I would make compassion and empathy classes mandatory in schools.

What would you change about modern society?

Something needs to change. As the world gets more complicated, resources diminishing, people may be becoming more selfish?

But is that because we see so much more of the bad things going on in the world? It is only since film and TV and then the Internet that we have been able to see wars and conflicts in real time. We are not always sheltered by time or censorship of terrible events. Computers give us access to horrendous content that could change the way we think. But statistics show that in some countries crime has decreased considerably over the years.

As countries seem to be heading towards populist, right wing agendas, perhaps we should look at the ethics of news, bring in compassion and empathy. We could go back to religious rules, like turning the other cheek, enacting laws so that the weapons of war are not easily available, or working against theft and violence. But it doesn’t have to be a religious interpretation. Not all of those rules make sense. Why not work with humanitarian or humanist ethics? Listen to world courts and follow their precepts.

If compassion and empathy were taught in school we might not change the current situation but we could change our futures or our children’s futures.

Day after

14 years after the Conservative Party took over government in the UK, the Labour Party has now won our General Election.

Yes the election votes were counted last night, and this morning, after the votes had been collected in only two results are outstanding. I guess that’s because we have about a fifth of the population of the USA and I think I’ve read that the UK would fit into Texas?

But it is remarkably speedy. Sir Kier Starmer is now Prime minister. He is already selecting his cabinet and has taken over the reins of government today. Rishi Sunak the Prime minister yesterday has left number 10 Downing Street already.

It’s so different from what we saw on January 6th 2021 in the States. No fight over the winner, maybe a few recounts, all done manually with people counting bundles of votes which were collected in from Polling stations within hours of them being cast. And how do we indicate who we want to vote for? With a pencil cross in a box next to the candidates name.

The only change recently? Having to have photo ID. Not universally appreciated as not everyone has it and you have to apply for a certificate of authenticity if you don’t have a photo driving licence or a passport. The amount of electoral fraud was only in the hundreds if I remember rightly. This was one expensive policy by the previous government that might have disenfranchised some voters yesterday.

So congratulations and hoping for a much better, less frantic, government for at least the next five years!

Tell everyone!

You get some great, amazingly fantastic news. What’s the first thing you do?

I want the world!

Another of my digital drawings

My background is that I come from a very talkative town, always willing to share our stories and jokes. I came to my current city over 40 years ago and found the residents were warm and friendly but had a different take on life.

That doesn’t stop me sharing news with everyone. Recently that’s been a lot of bad news but I’d love for it to be great news instead. I live in hope that I will be able to say one day that this is my news, it’s great, and I want everyone to know. After all if a trouble shared is a trouble halved, then maybe good news shared is amazing news doubled?

No sleep

Nothing helped last night, counting backwards, trying breathing techniques, listening to the radio on very quietly. I couldn’t get comfortable, the bed cover was wrinkled, I kept getting cramp.

I’m surrounded by three cats, one on an armchair, one on the settee, which was getting in the way of my legs, one on the cat tree. I just realised they are being supportive. I know it sounds strange, but they have become much more attentive since my injury.

I’m going to make a warm decaff coffee and try and sleep…

And yet I’m just listening to the awful news about the flooding in Libya and the Earthquake in Morocco. My problem is nothing compared with that. The world is a cruel place.

Boris isn’t standing!

A cartoon I did of Boris Johnson while I was doing my Illustration MA. I wanted to discuss the underfunding of arts at school.

Anyway after a couple of days of conjecture and speculation it turns out Boris Johnson has decided not to stand for Conservative leader and Prime Minister again. When I heard the new I actually whooped with joy!

His Conservative backers, including Jacob Rees-Mogg were saying he definitely had 100 MPs supporting him (the threshold was raised from 20, which it was for Liz Truss). So what has happened? Could it be he’s had a change if heart, or maybe he realised that there Ed too many things adding up against him? So it is now likely that Rishi Sunak will become Prime Minister although there is another candidate. We do live in interesting times….

Royal news

I have seen on TV that the Queen of the UK, Queen Elizabeth II, is ill and is resting comfortably. What is worrying about it is that all of her family is travelling up to Balmoral in Scotland (about 45 miles from Aberdeen). Our BBC TV station is reporting about it at the moment, lots of speculation is going on. Buckingham Palace is not giving out much information.

Queen Elizabeth has been the ruler of Britain and the Commonwealth for 70 years. She is 96 years old, and recently has been suffering from mobility issues. Today she has been placed under evaluation after further medical consideration.

Not everyone is a royalist, but I do feel sorry that she is ill. Perhaps there might be more news later.

News!

The Conservative Party are in turmoil. Several tory party cabinet members have resigned today. I won’t go into details, but the prime minister has been found to be telling untruths about certain issues. Watching the house of commons at Westminster today it was clear that he is unable to offer sincere apologies that are believable. He just doesn’t seem to care about either his political party or the members of the public who voted for him. When you watch Tory MPs get up in the House of Commons and tell him to resign you know it cannot carry on. What will happen? Who knows?

will the counting ever end?

Will the counting ever end? 200,000,540 or 74,002,350 or 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ….

I’m sitting in the UK watching the news about the USA election. Thinking about how disorganised it seems. Clearly they needed mail in ballots ( we call them postal votes) because of the pandemic. How can that be argued against. Then it said Pennsylvania is supposed to be causing problems because the mail in ballots were counted after the polls closed, but thats because the Republicans would not allow them to be counted before then!

The delightful Donald is tweeting that they should stop counting in one state but he is behind, so that would give the win to his rival?

I am being disparaging I know. I apologise, but when you sit outside and look in it does seem peculiar. It feels like one of the greatest countries in the world is being run by a toddler. I’m expecting him to say he’s not playing football anymore and is taking the football with him. He may be very good, what do I know? And I can’t claim we have got the best government ourselves. I guess democracy is not an exact science, humans get in the way of sensible ideas.

Apologies if I have given offence to anyone.