Lately I might have given the impression otherwise but I do still love blogging. I know I’ve not exactly been firing on both cylinders for a few weeks, but life remains complicated by my Mum’s recovery, which on some days seems right on course. On others, not so much. Today has been one of the latter kinds of day, possibly due to an adverse reaction to medication. I’ll have to see — noting, as ever, that these complications always seem to happen on a damn Friday…
Without getting into the detail, I’ve had another reminder about how the human body is an amazing thing yet how little is really known about it. It’s remarkable how one thing can be linked to another that doesn’t seem remotely linked. Sometimes I wonder if the Chinese had it right when they noted that stubbing your toe can make your nostril hair fall out (not a real thing but I hope you get my gist…)
This is my excuse for explaining why I’ve still not written anything interesting for the blog. The little time I’ve had to myself this morning, I’ve used writing a piece about the Amy Comey Barrett hearings, which I’ve been trying to follow all week. That’s partly why the loss of US news from my Amazon Alexa continues to piss me off. I’ve got a cheap router arriving tomorrow, which I’m hoping I’ll be able to use with a VPN to create a small wifi network which will be constantly connected to a US server. If it works correctly, I’ll be able to get my news back, which is more than useful. It’s essential to how I think about politics.
It baffles me constantly how the world is going down a bad path regarding paid-for services and how difficult it is to get some relatively standard channels legally in the UK. A channel available on service X suddenly appears on service Y. We might only subscribe to X for that channel but perhaps we don’t. Juggling subscriptions is a real pain if you can afford it, which I often can’t. It’s like having Premiership football split across Sky, BT, and Amazon. Do they really expect people to pay for every service? The reality is that we have more choice but an increasing number of us are priced out of everything.
But enough of that. I have two illustrations to finish this weekend and I’d like to get ahead of them, with an hour of drawing before tea, perhaps with a podcast or two…
On the very specific point about the availability of USA news channels I totally agree. I have sky and you’ve got Euro News France24, Al Jazeera, a Chinese news channel, an Indian one among others. But since Fox News was removed the only US one us CNN BUT its CNN international which is fine but not why I watch CNN! I hear of something happening over there that i want to know more about flick too CNN (at the wrong time of day) and get Christine Amanpour interviewing Michael Palin! I keep hoping that since Sky was bought by NBC/Comcast that they’ll put NBC NEWS on there but no luck yet…
Ah, now we’re on one of my pet peeves. I hate — I mean hate — CNN International which seems only designed to be watched by poor trapped business executives stuck in hotels. I want CNN. I want Jake Tapper. I want Wolf Blitzer. I want Chris Cuomo. Much as I like Amanpour, I do not want world news. I also like Deadline Whitehouse with Nicole Wallace on MSNBC at 9pm UK time and now I can’t get it. So annoying when you’d think these channels would welcome viewership outside the US.