Staying in bed. Protests and curfews and arrests. And remembering Aberfan.

 Having got up early yesterday, today I woke, heard the rain on the windows and went back to sleep for a while! The rain stopped in the late morning but the day remains dull and damp. I walked into the village to buy some essentials. The local pessimist was in the Co-op, talking mostly to herself but for everyone to hear, complaining loudly that she can never find anything she wants in “this rubbish shop”. On other days I have heard her on the main street telling us all how bad the local bus service is. Maybe she just needs to voice her protest on a kind of rolling programme.

In France the violent protests and looting have escalated to the point where some of the major cities and parts of Paris have had a curfew imposed. 

Marseille, for example, plans to to introduce nightly curfew for under-18s until Friday to stop violent protests

It seems that Belgium, Albania and Italy have been following France’s example. Milan has used military force to protect its shopping centres. Some stores have removed good from display and others have boarded up their windows. 

Various groups have been “blamed” for encouraging the violence: a combination of left-wingers and Islamists, according to some of the papers, Russian and China, say others, and Hamas, according to Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Meanwhile, according to this article, a small number of settlers have been arrested in the West Bank. This follows separate assaults by settlers on a US photojournalist and a group of international diplomats visiting a Palestinian olive grove. 

It’s sixty years since 100,000 tonnes of coal waste slid down and buried the primary school in Aberfan, killing more than 100 children and close to 30 adults.  Here’s a link to an article about it.

Even though a 1967 tribunal found the National Coal Board was to blame for not heeding warnings that the tip was unstable, no directors or employees were ever prosecuted. And there are still 2,000 disused coal tips in the south Wales valleys that pose a significant safety and environmental threat. That’s sixty years of our knowing such tips are dangerous! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!