An interesting year in every possible way. So where do we go from here? I have no idea. At the time of writing the UK is still part of the EU though I suspect not for that much longer sadly.

I have spent a lot of time soul searching about my personal life which has changed markedly since the sudden death of Vicky Martin in April 2019.

I am still performing live music but somewhat sporadically. I had seriously considered giving up live performances completely to be honest.

Well the leaves have turned but it’s not too bleak out yet fortunately. A couple of possibilities on the music front and I am waiting to see if they will bare fruit. Plus a festival for next year, which is cool if we still have a band by then Live music seems not to want to give me up just yet?

It’s still business as usual though on the whole. Nothing radically different.

Upgrading the TLI forum has run into a few problems which I am trying to resolve and it’s turning out to be slightly more complicated than I envisaged but with a bit of patience I am sure the bugs can be ironed out. The Problems I have encountered are the same ones that many others are according to the Vbulletin support forum. So far none of the bug fixes has actually worked it has to be said. There seem to be a lot. Surprising for a commercial product that is widely used. Fortunately I should be able to get on with it without breaking anything on the “old” forum mostly

Apart from that music and recording and a bit of DIY is the order of the day here. I have had a few low days and whilst I do get a bit of support from friends, it’s not really a fix yet. The world I knew is dissolving around me and I am adrift. Life sort of goes in cycles though. I remember when I left my driving job which I had had for many years and things were particularly grim having to take them to a tribunal for unfair dismissal and feeling like it was all downhill, but as it turned out it was the start of a new and very different career so you can never tell what’s around the corner? In my personal life the old order of things has collapsed though and to keep my sanity or what little is left of it. I must as they say at Sandhurst “Crack on”.

Maybe there is something new around the next bend, though precisely what is really the question.

Tories insist the NHS is not for sale – which must disappoint Conservative co-chair Ben Elliot, whose firm Hawthorn Advisers lobbies for foreign-owned private health firms, including one which took 25% of the UK’s adult social care market. Full story in new Private Eye, out now.

— Private Eye Magazine (@PrivateEyeNews) November 13, 2019

Social murder is a phrase used by Friedrich Engels in his 1845 work The Condition of the Working-Class in England whereby “the class which at present holds social and political control” (i.e. the bourgeoisie) “places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death”.^[1] This was in a different category to murder and manslaughter committed by individuals against one another, as social murder explicitly was committed by the political and social elite against the poorest in society.^[1]

This quotation begs careful study:

When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live — forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence — knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.^[1]

Although originally written with regard to the English city of Manchester in the Victorian era, the term has controversially been used by left-wing politicians such as John McDonnell in the 21st century to describe Conservative economic policy as well as events such as the Grenfell Tower fire.^[2][3][4] Lancaster University professor Chris Grover recently used the term to refer to Conservative public policy in the United Kingdom.^[5] York University professor Dennis Raphael used it to describe Conservative public policy in Ontario, Canada.^[6] In 2007 Canadian economists Robert Chernomas and Ian Hudson of the University of Manitoba used the term to refer to conservative economics in their book Social Murder: And Other Shortcomings of Conservative Economics https://arpbooks.org/Books/S/Social-Murder .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_murder