You'll be amazed at a Mazda

"The fact is that if you want a sports car, the MX-5 is perfect. Nothing on the road will give you better value. Nothing will give you so much fun. The only reason I’m giving it five stars is because I can’t give it fourteen."  -Jeremy Clarkson

While the demos are off merrily democking I thought I'd just post a picture of a natty sports car in red and cream. Kind folks on social media and a spot of googlifying tell me it's a Mazda MX5. Now I consider the private motor car to be the most pernicious invention known to mankind but if we have to have them (and it seems they'll be around for a while yet) they should all look as smart as this.

Election? What election?

For the last fifty days the country has been gripped by the democratic process, millions enthralled by the choices before them, the enormous responsibility of choosing the next government ... or rather it has not been any of these things. I do not recall an election with so little interest being shown, so few posters in windows, so few leaflets (I've had nothing from the Labour lot for the second election running, I think they aren't trying), or hustings or meetings of any kind whatsoever. If it wasn't for the TV/media constantly going on about it you'd never know there was an election going on at all. (What if it was all fake news after all and there really isn't an election? How would we know? ...) It's as if everyone really knows these campaigns change nothing so no-one is paying attention. So for what it's worth my prediction is the Tories will win by at least forty seats quite possibly by many more, not the silly landslide predicted fifty long days ago but easily enough. Oh and Diana Johnson will win as well; this is Hull; donkeys with red rosettes win in Hull.

Lost in music

Here he sits picking out pleasant tunes on his guitar and being roundly ignored by all and sundry. I suspect he doesn't care. He seemed oblivious to all the commotion and screaming not fifty yards away.

Classical Beauties

The Royal Hotel on Ferensway has joined the jamboree with these pieces of pseudomarmoreal pulchritude. Nothing says 'culture' better than a scantily clad lady with a jug.

Dealing with stuff

Here at the foot of the Queen Victoria statue are heaped flowers and balloons and toys and cardboard messages. It's part of that modern fashion for taking part in ceremonies or rites of remembrance and outpourings of sympathy and solidarity. I think I can date the start of this fashion at least in this country; 31 August 1997 or what we call in our house Princess Di Day. The weeks following that car crash were filled with outpourings of grief, giant heaps of flowers and dozens of books of condolences up and down the country (who read them?). I didn't know the woman, never met her but it seemed the whole country had lost a greatly loved family member; it was all totally surreal. So now with every natural disaster, road accident or passing terrorist attack (this one in Manchester the other week but it could be anywhere) we get this and more sometimes (Je suis Charlie was particularly grating). 

I have to say I prefer the old way of dealing with deaths and disasters; flags at half mast maybe, a few words of condemnation or commiseration, absolutely no interviews with survivors, family members, no coverage of police operations, no sensationalism and certainly no heaps of flowers, toys and so on and just move on. Deny your enemy the oxygen of publicity as Mrs Thatcher reportedly said, the bastards absolutely hate to be ignored or, as a columnist in the Guardian put it recently, "Publicity is terror’s “second wave”. Without publicity, terrorism is just dead bodies." But with 24 hour news coverage of everything they have to fill in the gaps with something even if it's only people putting flowers round Queen Victoria in Hull. I suppose I'll just have to deal with it.

Two Circles of Hull

So the promised fountains are in business. And instantly turned into some kind of amusement feature for screaming children to put on their cossies and splash around in the jets of foul smelling over chlorinated water. Cue jokes about the great unwashed of Hessle Road or East Hull (take your choice) getting their annual wash... Someday perhaps the novelty of these fountains will wear off but until then Queen Victoria Square, the centre of town, has been turned into a stinking nauseous pit of hell.

Double Helix

The first day of a new month arrives and the City Daily Photo theme is Nature.