Resumed blog

My blog has been shamefully lapsed. My resolution in these viral times is to resume on a daily basis, as a way of thinking out loud. I’m not looking for debates, which I would prefer to go via my email, but rather offering news, opinions, ruminations, in case anything might be of interest to a friend or two. It is also a way of keeping in touch with more people than I can contact in other ways.

This is now too late in the day to do anything substantial. My intention is to look at some of the big issues that are looming up in the present crisis and to tell of slighter, more local and personal things.

I have long been intending to blog on current events but have never done so on a timely basis. A case in point is the suicide of Caroline Flack, the tv presenter. The press concentrated on the role of social media and the abuse received by people in the public eye. The bigger point was largely missed; that is to say the skewed value system that parades the sexual merits of improbably fine bodies housing minds that are encouraged to be sparklingly superficial. Programmes such as ‘Love Island’ exploit the participants, the public and the presenters through the glossy mechanisms of false celebrity. The tenor of the whole enterprise is of ‘false nudes’, in which size and shape of tits is of more importance than humane values of emotional empathy. However, that is now past – old news with no learnt lessons. But there’s plenty to come. Some I hope cheerful and positive.