No Dunkirk

+I am very disappointed. Johnson has signally missed an opportunity to deliver a major Churchillian gesture. I’m surprised nobody else has noticed, but the return of the British Expeditionary Tourist Force from France has not led our great leader to utter any inspirational rhetoric. Well, perhaps not so surprising. After all, the 1940 government at least managed to organise an armada of small boats to rescue our patriots from the stricken beaches of northern France.
 
+I am a retired member of the GMB and have been asked to sign a petition to help save the jobs of workers still involved in handling cash, and to stop the rush to remove ATMs everywhere. I will happily sign up to this, but I feel the horse has bolted. I haven’t used cash since March. Cash and cheques are both on the road to oblivion. What worries me is that eventually plastic will follow suit, and every transaction will have to be conducted with one’s mobile phone. At least your plastic doesn’t rely on batteries that run down.
 
+Typical lockdown activity: I have finally got round to arranging my DVD collection alphabetically. I like to think that I am generally a fairly discerning film viewer, so theoretically many films in my collection should be watchable at least twice. But I suspect this is not so. A film has to be bloody brilliant to be watchable twice or more. I could for example watch Dr Strangelove any number of times, but could the same be said of the entertainment  provided by Mr Tarantino? Only time will tell. On the other hand, my CD and vinyl collections have been arranged alphabetically for yonks and I can listen to much of that music repeatedly. It could be argued that film is a supreme art form, but how often, about a merely good film, do you say I must watch that again?
 
+I read somewhere today that Benny Gantz, formerly the Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), and now a politician propping up corrupt Netanyahu, hadn’t been aware that Israel and the United Arab Emirates were about to establish diplomatic relations. This on the one hand reveals how fragile the Israeli government is, but somewhat questions how a former chief of the IDF could be so ill-informed. Israel and the UAE have been militarily (positively) engaged for ages. The IDF is part and parcel of Israel’s diplomatic kitbag.