The north-south weather divide seems to be working in our favour for a change. The south of the UK will have storms today and thunder and lightning but the north will have fine weather, with the best weather in Scotland, for a change! Here in Saddleworth it”s not as spectacularly nice as yesterday. The day began overcast and rather windy. I suspect that had I got up at 7.00 I might have had mist to contend with as well. The sun has come out intermittently since then. I trust it will stay fine so that I can walk down through the bluebell woods to collect the small boy from preschool later.
I read this morning that there are almost 3,000 billionaires spread around the world. The numbers of these super-rich tripled apparently between 2010 and 2020. Time was people aspired to be millionaires. Now that’s just small beer. Billions are what people aim for. Amazing! I remember a conversation with a friend almost 40 years ago where she declared that winning a million on the lottery would not be enough because it wouldn’t buy her a big enough yacht. Now I suspect she might dream of winning even more! Some countries (USA and China) have more billionaires than others. Some (not many) have none at all. But just think, if all the governments of the world got together to prevent tax avoidance and made all those 3,000 pay proper taxes we could solve so many of the world’s problems. That’s not likely to happen though.
Incidentally, coincidentally, 3,000 is also the number of people in prison unfairly on IPP sentences in the UK. IPP stands for Imprisonment for Public Protection, a system which allows people to be locked up for unspecified lengths of time. Usually they’re given a short initial sentence, maybe 18 months, sometimes for a quite petty crime, and in some cases end up spending 20 or 30 years in prison. Maybe we could use some tax money from billionaires to fund investigation into such cases. Maybe even provide rehabilitation for those who are unfairly Then we could begin to reduce the prison population.
Today is polling day around here. We get to vote for the local council and for the mayor of Greater Manchester. According to Zoe Williams, writing in The Guardian, Manchester’s Andy Burnham and London’s Sadiq Khan have very similar records for their time as mayor of their respective cities. And yet Sadiq Khan gets a lot more criticism and hate mail than Andy Burnham. Main differences: skin colour and being or not being judged as a Muslim!
Incidentally, once again coincidentally, the Muslim - non-Muslim question came up in a news report on the BBC last night. One of the American commentators, or maybe just someone in an American news report, categorised the demonstrators at US universities as Muslim students on the one hand and Jewish students on the other. A mistaken and far too simplistic view of things. The pro-Palestinian demonstrators are a very mixed bunch - some with direct connections to Palestine, a quite large number of American Jewish students and a huge number of neither Jewish nor Palestinian students, demonstrating for a fairer world.
Which way will they all vote when the presidential elections come along? Interesting times!
Oh, I almost forgot about the “well-known anarchists infiltrating the student body and brainwashing American children”. Who are these people and what do “anarchist infiltrators” do when there are no demonstrations?
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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