European Drone Fly

Eristalis arbustorum

Thank you all for the kind comments after last night's mishap. Feeling a little tender today to say the least.
As well as the Dr's orders I didn't really have the energy to venture far. Social distancing probably means I wouldn't have frightened any small children, but better safe than sorry.

I've had quite a few " think you've misunderstood Black Out Tuesday" comments from friends.

I've pondered events in the States a lot today.

The explosion of hip hop in the 80's was hugely influential in my political development as a teen. Following on from Thatcher, the miners strikes, and apartheid it was an insight into the reality that, for many, the land of the free was anything but. Having been on picket lines when British police attacked protesters including a teenage me I thought I'd seen the worst a (western) state could be. In '92 I thought Rodney King would be a defining moment, a watershed. This however seems so much worse, simply that the same shit can be happening three decades later. The hope of Obama followed by the dire reality of Trump. Make America great again. Or make it in your own image. Shameful.

I've said before I see myself as human first, admittedly western, genetically male... And that's about it. European if you push me I guess. That we're now living in the days that the science fiction of my youth was set in, and we still define people by colour, belief or, apparently most important of all, social class, it staggers me.

The world watched a man murdered on television.
There's no ambiguity.
I'm not ashamed to say the full nine minute video made me cry.

Apparently what the supposedly most powerful man in the world saw was people that he needs to send troops to attack, not people he needs to get off his pedestal and apologise to. We don't seem to have progressed at all.