We got a first peek at the Worldcon schedule today. Most of it is on New Zealand time, which is entirely understandble, but a bit of a pain if you are on the opposite side of the planet. I’m hoping I can get to catch up with the likes of Glenda Larke and Catherine McMullen anyway.

What I can say is that I will be providing some entertainment in the evening UK time on the 30th. Wizard’s Tower is holding a party. There will be things happening. I’ll let you know more when I have a firm schedule.

Also I have finished my Hugo voting, which is a good job to have out of the way. Tomorrow is the last day, if you haven’t done yours yet.

I did my weekly shop at Tesco today, and also went into town as I had a couple of things to do at the Post Office. There are a few more people wearing masks these days, but still a minority and social distancing has pretty much disappeared, especially in coffee shops. This is a fairly low risk area of the country in which to live, but if someone infectious were to visit then the virus would rip through the town pretty quickly.

Lots of politics news in the UK today. Yesterday evening the House of Commons was voting on a trade bill. They voting for selling the NHS off to foreign corportations, for allowing foreign companies to import food that doesn’t meet UK environmental standards, and against the devolved assemblies, or even themselves, having any say in approving trade agreements. So much for “taking back control”.

Also the much hyped Russia Report was finally published. This was supposedly the in depth investigation into Russian influence on UK politics. Except it wasn’t. Basically what it said was that our glorious intelligence services are well aware that the Russians are targeting the UK, but they decided not to check on what they were doing because that might upset our government.

Which of course it would. The entire point of the current government is to sell off bits of the UK to the highest bidder and earn ministers enough money so that they can go and live elsewhere when the economy collapses.