Today I found out that Canada could’ve joined the nukes club at the start of the Cold War but chose not to, unlike the UK, which should’ve made the same decision.
As a Brit in Canada, this whole Trump Tariffs insanity is sounding very much like Brexit - the triumph of deluded bigotry over the mutual benefits of trade and compromise.
Alistair Campbell on TRIP: “I don’t consider myself part of The Establishment”
Also Alistair Campbell on TRIP: “As I was saying to Al Gore…”
Trying to file the current lunacy south of the border as some half arsed mafia state rather than the demise of a country I used to think of the least bad option for a world power. But sometimes things get close to home… like POTUS cancelling all government funded clinical research. I mean. WTAF.
Talking to a friend in the UK today and realised I’m actually used to -5c being ‘warm’. This is what two months in Canada does to a Brit….
Turns out going to the pub to watch jazz and get drunk with your partner is a very nice way to spend Sunday afternoon
Finished reading: Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore 📚
The chapters on his death and the subsequent manoeuvring, with some of the players and their relatives hanging on into the Gorbachev era are actually the best bits. Makes me want to rewatch Ianucci’s Death of Stalin.
The Paramount version of Le Bureau (The Agency) doesnt have the panache and elan and sheer … Frenchness …of the original.
Currently reading: The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann 📚
Wish me luck. It’s a long climb.
A lot of Canada so far has been white snowy parking lots at night hard cut with near-empty zombie mall stores.
Currently reading: Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore 📚
There’s a lot of juicy gossip in here, but you have to wade through a lot of tedium too.