Inverted

Just a bunch of weird shit. He's definitely got a weird megalomaniacal streak. Like a Rangers fan getting out their car in the middle of traffic to thank him for what he's doing for the game up here. Or his heartwearming story (told at the launch of his autobiography) of Danny McGrain (legendary fullback and backroom coach) asking Rodgers if he still had a job when he first arrived. Rodgers supposedly assured him "so long as I'm here, you're here". The only problem is Danny McGrain has no recollection of this happening.

Extraordinarily dumb to make such a terrible decision, double-down on it to completely destroy any goodwill, and then backing down and not getting the player anyway. They've truly managed to make the worst of it from every angle. Clyde got away with it seemingly because a lot of their fans were kinda apathetic about it, but when your most famous fan and major sponsor is a feminist writer, and the issue is all over the news because of Greenwood, it must have been obvious this was not going to fly.

The key thing is that in my opinion makes all this nonsense meaningless is that Johnson is not being done-in by anything recent that either he or Labour have done. He is being hit by revelations that many people have obviously been sitting on for months and months. What were they waiting for all this time, why didn’t this information arise at the time? Because those who control the channels of information still didn’t entirely trust the opposition. The UK is an authoritarian oligarchy ruled by a media-political class that arranges the exact composition of every government, and which will only show any hostility to the Conservatives so long as it can make sure the opposition is sufficiently neutered. And this is enabled by a middle-aged, middle-class “progressive” demographic that, when push comes to shove, would rather have a Hungary or Poland situation if the alternative is even the most mildly redistributive social democracy. If destroying Johnson would lead to any substantive change, then it simply wouldn’t be allowed to happen - just as it has already not been allowed to happen for all these months.

Owners like Moshiri very strongly reinforce my suspicion that, past a certain point, success in "business" is largely if not mostly down to random factors such as personal connections, timing and placement, rather than any kind of unusual competency.

And it shows. If we had snuffed out a few thousand aristocrats back when it was in vogue, we would have tens of thousands less of their depraved, inbred descendants to cope with today.

People like the present-day Tory party are why things like the Reign of Terror rightfully happen in times of social upheaval.

Just finished this and moving onto this:

Somebody should tell my firm. But yeah, London salaries at magic circle firms are a whole other planet. I think the starting salary for an newly qualified lawyer at my firm is about £36k, which would be plenty for me if I were to be kept on.

When you see things like the BBC interviewing Alan Dershowitz re Ghislaine Maxwell, or Pinochet's family about election results in Chile, you really get a sense for where the moral consensus lies within the UK media-political establishment. And then much of the rest of our current troubles begin to make more sense.

I'm still ambivalent about whether any new restrictions are needed, but I have noted quite surprisingly that my girlfriend's family are becoming a bit more relaxed about covid. Most surprisingly, her dad, having been extremely cautious about covid and supportive of maximal restrictions, is coming around to the idea that in the long run we may just need to bite the bullet with Omicron and hope improved treatments and vaccines can keep it manageable. He's also got a mum who's almost 100, and he himself is immunocompromised due to past surgery, so he has more at stake personally than many people. I am allowing myself some hope that within 2022 we perhaps reach a stage that covid is mild enough and our treatments are good enough that we can actually move into a kind of permanent normalisation of life with covid.

I'm in the UK, but I got Moderna for my first two and then a Pfizer booster. I think almost all of the jabs in the UK were Astra-Zenica and Pfizer, and then a relatively small number of Modernas.

My symptoms from the booster are a bit more varied and longer-lasting than from the first two. The pain in the arm is a bit less mild but has lasted two days so far, and yesterday morning after the jab, I woke up at 5am feeling a little unwell - sweating, drowsy, and thirsty. I seem to have got a way with almost no symptoms for the first two, so maybe I was just the opposite way round from other people.

I think we were briefly on a decent track with rolling out the boosters, keeping some mild restrictions and masks/distancing in place, and beginning to introduce vaccine passports. The restrictions were easy enough to live with that people couldn't complain too much, and they were much better than nothing. The vaccine passports were slowly bringing us toward a stage where we could set aside spaces where people could crowd together without worrying about the unvaccinated. Pretty much everyone except dedicated anti-vaxxers in turn felt that getting the boosters was worth it to keep us on that track. Whatever consensus existed now seems to be coming apart. Most people are still in favour of some restrictions and support the booster drive, but a very large segment of the population, if not a majority, is also opposed to closing down any further. There's a very big and uneasy overlap, I feel.

Got my booster this morning. Woke up early and walked to the centre for my 8:30 appointment, and ended up joining a queue stretching halfway round the building. I'm a big believer in the boosters being worthwhile and even I questioned for a moment if I really wanted to stand in the dark, in the 1c cold, wait, and be late for work to get my jab. Especially when we are likely going straight into lockdown anyway. And if I wasn't lucky enough to have a job where I can start late and just compensate at the end of the day, I wouldn't have stayed.

I'm quite concerned that any effort to reintroduce lockdown measures is going to lead to complete rejection of the whole pandemic response. The response is too incomplete and arbitrary to really be taken seriously, and people are smart enough to remember last year, when a tiny circuit-breaker turned into almost a whole extra year of complete lockdown. People are really starting to feel like they're being taken for a ride. You run the risk that a lot of people think "what's the point in getting the booster if it doesn't avoid lockdowns?". And then we are really going to be in trouble. Even I started to feel a bit unbothered for a while about getting my booster, although I eventually managed to get an appointment. My girlfriend got hers from her dad, since both of her parents are GPs, and they were all confused as to why I hadn't gotten mine yet - they didn't fully understand that most people don't know any doctors, and normal people have to book appointments and might be limited in choice of timeslots by work, etc. Which, although they meant well, I think is the kind of attitude from the professional middle-class that I think illustrates the whole divide between the kind of people who make the decisions, and the normal people who need to live with those decisions.

Historically, in most countries, Middle England types are exactly who far-right movements draw their core support from. Nazism for example was sustained in its early days by a very intense, disproportionately middle-class following - respectable people like minor professionals and small business owners. Not that these people are as bad as Nazis or even close. The most commited believers in far-right conspiracism are generally people who are sufficiently low down that they can feel oppressed by someone, but just high up enough that they don't want to be treated like the rest of the rabble.

I can imagine Aubameyang wearing people thin but at the same time this Arsenal management seem to have made a habit of picking fights with players for the sake of coming off strong and authoritative. And despite freezing out a large chunk of the former squad it’s evidently not worked a bit if the club captain is still taking the piss.

It looks like Havertz is coming into his own a bit as a centre forward. I remember thinking he would be ideal as a Firmino-type striker and it looks like Tuchel likes him in that role.

Markus Anfang? More like Markus... Ende.

If Poch only has a 2-year deal with PSG then it seems quite plausible that United could get him mid-season with a long-term, 4 or 5 year deal which at least matches his wages. Meanwhile, PSG can get Zidane, who walks into the exact kind of job he likes.

Sanchez also had a reputation for being an extremely hard-working team-player, as well as great tallies of goals and assists. In his prime he was definitely a player Mourinho would have loved. In theory it seemed like a straight upgrade on Mkhitaryan. The same work rate, but more output. I guess that was the idea, at least. Obviously didn't work out that way.

I'd guess that he sees Mkhitaryan as more disciplined and tactically reliable, whereas El-Shaarawy is more of a flair player who produces moments of excellence. Mourinho will always stick with experience and work-ethic. If he's desperate for a goal he will turn to the flair players.