E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

The only good news of late is perhaps that Joe Biden survived the inauguration and is all steam ahead with grown-up-in-the Room where it happens. There is not so much elsewhere. That is probably unfairly negative. I am now going to talk mainly about the UK at the moment. People here were broadly looking forward to 2021, and held high hopes for a return to 'normal' around 'Easter'. This is the sort of time frame the government had been talking up, around the time we all scaled back 'Christmas' to a lump of coal in a dank cellar, sipping vinegar from a damp sponge. That was before the 2020 Law kicked in - if shit can go sideways strange and fast, it will, man. So it has. Now, we have been told by ashen faced politicos to expect a staycation summer, and not much open until 'summer'. Meanwhile, Glasto and James Bond have been cancelled or postponed, precisely as they were at this time last year. Like last year, this one now feels far less upbeat and certai...

As this blog warned a few weeks ago, this was never going to be a period of calm. Unexpectedly, Brexit trade was negotiated speedily, and is not the issue. However, in the UK, a new total lockdown occasioned by a rampant new strain killing 1000 a day, and in the US, a president amok, powered for 12 more days, have made the anglo-sphere shaky, to say the least. I now turn to the events yesterday on Capitol Hill. There has been some hyperbole, but most of the claims for the historical moment are on the money. This blog long expected a 'Reichstag' moment from the president, what is surprising is how haplessly he unleashes, and then passively leashes the dogs of chaos back in. He seems the Hamlet of coups. A bolder, smarter demagogue would have yesterday declared the Insurrection Act, called out the army, and suspended all rights, annulling the election results, and getting sworn in by a flunky, while launching wars against enemies. That's what Augustus , more or less did, at t...