housing workers working with them only reflect and enforce wider societal attitudes.
horsemouth suspects that when the next (labour) government gets in they will add their own legislation on top of this.
after the meeting horsemouth wandered back up across the park (and very pleasant it was too). about a four and a half mile walk there and back all told.
thursday and friday horsemouth goes for further zoom meetings in pursuit of social housing decarbonisation money
naima karlsson (grand-daughter of moki cherry) picks some tunes and is interviewed (briefly) about one hour in to this show. there's a good discussion of an improvisatory turn (and there's some nice music). horsemouth will give it another listen when his head is more in tune with it
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