after the rain (let us pretend that our imperialisms are kindly and beneficent and wise)

hey hey! a wholly written in the morning blogpost (first one in a while).

there's no kilvert but there is a coltrane anniversary to wireframe it on. after the rain recorded at the van gelder studio on this date in 1963. 

yesterday rain. today a beautiful morning. a bit of haze but otherwise a blue sky. 

goldfinches in the garden.

bookpilled has been out thrifting for books (horsemouth will watch this this evening - who is he kidding? he'll crack and watch it this afternoon). ok he's closed the window to youtube so he's not tempted to look at that. 

politics. what of politics?

well starmer survives for now. 15 labour MPs voted to subject him to the parliamentary privileges committee.

that list in full; 

emma lewell (South Shields)

kate osborne (Jarrow and Gateshead East)

cat smith (Lancaster and Wyre)

luke myer (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland)

grahame morris (Easington)

mary kelly  foy (City of Durham)

apsana begum (Poplar and Limehouse)

richard burgon (Leeds East)

ian byrne (liverpool West Derby)

imran hussain (Bradford East)

brian leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth)

rebecca long bailey (Salford)

andy mcDonald (Middlesbrough and Thornby East)

john mcDonnell (Hayes and Harlington)

nadia whittome

respect to all of these. 

meanwhile (and see horsemouth's notes from yesterday on the use of 'meanwhile'...)

the king goes to washington and talks the old common sense to the congress and senate (but it changes nothing (really)). let us pretend that our imperialisms are kindly and beneficent and wise. the new thing is ugly and stupid, more of a grift than an ideology, but perhaps it is just more honest. 

horsemouth had a look at a vote to keep reform and the conservatives out website for his local area. it recommended voting labour. horsemouth doubts that the labour vote in south herefordshire will hold up given their poor showing in office. 

rachel reeves discusses rent control (or does she). the labour house building plan bumps into the problems that were always in its way.  it is difficult to tell how bad the gulf war/ post gulf war cost of living crisis is going to get. 

of course housing is no longer horsemouth's problem (and won't be for a while). 

anyway it's a long way off. even the local elections are a year off round here. 

the first real political bump is the may 7th elections. horsemouth thinks labour will lose wales but then he also thinks that labour (nationally) won't really care (any more than when they lost scotland).

dylan riley discusses stagnation and its political effects. to be class conscious it is not enough for workers to just act in their economic interests they have to act in their class interests which means having a vision of a world that is organised differently, one organised politically. this is usually held to be generated dialectically in class struggle. but levels of class struggle are low. there are sectors of workers still capable of defending their economic interests but can the mass nature of a movement to do this be created again given changing patterns of employment. 

today. a wander around. a read probably.