I don’t feel I’ve been here much lately. However, I’ve now got four weeks at home – more-or-less – so get used to photos of this place (and occasionally Manchester). On mornings like this, it’s no hardship – though the rest of the day was rather worse.
The public sector comprises people like teachers, refuse collectors, immigration officers, police officers, nurses, gravediggers… performing those tasks which are essential to the functionality and health of a society but which are difficult to ‘market’, unglamorous, dangerous, non-profit-making or all of the above. The UK government has, since taking power in a right-wing, private-sector-led coup that followed the inconclusive May 2010 general election, launched a sustained raid on the pensions funds of these groups, using the proceeds to pay off bankers who privatise and tax-dodge with their profits, but nationalise their debts – the perfect scam – and spending them on nuclear weapons that will never be fired (see October 3rd commentary).
The public sector unions responded by today calling a widespread strike, which will be excoriated in certain right-wing papers tomorrow as a matter of course, despite being supported by 61% of the British public, according to one opinion poll. Had Joe’s school been open – it was not – I would have kept him off anyway as a show of support. I hope there are more. Something has to make the bastards crack. They’re a Coalition for heaven’s sake, all it takes is the Lib Dems to stop pimping our arses while the Chancellor stands behind, shafting away.
So we move into the second trimester of this blog. End of November, December, January and most of February – the winter months. Expect lots of pictures of the cold and wet. I get several trips abroad in this period but they’re all to Norway (to where I head once more, tomorrow), Russia, the Netherlands – you won’t be seeing any winter warmth.
This picture was the only really interesting thing to happen today but is deceiving. The flood has been caused not by rain but by water flooding out (literally) from a burst mains pipe and drowning the road.
What irritates me most about the public transport in this country is not the unpunctuality (which tends to be concentrated on certain lines at certain times of the day, and after a while you just learn to avoid them – if you can, of course). No, the thing that gets me the most is the stupid ‘no growth in numbers’ contracts which the train operating companies have signed.As a result, public transport is an utterly backwards industry in which there is actually no business incentive to increase custom. (Undergraduate education is becoming another one.)
There is one, and only one, reason why such a state of affairs is tolerated: it’s because every journey by public transport represents a little redistribution of tax income. The government like collecting tax, so encourage us to use cars, which are enormous sources of tax revenue. They don’t like paying tax back out. so don’t want us to use public transport, which is ‘subsidised’ (I call it ‘invested in’). As a result Britain has the highest public transport costs of almost any country in the world.
But despite everything, it’s still a damn sight better than using a car.
Hebden Bridge in autumn plumage. Definitely a good time of year to be here.
Why do I have the sinking feeling that I am going to be getting up in the dark for most of the next six months?
Beautiful morning today but a bloody cold one, with a sharp frost, clearly visible here. Well, that’s winter on the way then.
Slight reservations about posting this if only because there’ve been a lot of Hebden Bridge pictures this last few days. Off to Russia on Sunday however, to give this blog renewed international flavour.
A day swamped with bad vibes but by the end I had found out the probable cause. Not a pleasant thing at all but not something which affected me directly. At that point I was glad I was able to join friends down at the pub.
I must have come through this back door at least twice a week on average for the last ten years but it’s nice to see it with a fresh eye now and again.
The light was weird this morning – a burst of sunshine into a day that was otherwise pretty foul – so here’s a challenge: can it make even an industrial skip, full of waste, look photogenic?
Hell yeah. It can.
Today was proving a very mundane day photographically and I was struggling to find a representative picture – until the natural environment obliged with the last light of the day.
Tomorrow is the 50th day of this blog, by the way. So look out for the page of ‘outtakes’ (or ‘best of the rest’) which I’m going to stick up tomorrow alongside the daily picture.
Being 42 