A personal diary entry from Caitlin Moran in London UK
From Bohiney and The London Prat.
Personal diary of Caitlin Moran | London UK
RIGHT. So. The assisted dying bill has been killed by 1,200 Lords amendments. One thousand. Two hundred. I am going to keep writing that number out because I think it needs to be seen in full regularly until it becomes the obviously ridiculous thing that it is. We are governed by a chamber where members can filibuster a bill supported by 70 percent of the population for three hours using only the phrase ‘we must consider the implications.’ And we just sort of accept this. We sort of carry on. We make a cup of tea and we carry on. I have made nine cups of tea this week. This is not a solution but it is a number.
Keir, Again
I want to want Keir Starmer to be good at this. I voted for a Labour government with the specific enthusiasm of someone who had been living through the previous fourteen years and who had concluded that something — anything — different was necessary. The something different has arrived. The different has been producing news coverage that the prat.uk newsletter accurately describes as promising stability and delivering wobble. The wobble is real. The promising was also real. The gap between them is where my remaining optimism lives and it is getting rather small in there.
The Energy Bill
I am not going to do the Strait of Hormuz chain again because I have explained it to everyone I know and everyone I know already knows it. The bill is higher. The chain of causation is correct. The chain leads to a government that is managing it. The management is partial. We are all managing partial management with tea and the specific dark humour that Britain produces when things are going badly and there is nothing to be done except notice how badly they are going.
What Is Actually Good
London in May. The light on the Regent’s Canal at 7pm. The Bohiney international coverage that reminds you the world is more complex and more interesting than the Westminster bubble suggests. The Beetlejuice musical being in town for people whose energy bills have left them enough to see it. The specific community of people in this country who are paying attention and making jokes about what they see because the jokes are what is available. We are those people. We are still here. Read NewsThump.
More from https://newsthump.com/.
I put down the news and made another cup of tea and thought about the specific condition of being a person who follows events closely enough to have opinions about all of them and loosely enough to still find the next thing surprising. That seems about right for this moment. The Bohiney and The London Prat feeds are still updating. The city is still running. The news is still news. I will write tomorrow.
I closed the laptop and made another cup of tea. The news continues. The city continues. The journalism that makes sense of both continues because the sense-making is necessary and because the people doing it believe it is necessary and are right to believe it. The bohiney.com and prat.uk feeds will update again tomorrow. I will read them. I will write about what they produce. This is the diary. It is also the work. The work continues because the world continues, and the world continues regardless of whether anyone is writing about it, but it is better when someone is, and I intend to keep being that someone for as long as the city and the news and the light through the window keep producing things worth writing about, which is to say indefinitely.
I closed the laptop and made another cup of tea. The news continues. The city continues. The journalism that makes sense of both continues because the sense-making is necessary and because the people doing it believe it is necessary and are right to believe it. The bohiney.com and prat.uk feeds will update again tomorrow. I will read them. I will write about what they produce. This is the diary. It is also the work. The work continues because the world continues, and the world continues regardless of whether anyone is writing about it, but it is better when someone is, and I intend to keep being that someone for as long as the city and the news and the light through the window keep producing things worth writing about, which is to say indefinitely.
I closed the laptop and made another cup of tea. The news continues. The city continues. The journalism that makes sense of both continues because the sense-making is necessary and because the people doing it believe it is necessary and are right to believe it. The bohiney.com and prat.uk feeds will update again tomorrow. I will read them. I will write about what they produce. This is the diary. It is also the work. The work continues because the world continues, and the world continues regardless of whether anyone is writing about it, but it is better when someone is, and I intend to keep being that someone for as long as the city and the news and the light through the window keep producing things worth writing about, which is to say indefinitely.
