A Strange Reaction

I was very surprised when the Houses of  Parliament recently stood in silence in memory of  an American who died while restrained by police.

Minneapolis is not subject to British jurisdiction, and investigations have been undertaken by the local authorities there, where criminal proceedings are underway.

Several years ago members of our own Metropolitan Police shot dead a plumber who had committed no crime and was not even suspected of committing a crime.. There was no minute of silence for him yet he was killed deliberately, unlike the American whose death  followed an inept and excessive effort to restrain him. The senior officer who supervised the plumber's killing was subsequently promoted to the post of Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Members of Parliament might sort our our own policing before offering advice to our former colony.

Relics of Bygone Days

Various relics remind of our past, statues prominent amongst them. I'm annoyed when people call for the removal of a statue because it commemorates someone now considered 'bad'. Recently rioters in Bristol pulled down a statue of Edward Colston, a seventeenth century slave trader, and threw it into the river, whence it will, I expect, have to be removed at considerable expense.

In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries slavery was generally accepted, endorsed  by John Locke, the philosopher whose writings inspired the American Constitution, so Colston  was not evil when judged be the standards of his day. His statue was a useful reminder of how things used to be.

A Welcome Discovery

Intending to arrange a virtual meeting I looked for my microphone. Alas, it was so ancient that its plug would not fit any of my computers. A friend suggested that one or more of my computers might have a built in microphone, but none was mentioned in either of the computers' lists of devices. Desperate, I opened the utilities to configure a microphone. While the desk top machine just told me no microphone was connected, the laptop suddenly found a microphone. I confirmed its existence by recording myself congratulating myself on having one.

JOY!!!