as usual there is a plan to build houses

'my work almost completely at a standstill. what I write seems to lack independence, seems only the pale reflection of earlier work...' - franz kafka, 25/10/1914. diary. 

it's a grey morning out there (but BBC weather control says it will clear by mid afternoon).

last night horsemouth watched the second episode of the housing documentary. this was frankly inessential. the points had been made (we hadn't had grenfell the piece de resistance of the whole thing, the icing on the cake with candles as it were, but everything was in place for it to happen). the whole sorry shower of shits that are the housing ministers for the past 20 years are rolled on (but at the rate of one a year it is difficult to imagine them really doing anything useful). 

what none of them do in their times in office is answer repeated requests from the commons housing committee that they sort out the farce that is building regulation after the lakanal house fire of 2009. it is this that leads directly to grenfell. instead of this question being put to them they are allowed time on screen to act as if they were responsible people whose opinions should be listened to. 

and still we wait for the report of the grenfell inquiry. still we wait for criminal charges. 

broadly horsemouth thinks of every housing minister since 2009 as some sort of a war criminal. 

post-grenfell gove complains about buck-passing by the housing organisations (but he also fails to realise that he is passing the back to them or more likely he does realise but he doesn't care). as usual there is a plan to build houses (but it is derailed by brexit) what does happen is help to buy which inflates house prices still further making them even more unaffordable for the poor schmucks who don't own already and lots of qualitative easing to make the people feel good (and keep house prices high). 

yesterday a zoom beer with howard (who is on half-term). it was mostly spent discussing housing (which was also inessential).  horsemouth has to be honest -the housing situation is unsolvable so there seems little point in discussing it. 

horsemouth watched the bird with the crystal plumage - the first of three dario argento gialli that make up the animal trilogy. argento wanted an atonal soundtrack (so he played morricone lots of atonal music when they were driving round in the car, they were neighbours). morricone conducted the musicians to synchronise the action on screen with the music. as usual the film looks amazing (but the plot makes little sense).

horsemouth was reading the bunuel. he is an annoying chap but relentlessly honest. he does know everybody though. 

what horsemouth will be up to today he doesn't know. a walk on the common (at some point). he tends to walk round it clockwise (keeping the encircled area on his right). today he turned back to avoid bumping into some other people out for a walk (and so a sector of the walk was conducted anti-clockwise). 

today parliament votes on whether to suspend peter bone MP (possibly triggering a by-election). horsemouth does hope so.