Frustratingly obvious. David Cameron shifted the Tories to the centre to make them more palatable (and still needed a coalition). Voters to the right won't ever vote Labour, and voters on the left won't support a Labour party that only looks to the right. Bizarre. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

A year on, and it turns out it wasn't enough that the winners weren't Conservatives. We have a Labour party happy to sit in the centre ground vacated by the Tories, doing what a Tory government should be doing instead of what Labour should be doing, and just as paralysed by fear of Reform.

I finished The Day of the Jackal on Sunday. On Monday, Frederick Forsyth died. In the legion of thrillers he inspired, that wouldn't be mere coincidence. Of course, for a book that popular, it's more unlikely that somebody *doesn't* finish it on any given day.
www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

Emerging briefly from hibernation to acknowledge a rare feeling of political optimism. I'll still maintain my streak of never voting for a winning party (or referendum result), but the winners won't be the Conservatives. That's more than enough.

“The most it ever seems we know how to do with time is to waste it.”
- The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, by Claire North (2014)

One of my favourite reads of 2023. Time travel that isn't time travel, with a few people starting their lives over every time they die but retaining their memories.

I'll just post into the void for a while, until I get a feel for if this will stick. Pebble announced it was shutting down within weeks of me making my only post, so hopefully this will go better.

Some 2023 writerly statistics:

Books Read: 63
Words Written: 247,578 across 23 projects
Books Written: 2
Books Published: 0

Five books that are just about ready to publish, with a little work. Feels like that needs to be a goal for the year. Not a New Year's Resolution, but something to aim for.