Something to Thank Trump For

The return of the Trump was always going to be horrible, and in the event it has been even more horrible than was expected. Although in hindsight it's an obvious strategy - change so many things so quickly and create so many outrages that the other side just can't keep up on what their supposed to be responding to now.

But there is one good thing that comes of this.

Trump has launched a number of trade wars, and threatened a number more. He's attacked Canada, the EU, made noises about annexing Greenland, and there's no sign that he's anything other than serious. That is, he's attacking his allies and trade partners.

And what that means is that those allies and trade partners should now be in absolutely no doubt: the US cannot be relied on to act in anything other than its perceived self-interest. That has always been true, but until now we've kidded ourselves on, pretended there's a "special relationship".

And that "special relationship", and the equivalants elsewhere, have been extremely dangerous. The EU is far, far too dependent on the US for its defence against Russia. Greenland hosts US military bases rather than looking to its own defence, Canada's economy and fuel security are intricately tied to the US. And, of course, our Trident system is tied in with US technology and systems.

That really needs to stop. If we cannot rely on the US, we need to look to our own interests and our own defence.

And that's a good thing, because the assumption that the big guy with the stick will only ever use it as we direct is always a faulty one.

Entropy

Our kettle died on us on Sunday. On the one hand, this was a mild inconvenience - kettles aren't exactly either very hard to get or very expensive. On the other hand, it's just annoying adding one more job to the list.

And, of course, it's unfortunate having to run out to get a kettle and spend the money just to end up back where we started. Multiply that by, well, everything and it's a constant annoyance of having to maintain everything, all of which gets in the way of making anything better.

Oh well.

In other news, and especially annoying, my car has developed yet another fault - after the type pressure sensors now finally seem to be fixed, it is time for the parking assist mechanism to fail. Another function that I don't make much actual use of, but which is installed and therefore needs to be working.

Sigh.

Lockerbie: A Search for Truth

This was released just before our NOW subscription expired, allowing us to quickly binge-watch it. Which was nice.

"Lockerbie: A Search for Truth" is a 5-part mini-series around the Lockerbie bombing and the aftermath therefore, based primarily on a book written by Jim Swire. Colin Firth plays Swire.

So... where to start.

(Oh, yes, there are spoilers, I guess. But since it's a historical drama, I'm not sure they count.)

Firstly, it's extremely well made, especially the scenes of the disaster itself in the first episode. The cast are very strong, with Firth giving a standout performance. And, more than anything else, it probably bears the closest comparison with "Chernobyl", which I also watched on NOW a few years ago. So that's all to the good.

But...

Somewhere around the middle of the third episode, Swire becomes absolutely convinced that Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is not guilty of the crime for which he is later convicted, and the second half of the mini-series follows on from there. All of which is his prerogative, of course.

Unfortunately, the sequence of events as depicted in the show just doesn't work - as presented, the prosecution case utterly falls apart, with just about every witness shown being extremely unreliable, key details coming to light to show that the conviction cannot be safe, and eventually a climactic moment as Swire attempts to bring the whole thing down.

My key problem being with that being that if things did indeed go down that way, there is absolutely no way the judges who were serving as the jury in the trial could have failed to see the problems. Meaning that the only real explanation is an almighty miscarriage of justice - either rank incompetence by five of our most learned judges or outright corruption. I'm afraid that neither of those sits right with me.

(The other thing is that much is made of the logical contradiction of only Abdelbaset al-Megrahi being convicted for the crime - Swire's argument being that the crime was only possible if both the accused were guilty. There's a key problem there: it just isn't so. Consider this: yes, as described, the Lockerbie bombing could not be the work of Megrahi alone, as he didn't have the required airport access. However, that doesn't mean that it required Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, his co-accused, to provide that access - there were others who could have done so. So the "logical contradiction" is not necessarily anything of the kind - the "jury" could feel that the case against Megrahi was sufficient to convict him while also feeling that Fhimah hadn't been sufficiently identified as the co-conspirator.)

I should make note at this point that I make no criticism of Jim Swire in all this - my strong suspicion is that the relevant scenes were heavily edited for dramatic effect, which worked, but at the cost of losing some of the critical nuance.

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that the second half of the drama doesn't work anywhere near as well as the first. Which is a shame. Also, barring an intervention by President Trump, I think it's unlikely that we'll ever know the full and unvarnished truth, which is an even bigger shame.

So, do I recommend the show? Hesitantly, I say yes.

#2: "The Ultimate Discworld Companion", by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs

Rings of Power, Season Two

If I had written this post a week ago, I would have said that RoP was a vast improvement over the first season, provided you accept that it's very much not Tolkien - it's what you might come up with if the only exposure you'd had to "The Lord of the Rings" was from watching the Peter Jackson movies.

Unfortunately, the final three episodes represent a spectacular collapse in quality the like of which I don't think I've ever seen. Fundamentally, I think it's trying really hard to be good, but just doesn't know how.

There are two fundamental problems I can see.

The first is that there are too many characters and too much space, and too little time. This means that some key character disappear for several episodes at a time, and many others get only a handful of minutes of screentime. There's an awful lot of "who's that guy again?"... followed by an awful lot of "you know what, I don't care."

The other is specific to the final episode, which is basically made up of recycled material from older, better sources. We have Aragorn being given Anduril, being re-enacted shot by shot and pose by pose. We have Luke Skywalker giving a little smile before jumping to near-certain doom. Not to mention the Rebel Alliance rallying at the end to look forward to a better future. And there's a lot of sound and fury, and a lot of peril... being endured by characters who we know can't die, or even be seriously injured. (Though, actually, we know that elves sometimes return from the Undying Lands, so maybe they actually should have pulled the trigger. Then again, then we'd just get Galadriel the White.)

Long story short, it's just a mess. And, I'm afraid, it's a mess I'm going to watch no longer. If you haven't started, I'd recommend avoiding.

Elon's Salute

I can't believe I'm going to have to defend Elon bloody Musk...

At Trump's inauguration there were, of course, all manner of speeches of various tenors, including one by Elon Musk. Following this, he has been accused of giving a "Nazi salute".

He of course did no such thing.

The thing is, the gesture he made is one that has been duplicated by many, many people over centuries, including the last eighty years. Indeed, ever since this madness blew up social media has been awash with images of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and various other left-leaning politicians (or what passes for the left, anyway) making identical gestures. Which is really not a surprise - there's a reason the Nazis co-opted it. Context really, really matters.

The thing is, there really are genuine, honest horrors coming. Indeed, we saw some hints of them yesterday. Closer to home, there is suddenly a genuine risk that we could be seeing Prime Minister Farage, with all that that entails. (And, for the avoidance of doubt, no, I'm not joking about that.)

The fight back against those horrors is really not going to be helped by the left-leaning voices in the media torching their credibility by pushing this sort of nonsense - clear hyperbole of this sort (assuming it is hyperbole, and not simply outright lies) really doesn't cut through in the way that they seem to do it.

Please, stop.

Experimental Cookery 2025: Sausage and Red Wine Risotto

A second meal from the final Hairy Bikers book, "Our Family Favourites", like the previous risotto I've made was very simple to put together, but also rather time consuming.

The end result was very tasty, and is something we'll no doubt have again. It feels quite seasonal, though - the sunblush tomato risotto feels quite appropriate for Spring and Summer, while this one is much more suited to Autumn and Winter. Which is no bad thing, of course.

All of which makes for a fairly short entry. But it's good that the second foray into that book made for a rather better experience than the first.

Secret Level

Over the Christmas break I managed to get caught up on some of the shows I'd been watching, one of which was "Secret Level". This is an anthology show with each episode based on a video game (or, occasionally, some other game). The show started with ten episodes, but quickly released a further five.

The show is extremely well made, with a variety of animation and storytelling styles. But, like all anthology shows, it's very much a mixed bag - some of the episodes were really enjoyable, some just fell flat. Though none were really bad, as such. (The kicker, of course, is that the ones that I think fell flat may well be the ones that you enjoy, and vice versa.)

For me, the most interesting episodes were of course the ones for "Dungeons & Dragons" and "Warhammer 40,000". The other one that I found really intriguing was "Pac Man" which was... odd.

Anyway, it's on Amazon Prime, and if you have Prime I'd say it's worth a watch. As with just about everything on Prime, though, it's probably not worth the subscription fee all by itself.

Experimental Cookery 2025: Chicken Enchiladas

This one comes from the latest (and last!) Hairy Bikers book, "Our Family Favourites", and was the one that most jumped out at us as something to try.

The meal here was easy enough to make. It wasn't exactly quick - all in, it takes maybe an hour to prepare. But that's fine, as it just means it's a meal for a weekend rather than a weeknight. There are no particularly complex steps nor any outlandish ingredients.

I made two crucial mistakes when preparing this one:

• Although I halved the quantities of most of the ingredients, I did not half the onions or peppers. In theory this wasn't too bad, as extra vegetables is fine, but in practice it meant that the ratios were just wrong.
• There was a gap in the cooking, and I made the mistake of assembling the dish and putting it in the oven on a timer. I should really have stopped with the sauce and chicken prepared, and only assembled immediately before the final cooking step.

Because of those two mistakes, the end result was not terribly inspiring. It was fine but... it was fine.

I do intend to have this again, as I think it's worth another shot, but for now at least this is not our go-to enchiladas recipe.

Gladiators Celebrity Special

Of all the festive entertainments we watched over the break, this was, sadly, the weakest. And, unfortunately, the issue was conceptual: in the normal game the competitors are chosen amongst the best amateur athletes available - they're obviously not at the sometimes-Olympic level of the Gladiators, but at least there's something approaching a contest to be had. In the celebrity version, the competitors are chosen from that subset of famous people willing to take part.

The consequence of all of this was that the Gladiators were very obviously not trying very hard. On the one hand, no surprise there - had they played at full force someone would have been humiliated or hurt. But on the other, it meant that the show really had nothing in it.

Assuming that they do want to have another celebrity special (which I'd tend to advise against), they really need to think about who to invite: perhaps recently-retired athletes, or something like that? Of course, the short-lived Sky reboot had a couple of specials where "the legends return", which were actually quite good. Sadly, I think the time for those has now passed - it's one thing for people to come back after a couple of decades; quite another a couple more decades on.

But all of that's a small niggle - I felt that the festive offerings overall weren't too terrible this year, and the BBC in particular did well. So I'm happy with that.

Rangers Woes 2024/25

I'm starting to wonder what the point is of having a football season where everything is essentially decided by Christmas. Though it should be noted that that's not Celtic's problem - they're doing to job in front of them as well as they can, and it's really not their problem that that means they easily outclass everyone else.

But it remains the case that the league is deadly dull, and largely pointless. And that's just not going to change until Rangers get their act together.

Right now, it would be easy to blame the management for the problems, and indeed it is likely that the current manager is not the right man for the job, at least in the longer term. But it's also the case that Rangers' players have underperformed under several successive managers; they're not up to the job either. And it's further the case that Rangers don't have the requisite money to fix these problems.

So...

My inclination is now that Rangers need to take a long view of this, and build from the foundations out. That means accepting a hard truth: they are very much the second team in Scotland, and will remain so for a very long time. Indeed, they're pretty much a mid-table team.

The strategy, therefore, should probably be to do enough to retain their second-place standing and do as well as possible in Europe, but not to spend money trying to catch or overhaul Celtic. Instead, let the manager and the more expensive players run out their contracts, and gradually replace them with better players - crucially, don't spend loads of money on compensation for getting rid of them for a quick fix - short of investing tens of millions of pounds that they don't have, no quick fix is available.

Fundamentally, I think we may be back to where we were a few years ago: the ultimate goal is to stop ten-in-a-row.

Which is horrible, but I think it may be that stark.

#1: "Machines Like Me", by Ian McEwan

Books of the Year 2024

My target for the year was to read 30 books, but alas that has not happened. Here's the list of books for this year:

1. "Ariadne", by Jennifer Saint
2. "Promise of Blood", by Brian McClellan
3. "Smart Leadership", by Jo Owen
4. "Why Should Anyone be Led by You?", by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones
5. "Atalanta", by Jennifer Saint
6. "Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life", by Arnold Schwarzenegger
7. "Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes", by Rob Wilkins
8. "Sharpe's Command", by Bernard Cornwell
9. "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", by Ian Fleming *
10. "Making It So", by Sir Patrick Stewart
11. "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again", by Frank Cottrell-Boyce *
12. "Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk", by Wizards of the Coast
13. "Empire", by Conn Iggulden
14. "A Thousand Splendid Suns", by Khaled Hosseini
15. "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Race Against Time", by Frank Cottrell-Boyce *
16. "Surrounded by Idiots", by Thomas Erikson
17. "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang over the Moon", by Frank Cottrell-Boyce *
18. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", by John Le Carré
19. "Firefly: Coup de Grace", by Una McCormack
20. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", by J.K. Rowling *
21. "The Prisoner of Heaven", by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
22. "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", by J.K. Rowling *

Annoyingly there is, once again, my records got messed up during the year - I recorded "Promise of Blood" twice, and failed to record "Sharpe's Command" and "Phandelver and Below". Those problems have, at least, been corrected.

That gives a total of 22 books. This includes two rereads (Harry Potter), and six books for Funsize/Surprise! The only RPG book this year was "Phandelver and Below", which is a disappointing one to end on.

This year's best book was "A Thousand Splendid Suns", but I'm really not sure I recommend it - I found it almost unreadable at times. I'm not going to list a worst book, as none of them seemed particularly bad.

Unfortunately, despite my best intentions I have ended the year with shelves every bit as full of unread books as I began, with some coming to their third year unread. It is very much my intention to start clearing that backlog in the near future.