Back to staying at home and working for me today: day job, Wizard’s Tower accounts, and some stuff with Mike Carey which will all come to fruition in due course.

It was Prime Minister’s Question Time again today, and once again Bozo lost badly. That’s despite the fact that he was caught cheating with an earpiece in so that aides could whisper appropriate responses to him. It won’t be long before he turns up roaring drunk and refuses to answer any questions ever again.

Meanwhile the plan to re-convene Parliament in-person has gone very badly wrong. The Business Secretary, Alok Sharma, has been taken ill and is being tested for COVID-19. If he tests positive that’s presumably a whole bunch of MPs needing to self-isolate, including all of the Cabinet. Jacob Rees-Smaug was apparently heard to say that there was nothing wrong with being undead, and the sooner the whole of Westminster followed his example the better.

I made my weeky visit to Tesco today. All seems pretty much as usual, except that flour supplies are now almost back to normal. Hardly anyone is wearing masks, but at least people are being respectful of distance.

Today was a significant day in the history of the UK’s parliament. During the past few weeks of Lockdown, Parliament has been operating electronically. MPs have been able to debate and vote online. By all reports I have seen, this has worked very well. However, the government, in the person of Jacob Rees-Smaug, has seen fit to insist on a return to in-person meetings. This has had some very negative effects.

To start with, a number of MPs have been completely disenfranchised. That’s because they are elderly, disabled, vulnerable to infection, or caring for someone who is vulnerable. They won’t be able to attend or vote, and the people who voted them into Parliament are effectively disenfranchised too.

Secondly, the new voting system that has been devised to preserve social distancing takes around 45 minutes for a single vote (with MPs having to queue for most of that time, outside in the hot sun). That futher disenfranchises MPs whose health is not good, and it makes the act of voting such a nuissance that MPs will want to avoid it where possible. It also takes time out of the Parliamentary schedule, which makes it harder to scruitinise what the government is up to.

Many Tory MPs are reportedly furious about having to go through this rigmarole, but most of them voted for it anyway because it was only their personal inconvenience that mattered to them.

Practically speaking, of course, an 80 seat majority means that the government can do pretty much what it wants anyway. Not having a functional parliament simply makes it harder for the opposition to find out what they are up to and to challenge it. But we are well on the way to being a country where the Prime Minister, Mr. Cummings, can rule by dictat.

Still, at least it is all very British and civilised. It could be worse, we could have armed Trumpist militias terrorising the populous like they have in the USA.

I’ve spent the day reading and editing Wednesday’s radio show. The latter hasn’t been fun because I have had to find things to say about what’s going on over the Atlantic.

The impression I’m getting from social media is that people in the UK are acting as if Lockdown is over now. I’ll know more after I have been to Tesco tomorrow. I’m tempted to stock up for a couple of weeks in case there’s a massive spike in infections by this time next week.

I understand from Facebook that there will be a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Bristol on Sunday. I’m going to prod people at Ujima to see if there is any way that people can participate virtually.

Another day in Lockdown. Not much news. I have written things. You will be able to read some of them soon.

Out in the rest of the UK, things have gone a bit mad.

Our government has been operating virtually for several weeks, but Parliament has now voted (by which I mean that the government pushed through a vote) to “return to work”. Online participation will no longer be allowed.

However, social distancing rules are still being observed in Westminister. No more than 50 MPs will be allowed in the chamber at any one time. There are over 600 MPs.

Furthermore, the utterly archaic system that Westminister uses for voting involved crowds of MPs trooping through Aye and No lobbies, and this is clearly contrary to all social distancing rules. So voting will not be allowed.

Which means that Parliament can debate (sort of), but cannot actually pass any legislation. Which presumably means that the government will be ruling by fiat.

People, if you thought that Cummings going on a road trip was outrageous, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Today was mostly a being an historian day. I have a book contribution for which the edits came back last week and which I need to finish this week. That’s mostly done. Can’t tell you much else until the book is officially announced. But I’m glad the project is going ahead despite the craziness.

I also did a food shop. As things are starting to get back to some semblance of business as usual I’m trying to move to shopping once a week rather than once a fortnight so I can make sure I get fresh fruit, veg, etc.. Tesco had some flour today, which I guess is progress.

Elsewhere the rolling weekly average death count in the UK ticked upwards today. One day does not make a trend, but I worry about the combined effects of the glorious weather and CumGate.

Talking of our inglorious leaders, today was Prime Ministers’ Questions day in Parliament. This is a sort of gladiatoral combat entertainment in which opposition MPs line up to try to make the Prime Minister look an idiot. These days it is more like feeding Christians to lions. Bozo is so good at making himself look an idiot that no one has to try very hard. Thankfully the opposition are at last competing among themselves to see who can cut him down in the most elegant and witty fashion.

None of this matters, because he has a massive majority. Sure, a few have got upset over CumGate, but not enough yet that he’s ever likely to lose a vote.

Today has been mostly day job again. Code has been written. It isn’t exciting.

Elsewhere the political storm that has become known as CumGate rumbles on. For the benefit of foreigners, the story so far is that our allegedly beloved PM, Bozo the Clown, has fallen under the influence of a charismatic guru called Grigori Rasputin. The people have decided that Mr Rasputin is a selfish and dishonest piece of excrement who is apparently only charismatic to people he is able to blackmail (meaning most of the Cabinet), and he has been caught doing all sorts of terrible things. Even the Daily Malice has had a go at him. But Bozo will not abandon his beloved teacher, and in any case Rasputin has more blackmail data on Bozo than on anyone and would happily leak it to the media if anyone crossed him. A number of junior Tory MPs, who are more afraid of pitchfork-wielding mobs of their local peasantry than of Rasputin, are believed to be plotting an assassination. Their heads are expected to appear on pikes on Westminster Bridge next week.

I totally forgot to do a post yesterday, didn’t I? I’m sorry, I was having fun at Wiscon.

Today has been back to work for me, so there’s nothing much interesting to report here.

As to the wider world, the people of Britain are continuing to find out that their government simply does not care what they think of it, and there’s nothing that they can do about it. I suspect that the total refusal to admit any wrong-doing is the point. They want to rub people’s noses in the fact that they can do whatever they want. Once people realise that their anger is futile, it will morph into despair, and then resignation. And then further outrages become possible.

Life is slowly returning to normal here. I did some day job work today. But a lot has fallen by the wayside this week. There was no radio show as I was busy all weekend. And I totally forgot to do a new Lockdown Reading book today. Next week.

The main order of business today was food shopping. While I was out I also picked up my prescription, so I am OK for hormones for another 3 months. This is a huge relief.

The weather here is gorgeous. People are going to want to get out and about, especially as we have a bank holiday weekend. I’m planning to stay at home. After all, I’ll be spending quite a bit of time in Virtual Wiscon, which will mess with my time schedule.

Oh, and OutStories Bristol launched a new project today. I’ll tell you more about it tomorrow.

OK, the #GiveItUp125 thing is now over. I’m sure a lot of you are relieved. The rest of you, I hope you enjoyed the show.

Tomorrow I get back to normal-ish life.

The news from the “real” world is that MPs have voted to stop meeting remotely and instead convene in person from the beginning of June. The word is that Bozo is failing badly at Prime Minister’s Question Time and he wants to have his baying mob of back-benchers there to support him from now on.

Oh well, at least they are getting very well paid to risk their lives, unlike most NHS staff and other “key” employees.

Important as all this fundraising is, I will be glad when this week is over. I might be mostly free of virus-like symptoms, but I’m not fit enough for long work days. Thursday and Friday won’t be quiet as I have to cram a week’s worth of day job into two days, but I don’t have a radio show next week so I won’t be working all weekend.

Today’s bit news from the real world is that Hungary has passed a law banning gender changes. There are going to be a lot of very frightened trans people in Hungary right now. It will be interesting to see how the EU reacts to asylum claims. They must know that the same sort of thing is likely to happen in the UK soon, so anything they do for Hungarians will set a precedent.

I don’t think the UK government will start repealing laws just yet, but what they are doing is issuing “guidance”. Well, the government isn’t doing it. Random politicians are doing it. But that’s just testing the water. What I expect to happen is a new “interpretation” of the Equality Act which defines trans rights as being discrimination on the grounds of sex so, even though trans people are theoretically protected, anyone who tries to give equal rights to trans people will open themselves up to being sued for discrimination under the Act.

Oh, and the government has also been boasting about taking away our freedom of movement. I note that I do not earn enough to be allowed to move to the UK as an immigrant, but I apparently also earn too much to be eligible for income support under the government’s scheme to help the self-employed during the pandemic.

I have spent the entire day in Finland. The occasional piece of UK news from Twitter suggests that our government has got back into “persecute the immigrants” mode, rather than applauding their contribution to our health service. I guess that indicates some sort of return to “normal”.

I’ve had a busy day in Virtual Australia. I have no idea what is happening in the UK.

Well that’s not quite true. The BSFA Award winners are being announced tonight, we hope, internet connections willing. More on that tomorrow. I’m going to watch from bed as I have a busy day tomorrow in Finland.