Cereals, commitment and accepting responsibility.

A friend of ours recently commented about his daughter's dislike of the fact that the area of Madrid where she lives seems to have become the haunt of hipsters. Now, I don't know a lot about hipsters except that Phil keeps pointing out young men, often football players, with either a man bun or a particularly silly-looking beard, a beard of the bushy variety, on the way to being a patriarch beard. Sometimes both! What a very strange fashion. I can fully understand our friend's daughter not wanting such people around. Nor wanting her district to be "gentrified" in such a way, with all the price rises that usually follow. On the other hand, there is a bit of me that says people should be able to dress and wear their hair, facial or head variety, in whichever way they like. 

Apparently one element of being a hipster is eating cereal (Corn Flakes, Rice Crispies, possibly Weetabix) at all hours of the day. A new all day cereal bar opened on Monday in New York. It's called Kelloggs New York, or something like that. It sounds as if the Kelloggs company is cashing in on a trend. It costs $7.50 for a bowl of cereal! Wow! 

Here's an interesting quote from an article about the new cereal bar:- "When cereal was first created, towards the end of the 19th century, it was promoted as part of a temperate Christian lifestyle. A bland diet was thought to keep both body and mind healthy, subduing sinful sexual urges. Dr John Harvey Kellogg who, alongside his brother Will, invented Corn Flakes, extolled cereal as a means to curb masturbation – about which he had very severe views." Who'd have thought it? 

 Since then, the papers have largely been full of the report from the Chilcot enquiry. It's all very damning about Tony Blair and his cronies but one wonders (well, this one wonders) if they will actually be brought to account. Blair still seems to think he did the right thing. "Asked whether invading Iraq was a mistake Blair was strikingly unrepentant. “I believe we made the right decision and the world is better and safer,” he declared." His idea of a better and safer world is rather different from mine. 

There are journalists and pundits saying that the only member of the Labour Party coming off anything like squeaky clean in the much criticised Jeremy Corbyn, who was opposed to the war at the time. He has apologised for what his party got up to. Party leaders are expected to do this kind of thing. 

All this apologising for stuff that you did not do, however, leaves me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. All the politicians are at it and it smacks of popularity seeking to me. Distance yourself from those actions by all means. Indicate strongly that you were opposed to it at the time, assuming you were around when the bad stuff happened, or that you disapprove of the actions of your forbears. But, for goodness sake stop this mealy mouthed apologising! 

That's all!