Gloves on

With shops soon shutting their doors and the threat of a zero degree night on the forecast, I caved and bought some gloves. I thought they may also come in useful metaphorically for the US election results.

In the office we had an interesting session on gender and conservation. Gender dynamics play an important role in the design of conservation projects as they shape the participation of and decision-making by both men and women. There are many examples of where projects have failed to understand power dynamics and cultural norms, leading to unintended consequences and a failure to address the conservation issues at hand.

After work I joined Kathie for tasty and warming soup at hers. This was a sensible step following our previous cider-drinking evenings on Jesus Green. The last time we did that it was far too dark, damp and windswept to be outdoors on picnic blankets. Kathie told me her Bulgarian lodger was upstairs, self-isolating in his room. Only in 2020 would this make any sense.

Tonight sees the culmination of a ludicrous election campaign. Everything is ludicrous when it involves Trump, as it’s still staggering how a character like him could have made it to the position of President.

With some chocolate and a punnet of grapes I settled in front of the BBC’s coverage of the US elections. The BBC is painfully careful to appear impartial, to the point of blandness, unless Emily Maitlis is injecting some charisma on screen and pushing boundaries like she did in her infamous Newsnight intro that mirrored the public mood. The election coverage included multiple interviews with right wing Americans espousing the dangers from socialism caused by a Biden win. For Europeans this is laughable as most Americans wouldn’t know what socialism was if it slapped its paid maternity leave and other employment rights in their faces.