Sod's Law

I've thought for a long time that the whole idea of privatising something as essential to life as water could only have dreamt up by someone who really hated the human race. It's like a grotesque mockery of free market capitalism with all of the drawbacks and none of the benefits. Whatever your opinions on the privatisation of gas/electricity, at least you can change suppliers if you're not happy with the service you're provided with. If you're not happy with your water supplier, then where can you go? Why even have privatisation without some kind of free market element?

On the bright side, if the Tories do so badly at the next election that they completely implode, that leaves the door open for more PR-friendly parties like the Lib Dems to replace them as the next largest party and make it a more salient topic after the next election. May be wishful thinking and I'm prepared for the polls to be wrong again, but what else have we got at the moment?

But that's just the problem with it. There IS no alternative under this archaic joke of a voting system we're stuck with, which none of the main parties with any chance of reaching power has any motivation to change. I can fully sympathise with the 'get the Tories out at all costs' position (and in fact I'll be voting with that in mind myself) but it's hard not to look at the opposition and despair sometimes. The current government has set the bar so low that Starmer could be a wooden fencepost with a red rosette pinned to it and still be a better choice for next prime minister. There was a time when you could defend FPTP as a voting system that produces stable governments that keeps the fringe loonies out, but the last few years have blown that argument apart. The fringe loonies haven't been kept out, either here or in America. They just end up joining one of the main parties and changing them from within.

Better get down to some large scale dirt-digging on the rest of them then.

Blackpool South MP Scott Benton has resigned. Another by-election imminent. How many disgraced MPs would we need to shed before we have a General Election by default? https://news.sky.com/story/former-tory-mp-scott-benton-resigns-from-parliament-triggering-by-election-13101692

A Pope who can't... well, 'pope'. As a religious man you think he'd be wondering if God is trying to send him some sort of sign...

For me seeing it just represents the fact that the TV schedules are about to get a whole lot more tedious for five long agonising weeks.

Or endometriosis which was later found to have cancer present. The exact specifics aren't any of our business though. I've heard more than I needed to hear about the diseased genitals of members of the Royal Family at least until there's any huge developments (if there ever is).

You should have written for the show in the Chibnall years. Those suggestions aren't any worse than some of his were.

Then there's the whole 'sticking ads in Prime movies and removing one day delivery from many products' thing. Companies like them are desperate because the boom days of internet shopping and streaming are now well and truly over and they're desperately clawing at the bottom line as much as they can.

Geez, I hate searching on Amazon now. Half of the items on the list are sponsored items which have nothing to do with what I searched for. I will search for coffee pods and randomly get baby formula thrown into the results. I don't even have a baby. I also miss how I could preorder books by selecting 'publication date' in the drop-down list and it would have upcoming books by authors I've read that I could easily preorder. They seem to have changed the algorithm now so it only shows books that are already released. Changing search criteria from 'featured' to 'publication date' will also cut a list of 2,000 results to less than 50 for no apparent reason.

And only five years after they finished filming 'No Time To Die'. Has there ever been a longer gap between completion of one Bond actor in the role and the announcement of the next? You'd think they would have spent the pandemic years preparing for casting a replacement and would have had it ready to announce long before now, but that clearly didn't happen.

You know, I saw that name in the corner of my eye for a split second on the BBC News website and dreaded for a second that Tom Baker had died.

The banner under the picture in the article says it's a garden party at a friend's house in Hampshire and the man sitting next to her is Conor Burns, Tory MP for Bournemouth West. The rest of the article is paywalled though so that's as much as I can get.

Jesus Christ, I know that street. It's only a few miles from me and has some deadly potholes. Hope he didn't hurt himself rolling over any of them...

I found that one but couldn't find any date for it.

Have we had Thatcher yet? If not, here's her last photo from summer 2012. And here's Harold Wilson, 15th June 1994 (11 months before his death from Alzheimers and colon cancer).

Maybe the plan was to have the music-themed episode scheduled on the 11th for that reason but the first episode had to be moved back for some unspecified reason?

The Independent now reports Thursday 10th October as the most likely date, though a lot of that would depend on how many letters of no confidence in Sunak come flying in after a dire set of results for the Tories in the May elections. He's achieved the impossible and somehow become even less popular than Truss (especially with his own party) despite making a smaller dent in British politics in one and a half years with his 'do nothing and let things break' style of leadership than she managed in one and a half weeks of 'move fast and break things'.

Dear God, please go back on your walk.

Back so soon from your walk?

Doctor Who is the very definition of teatime TV though. The idea of watching it on a Saturday morning during breakfast just to avoid spoilers doesn't appeal to me. I'm not against an iPlayer-first release but it feels like the timing was done to prioritise American fans, since midnight here is early evening in the US.

Will conference season even happen with an election campaign ongoing at the same time?

I'd still prefer they just got the inevitable over with. This government's like an ancient sickly dog staggering around a room looking for a corner to die in. Why prolong the pain?

Parliament would have to be dissolved on the 26th at the latest apparently, which is when the Easter recess starts anyway.