This morning, the GF and I went to 228 Park to join the Black Lives Matter protest there. It was a curious affair. Every foreigner in Taiwan (excluding migrant workers) seemed to be there – the crowd was about 90% non-Taiwanese, and I suspect many of those who appeared Taiwanese were Americans of Taiwanese origin. […]
Imperial blindness
What a bizarre article in its acceptance of a teenaged slave girl bought from the auction block by a middle-aged Englishman, and this odd sentence about the end of her life: Widowed in 1893, Florence lived until 1916 at Sandford Orleigh, the Bakers’ estate in Devon, and was doubtless gratified when the Daily News called […]
Occlusion
The last couple of days I’ve had a bit of a dip, an occlusion of my normally sunny disposition. Partly due to physical reasons certainly, but also it was one of those periodic instances where the despair at where we are caught up with me. It will all eventually come to an end, and if […]
Doubting Dalrymple
A very interesting review of William Dalrymple’s latest, on the rise of the East India Company, in the LA Review of Books. Articulates my vague unease about his school of post-imperial wokeness that is so popular amongst the chattering Pakistani readership.
Fallout
A bit of Brexit fallout already as I hear that a relative by marriage, a French national, has had her application for indefinite leave to remain in the UK (with a British spouse and two British children) declined because she didn’t have proof she was in the country during the period of her maternity leave […]
Morning after
So Britain has left Europe, and like millions of others in the UK, Europe and beyond, I feel an inestimable sadness. I became a UK citizen only about seven years ago, and lived in the UK only about 11 years in total, and in all this time the European Union was a shining light that […]
Sad day
Today.
Tea break
A friend popped in for a cup of tea and brought over trifle, so I had a pleasant break from work. We tutted over the whole Prince Harry business, generally agreeing that it was all nonsensical on every side, and the press is particularly shameful, but it’s certainly good gossip fodder. Other shameful news from […]
What I make of Christmas
I will freely admit that I dislike and resent Christmas. I resent how it – and, specifically, one version of it – bulldozes over every other celebration, in almost every part of the world. I hate the consumption that surrounds it. If in the UK, where it is genuinely celebrated, the anxiety and expense around […]
Filth
What a bloody miserable result. Worse than I could have imagined it. It’s really truly devastating. Brexit now a certainty. Austerity, Tory cruelty to the poorest and weakest. Rising nationalism. Destroying institutions. Institutionalising lying. It’s unbearable to see this tide sweep across the world. What we had was imperfect, but it was not the brutishness […]