If you hadn't heard of Michigan Militias before the last week or so, you certainly have now. How did they end up implicated in the plot to kidnap and execute a sitting State governor? How did they get so powerful (debatably) and influential that the President is reaching out to them with his support, via Tweet? How worried should America be about them with only three weeks until Election Day?

Me And The Dog

Michigan Militias, And Everything They Stand For

What can I say, I picked the right time to come back! Two days into the new run and Donald J Trump delivers the goods, his disastrous tax details giving the political podcasters of the world fields full of grass to make hay with. This one is going to run and run, so here's a quick rundown of why his abysmal tax payments and $70,000 haircuts aren't the big story. There are much bigger consequences revealed by the New York Times story.

Trump Tax

We're back, after our unannounced hiatus! And today we're talking about something missing from our contemporary political discourse: Respect. Sure, the politicians we're most concerned with today are among the least respectable people to ever walk the earth, but what about the rest? The disrespectable-by-association? The way we treat them is a big problem, these days. Why is it a problem to disparage a politician, of all people? Listen on, to find out!

Respecting The Disrespectable

UK politicians, and the UK electorate, are terrified of coalitions. There probably isn't anything more likely to destroy a government's chances before they even get into office than the possibility that they might share a little power and influence with anyone else. To anyone from abroad, this can seem strangely naive and unsophisticated. If the parliament doesn't produce a majority, why should one party form a government alone? Well, they shouldn't. And in the rest of the world, that regularly just works. In fact, Ireland just made it work this past weekend, after a very strange election result.

Let's All Get Together And Form A Coalition!

Bees are wonderful. I absolutely love them, little tiny flying pandas with the wrong number of eyes and no conception of the existence of glass. I like helping them out of the window and on their way, and I like sitting among them in the garden. They're harmless entertainment and they do so much for us. Unfortunately they have developed a habit of very suddenly vanishing, from my garden, from their own hives, and from large parts of planet earth.

Bees, Though.

Football has returned! Or at least Premier League football has, which is the same thing to some people. Sadly, ahead of its reopening match, something else has returned too. Football Lads. That is the Democratic Football Lads Alliance, which is a bit less welcome than the actual football. Fascism and football are unfortunately regular bedfellows, but perhaps there's an inspiring light to counter the punches of the Lads?

The Return Of Football (Lads).

Every time we try to pull down a statue or sweep a TV show into the dustbin of history, a certain argument comes out: It was of its time. Everything seems to have been created in a kind of nebulous long ago when things were different. Things were not like they are now. They took down an episode of Fawlty Towers, a Great British Institution, and for those who care about Its Time, this was a Major problem. But why? The time of Fawlty Towers was not a time of such abject racist disgrace that anyone could be forgiven for making a racist joke. It was just the seventies. Surely, though, earlier times were different, right?

Fawlty Towers, And Things Being Of Their Time

How do you fix the police? How do you reform what's patently and obviously unreformable, a community of people who reject outright the idea that they might ever be answerable to anyone, and use the opportunity to decisively choose a new and better path to instead escalate their behaviour beyond any hope of redemption? You can't, is the answer. Reform won't work, because it never has. Is it time, again, to talk of Abolition?

Policing For Some Isn't Policing At All

Black Lives Matter. Blackout Tuesday. The Show Must Be Paused.

Paused, For Eight Minutes And Forty-Six Seconds

U2 are a very serious band, with very serious songs, and they were inescapable in Ireland in the 1980's, when I was a child. While those uplifting, energised stadium rock tunes took over the world, they didn't catch on with 5 year old me. But In the 1990's as the focus of the world shifted decisively to Europe, so did U2's attention, and the change yielded something that really resonated with 10 year old me. It was a 1993 album called Zooropa, dashed off quickly, and mostly forgotten by all but serious U2 fans. U2, though, had done something that for them was very different. They'd forseen the future. And it had loops and synthesisers and effects, and it was good.

For A Moment There, U2 Could Have Been My Favourite Band

Hyperbole? Maybe. Better than hypocrisy. Dominic Cummings, the power behind Boris Johnson's throne, is in trouble. He's in a lot of trouble. He's after going for a drive and in doing so, a little bit of endangering the lives of his family and others has become the least of his problems...

Dominic "Rasputin" Cummings?

Cymbals are everywhere. Literally everywhere and you can't get away from them. Try it, and you'll only end up listening to The Velvet Underground and Einstürzende Neubauten forever. Why though? Why cymbals everywhere, and not anything else?

Cymbals. They're Everywhere.

In 1988 Mike Tyson became Lineal Heavyweight Champion of the World by defeating Michael Spinks. Watching the fight today, there is a very incongruous mention by the announcer: The name Donald Trump. The fight was at his hotel, or so it seemed. Is it possible to equate Obama v Trump to Tyson v Spinks? Well, spoiler alert, no it isn't. The only Obama v Trump fight is going on 24/7 in Trump's head, and the clash of two highly skilled, deserving champions in Tyson and Spinks is not exactly indicative of the, ah, discrepancy in political ability between Trump and Obama. But why compare the two at all? Well...

Trump vs Obama vs Tyson vs Spinks

The Lost Words, by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris is a beguiling book the captures the magic of the kind of nature that's all around us, every day. And it has an important mission, to save the words we might lose and stop them from fading away forever. I saw an eagle once, wild, up close and on the wing. And I saw an owl the same way. I found it hard to describe them, the words weren't there. Let's not lose them.

The Lost Words, A Book of Spells and Nature

"Stay Alert," the new English government advice for dealing with Covid-19, threatens to split the union. England is on its way to disaster on the international stage, while Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland stay home. Football fans will be familiar with that state of affairs, but it's no joke as 40,000 are dead. Today we're talking about the recent vogue for completely empty, meaningless slogans, and why they're so wildly successful.

Stay Alert For The Sunlit F***-Uplands.

Get the latest, most insightful analysis on politics, culture, and current affairs from a guy, with a dog, in the park. Talking to himself. The guy is me, Ev Buckley (Twitter @evbuckley) and the dog is Lupo. Between occasional dog related interruptions, I cover topics in a gentle, easy manner, befitting an afternoon stroll, and provoke a few thoughts while Lupo provokes the squirrels.

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Me And The Dog

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