nourishing obscurity: Wednesday [1 to 5]

See what today brings.

5. There are new drops

.... at NOWP.

4. Daily Sceptic mailing today

All frontline staff are required to have had two jabs by April 1, meaning the first dose must have been administered by Feb 3rd. More than 80,000 – 6% of the workforce – remain unvaccinated despite repeated efforts to boost take-up.

Last week, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) urged ministers to delay the rules, saying they could have a “catastrophic” impact on the delivery of services.

3. Musical tastes

I'm quite sure certain choice things can be said about the quality of my 'music' played at N.O., particularly this evening's, and tastes do differ - some do like modern jazz with its discordant squeak and tunelessness and this is in that category, although called 'blues'.

Lord Somber does have a case though. Actually, all he said was that he'd like to be like this man. Fine, it could be a lot of fun, particularly on airport pianos, annoying everyone, but what struck me most was not the 'music' itself [critique to follow this] but the superlatives in comments at YT:

https://youtu.be/ompYP6GtGJM

It appears what we have there is a masterpiece, so we're told. The fact that I'm too cloth-eared to see it as nothing more than tuneless bashing of the ivories up and down the keyboard, bereft of harmony or melody may just be my fuddy-duddy tastes. Pearls before swine such as me.

2. Surveillance

This is a classic libertarian versus cry-rape dilemma:

https://www.samizdata.net/2022/01/the-worst-of-both-worlds-in-surveillance/

It's compounded by the behaviour of the police in the case in question. By cry-rape, I mean here the female getting back at the male and officialdom first believing the woman. You've seen posts and items from me by no means down on women as a species, thinking primarily of 'good' women I work and am friends with.

Unfortunately, the other side of the coin is not only prevalent but dangerously everpresent. Just as with the Woke, it's not even necessary for a male to have actually done something wrong, even in terms of a decade ago - if he gets her pronoun wrong these days or disempoweringly holds a door open, anything is now a pretext.

And I continue to say that there are good women who won't put up with this tosh from their 'sisters', primarily because it undercuts and undermines their case for very real danger of rape and other harm, abuse.

I know there are ladies who quite resent a comment by me long ago that women can be halfway between a child and adult too often in their behaviour ... I'm sorry but this case at Samizdata does nothing to diminish that observation.

And if you take this case, plus my observation together, plus female pollies' behaviour, e.g. Cortez, Rayner, Harbag, Maxwell, it is the diametric opposite of one of my key missions and hopes - that male and female can and will get along together, to the extent of reasonably happy marriages and good families.

It's the most difficult thing in the world to promote an unpopular view in these times - that men and women should be at one if at all possible - when it is the simplest thing in the world for one of the parties to cause mischief like this. Anyone at all can suddenly split two people, it takes a power of work to keep them together.

I have a RL issue myself just now, domestic, and the other party is young male, so I'm not so fond of that gauche and know-all, unpleasant demographic at this time. The females I know and work with are just fine, good people, even mates ... that's where I'm coming from. That's the context of this item in this post.

As for the surveillance issue, giving that power to plod is a bit like the discredited PCR test - it's a lottery, with the bias towards guilt if possible. Especially the way plod are common purpose run today - see behaviour at protests for example.

But if that woman's details had not come out ... what then for that man?

1. Steve