The news media are paying a lot of attention to Kate Bush, all because of a song I never heard the first time round (1985?) being revived for TV series I’ve never seen (Stranger Things). It’s number one in the charts apparently. On today’s Radio 4 news someone was drawing conclusions about a whole lot of coincidences. We have a heatwave. There was a heatwave in 1976. We have railwaymen striking. Back in the day we had miners’ strikes. He reckons that in times of crisis we all get a bit nostalgic. It all seems a bit farfetched to me. And I never particularly liked Kate Bush anyway!
Australia’s government is being asked to intervene in the Julian Assange extradition case. Independent MP Andrew Wilkie called on Albanese to make an immediate and direct appeal to the US president, Joe Biden, and the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, on behalf of Assange.
“I have no doubt that Anthony Albanese has enough influence over the British prime minister to bring this to an end if he picks up the phone and says, ‘end this madness’,” Wilkie said on Saturday.
“I have no doubt that Anthony Albanese has a good enough relationship with Joe Biden to pick up the phone to the US president and say, ‘end this madness’.”
Let’s see if anything comes of that.
With all the stuff going on in the world at the moment the climate change crisis seems to have been pushed almost completely off the agenda. But it’s still there. Vulnerable countries and communities are already suffering from severe losses and damages of lives, livelihoods, crops and infrastructure caused by unavoidable impacts of climate change. Communities that are least responsible for global emissions are facing the worst impacts and do not always have the resources to cope. There is currently no global financing facility to support recovery from the losses and damages these people endure.
COP27 will take place in Egypt in November of this year. Will anything get sorted out? We shall see. Something needs to be done though. Otherwise the refugee crisis will only continue to grow worse as parts of the world,become uninhabitable. Time for a proper world solution.
Meanwhile, there are calls for countries of the West to put themselves on a war footing. I heard someone from high up in our military saying we need to be prepared to defeat Russia in a land battle! I was shocked and rather frightened and I sincerely hope it doesn’t come to that. Surely in the 21st century we can manage to negotiate our way out of such situations. Or is it going to be a race between global warming and a nuclear war? The arms manufacturers must be rubbing their hands in glee!
As you can see, I’m feeling a bit pessimistic about the world today! No doubt I’ll bounce back.
There are still good things going on. The washing has been done - an old friend and I have expressed our opinions on social media about the right and wrong way to “peg out” - we are both sticklers for proper pegging - it minimises the need to iron everything! The kitchen has been swept and cleaned. Other rooms have been vacuumed. The family is coming round later. Maybe I’ll bake a cake!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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