Digital ID. Nope not a fan at all. In the present populist political climate I am not comfortable with this personally. I have a passport and a driving licence and that should be sufficient. If id cards are used for routine checks I believe that there is a huge risk of unscrupulous behaviour in government or misuse of information. With recent rhetoric and in particular the labour gov stifling debate generally among its own MPs my level of trust is marginal.This at least forces a proper debate on the matter. And undocumented people won’t have them anyway so it seems a bit pointless. If you are self-employed will you have to ID yourself to work?

A few projects are ticking along nicely, but I am behind with a few practical matters that must be dealt with. Today as I write this I am feeling a little bit off. Sometimes the world is just a difficult place to navigate.

Hopefully my LP will pass all its checks. Its due for release at Halloween though it’s not really at all spooky in my opinion.

I am a bit achy and tired. I played a gig with the Sonic Boomers at Sandy last night. Good fun and a decent stage too. Situation normal really. Funny dream. I had a long chat with HM Liz 11. She was making jokes and did a couple of funny impersonations. We were in a run down canteen/OAP lounge or similar. No idea where that one came from. Not being remotely a royalist that is kind of strange.

When you are getting old and grumpy and you ache a lot it’s hard not fall out with people however much you try. Well that’s my excuse and I am sticking to it.
Here is a new song:

All the devils are here

Because truly they are. . In the end we can’t make people like us or love us or even just stop them hating us can we. Also a lot of people don’t like it when we decide to do the things we want to rather than the ‘sensible’ things they think we should.

Migrant/Refugees/Asylum seekers.

You have to be desperate to get in an overloaded and possible leakey inflatable and cross one of the most congested seaways on the planet. The boats are now often over capacity so it is amazing people don’t drown before they have got halfway across. “The number of migrants per boat varies but is generally increasing, with the average for 2025 currently around 59 people per boat, though some boats have been recorded with over 100 migrants. In 2024, the average was 53 migrants per boat, and a record 98 migrants were on a single boat in October 2024. ” Getting on a rubber dingy that full is a real act of desperation, more so than ever with nature and amount of commercial shipping passing through the channel. So all you weekend warriors outside hostels (they are not really hotels anymore) would you take that chance for nothing? Would you thread your way across between oil and LPG tankers and container ships as high as blocks of flats that could send you straight to Davy Jones locker in an instant just like swatting a fly? Thought not. Still Football seasons starting soon though so all will be well.

It’s all fine here really, it is….

What do you do when there is something your are desperate for that is tantalisingly close and almost within reach but you know if you reach out to grab it everything might fall apart? That’s the place I find myself at presently. I am not sure how I got here but I am stuck and distracted again.

Thinking about the MAGA Christian Nationalists. The more you look at it the stranger it becomes to understand what it is actually supposed to mean? The church is to many an identify and a social club and for some a way to do good work, where it gets messy is little things like faith and doctrine. For some it provides a warm fuzzy place of comfort unchallenged by the quite radical teachings of man from nazareth that are not particularly compatible with capitalism or nationalist notions of freedom. Hell as described in popular literature is not in the Bible. The Bibles hell is to be estranged from God’s love(cast out). If you believe judgment is from God not man. Charlie Kirk from his own reported words seems to have judged many and that’s not what following Christ is about is supposedly about. I am no theologian so I don’t claim to be any sort of informed voice, simply another person in the crowd listening. We fear others, we fear what we don’t know, we fear our feelings about who we are quite often. Much in the carpenters teachings appeals to me but the sin no more bit might be hard. The Bible has some great lines in it too. Some of my MAGA Facebook ‘friends’ are deeply Christian in the sense that it seems they attend the church of straight white capitalist Jesus, but I haven’t found him in the new testament yet. Maybe I am reading the wrong edition?

Disclaimer:
I am a sort of an agnostic atheist: I don’t believe but who knows for sure… If there is any sort of higher benign power though I suspect it might not be particularly concerned with deliberately cruelty or the petty squabbles of humans. I rather hope it would simply say ‘Do no harm’

Also while we are on the subject of the right generally I notice people trying to normalise the recent flag march. The thing is not that it took place but who it was organised by and who the speakers were,

Yaxley-Lennon: After losing his job as an engineering apprentice for assaulting a police officer, Robinson moved into activism in 2009 by founding the English Defence League (EDL), an Islamophobic organisation forged on the football terraces in Luton before spreading nationally.

The EDL was involved in frequent displays of violence, including at a demonstration in Birmingham that led to 50 individuals receiving criminal convictions, but fizzled out shortly after Robinson left in 2013.

Elon Musk:

He has thrown his weight behind several far-right figures. He was the largest donor in the 2024 US presidential election, backing Donald Trump. He also urged Germans to vote for the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland.

In the UK, he has pledged support for the populist party Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage (who was not at the rally), although Musk’s support has been inconsistent.He has been consistent, however, in his repeated attacks on the UK government under Keir Starmer

Éric Zemmour:

A French far-right politician who came in fourth place in the first round of the 2022 French presidential election. He addressed the “unite the kingdom” rally from the stage.Zemmour, 67, has been convicted for inciting racial hatred, attacked by historians for claiming the Nazi collaborator Marshal Philippe Pétain saved French Jews rather than aiding their deportation to death camps, and was described by a French justice minister as a dangerous racist and Holocaust denier.He spoke at the rally about “the great replacement of our European people by peoples coming from the south and of Muslim culture” and said: “You and we are being colonised by our former colonies.”

Ben Habib previously served as a co-deputy leader of the Reform UK political party and now leads the far-right Advance UK party.

He addressed the “unite the kingdom” rally and said he and his party stand for “our constitutional Christian roots”, adding: “We will stand against the indoctrination of our children who we taught to be ashamed of our forefathers.”

Habib, 60, was born in Pakistan to a Pakistani father and British mother. He moved to the UK in his teens and attended a private school before attending the University of Cambridge.

He was a supporter of and donor to the Conservative party until 2019 when he stood for the Brexit party in European elections. He was made co-deputy leader of Reform in 2023 but quit over differences with Farage. In April 2024, Habib suggested in a broadcast interview that some migrants travelling to the UK by boat should be left to drown.

So if you marched did you intend to align yourself with these people and their beliefs?

Hell is Empty all the Devils are Here