Midsomer Murders takes on atheism

As long time readers know, I am a fan of TV detective stories, especially the genteel type of story set in quiet settings where the villain is unmasked at the end. The British police procedurals are a significant sub-genre and one of the most venerable is the series Midsomer Murders that began in 1997 and is now in its 24th season. Set in a fictitious rural county in England, it follows a set formula and that very familiarity is part of its appeal.

I have seen all 22 seasons and noticed that over time it has developed a certain campy quality as the writers seem to be trying to introduce ever more bizarre ways of having the murderer kill their victims. You would think that any reasonably competent murderer would try to make it quick and clean in order to avoid getting caught. But these murderers seems to be artists who want to make a statement and thus seem to spend a lot of time creating increasingly exotic ways of staging victims, even in places where they are likely to be found doing so. The campiness has reached a point where the discovery of the victims makes me laugh out loud.
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Liz Truss and Jacob Rees-Mogg: Two useless people in high places

Liz Truss gave her farewell speech and seemed as clueless as ever. She advised her replacement Rishi Sunak of the need to ‘be bold’ although it was her very own boldness that led to one of the most spectacular downfalls in recent UK political history. She is is most likely to be remembered as the answer to two future trivia questions: Who had the shortest tenure as UK prime minister? And who was prime minister when Elizabeth Windsor died?

It is unlikely that Sunak will take her advice to be bold. He has probably learned that he needs to take things slow and at least give the appearance of being deliberative so as to remove the image that the Conservatives have now acquired for being reckless, even as he pushes the same right-wing policies that the Conservatives always push. Although he is cut from the same cloth as other Conservative leaders, coming from a wealthy and privileged background and went to the ‘right’ schools, I am sure that he is mindful that he is different in being an ethnic South Asian and Hindu. Being the first in any major category (gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion) to occupy a high position means that people are closely watching you. Failure will cause many to whisper that ‘people like them’ are simply not cut out to hold such positions. So Sunak’s first goal will be to not mess things up as much as Truss did and thus cautions is called for.
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Trump is unlikely to testify publicly to the January 6th committee

When the January 6th congressional committee voted to subpoena Trump to testify before it, I thought that there was a real possibility that he would because, despite the risks that he will say something incriminating, Trump loves to be on TV so much and the ratings for such a hearing, the only measure that he seems to really care about, would go through the roof. He could use the event to ignore the questions and instead rant about all his pet peeves.

It seems like the committee was well aware of this possibility and vice-chair Liz Cheney said that Trump’s testimony would not be live, in order to avoid the hearings becoming a circus.
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Anthony Bourdain behind the scenes in fancy restaurants

The late Anthony Bourdain shot to fame as a celebrity chef following publication of his book Kitchen Confidential that went behind the scenes in the kitchens of fancy restaurants. That book grew out of a 1999 article Don’t Eat Before Reading This that he published in The New Yorker. It is a wildly entertaining account. Here are some excerpts.

Good food, good eating, is all about blood and organs, cruelty and decay. It’s about sodium-loaded pork fat, stinky triple-cream cheeses, the tender thymus glands and distended livers of young animals. It’s about danger—risking the dark, bacterial forces of beef, chicken, cheese, and shellfish.
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When a kitchen is in full swing, proper refrigeration is almost nonexistent, what with the many openings of the refrigerator door as the cooks rummage frantically during the rush, mingling your tuna with the chicken, the lamb, or the beef.
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Let the next round of infighting begin!

The contest to see who becomes the next Conservative party leader and thus prime minister was remarkable for its swiftness. As this timeline of events shows, Liz Truss resigned on the afternoon of Thursday and by Monday morning the contest had been settled.

In the end Rishi Sunak managed to avoid a vote of the Conservative party membership (which he lost to Truss less than two months ago) when his rivals Boris Johnson and Penny Mordaunt withdrew their candidacies because they could not reach the high bar of 100 MP support that the party leaders had set for them to be nominated. The party leaders had clearly wanted to avoid putting it to a vote of the party membership, given how disastrous their selection of Truss had been and the likelihood of Johnson winning it this time, and their plan succeeded.

Sunak, apart from having South Asian ethnicity and being a Hindu, seems to be cut from the same cloth as other Conservative party leaders and prime ministers, being wealthy and privileged and having attended an elite private school (Winchester College) and Oxford University and has admitted in the past to socializing with only the wealthy and aristocratic and not having had any friends from outside that class. In addition he is married to a very wealthy woman, the daughter of an Indian billionaire. So he is, apart from his ethnic origins, just like the others in the British oligarchy. Although he is viewed as a safer set of hands to steward the economy than the pitiful Truss, he was once a supporter of Johnson and served as his Chancellor of the Exchequer until his resignation helped to topple Johnson.
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The Conservative party and Republican party have a lot in common

What they share is much more than a right-wing ideology. One commonality is that they both have former leaders (Boris Johnson and Donald Trump) who are lying, egotistical, narcissists. Another is that despite their manifest faults that should in a sane world disqualify them from any leadership position, both ex-leaders seem to be viewed favorably by a vociferous base of the party faithful (Conservative party members in the UK and Republican primary voters in the US). The third is that both party establishments seem to have lost their grip on the party and are now struggling to regain control. The final similarity is that both parties seem to have given up on having any specific agenda or party platform and now seem to be going with whatever the leader says. Recall that in 2020, the Republican party did not even bother to come up with a new platform for their convention, essentially saying that their platform was whatever their nominee Trump said.
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The fight for the UK Tory leadership could get very ugly

I have just been able to view the first season of the BBC TV satire The Thick of It that ran from 2005 through 2012. It purports to show the brutal backstabbing that goes on behind the scenes of UK politics and the media. Peter Capaldi is clearly having a great time playing Malcolm Tucker, the prime minister’s ruthless ‘enforcer’, who gets to do the PM’s dirty work such as getting ministers to take the blame for any mistakes even if they are not at fault, firing them, and then writing their ‘resignation’ letters. He is a domineering and aggressive person whose is constantly scheming and whose in-your-face belligerence cows everyone around him. His very appearance in their office makes their hearts sink. He wields tremendous power over even ministers of state, ordering them and their staff around. He is the PM’s spin doctor manipulating the media, This clip gives you a good sense of his character.
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The danger of ‘long covid’

The WHO is warning that what is known as ‘long covid’, one feature of which is debilitating fatigue, is a serious issue that countries should start paying more attention to.

Long Covid is “devastating” the lives and livelihoods of tens of millions of people, and wreaking havoc on health systems and economies, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned as he urged countries to launch “immediate” and “sustained” efforts to tackle the “very serious” crisis.
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Covid has killed almost 6.5 million people and infected more than 600 million. The WHO estimates that 10% to 20% of survivors have been left with mid- and long-term symptoms such as fatigue, breathlessness and cognitive dysfunction. Women are more likely to suffer from the condition.
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