I’ve been out this morning to meet an old friend an former colleague for coffee and a chat in the centre of Oldham. We caught up on family news - a son working in finance (somebody has to and in the modern world you may as well work in something that pays well, he says), a daughter living and working closer to home, his wife finally managing to organise an early retirement deal, and he himself working part time in a number of educational establishments - we set the world to rights and he went back to work while I went to the library and to the supermarket.
In the wider world, the ceasefire looks as if it might not keep going. Fingers crossed that the prophets of doom are wrong.
Then there is this posted by Michael Rosen, yesterday I think:
“People of the Book arrest books.
O dear, representatives of the 'People of the Book' (that's what we Jews are sometimes called or sometimes we call ourselves) have raided...er....a bookshop and detained the booksellers.
People of the Book arrest books.”
This is what happened:
“The raid on The Educational Bookshops happened on Sunday and hundreds of titles relating to the ongoing conflict in the region were bagged up and taken away, with police accusing the pair of inciting terrorism.
That charge was reduced to a public order offence.
Mahmoud Muna, who went to university in England, and his nephew Ahmad, appeared in Jerusalem Magistrates Court on Monday morning.
They have since been detained in prison for another 24 hours and will have to serve five days of house arrest once released.
The prosecution demanded the men be held for a further eight days to allow police time to examine the books, but the judge decided they should only remain in prison until Tuesday.
A small group of protesters gathered outside holding signs such as "coward confiscate books" and "Palestinian books matter".”
And here’s a Michael Rosen response today:
“When they come for our bookshops
and owners of our bookshops
we know that
they know
that we know
that
we've rumbled them.
We know what they're doing.
We know why they're doing it.
It's not that snatching books
and bookshop owners
is worse than bombing apartment blocks
locking up people without charge
and killing families.
It's not that snatching books
and bookshop owners
is as bad as bombing apartment blocks
locking up people without charge
and killing families.
It's just that it's
an alarm bell, a warning light
the kind of thing that usually merits
a cry from the heart of
whatever it is that liberal opinion
thinks matters.
But then when it comes
to what the Israeli government and army do,
liberal opinion seems to sometimes lose its voice,
seems to sometimes fail to switch on the alarm bells
and warning lights.
Seems not to cry out from its
liberal heart.
It's almost as if
that old black and white film
of books going on to the flames
in Bebelplatz in Berlin
on May 10 1933
is in a museum, in a case
behind glass,
as some much lamented horror
that happened in the past
and only in the past
and - thank goodness -
doesn't happen now.”
And here in the UK an NHS trust suspended two members of staff from working because they were considering a organising a Palestine demonstration during their lunch break. This happened some time ago and there has been a three month investigation which “found they had no case to answer and that the trust had breached its own disciplinary policy in its treatment of them.”
The investigation also “noted that, though there was no intent from the pair to bully other staff members, two staff members did feel unsafe to come into work “as an indirect result” of their intent to organise the protest.”
Considering how little violence has been perpetrated by pro-Palestine demonstrators it’s hard to understand colleagues feeling “unsafe”. “Unsafe” seems to be turning into a synonym for “opposed to your views”.
Across the pond, Mr Trump has apparently signed an executive order to bring back plastic straws, banned for some years and replaced with ‘liberal paper straws”, which in his experience “explode”. Paper straws are woke. One wonders what a man of his mature years is doing sipping his diet CocaCola through a straw but that’s how it goes. He seems to know better that environmental experts on this matter:
“While plastic straws have been blamed for polluting oceans and harming marine life, Trump said on Monday that he thought “it’s OK” to continue using them. “I don’t think that plastic is going to affect the shark very much as they’re … munching their way through the ocean,” he said at a White House announcement.”
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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