N 9 days from now Clacton goes to the polls and can reject the incumbent bigot. I took a quick look at the BBC’s description of all the candidates and about half of them can be written off as a self-described (admitted) parody. Consider “Monster Raving Loony Party” and “Everyone is God Party”. No serious person would go by such names.

That leaves about 20-25 people who take themselves seriously and fancy their chances.

Independent candidates aplenty are not a bad thing. In a good democracy, the “Independents” would stand a chance of winning, and gaining visibility without a massive budget (from parties such as Labour) should be desirable.

Encouraging people to vote “Independent” will lead us closer to a democracy not controlled by big Money.

For one thing, your female employees will flee the firm.

T seems like a deliberate delay or stalling. Another business day over, still no financial report from the hired guns, probably owed a lot by their American clients who started lawsuits that they could not afford and sought to hide horrific acts.

That’s OK, I can wait…

am feeling very energised or generally energetic this month. We got good news last month. Someone else received a truly massive bill.

By midday today (UTC), after a long night’s sleep (10pm to 6am), I’ve caught up with global news and published over 30 new pages across 3 sites. I intend to keep up this pace and maybe increase it further.

Today we finally have much-needed rain, some of it heavy, so let’s hope that the grass outside (everywhere, not just our lawn) will get greener. The yellowing this year reminds me of the terrible drought we had in 2018 when many lawns died. I still remember the year due to that. Some have not recovered since.

am hardly surprised to see the above in today’s news. Out of three dozen choices one has except Farage the media chooses to obsess over a faceless joke of a candidate.

This has gone on for weeks already.

Wetherspoon’s (Spoons) fun while it – the ‘choc offer – lasted

N the summers of 2024 and 2025 we spent every week going out to take advantage of food and unlimited drink offers at one of 5 (or 6 if one counts Trafford Centre) “Spoons” in central Manchester. We enjoyed those every time, except maybe in Piccadilly because there’s almost always some drunkard there who ruins the atmosphere for everyone around him (yes, it’s always a him). The place has extra security staff because the Piccadilly “Spoons” attract some unpleasant people. It’s about the location.

As part of the inevitable changes we decided to spend more time chatting in other settings. All the “Spoons” were phasing out mocha and chocolate anyway (new government regulations came into effect) and we were approaching winter.

Looking back at 2.5 years of weekly “Spoons”, I have fond memories. The sunny days meant sitting outside with lots of coffee and hours of constructive chats. The weather is good this August, but we no longer go out for drinks. We make better use of our time.

Ruben Schade regularly writes about coffee shops he fancy, so why can’t I?

Yesterday: Swatting People Who Write About Corruption, Misogyny, Criminal Misuse of Funds

Days ago:

llison Pearson had the same lawyer as us at around the same time. It was also around the same time a bunch of misogynists were trying to attack my wife and I by ‘swatting’.

Pearson found justice at the end. As the news puts it, “Police and crime commissioner to pay Allison Pearson ‘substantial damages’“ (they can afford it) and to quote the summary:

Telegraph columnist receives five-figure sum in complaint against Essex police boss.

This matter was previously covered by the BBC [1, 2, 3, 4].

In the news today

‘ve unfortunately had to deal a lot with bad, rogue, mentally-defective (by their own admission) people in recent years. Misogynists were among them. They think women are nothing. They believe they can strangle, drug, sexually abuse them and so on.

Misogynists are the sorts of things that stand in the way of societal progression (upwards, higher standards). Misogynists are an enemy of civil society.