Julblog 2024

Not a lot of time for serious abstract thinking this month due to seasonal tribal gatherings with parts of the clan from the Antipodes, the Americas, and the Scottish Highlands, leaving barely enough time for a couple of sculptures. So, in this holiday season, herewith a few oddments in lieu of serious esoteric thought: -

This is Chaos. – The book. The publishers have all the manuscripts from the 15 contributors, and I’ve seen the provisional cover design. Publication date probably July 2025 with pre-orders possible from this September.  

Assassination attempt. Will the failed assassination of Donald Trump go down in history as a Sarajevo Level Event and become regarded as the trigger that made WW3 inevitable? I dunno, the UK media delight in interpreting Trump as a narcissistic, sociopathic, machiavellian untrustworthy blaggard who plays populist demagogue to the worst instincts of the American electorate. Have they missed something? If civilisation survives, will historians come to regard Donald Trump as a master of Chaos Magic? See this: -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_Rising

UK Election. As the dust settles from the landslide UK general election it becomes apparent that the old truism still holds, oppositions do not win elections – governments lose them. The Labour party adopted the cunning strategy of saying almost nothing about its intentions and simply let the Conservatives dig an even bigger hole of indecisiveness and incompetence for themselves. Only one in five of the UK electorate actually voted for Labour but the plethora of other parties running, a low turnout, and the peculiarities of our first past the post voting system delivered them a huge majority. This may prove a good thing for a while, Kier Starmer need not feel himself a hostage to the wokeist, anti-Israel, LGBT, Critical Race Theorist and Green factions of the left. I doubt that he has much faith in the Dictatorship of the Proletariat but those with worthwhile assets and descendants may wish to consider dying fairly soon before Punitive Death Duties become announced. Labour seems to have pinned its hopes for economic growth on persuading private finance to invest massively in capital projects, infrastructure, and housebuilding. We tried that before under Tony Blair. It didn’t work for long, the country just ended up with a legacy of massive long term debt to private financial groups, badly built structures, and asset degraded utility companies.

It doesn’t look like Starmer will do much to reduce the UK’s dependency on the vicious circle of trying to prop up a decadent low productivity economy with massive immigration to reduce training and wage costs and to continually inflate property prices. These small islands become insanely overcrowded and the environment continues to degrade as a result.

Sculpture. Firstly, the latest in a long line of sci-fi neo-juvenilia pieces, an over the top Flagship for the Skaron fleet, bristling with improbable armaments, made from the usual recycled vape and scrap metal pieces and another lump of autoclaved aerated concrete that washed up on the beach.

Secondly, a serious item of conceptual post-modernist high art: –

‘Cracked Pedestal’ – The fragility of belief and the absence of absolute truth.

A bold and disturbing masterpiece in hand-marbled recycled antique hardwood.

Death at Chateaux Chaos. We put out kilos of birdseed each week and the number and variety of small birds visiting the feeders has climbed over the years. Then a couple of days ago this happened on the south meadow: -

A Sparrowhawk came for lunch. We just managed to take a pic before it took off carrying something small and feathered, hopefully not one of the rare Nuthatches. I have only ever seen one wild Sparrowhawk before, but it seems that the more we degrade the UK’s rural habitats, the more the wildlife seeks suburban sanctuary.