Here is a passage from a review by Andrew Marr of the book The Road to Somewhere by David Goodhart. The review was published in the New Statesman of 17th to 23rd March 2017. I haven't read the book (yet), but the collected reviews would make a worthwhile set of political arguments in their own right. Perhaps somebody could have the idea of publishing books of reviews in the wake of interesting books, for reference. Online, to keep the costs to scale. I seem to have a self-illuminating light-bulb floating in the air above my head, in case any cartoonist out there needs one.
     Anyway, the review, passage from. Marr has just summarised Goodhart's notion of "Somewheres" - people who are "rooted in geographical identity" and thus distinct from cosmopolitan, internationally minded, "liberal elites" who might be expected to - you guessed it - feel comfortable in the European Union. In the wake of the Brexit vote, says Marr, those elites face the "queasy possibility" that they "are going to have to acknowledge, or even kowtow, to the views of the more numerous authoritarian, poorer Somewheres".
     Marr writes: "The liberal elites are so certain of themselves and they have become so used to thinking they are on history's sunny side, that the very idea of such an accommodation sends them into a vituperative frenzy. Witness the jeering at pro-Brexit voters for being stupid about the economy and the almost gleeful enthusiasm for loss of their jobs as a result. Goodhart quotes a Bulgarian political scientist: the outcome is a sort of struggle in which populists are becoming openly anti-liberal, and elites are becoming secretly anti-democratic."
     Secretly? Do Bulgarian political scientists count as experts these days? I like Marr's use of the word "kowtow", which came into English from Cantonese (thanks, Wikipedia). Perhaps high-profile journalists have a ubiquity which would make them "Everywheres" if Goodhart extended his analysis. Doubtful about the word "authoritarian", though. "Populism" seems to have been smuggled past the let's-define-our-terms stage straight to bad-word status; maybe we should be more careful with such judgemental verbiage. Is it "authoritarian" to - oh, not now!
     I went online to double-check title, spelling of author's name, derivation of "kowtow", et cetera, and in the process came across Jean-Paul Sartre's The Roads To Freedom, which caught my eye not least because it was serialised on TV once, long ago, with lovely singing over the end-titles. Maybe there is something a tad disconcerting about the unexamined assertion that the pro-Brexit vote might be less valid because anti-Brexit voters were better informed (and less stupid, ha ha), and I wonder what Sartre would have made of that. Or Orwell, come to think of it.
     But what turns over in my mind, thinking about today's binary debates about everything - left/right, good/bad, in/out - is just this. To judge from his chosen title, even in his time and place, even with his political and cultural allegiances, Sartre took it for granted that there was no single road to freedom. And I suppose I'm also taking a moral from this: like history itself, and the roads themselves, The Roads To Freedom remain(s) unfinished.

"There is no such thing as a senseless act of kindness," says the little thing - let's call it a forecast - I get every morning from an outfit called Astrology.com. It's a Tarot reading, apparently, and comes accompanied this morning by The Judgement, a card showing an angel blowing a trumpet, and below him/her, a group of pale-looking people standing up in their coffins and raising their arms. Okay. Good thought. The daily Tarot reading occupies the place in my mind once filled by the tiny pocket cartoon in the newspaper I used to read on my daily commute, all those years ago.
     Now, I don't have time to field any challenges around "Surely you don't believe in all that stuff?" and anyway, unlike a proper grown-up economic-type forecast, my Tarot reading has a button right underneath saying <Get New Reading>. If I don't agree that there's no such thing as a senseless act of kindness, I can press the button to be shown another card with a different message. Economic forecasts don't come with an "If you don't believe this, we can forecast something else" button, and these days, the public ones tend to be presented as though the word "could" conveys certainty rather than possibility.
     I remember the day, long ago now, when I realised that economic forecasts aren't meant to be believed. They're the best guess - sorry, best estimate - based  on a lot of "number crunching" (do we still use that phrase?) by experts (and that term?), and the idea is that they give both a direction and a unity of purpose. If the forecast is down, we can work together towards up. If we're veering left, we can pull right. But there is, or at least was, an acknowledgement that  reality tends to go its own unpredictable way. Sometimes, these days, we use forecasts to hold forecasters to account for their fallibility. That's a human quality, and not a disqualification (up to a point).
     Belief isn't the issue. Usefulness is the issue. We find the truths we need, wherever we choose to look for them. Thinking back over the events of this past week, I'll set aside all the news, the comment, the live coverage and the straight-to-camera recitations of what we know so far, and stick with the truth expressed by the writer of that short paragraph next to the Tarot card: there is no such thing as a senseless act of kindness.

More than anything else this week, I've been thinking about three current films: Logan, described by Mark Kermode as "a superhero movie about ageing," which must have been an easy elevator pitch if we make certain assumptions about the age-cycle of the film industry; Kong: Skull Island, which certainly says it on the tin; and Hidden Figures, which tells the story of the three women shown on the poster, who apparently launched NASA's mission to the moon. Their ethnic origin is relevant to the story, I understand, as is that of all the men, military and scientists, who get in their way.
     I don't have a problem with the idea that behind every successful, emphatically (for storytelling purposes) male-dominated endeavour are the women who did the actual work, and these days, I guess that's a fairly easy elevator pitch as well. I've seen Logan, as of last night, and if I don't lose interest, I'll go see the other two as well. Logan held my attention, although a superhero who coughs a lot and gets tired fighting (sorry, is this a spoiler? Stop reading now, if that matters) is something of a frustration if you're in it for the genre. It's actually a movie - I prefer the word - about the not-so-vulnerable little girl winning the affection of the initially dismissive disillusioned hero, but all the better for that. Dafne Keen, the actress. Good to watch.
     Oh, and stay for the credits. Johnny Cash, The Man Comes Around. Haven't heard that for a while. Might look out the CD. Don't suppose not-so-vulnerable little girl, et cetera, is any more original than any other plot, and perhaps I should look it up in the copy of Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure For Writers (third edition, Michael Wiese Productions) that a visitor left behind a few months back. Patrick Stewart's character, Professor Xavier, does confess to a tragic flaw/mistake before he's - sorry, spoiler again. It was good to see them watching television, which characters do as often as they lock their cars, and at least they cut down on the number of crucial conversations fashionably held in, er, comfort stations.
     Meanwhile, in the other places, the bill to trigger Article 50 coasted through to final approval. Uh huh. Great. I suppose the parliamentary tussle strengthens the mandate to go ahead. On my Kindle, I'm re-reading Andrew Rawnsley's The End of the Party (Penguin, I think) and I've got to the bit where they're working towards the Iraq war. Movies these days are more interesting for the grace notes - the quirky little sub-plots and the funky moments - than for the delivery of the basic premise, and there was something very satisfactory about the timing of Nicola Sturgeon's (predictable now, but not at the time) call for a second referendum. When the writers get to Brexit, she's earned her place in the myth.

So this morning I woke up very early, 04:43 my wrist told me, and decided that I wouldn't spend the next hour lying in bed thinking about sleep: I'd get up. Got up, dressed, lay down for a moment, and somewhere after seven, got up again and went for a walk. Slate-grey morning; slight drizzle. Took my new(ish) compact camera, took a few pictures, and then, as is the way with new technology, spent time trying to work out which button I'd accidentally pressed to stop the focus working. And why a camera would need a button...
     There was a guy with a van backed down that narrow alley - what is it, Well Lane? - almost as far as Pea Souk (if you're ever in Falmouth, small vegetarian cafe run by a very good cook), clearing broken wood pallets and other debris from a back yard (courtyard?) ahead of building work. Pleasant conversation. If I want wood (or any other debris), I'm welcome to turn up this morning and collect.
     Boring budget, right? You could hear in the man's voice, or I thought I could anyway, that he wasn't comfortable with the self-employed bit. "Fairness" covers a lot these days, doesn't it? If you have to go to the small print to demonstrate that you haven't broken an election promise, seems to me that you're missing the point. If you're a straight-up guy, we shouldn't have to take everything you say with a glance at the small print. But that's the way of budgets, isn't it? Read the books. And of politicians bearing promises.
     These moments of "Right there in the small print, it says I wasn't promising anything" don't go away, do they? They silt up, and sometimes, they bring us such outcomes as - oh, I can't face typing the words. The overturning of the liberal order on both sides of the Atlantic; you know who and what I mean. End of history followed by a rough re-start. So much time, in so many situations, is spent avoiding the truth that everybody already knows. Finding the explanation that ... actually, reminds us that we're still dealing with those people.
     Archibald Cox, the Watergate prosecutor, told at least one interviewer (who told me in conversation last week) that Nixon's fall demonstrated (as it was summarised to me) "that the US system worked". History doesn't repeat itself, but Tr - no; still can't face it - seems to have provoked the system to react. His own election was a reaction; now there's a reaction ... and of course France ... Fillon ... in Germany that unexpectedly credible challenger to Merkel. There's a point in a government at which a clock starts ticking, and in the UK, I think this budget was it. But take a look at the bigger picture. What a time to behave like a politician. Tells you something, right?

Here's my conspiracy theory, for what it's worth. If Brexit really means leaving the EU, the government would accept any amendment, because "firing the starting gun" by triggering Article 50 imposes that two-year deadline. We're a 'dead EU member walking' for two years, and then we're out regardless of whether or not Parliament disagrees with whatever deal the government is trying to achieve. If Article 50 is triggered, the political game switches to: Parliament's input is delaying an at-least-adequate settlement while the clock ticks down to WTO rules. Government 1, Parliament 0.
     If Brexit means being seen to obey the will of the people, and in the long game winning the next election, the government might as well fight for a clean bill to trigger Article 50. If actually leaving isn't the point, but politics is, then losing against opponents who can be portrayed as "opposing the will of the British people" might just turn into a long-term win. This time, Government 1, Opposition 0.
     The people who really want Brexit to mean Leave are those now laughing off the Article 50 vote as nothing more than "firing the starting gun". They've realised that the game can't start until the starting gun is fired. And no doubt that this game can't be stopped once it's started.
     I hate it when politics gets interesting. The sky is clearing after a foggy, rainy start, and in the harbour, it looks as though that shallow-water rig might be on the move.

World views collide in this latest spat over Brexit. There is "the moral case" (quoting a BBC report) whereby EU citizens resident in the UK should be given certainty over their future before the negotiations start. Doubt and fear are as corrosive to the soul as they are to long-term career prospects and family planning, and it's difficult to argue against that one. It's a human case: the various Lords who voted last week to amend the simple Brexit bill in favour of our EU-sourced workforce seem to have been, you might say, acting out of human feeling.
     Yes, the UK economy does partly depend on the input of those EU workers, and there is a practical case as well. Those Polish plumbers who kept the water running maybe a decade ago have been replaced in the popular imagination by Polish doctors and nurses - similarly essential contribution; different plumbing. Maybe the UK adult-education system has been quietly adjusting the career expectations of kindly Poles who don't faint at the sight of blood and who work well with their hands. But if we get into the practical case, we get into a lot else besides - and have you noticed that those boring, practical, this-or-that debates have a way of never ending? Like, y'know, Leave/Remain?
     There is also a case that isn't "the moral case" (I'm very carefully not describing it as amoral or immoral, please note) whereby the rights of EU citizens here should be negotiated with the rights of UK citizens there. We'll keep your lot if you keep our lot. If we unilaterally adopt "the moral case" and confirm the right of their lot to stay, they might either kick out our lot or use our lot's rights as a bargaining chip against something else - pay an "exit fee" to cover their health costs, and we'll let them stay. It's difficult to argue against this either, and past performance suggests that not all EU countries like playing host to outsiders. But again, we're on the edge of a bottomless argument.
     This is just another basic human dilemma wrapped up in contemporary clothing. Do we trust each other, or don't we? And another: do we extend some basic human feeling - pity, perhaps - to those who can't or won't trust, or do we lose ourselves in a spate of mutual recrimination? The moral case and the other case make perfect sense - depending on who you are and what you weigh most heavily (and setting aside any digression into the changing of minds, conversion, redemption, et cetera). It's the kind of finely balanced human moral question that merits the input of a spiritual leader, you might think.
     If you did, you'd be wrong. These are questions to be asked and answered in the heart. Not in the debating chamber, nor in the studio; not by logic, nor by argument. There are people who need reassurance. Beyond that, they need (want?) certainty. If we reach out to them, we lose any power we might have (imagined we) had to help our own people in need of both reassurance and certainty. It's a tougher call than may be apparent from either side. But it's in the nature of life's real questions that the answers don't come from outside.
     And anyway, our spiritual "leaders" face questions of their own, this week.

Not that I need to get a life or anything, but I listened to Prime Minister's Questions (rice cooking, radio on, couldn't help it). Not the whole show; just the bit where Theresa May described Jeremy Corbyn's leadership style as "incredible". Her delivery, et cetera, told us that this was a big, clever put-down. In one way, it was: Mr Corbyn had run out of questions, so couldn't reply. But it didn't quite work for me - indeed, it came as a surprise. The word "incredible" tends to be used nowadays to defend embattled, non-manual, typically (but not exclusively) public-sector workers. Nurses, teachers, lecturers, NHS managers, civil-service administrators are all said to work "incredibly" hard to serve the rest of us.
     For a long time now, "incredibly" has been the go-to word to describe good people. They don't work hard; they work "incredibly" hard. The challenges they face are "incredibly" difficult. In the film, The Incredibles are the good guys. They're a Hard-Working Family; at points in the story they're Just About Managing. Words are flexible and they're loosely used, but I don't think 'incredible' has quite the impact Mrs May intended. If it has any impact at all. It's an invisible emphasis-word. Nobody reads in politics; they always read "very carefully". Politicians may give evasive answers, but they've always "made it very clear" at some nebulous point in the past. Oh, and where are the easy choices in politics?
     For me, the masterclass came in the aftermath of the 2013/2014 floods on the Somerset Levels. "Now is not the time for blame," said the then-Prime Minister, standing knee-deep in flooded England. Same line taken by his ministers, and unless I've missed something, we're still waiting for the time for blame to arrive.
     Now is not the time to criticise the PM. No doubt PMQs is incredibly challenging. But have we really got to the point where we're even getting our misuse of language wrong? At the highest level?