horsemouth a one mule orgy of narcissism

wait! boris johnson has talked about an orgy of narcissism?

boris johnson?

boris johnson is a one-man orgy of narcissism!

more covid inquiry stuff. 

as usual the british press are too busy with settling previous scores (brexit and barney castle) to deal with the material in front of them. surely there is more we can learn from the government's response to covid than 'oh miss he swore!'.

the main strategy seems to be throw dominic cummings and matt handcock under the bus (this is mainly because they are so widely disliked).  

with matt handcock it is entirely fair and justified. 

dominic cummings (on the other hand)  is just a small highly efficient teams bore. he's not that clever. he's not that special. the fact that he took the british political class to the cleaners is an expression of the weakness of the british political class, of their failure to understand the public.

anyone who looks at a million votes for UKIP only getting them one MP can see that parliamentary representation is broken.

and this reveals an essential tragic truth about the uk - the political class can get away with having no understanding of the people they rule over because the political system as a whole insulates the ruling class from any need to understand the people. the people don't have enough power for them to matter (most of the time). 

horsemouth is however happy to see that the political class cannot learn. it means they will get rinsed again. 

it comes to something when the saviour of the nation is held to be the institutional inertia of its civil service. 

'and finally the drowned world by ballard...' 

matt (bookpilled/ thrift-a-life) is still down mexico way (looks like). well done matt. well escaped dude. he's funding his long holiday through patreon etc. (reviewing SF novels, giving advice on clothing reselling). he's often a smart, perceptive reader and critic (not always but often enough) and his life journey (LA - san diego- mexico/ stand up comic- worker in a writing mill - youtube blogger) is interesting. 

however he will persist in using  the term 'sci-fi'. 

now there are many of horsemouth's friends who don't like the term sci-fi. sci-fi just sounds rinky-dink and cutesy and a bit streamlined and 1950ies (like the fins on a corvette). it's not as bad as gernsback's original scientifiction (but nearly). 

for most of horsemouth's friends if you don't use the term SF you are just a rube of some sort.  speculative fiction means you are pretentious (and don't want to admit you have been reading mere SF) and similarly if you should be caught drivelling on about 'third stream' or whatever it is called. 

meanwhile...

well it's a rainy morning. (and more rain to come). last night horsemouth started on xavier de miastre's a journey around my room. xavier (under house arrest) zeroes in on the microcosm.