Mene, mene, tekel, parsin?

A little over a century ago, the Liberal party ceased to be the party of government for the last time (the Lib Dems have been a part of a coalition since, but never by themselves). The position once held by the Liberals had been usurped by the Labour party - a feature of the first-past-the-post system is that you inevitably have two "big" parties and one "neither of the above" party (plus any number of minor parties that basically just make up the numbers).

After the last General Election, there was a lot of chatter about that transition being a once-in-a-century event, with the Tories about to lose their spot as one of the big two to Reform. And that certainly seems to be the case. (And I should note that I take no joy in this. While I don't share the Tories' politics, and while they had been becoming increasingly insane, at least under Rishi Sunak they were at least somewhat bearable - Reform are just horrible. Of course, I'm far from convinced that today's Tories aren't just as horrible, in an awful bid to stay relevant.)

However what I didn't expect, and what the calamitous polling of Kier Starmer's Labour and the result of the election in Gorton and Denton suggests, is that we might actually be getting to a point where both of the big two are about to lose their spots - that the Tories may be supplanted by Reform and the Labour party supplanted by the Greens.

In reality, it's far too soon to declare that the writing's on the wall. But now that the Greens have shown that they can win, it's suddenly not inconceivable that people might start voting for them. And Labour have pretty thoroughly alienated their own left wing, largely on the logic that they have nowhere else to do... only now they do.

It certainly makes for an interesting thought...

All at Sea

I got new glasses today. I hate getting new glasses.

The reality is that for each individual part of my vision, these are a marked improvement over the old glasses - both my distance and near-field prescriptions had changed slightly, which was causing me some problems with reading in particular. So moving to new glasses was a necessary step, and both areas are improved.

The problem is that my eyes are used to the existing glasses, and in particular the various transition points between the various areas, and in the new glasses they're all slightly different. Which means that any time I look at something other than dead ahead, or any time I change where I'm looking, my vision swims until it gets back to normal.

That's all to be expected, of course - I get this every time I have to change my glasses, which is why I hate getting new glasses. But it's never fun in the interim.

Controversy at the BAFTAs

It has been a long time since I watched any awards show, be that the BAFTAs, the Oscars, the Brit Awards, the MOBOs, or any other. For the most part, I concluded that they were basically just people in the industry patting themselves on their backs while enjoying a lavish party, and that really the only reason anyone cared is because they're connected at least tangentially to things we actually do care about. I also concluded that winning BAFTAs or Oscars was actually no indication of whether I would actually enjoy the film in question.

But I digress.

This weekend at the BAFTAs there was a moment of controversy when one of the attendees, John Davidson, a sufferer from a particularly difficult form of Tourette's Syndrome, shouted the N-word while two people of colour, Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo, were on stage.

The whole thing was generally horrible.

Now, the very first thing I have to say is that I have nothing but respect for Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo (and indeed for Jamie Foxx, who also seems to have been particularly strongly affected by this incident), as actors and also as individuals. And people of colour get faced with this sort of shit far too often, so I certainly can't blame them for objecting.

But two things can be true at once. And in this case, the other truth is that John Davidson was present at the BAFTA ceremony precisely because of the film that was made depicting his journey with Tourette's, the way it has affected his life, and the negative effects of it. And, crucially, the fact that his tics and outbursts are entirely involuntary and out of his control - to the extent that he has previously shouted "F- the Queen" while receiving his MBE, and declaring that he was carrying significant amounts of illegal drugs while at airport security.

It's a very difficult disability, and is out of his control.

So any suggestion to deal with it, "couldn't he just..." has the answer that, no, he couldn't just. There were basically two possibilities: either accept his presence, and the risk that went with it that something like this could happen; or bar him from the ceremony in some form (which, incidentally, would be illegal under the Equalities Act...)

Ultimately, there's no neat resolution to any of this.

For myself, my sympathies lie with the victims in all of this, all of them: Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindon, of course, and also John Davidson. Because there was offense caused, and we shouldn't minimise that... but this is that odd case where there isn't actually someone to blame.

And engaging in a witch-hunt, or fighting it as yet another front in the Culture War does nobody any good.

(All that said, there is one little bit of blame to go around: apparently, the BBC in their wisdom elected not to edit out the slur from their time-delayed transmission, while editing out both Alan Cummings' later apology for it and some other shouts that occurred in the night. They could easily, and should, have handled that better. But in all of this, that's a fairly minor point.)

And that's that, I think.

The Future of VAR

On Clyde 1 Superscoreboard last night there was an interesting debate concerning the future of VAR - apparently the scope of its use is due to be significantly expanded at this year's World Cup, and the question was whether that would be the end, of if we'd see further expansions in scope.

I'm reasonably convinced that the answer to that is not only that it will be massively expanded in scope, but in the next few years we'll start to see AI-assisted refereeing, where the AI has been trained on the last several years of video footage, will 'watch' the game in real time, and will make all sorts of rulings. Indeed, there may come a point where the AI referee becomes the primary authority in the running of the game, although we're some way away from that just now.

In theory, this actually represents a good thing - at the moment, the biggest problems with VAR are that the checks seem to take ages (certainly, far too long), and they're all-too-often still wrong. Switching to an AI assistant should lead to much quicker turnaround and should, again in theory, see them become much more accurate.

(That said, they'll need to be very careful in how they train the AI, or they'll see them much more likely to award decisions to the 'big' team over the 'smaller' one. Or maybe the opposite...)

But all of that is a few years away... though maybe only a few. I think there's a reasonably good chance that we may see an AI assistant being tried out at the Women's World Cup in 2031, in advance of its being rolled out more generally after that.

Day 50: Update on Goals

It is already day 50 of the year, so time for the first update on my goals (and non-goals) for the year:

As for goals for next year, I only have three:

• Books: By day 50 I should have read 4.9 books. Thanks in large part to some decently-long journeys in the first couple of months, I'm a bit ahead of schedule on this one - book four finished while in Barcelona, and book five shortly thereafter. I'm now closing in on the end of "The Fellowship of the Ring", so I'm in a really good place.
• Weight: After a fairly disastrous Christmas season, things have been going in the right direction. There's a long way to go, and so I don't want to declare any sort of a victory, but so far, so good.
• Church Website: I've made a small update to the website, and managed to clean up something that wasn't working in December, so that's not terrible. My next step is to make sure there is at least some sort of a page for all of the various groups in the church, and then I can see about populating them with actual data.
• Blog: By day 50, I would expect to have posted 16 times. I'm very slightly behind target, with this being post 15, but that's not disastrous.
• Garden: Something that has recently come up is that our back garden needs a bit of attention - last year we dug a hole for a sandpit for Lion which has turned into a disaster. There is also some damage to the lawn, and a few bits and pieces in need of repair. I didn't set a decoration goal for the year as pretty much every room (except the kitchen and adjoining utility room) has been addressed, but it turns out that this should be looked at - getting the garden fixed is a new goal for the year. But in terms of an update: we haven't yet meaningfully done anything towards it.

And that's where we are: small progress on all three goals, a very small slip on the non-goal, and now an additional goal for the list. I'm happy with that, for now.

Experimental Cookery 2026: Rib-eye Steak with Red Wine & Pastrami Sauce

For completeness, I made this for our dinner on Saturday. It was fine - nothing much to it, pretty decent results, but not spectacular. We might have it again, but I'm not in any huge rush.

Experimental Cookery 2026: Waffles

I do like waffles, but we've hardly ever had them - my previous "waffle maker" was a repurposed toasted sandwich maker that, frankly, wasn't particularly good even at its own job, and the pre-cooked waffles we've had from Tesco have never really hit the spot. All in all, it's been a disappointment. Then, before Christmas, LC and Funsize decided to plant a seed: they decided to openly muse about getting me a waffle maker as my present, so that I could make them waffles for breakfast. (When I queried how that made it a present for me, Funsize quipped that I love to cook, so it's all good.)

Anyway, they didn't get me a waffle maker for Christmas, but that did lead me to muse on the topic. So I did some research, and identified a few good ones (apparently, there are a lot of indifferent ones out there). I picked one... and then found it was out of stock everywhere.

Argos then, rather cruelly, decided to reduce the price to their "lowest ever!", while it was still out of stock. Which was nice. But then, at the start of this week, it came back into stock. And I had some money-off vouchers available, so an order was placed, and I ended up getting a shiny new waffle maker at a third of its real price. Huzzah!

This morning, therefore, was the first actual use of the waffle maker. I found a batter recipe online (it's basically a pancake mix, but enriched with butter, and with the eggs separated and the whites whipped up to soft peaks). I made this up last night, rested it overnight, and then cooked the waffles this morning.

And they were lovely - nicely cooked (not quite perfectly formed, but that's about the amount of waffle mix I put into the maker), soft and fluffy. All in all, a win.

They're not perfect, but that's not a surprise for the first time out. But give it a few more tries (and some adjustment of the waffle mix), and all will be well.

So that was nice.

The Starbucks Incident

I'm not a fan of Starbucks on several levels. However, in this case, my issue is not with them...

I was traveling to Barcelona from Edinburgh, and due to a combination of travel times and company policy, I was using BA flights with a stopover at Heathrow. Which was fine - arrive at the first airport at silly o'clock, fly to Heathrow for a tight-but-doable transfer (I had an hour, and they claimed I needed an hour), and then to Barcelona just after lunch. And, it being a BA flight I could reasonably assume I would get something to eat, and maybe a coffee, on the flight...

Silly me.

I got to Edinburgh at silly o'clock and got onto the flight. So far, so good. And then the pilot came on to announce that we were delayed by ten minutes... That was far from ideal, but there should still be time. Then I discovered that BA no longer provide any meaningful food or coffee on their "short" flights - I received a tiny flapjack and a small bottle of water.

Never mind - I didn't actually choose them for the food.

At Heathrow it transpired that we had a little more time than was expected, and so by the time I had found my transfer gate and visited the toilets I had all of a few minutes before having to board. So I visited Starbucks and bought a croissant and a medium coffee. Said coffee was almost thermo-nuclear in temperature, but never mind as it would cool down on the plane.

Oh, and the croissant was very dry, but would also be fine with the coffee to wash it down.

Oh, and it was stupidly expensive, being a Starbucks not only in an airport but in Heathrow Terminal 5.

Anyway, never mind - that was me sorted for something to eat and drink on the second flight, which would tide me over until a late lunch in Barcelona. Huzzah!

Then I went downstairs to board my plane, only to be met by an instruction that we were boarding using a bus and that no hot drinks were allowed on the bus.

And so I now found myself, having very grudgingly spent over-the-odds on a mediocre coffee that was currently burning my fingers through the cup, having to throw almost all of it into the bin because I couldn't take it onto their bus. I then found myself having to eat a fairly dry croissant without the coffee to wash it down that would make it palatable. And then on the second flight I was given two small biscuits and a small bottle of water as the 'food' offering.

All in all, that was just a rubbish experience. And I absolutely blame Heathrow for this one - at no point is there a sign saying "by the way, you can't take your coffee on your plane". I consider the whole thing an horrible, and deliberate, rip-off of customers.

(And yet, somehow, the food offering was still better than the flight back, which was a "BA" flight operated by one of their partners, and where for three hours there was nothing at all. It's fair to say I have very little intention of using them, or Heathrow, any more than I absolutely have to in future.)

#5: "The Specimens", by Mairi Kidd

Basking

I spent the second half of last week in Barcelona, at the ISE trade show. This was a fun trip, albeit made up of three very long days. It featured a new and exciting way for the airports to rip customers off, which I may or may not post about separately.

But one thing that was really nice came on the last day, when Barcelona enjoyed 18 degrees and bright sunshine. Which meant that just as I left ISE for the last time, before getting on the metro to the airport, I spent a minute just standing, basking in the sunshine.

It's funny how you don't notice how much you miss it until the sunshine is back.

#4: "And the Mountains Echoed", by Khaled Hosseini (the current candidate for book of the year, though I'd be surprised if it stays there. It's very good, but not quite as good, though also not as desperately sad, as "A Thousand Splendid Suns")