Rachael McKelvey

• How do you feel about AI?
• That weird feeling of agreeing with Matt Hancock
• Is nature trying to get even
• Intensive three day courses
• Voter ID, the data is coming

How do you feel about AI?
BT announced this week that will be reducing staff numbers by up to 50,000 employees by 2030 and estimates 10,000 of those jobs will be replaced by AI and while not all because AI can replace humans, but that better infrastructure requires less maintenance, so this is not simply AI replacing jobs, but it’s the first step.

In the same week a wonderful human in my life sent me a wonderful piece of prose from ChatGPT from the simple instruction “write me a poem about…” and selected two variables. I don’t mind saying it punched me right in the feels, it was as beautiful as it was insightful and I couldn’t quite marry up the insight with the lack of human being the one that put it together, it has obviously originated in those words, maybe not in that order before, from human input.

I think I am AI agnostic, simply because for a little while longer I’d like to believe in the future that robots will do the heavy lifting of life and I will be the one writing prose and making art…not the other way around. (Side note: If ever there was a call for universal basic income, the time is coming.)

That weird feeling of agreeing Matt Hancock
Thank god Matt Hancock went on The News Agents podcast and had an opinion on Nat-Con because I couldn’t not talk about NatCon but who wants to talk about NatCon? What happened at NatCon should very much have stayed in all their heads. On the one hand “don’t talk about them, it’s exactly what they want” but very much on the other hand when you have serving members of parliament sharing and cheering some quite obviously fascist policy ideas then you definitely have to say something.

It pains me to agree with Matt Hancock but he did the right thing. While he has come out to criticise those speaking at Nat Con it’s worth noting he does so from the safest possible place that can’t damage his political career. He is not a member of the Conservative Party, currently sitting as an Independent and he is not running at the next general election, but credit where credit due. He quite strongly condemned, rightly so, the right of his party, the current civil war and the honest reality if they think this is the answer to win a general election they will not be voted back in for a generation.

Is Nature trying to get even?
Following a spate of Orca’s sinking boats in Europe, Live Science published an article that might explain why and how Orcas appear to be teaching each other how to do it.

Scientists think there is a “critical moment of agony” which results in attacks on boats and that this is now becoming socially acceptable behaviour in the Orca community, in the most recent attack the Skipper reported that the two younger smaller Orcas were imitating the larger orca and also slammed themselves into the yacht.

The crew were rescued, the boat bought into port, where it promptly sank at the entrance, days after a similar incident where a pod of six Orcas charged another boat. Is this a fight back? Just because we built boats and can travel by sea, should we in quite the way we are doing it now?

Intensive Courses
I am just off the back of a three day intensive course and assessment and I am shattered. It definitely does not suit my learning style at all. I am so tired might I cry. Very early on I had a feeling that I couldn’t do it, I felt quite deflated on day 1, turned up on day 2 wondering if I was even going to turn up on day 3 and well day 3 was a story arch of “if there was no more content today I might pass this” to if I fail this I don’t think I’ll bother getting assessed again, I don’t need this.

I passed, somehow. It can only be based on the submission for assessment criteria, I knew the stuff but that it would probably escape me in the moment. Our assessor was lovely and the time flew, but my mind definitely went blank, I definitely got some things wrong and I definitely am not at peak fitness. The fact that a three day intensive course had be stuck entirely in fight or flight, an entirely voluntary course and assessment that no aspect of my life depends on me having.

With a whole generation of Covid children facing week two of their GCSE’s this week, it was nice to be humbled, you think you get it, the stress and the overwhelm because we’ve all done it, but you forget what it’s actually like, in the moment.

Voter ID, the data is coming
It’s currently being predicted that around 10,000 people were not eligible to vote at this round of local elections as they did not have the correct eligible ID – because it wasn’t even about having ID, it was having the right ID.

The BBC has gathered data with 160 of the 230 councils operating in the election showed that over 25,000 voters were initially refused a ballot paper for not having ID, but of those voters just short of 1000 voters did not return to vote.

What is great is that a significant percentage did return to vote with the correct ID and that is amazing, but, there is always a but, to do so comes with privilege, how many people didn’t return because they didn’t have ID, how many didn’t return because they didn’t have time?

Current watch:  The Chair – I originally watched this a few months back, but an odd conversation sparked my want to watch it again, because Sandra Oh. The premise is prestigious American university, a first woman chair of the languishing English department, that’s very stale male and pale, but she becomes caught up colleagues self destruction, declining enrolments and out of touch views.

There are three very strong female characters very much in different seasons of their academic life, highlighting how hard it is and always has been a woman in a sexist patriarchal power structure, even with women at the helm. I wish it was longer, it’s a short 6 30ish minute episodes, but it packs a punch because of the reality of it.

Current read: F**k You Ver Much: The surprising truth about why people are so rude by Danny Wallace – After 24 hours where I had seen impatient people abuse dispensary staff at the chemist and ignorant people abuse volunteers at a local hospice shop I was left with a feeling, a feeling I knew only this book would solve.

I absolutely adore Danny’s writing and this was on my kindle from its release back in 2018, but it had never been the book to suit the mood. So imagine my delight 5 years later when it confirmed everything I was already thinking, people are getting ruder and it’s a problem. It impacts those who are rude, those on the end of the rudeness and people who witness said rudeness.

Danny travels the world interviewing neuroscientists, psychologists, barristers, public sector workers and even joins a Radical Honesty group – never heard of them? Go look them up, I won’t come with you! I felt comforted in my experience and really do vow to be kinder.

Most Impactful Listen: Today in Focus – Why ‘Godfather of AI’ George Hinton thinks humanity is at a crossroads – Hinton stepped away from his work with Google in this field to be able to speak freely about this concerns, at 75 Geoffrey Hinton’s work on neural networking has been key in the progress of AI to date, but he is worried about the risk of the technology outpacing the human ability to respond and the risks involved.

It is well worth your time, regardless of your feelings on AI, because it felt oddly hopeful, because I think if you’re not concerned by the risks then you’ve missed the point, but actually there are reasonable steps we can take, so why aren’t we?

• 100% mortgages are back
• Financial Education in Schools
• The current cost of living
• Protecting overweight people
• Eurovision

100% mortgages are back
If you didn’t read that & hear the voice, then there is something wrong with you. Anyway, Skipton Building Society have opened a no deposit, unguarantored product aimed solely at renters looking to make the move to home ownership.

I already know what a certain generation think without even having to ask, 100%+ mortgages gave off strong main character energy in the 2008 financial crash, which my generation has paid the price for I volunteered at Citizen Advice prior to the financial crash in 2008 & let me tell you, 100% mortgages weren’t the problem. It was handing them out like peanuts at the bar that was the problem.

Skipton appear to have done their due diligence & assessed the risks. A 5-year fix at 5.49% limited to first time buyers, maximum £600k loan value, so long as the mortgage payments in the first 5 years don’t exceed the average monthly rent paid in the last six months of renting.

It’s a solid proposition, but likely falls short of the values needed to buy the average home. I suspect it will greatly help in the north, but barely be possible for the southern counties. As with all things in life, a solid solution but unfortunately the housing market just doesn’t work.

Financial Education in Schools
MyBnk this week have called for 30 hours of financial education in schools & I am here for this. While Rishi Sunak continues his obsession with maths, which by the way, I don’t think is the magic bullet he thinks it is & a rather odd hill on which to chose to die. Context however would be a great hill on which to want to die, financial education for all.

As a donator to the FT’s Financial Literacy & Inclusion Campaign I definitely think there need to be room made at key ages for practical education around finances, make maths lessons practical, teach the basics of compounding, the cost of debt, credit ratings, pensions. All very easily covered in 30 hours to allow young people half a chance of existing formal education & being able to make better decisions from a place of confidence.

Thats how you empower people, regardless of age, by giving them the tools to make the best decision they can. Two thirds of young people do not recall having ever received any financial education and it might not be something anyone around them can help with either, but chances are we will all have income in our lives to manage, to preserve, to spend and to borrow. These are the basics, so if you insist that we must all learn maths till we’re 18, making it useful.

The current cost of living
Which released some interesting data this week on the impact of the cost-of-living crisis, showing that two million households in the UK missed or defaulted on either a mortgage, rent, credit card or bill payment last month. 2 million. 700,000 of those two million where I the housing payment category and then the tail end of this week saw the Bank of England raise interest rates again in an attempt to curb inflation.

A cost-of-living crisis disproportionately impacts the poorest, who already don’t have a cheaper alternative to buy. Retail research from Assosia looked at 15 everyday essentials at Morrisons, Sainsbury, Tesco and Asda…your mid-tier supermarkets, mid-tier and the 15-item basket had risen by 34% from 2021 to 2023.

When a standard 500g bag of pasta is now 95p, when it was 50p two years ago. No amount of financial literacy or 100% mortgages can help in a cost-of-living crisis as prolonged as this one, for many the maths just does not math and that is just not okay.

Protecting Overweight People
This week New York City council passed a law that protects against discrimination based on weight.

The life of living in a larger body is fraught with discrimination, you do not know thin privilege, unless you have been overweight and I have been overweight, morbidly so, I have been super thin, I have been fit and I currently reside in a body that is larger than feels comfortable but that simply “losing weight” is not possible due to health problems.

More than 40% of American adults are considered obese and the social studies from practical things, like being able to access facilities, sit down and weight limits to prevent moving around the city to possibly unexpected bias in costs and lower wages…especially for women.

The city councilman Shaun Abreu who sponsored the bill felt compelled to tackle the “silent burden people have had to carry” around weight stigma after he gained 18kg himself over lockdown. There are other states in the US that at local level have protections in place in the workplace against discrimination based on weight.

Eurovision
Love it or hate it, I think we need to talk about it. This years was weird, it felt a bit like a caricature of itself, which would usually be amazing but this year just felt a bit off.

It felt a very different vibe this year, properly political again but not really in and obvious political way, how did Israel do so well? I had the luxury of spending my post Eurovision Sunday morning with an International Relations and history student and it was fascinating to get their analysis and ask some probably odd questions about if there a political reason for this.

All of that aside, Liverpool put on an amazing display, twitter was superb as always and even Tiktok delivered some behind the scenes this is what happens in the 40s between the acts on stage interesting videos.

Current watch:  Evicted – Binge-watching heartbreak seemed odd this week, but what an important series. As the episodes open, when you’re a 20-something you should be having fun but they’re actually being priced out and pushed out of quite frankly awful accommodation for too much money. Section 21 has quite a lot to answer for and the statistics in the series are truly terrifying.

Current read: Happy Fat Taking up space in a world that wants to shrink you by Sofie Hagen – This book follows Sofies own journey into self-acceptance, through sharing her own experiences of fat phobia both from the external world but also her internal world to find a way to live a happy life.

This is half memoir, half social commentary with some amazing interviews with other voices in the fat liberation space, it’s funny (Sofie is a comedian), it’s beautifully sweet and really very honest – fat sex, getting stuck in a toilet, having to ask for extra things to merely be comfortably uncomfortable.

Most Impactful Listen: Robots vs Marathons – The List of Absolutely Everything That might Kill You – Hosted by radio presenter Matt Edmonson and author and comedian Adam Kay, the pair battle out innocuous everyday items that might be secretly plotting to kill us to create a lethal league table of sorts. They are each others ying to their yang and make a real lovely pair, they are joined by Professor Jennifer Visser-Rogers their resident statistician to apply the statistics from the surprising histories. This particular episode might surprise you as much as it did with. Well into marathon season and all the talk of robots, which do you think will mostly kill you?

• Life aboard the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
• Post Pandemic “Skills gap”
• Why every vote counts
• Why is it so difficult to unsubscribe
• More rubbish plastic records

Life aboard the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
So it turns out thousands of marine creatures called nuestons have unexpectedly hitching a ride across the ocean on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a patch of human made debris that stretches for hundreds and thousands of square miles in the North Pacific. Species including a violet sea snail, bright-blue jellyfish and blue sea dragons have been found on the 1.6million square kilometre patch.

The official paper High concentrations of floating neustonic life in the plastic-rich North Pacific Garbage Patch was published this week off the back of the beautiful amazing if not slightly hideous discovery was made when long distance swimmer and environmental activist Benoit Lecomte embarked on his swim from Hawaii to California with the intention of swimming through the garbage patch. Ben and his team collected samples throughout the patch in the name of science.

Now the paper is live it has raised some interesting questions – there are other garbage patches, five in fact, are they also now fully functioning ecosystems? And now raises the questions over whether its right to clean up the plastic in the seas when it yields and supports so much life now?

I think we can all agree we need to stop plastic getting into the sea, but what do we do with it now its there?

Post Pandemic ‘skills gap’

This week saw PwC and Deloitte acknowledging the ‘skills gap’ amongst new recruits whose education was disrupted by lockdown by offering additional coaching to support both communication and teamworking skills to support their adaptation to a working environment.

I think Ian Elliott CPO at PwC put it more positively than Deloitte’s partner for people and purpose who said it was “understandable that students who missed out on face-to-face activities during Covid may now be stronger in certain fields, such as working independently, and less confident in others”. Starting to think I joined the wrong Big Four!

This was talked about on one of our lunchtime walks this week with children once again off school as a result of striking, which everyone supported by the way, but just pondering the impact on students in the long term of the last few years and possibly the few years to come.

Is it time for an education over hall?

Why every vote counts
While I hope everyone voted in their local elections, I do understand why people don’t. I understand it, but I don’t get it. Life is full of hard choices & voting unfortunately just fits in that category. Go in & spoil you ballot if you can’t decide, partake in the process because it’s an absolute privilege…even more so now you need photo ID, another rant for another day when they have all the data.

The most comment no point in voting opinion you hear is that it doesn’t matter and while sometimes it feels that way, especially in first past the post, a local council seat changed hands by a margin of 4 votes to a different party? Imagine if those 4 people had been like ‘not today my vote doesn’t matter’, your vote matters, even when it doesn’t seem like it.

Also just by way of fact’ing this out a bit, the Conservatives lost 60% of their councils in which they held majorities and you can now walk from Dover to John O’Groats without walking through a Conservative council. Result.

Why is it so difficult to unsubscribe
I have been spring cleaning my inboxes, well trying too, but it’s increasingly hard to unsubscribe from anything…to the very hidden terms and conditions to the endless ‘we miss you and want you back’ emails…Calm down corporate America, we know where you live. If I want you back I’ll find you!

After a little bit of looking around I stumbled around this brilliant but of storytelling from The Pudding on why it really is so hard to unsubscribe and what exactly Dark Patterns are. The article by Caroline Sinders follows an experiment she ran at the end of summer 2022 in which she signed up for and subsequently cancelled 16 different services with some interesting side effects. Encountering 20 instances of dark patterns across the 16 companies, which seems like A LOT.

In the day and age where we have to sign up to so many things, it really does make you think if it’s really worth signing up in the first place.

More rubbish plastic records
This weekend Adrift labs announced on twitter that had removed over 400 pieces of plastic from one baby sea bird and over 50g from another, which were new records for the research team on Lord Howe Island in the Tasman sea between Australia and New Zealand.

Adrift are a research team dedicated to seabirds and marine plastics research, they want to gather as much information as they can for as long as they can to help shape marine and waste policy in influence positive change at individual and community level to help our Oceans survive.

In March they had released a paper about the ingestion of plastics by wildlife another incredibly sad read, so the turn up of a recording breaking amount of plastic in a baby sea bird hits hard.

Current watch:  Colin from Accounts – Don’t panic its not about accounting. It’s and Australian comedy picked up by the BBC written and starring husband and wife duo Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, playing to single genuinely flawed human beings bought together by a car accident and an injured dog.

It’s funny in a laugh out loud and on a deep soul level, it’s cutting and brave as you watch two people learning to be brave with one another to navigate life. It’s very bingeable and heart-warming.

Current read: Gene Eating The Story of Human Appetite by Giles Yeo – I was very influenced by the episode of Diary of a CEO with Giles Yeo and even more surprised to stumble across the book in the library and was surprised at how interesting I found the book, it is exactly the right balance of informative and engaging, it’s incredibly well researched but also funny and engaging on a real human level and I think it’s an important read.

There is so much out there right now about weight loss and it’s hard to tell the real from the pseudo-science because everyone has a podcast. Giles is at the cutting edge of obesity research and while this book is hailed as anti diet, I think it’s more nuanced than that, it explains why they work and why they don’t and really how your genes impact your body’s ability to lose weight or even gain weight. I certainly feel it gives a kind perspective on why your body might not behave in the ways you’re led to believe it will be.

Most Impactful Listen: More of Less: Behind the Stats – How much is the Coronation crown worth – A really wonderful short explainer on the truth behind the numbers quoted in the media, I was surprised and learnt a lot in 10 minutes.

Historian Dr Anna Keay and CEO of the Gemmological association of Great Britain Alan Hart talk with Charlotte McDonald about the truth worth of 2kg of gold and 444 gemstones and what it might really be worth today.

• Real life Succession
• Reluctantly accepting we are “worse off”
• Why good leadership matters
• Every now and again something reminds you the world is mad
• Avoiding the world

Real life Succession
Absolutely no spoilers about the fate of Waystar Royco but it’s hard to say how much more the Murdoch Empire can withstand, and while I desperately wanted to see Dominion Voting Systems squash Fox News like a tiny little bug in open court, I can understand why they took the settlement, you’d like to think truth was an open and shut case, but we live in interesting post truth times. I’m also not sure as a shareholder following the offer of £631 million ($787m), a life changing amount of money for a business, that I wouldn’t have also voted to take the deal.

The only other upside to this was that Tucker Carlson has stepped away by “mutual agreement” after saying he would see everyone on Monday…the market reacted in the only way the market can, by dropping 3% of the share price only to recover it pretty quickly, do not let the door hit you on the butt on the way-out Carlson. I think the greatest irony is that right now the biggest existential threat to the Murdoch Empire is Prince Harry and the irony being that if Prince Harry had done literally anything else you know the Murdoch press would have slapped it over every single one of their front pages and have as the flagship story on all their new channels. Grab some popcorn and settle in.

Reluctantly accepting we are “worse off”
On todays episode of I’m rich you’re poor how is reluctantly accepting that, “yes, we’re all worse off, and we all have to take our share” working out for you? Against a backdrop of continuing strike action, a decline in public services and the inarguable statistic that the richer have in fact got richer how is being poor working out for you?

This week England’s top Economist spoke on Columbia Law Schools Beyond Unprecedented podcast which is all about the economy in a post pandemic world and having listened to the episode, in the context it is in and very objectively if we were looking back at this as a historical event it’s potentially not an unfair comment, but it definitely feels a little off the mark outside the podcast.

It’s the comment about taking our share that sticks a little with me, because we all know that those share’s are not equal and disproportionately impact those who suffer the most at times of high inflation.

Why good leadership matters
I think the state of British politics right now is the perfect example of why good leadership matters, because look what happens when the leadership you have is average at best and well beyond hideous at worst.

The fact that the resignation of Dominic Raab has more people talking about civil service reform rather than ministerial behaviour is astounding, off the back of a resignation letter that might as well have just been a post it that said ‘sorry not sorry’ and while I don’t think anyone would disagree the civil service needs some reform, at this moment in time its not that and that not even where the conversation is going.

LinkedIn is awash with people don’t quite bad jobs they quit bad managers and there is a reason it keeps doing the rounds, its true, but also not everyone has the luxury of quitting and some bad managers never leave, you just have to look around bad organisations to see it, the good people go and those that are left are bad people and hostages and so the cycle continues.

Every now & then something reminds me that existence is mad
For me it is Moore’s Law, what is yours? The hypothesis being that for the next 10 years from 1965 onwards that the number of transistors on computer chips doubles approximately every two years…and it has been right for over half a century!

For decades people think this will be the year Moore’s law becomes obsolete and here am I just thinking everything is mad because how can we put a billion of anything on something as small as a microprocessor and how do we use those exceptionally tiny things to do millions of different things. They basically keep all this *gestures vaguely around* going. It’s absolutely mad to me.

If you haven’t stopped by Our World In Data may I highly recommend that you do, there is a brilliant article on Moores law with some interactive charts and some other interesting charts on other examples of exponential growth in technology.

Mad little planet we live on.

Avoiding the world
Last weekend I spent 3 nights in a geodome in a field in the middle shires, it was glorious. I went all in and turned off my mobile data the minute I grabbed the last bag from the car. I was in two minds, I had a charging block that would have lasted me till the Monday, there were mod cons, this was not wild by any stretch of the imagination, but electricity from solar panels and hot water from a calor gas boiler and the other method of heating spaces and water was burning wood. It was glorious and I didn’t miss the scrolling or the contact.

Reunited this week with a friend who’d spent 10 days in Bali, also relatively off grid without wifi connection and we compared notes, it was surprisingly easy to drop into presence and gratitude, both commenting how nice it was to just use our phones as cameras, check in only if necessary and feel like there was enough time. I found that I didn’t spend more time reading but the time I spent reading was more intentional and the by the time I was home to my own bed on Monday evening I had finished a book I had only started at the bedtime on the Friday by the light of the fire.

Current watch:  Unstable – Quite literally a father son comedy about the interesting family dynamic when you are just opposite ends of the spectrum, an eccentric genius in bio tech and his shy socially awkward son who both need each other to survive in the wake of the loss of their glue, their wife and mother.

Sian Clifford plays the part of CFO in the middle of these two, one who adores being the centre of attention and the other who just doesn’t. It’s a very watchable, very relatable and sometimes really silly look at a father son dynamic. Made only greater by it being John Owen Lowe and Rob Lowe playing the roles, John Owen Lowe is his fathers biggest troll on Instagram and the world loves it.

Current read: Damage by Josephine Hart – In advance of sitting down and watching the Netflix series, this has been in my TBR for a while and boy am I glad I picked it up, I rarely read non fiction but when I do it has be a page turner and this did not disappoint. I couldn’t put it down, part car crash part absolute fascination. This is an incredibly well written portrayal of betrayal and obsession at all costs, it is cleverly written and compels the reader to read and think between the lines, right until the very end. In the novella class this definitely deserves a hot drink of choice and an afternoon of no plans.

Most Impactful Listen: Word of Mouth – Psychiatrist and Patient – Michael Rosen speaks to Neuropsychiatrist Anthony David about the dialogue that takes place between him and his patients. I found myself stopped in the supermarket a few times to concentrate and want to listen better. It was fascinating to hear about the experience from the opposite chair in the room. Rosen is his usual insightful and useful voice, this as with most other episodes so far are well worth your time.

• Rock Dad get his eaglet
• Parisians voters opting to ban e-scooters
• An evening with Russell Jones
• Taking a hedgehog to the hospital
• Avoiding the news

Rock Dad gets his Eaglet
In March you could barely move online for the news of a 31 year old bald eagle called Murphy and his rock, because the World Bird Sanctuary had to put a sign on Murphys enclosure explaining to passers-by not to be alarmed if Murphy was on the ground, that it was “not hurt, sick, or otherwise in distress” the reason being that “He has built a nest on the ground, and is very carefully incubating a rock!”…the sign goes on say “We wish him the best of luck!”

Well, this week Murphy met his Eaglet…Murphy was a dedicated rock Dad to the distress of the other eagles in the enclosure, so the decision was taken to move him to his own private enclosure and on the same day an orphaned eaglet was surrendered to the sanctuary and the rest his history. Murphy met his eaglet, and their bond began, and Murphy has proved to be the best chick Dad you can imagine.

Parisians vote to ban rental e-scooters from the capital
An overwhelming 90% of votes cast opted for a ban on rental e-scooters in the city in a referendum on the matter following the rise in numbers of people involved in accidents and killed in the French Capital. With a population of nearly 1.4 million people based on the electoral register only 8%, just over 100,000 people took to the ballot.

Paris was one of the first cities to adopt electric vehicles to boost urban transport options and reduce emissions and while all forms of rental vehicles are fundamentally a good idea, practically I completely understand why Parisians that voted did vote to ban.

In Milton Keynes we have tiny delivery robots (the best) that use the paths, no place is immune from curb mounted cars, and we have a growing amount of abandoned scooters and bikes cluttering up the paths making it hard for people to move around, even with an amazing cycle network which you would assume would mean better assimilation, but no, I understand the frustration.

An evening with Russell Jones

I don’t think you can be on twitter these days and not know who Russell Jones is, the moderate mild-mannered project manager and proud dog dad from the north, who just used to catalogue all the mad things the government had managed to achieve in a week in twitter threads, arguably before the government got as mad as they are now. They were always perfectly curated and backed up with sources and were very much a highlight of my week in the early days…but as with most things in the last decade they come with a side dose of absolute despair. When the weekly thread tipped out at 120 mad things in just one week

Turns out Russ had enough material to create a book and so The Decade in Tory was born, Russ graced the south with his presence last night for Milton Keynes Literary festival and what a lovely evening that was. Russ read an exerts from both his books, talked about how a working class kid from the north found himself writing the book and how his upbringing has influenced his ability to always find the humour…even in the Toriest of times. Russ has a new book on the way, Four Chancellors and a Funeral to bring the decade up to date and having heard a preview, it’s one also not to be missed.

Taking a hedgehog to the hospital
Today has hopefully concluded a briefly stressful time amongst our neighbourhood wild life friends, which started last Monday with a hedgehog in the road at about 9am and while not always immediately alarming…proceeded to become rather alarming when it appeared to only be able to walk in circles & then it started to rain.

A quick google just to check TiggyWinkles took walk ins while creating a makeshift cardboard box home complete with towels and my as yet mostly unread weekend newspaper. Alas one miss step from me in an attempt to get him boxed and he scurried off into some scrub but I had taken enough correct steps to determine he was blind and hungry.

The only heart being that he was least out of the road, fast forward to Wednesday morning when there is a notification from the camera in the hedgehog feed station in the garden and its Mr Crusty Eye out once again in the day at about the same time. A back and forth with TiggyWinkles confirmed they would want a hog in his condition to check over and then the fun really started. The box was ready, we just needed Mr Crusty Eye to return.

Queue a mad dash downstairs in pyjamas following 6am phone buzzing on Sunday and he is in the box, a quick slide of the box up to the wall and he now cannot escape, and he is safely transferred into the cardboard box, where he immediately balls and then loafs on the towel. Safely delivered to a local hog rescue, who will get him to the vets tomorrow. We have requested that if he is eligible for a return to wildlife that we bring him back home where he belongs.

Avoiding the news
I know this is like Wellness 101, remove the constant negativity that is the news, news in the format that we consume isn’t inherently good, you have to search out the stories about Rock Dads and very much will always remember exactly where you were as a teenager when you got to watch hundreds and thousands of people die when the planes crashed into the World Trade Centre, you get endlessly mocked for wasting your time online finding the former but somehow praised for being on top of all the harrowing things

I haven’t intentionally been avoiding the news, but it happened as a by-product of having a fortnight absorbed in a podcast series, two books and some TV shows, it has also come about by not spending 3 mornings a week in the same house as my partner, who loves to put the news on when he gets up and I prefer the radio and or sleeping long enough to just do the bare minimum for starting the working day.

All this extracurricular activity had the upside of reducing my news summary options as well, social media usage was also down and other podcasts did not get a look in and while this all seems great and I am sure there are some people out there who would be like this is amazing and has changed my life, I definitely feel less connected, less like I know what is going on and while I think that’s nice for a while, it definitely feels too long and a bit jarring for me. Am I more than happy to step back for a couple of days? Yes but could this be my life? Absolutely not. Normal service will be resumed.

Current watch:  Wellmania – Based on the book of the same name Celeste Barber brings to life of Liv Healy a 39 year old women who returned home during a health crisis who is lead to trying anything she can to be well so she can return to New York to advance her career. The cast are incredible, the story line probably rings true to most women in their late 30’s and is well worth 8 episodes of your time, you’ll laugh a lot, you’ll die of a little bit of the cringe and you might find yourself welling up a little bit too.

Current read: Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language by Amanda Montell – An absolutely fascinating and entertaining guide through the history and origins of gendered language, the book holds no punches in places, in then language it looks to explain but does the perfect mix of history, culture, science and humour. The answers the book provides illuminate the path of the actions to take to affect real social change. The book is brash  but even if you are not a fan of curse words it still is an important and recommended read.

Most Impactful Listen: New Economics Podcast – How we can all have a home – Regular host Ayesha Thomas-Smith was joined by Kieran Yates and Vicky Spratt to talk about how private renting became to prevalent, why tenants rights are so precarious and how this impacts the ability to make a home. Vicky is the housing correspondent at the i newspaper, author of the book Tenant and tireless housing campaigner and Kierans book “All the Houses I’ve Ever Lived in” that is out soon really acts as a rallying cry for change following the highs and lows of navigating a housing system in chaos. Both contributors bring a depth and richness to the conversation from different perspectives that too often get overlooked.