Is self-isolation a political obligation?

Political obligation has often been characterised as an obligation to obey the laws of the state, but this understanding has been challenged by a number of theorists who have argued that it ought instead to be conceived of as something like an obligation to promote the common good of one's community - something that may, ordinarily, require obedience to the law but that might also require other things and even, in some cases, perhaps breaking the law.

I was just reading a BBC article about the 'pingdemic' - that is, the rising number of people being told to self-isolate. Like a number of other government 'guidelines', it seems that this is not a legal obligation:

So, according to the traditional understanding of political obligation - which focuses only on obeying the laws - complying with this instruction or request would have nothing to do with our political obligations.

 

However, I suspect that many people think that there would be reasons (not necessarily overriding ones) to isolate and that these would in some sense be political. Certainly, they could be justified by a number of traditional arguments for political obligations, such as a duty of fair play, associative obligations, or Samaritan duties.

 

Indeed, in this other piece, Mr Scully elaborates:

This looks like a political, if not a legal, obligation - and a useful example for my first-year module later in the year.

And freedom for all...?

Today, 19th July 2021, most of the pandemic-related legal restrictions in England are lifted. That is, we're finally out of lockdown, with work and shops returning to normal(ish) and masks a matter of 'personal responsibility' rather than government mandate. This has already come to be known as 'freedom day' - although even this terminology is another piece of propaganda. 

 

There are different views on whether or not it's wise to relax restrictions at this point, given rising numbers of cases. And Frances Ryan has pointed out, in the Guardian, that freedom for the majority may come at the expense of vulnerable groups. What particularly caught my eye though is this piece pointing out that allowing one person the freedom NOT to social distance can conflict with someone else's desire TO maintain social distance.

 

This, of course, is just a new example of conflicting rights. For instance, if I want to meditate quietly in my room, but my neighbour wants to practice drumming in hers, then we can't both get what we want. If she's allowed to play her drums, then my ability to meditate is frustrated. On the other hand, if I can somehow enforce silence, then her desires are frustrated.

I know that there are various treatments of this out there in the literature - I think Sen discusses such cases somewhere - though I don't know of any simple answers. 

 

The authors of the above piece claim that "We cannot be free to restrict the freedom of others" but, as my last example shows, this may be impossible. Given the conflicting preference, any law that we adopt will involve frustrating or restricting one of the individuals. This applies to the social distancing case, as well as the drumming one.

It seems that we cannot avoid some choice as to whose freedom should have priority. The authors suggest that we should protect the freedom to social distance, ending with the remark that "We should all hold dominion over our own bodies and our own health: no-one should have the power to choose what we are happy to subject our own bodies to or the risks we are willing to take with our own health."

 

Perhaps this is the right answer, but it doesn't seem to be the right reason. How close I am to you, or you are to me (the other side of the same coin), is not simply a choice over my own body. There's no obvious reason why I should be the one to make that choice, any more than you. 

 

Nor, of course, can we say that the choice should be whichever of us wants the most distance, since one of us may have an unreasonable aversion to social contact. Suppose I want you not to come within 100m of me. Absent some particular circumstances (for instance, justifying a restraining order) this would be too much of an imposition on your freedom.

Joint Sessions talks

The annual Joint Sessions conference is taking place this weekend. It's online, unsurprisingly, but also much of it - all the open sessions - is actually asynchronous, with talks pre-recorded and available for viewing and commenting at any time. No need to worry about parallel panels clashing but, on the other hand, I doubt that most will receive many comments in this format.

Still, my talk - on a democratic version of voter licensing - is on Youtube. I've tried embedding it below, but it looks weirdly cropped so it may not work. If it doesn't, follow this link to view the original.

This is a shorter version of the paper that I gave at Brave New World, but was actually recorded back at the end of May. I already have some idea of ways that I would like to change it, but I'm holding off on a re-write for now in case I get more comments or ideas.

I've been trying to watch several other people's videos and found some pretty interesting.

Coin tosses and penalties: Italy in Euro 1968

I was aware of some cases of club football matches being decided (pre-penalty shootouts) by coin tosses. I've blogged about some of these before (e.g. here and here).

Thanks to the BBC, I've just learned (I think this is new to me, unless I knew it and forgot) that Italy reached the final of Euro 1968 after beating the Soviet Union by coin toss.

Another example of a match being settled by a genuine lottery.

Accents and pronunciation

I meant to write a post a couple of weeks ago on this story about accent bias. It reports that Essex accents were judged 'less intelligent' than others in a survey - though it seems the study only looked at London and home counties accents and didn't include other accents, such as Brummie or various northern accents.

Accent bias can not only unfairly affect an individual's job prospects, but even democratic politics.

I didn't get round to a post at the time, largely because much of my time has been spent on marking lately, but I was reminded of that study by this column on mispronunciation. The author is professor of phonetics and has lots of interesting things to say about why certain mistakes come about (e.g. 'expresso' instead of 'espresso').

However, the last section of the column moves from how language changes to making normative claims about prejudice and discrimination. "Correcting pronunciation can actually be an act of linguistic prejudice." I suppose it could be, but it isn't clear that it has to be or even that this is the normal case. Though she acknowledges that correcting a language-learner may be different, it seems that how and why someone corrects someone else makes a big difference here.

She ends by remarking on 'accent prejudice' which is indeed alive and well, as demonstrated by the BBC story I mentioned earlier, but it's something of a non-sequitor. There's a difference between who someone pronounces a word differently, because of their accent (which they will share with a wider group), and idiosyncratic mispronunciations. You might think that there's something objectionably elitist about correcting even the latter, but that doesn't follow from the fact that it's wrong to correct the former. 

(For the record, I was born and raised in Essex, but I'm not sure I really have an Essex accent any more. On the other hand, I'm regularly unsure how to pronounce words that I'm more used to seeing in print.)

Regulating women's behaviour

 The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recently published a first draft 'global action plan' on alcohol. (The preceding link is to something like an online press release; the actual draft plan can currently be found here.)

One thing that has caused particular controversy - such as this report - is the following sentence from p. 17 (emphasis added):

"Appropriate attention should be given to prevention of the initiation of drinking among children and adolescents, prevention of drinking among pregnant women and women of childbearing age, and protection of people from pressures to drink, especially in societies with high levels of alcohol consumption where heavy drinkers are encouraged to drink even more."

Now, it isn't clear (at least on a brief look) exactly what this is supposed to mean. It certainly doesn't seem to propose anything like banning women of childbearing age from consuming alcohol. But, all the same, this is a sweeping statement, suggesting that most women shouldn't consume alcohol, even if they haven't had sex and therefore are not pregnant.

The Metro coverage quotes Matt Lambert (a remark apparently from the Telegraph, but behind a paywall) describing this as "being sexist and paternalistic, and potentially restricting the freedoms of most women".

I wouldn't agree that it's paternalistic, since paternalism usually refers (roughly) to preventing an agent from harming herself. In this case, the guideline isn't to protect the women themselves, but their children. That isn't really paternalism, even if it is unjustified.

Starg***e

I haven't been up to much of interest this month, largely due to a pile of marking and the fact that I'm still waiting for a vaccine appointment, but I did start painting the first bits of my Stargrave Nickstarter and some odd bits of loot and scenery, including this mysterious alien portal:

I was quite pleased with the composition here, though I had to borrow my partner's phone to take the photo as there's a problem with my camera and/or its memory card, so expect fewer pictures until I have that resolved.

Do masks save lives?

I've seen a number of anti-masking posters/stickers appear in my local area. This particular example was on a postbox. I'm sorry it's not the clearest picture - I did try going back for another, but it had been removed by then.

I don't teaching critical thinking/informal logic, but it strikes me that this would be a useful example of bad reasoning.

It may be that someone is telling porkies, but that certainly isn't a logical consequence of the preceding claims, without at least some implicit premise.

This seems to be questioning whether masks save lives, but the mere fact that someone who hasn't worn a mask hasn't died doesn't show that they don't. By way of analogy, I haven't worn a seatbelt, crash helmet, or parachute at any point in the past year. But the fact that I haven't died doesn't cast doubt on the claim that these things save lives.

Joint Sessions

Another conference that I'll be speaking at (virtually): the 2021 Joint Sessions. Besides my own paper, on voter qualifications, I'm interested in the first of the keynote symposia, on Mill on free expression. I've read a couple of recent articles on this subject lately - here and here - so it seems quite topical.

Brave New World

Back to a 'day job' related post... I'm happy to say that I'll be a keynote speaker at this year's Brave New World (virtual) conference.

 

Long-time readers with exceptionally good memories may recall that I presented a paper there as a graduate student, back in 2006. That abstract can be found here, and my report on events here. This has actually proved to be a useful aide memoire, because I was trying to remember who the two keynotes that year were just the other day. For the record, I was right, but wasn't certain of one of them.

I can't see a website for this year's conference - the MANCEPT page still links to their 2019 programme (I assume 2020 got cancelled) - but a call for submissions has gone out via Philos-L. Here are details, though I've not included the email here to avoid spam.

This year’s Brave New World is the twenty-fifth annual postgraduate conference organised by the Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT). The conference will take place on Wednesday 7th and Thursday 8th July 2021, held online using Zoom

 

We are pleased to announce that this year's keynote speakers will be:

• Jesse Tomalty (University of Bergen)
• Ben Saunders (University of Southampton)

The Brave New World conference series is a leading international forum dedicated to the discussion of postgraduate research in political theory. This year will be the conference's 25th anniversary. Participants will have the chance to meet and talk about their work with eminent academics, including members of the faculty from the University of Manchester, as well as the guest speakers who will deliver plenary addresses.

 

Submission guidelines:

The deadline for submissions is May 7th, 2021. If you would like to present a paper, please send an abstract of approximately 400-500 words in PDF format and prepared for blind review.

 

It's a shame that I won't actually get to visit Manchester and see people in person, but I'm looking forward to presenting there again.

Tau pirates

Most of the photos that I post here are of outdoor nature, but I thought I'd share one of some wargaming models that I've just finished painting. This is partly because they're the first models I've painted all year - not a very productive start - but also because I used a new (to me) technique, which I'll say more about after the picture.

 My normal approach to painting is a simple basecoat then a wash (usually Reikland Fleshshade) all over to provide shading. On these guys, I was inspired by a 'greyscale' technique that I'd seen in a couple of wargaming groups.

 The models started black with a grey drybrush all over. This is still what remains on the legs, arms, guns, and backpacks. After that, it's just a case of picking out a few coloured details. I have seen some that keep this really minimalistic, for a Sin City-style look.

 I didn't go quite that far myself, but used a blue/green on the larger armour plates and then yellow, orange, and red as spot colours. The one second from left has a touch of green on the thing in his hand (some kind of scanner I guess), but - aside from the brown bases - that's it. 

The models are Tau fire warriors, from Games Workshop. I haven't played 40k in many years, but still had these lying around and thought I might find use for them in Stargrave (Amazon affiliate link), where I think they'll make good pirate shock troopers.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by the results of this quick and easy painting method.

Predatory behaviour

I recently discussed a case in favour of (so-called) predatory publishers, but there are concerns that such journals published a lot of rubbish. Here is a nice example, setting out to expose such problems.

 

It's published in the American Journal of Biomedical Science & Research, which I'd never previously heard of. They claim to use "thorough peer review and rigorous check[s]". And yet, somehow, they published an article on whether Covid-19 could be transmitted by consuming Zubat (a type of Pokemon).

I particularly appreciated the article's reference list, which includes a number of articles raising concerns around predatory publishing, along with some clearly joke references like:

10. Wayne B (2016) Phobia of Bats and Its Applications in Criminal Justice. Gotham Forensics Quarterly 26(8): 807-814.

22. Potter H, Weasley R, Granger H (2013) Novel rhinovirus responsible for newt eye infection. Magical Creatures 6: 31-36.

25. Winnfield J, Vega V (1994) What do they call a predatory journal in France? Pulp Nonfiction 521: 154.

29. Pooh W, Milne AA (2019) Similarities between politicians and fictional bears, part xi. Hong Kong Journal of Democracy 5: 50-55.

33. da Vinci L, Simoni MdLB, da Urbino MS, Bardi DdNdB (2014) Effects of exposure to sewage on martial arts skills in turtles. Journal of Cowabungan Zoology 479(2): 149-155.

34. Orwell G (1984) Why arresting doctors for discovering a new virus is a terrible idea. Annals of the Zhēnxiàngbù 112(2): 748-759.

 

This article will be useful for two purposes. First, I may discuss it with graduate students, when discussing publication (and warning them about publishing in such journals). Second, I may discuss it with undergraduates, when warning them to be selective about what they read.

Robin

We've had a few sunny days here of late so, while it's still been cold overnight, it's starting to look like spring. Today, we had lunch out in the garden for the first time this year, accompanied by this robin singing.

 

 It's not the best photo, since it's looking up at him and he's a bit further away than ideal, but it's the best that I could manage. After lunch, I spent a bit of time re-potting some lettuces that I started three weeks ago. I hope these will give us a salad harvest later in the summer, so long as they don't get eaten by slugs first.

Raising the voting age?

I’ve recently been discussing the voting age with my 2^nd/3^rd year democratic theory students. Our time this year was mostly focused on whether to lower the voting age (for instance, to 16) or whether we might implement some form of test, as well as or instead of relying on an age threshold.

I didn’t really discuss whether the voting age should be raised, though of course many of the arguments against lowering it can also be used to advocate raising it. There’s no reason to think that we have the right balance at present. However, I just stumbled across this provocative 2017 post by Robert Ringer, which advocates raising the voting age to at least 25, preferably 30. I wish I’d seen it earlier, as it might have made for a good discussion prompt.

Interestingly, Ringer titles his post ‘Putting an End to Child Voting’ but that’s a rather misleading characterisation of his aim. He refers, in the first paragraph, to “18 year old children” but it’s not clear whether he thinks of 24 year olds (and even 29 year olds) as ‘children’. Maybe so, but – of course – they’re legally adults, so what he proposes is in fact to deny voting rights to some adults.

Though he concedes that some people are mature at 18, while others are not even at 40, the main support for his thesis is an article on the teen brain – seemingly this one – reporting that teenagers are more emotional and less rational than adults.

It’s somewhat surprising that he accepts this at face value, given that he later disparages colleges for misinforming many young people about history and economics. Maybe he thinks psychology is more objective, despite the well-known ‘replicability crisis’.

In any case, even if we accept these findings – that people’s brains tend to be more emotional and less ‘rational’ up until around age 25 – it doesn’t follow that this is reason to disenfranchise anyone.

First of all, this would be to derive a normative conclusion (a view about what we ought to do) from empirical facts (descriptions of what is the case). As Hume pointed out, it is difficult to see where the normativity comes from in such supposed inferences. It seems that one must rely on an implicit (normative) premise that people ought to be excluded from the franchise if they are not rational.

This brings us to a second question, as to whether ‘rational’ thought trumps emotional reasoning. That’s too large an issue for me to explore here, but feminist scholars such as Carol Gilligan and Genevieve Lloyd have criticised the conflation of rationality with maleness and pointed out that emotional thinking may be a good thing, at least in some cases. As I say, this is not something I can do justice to here, as it’s beyond my expertise anyway, but it’s certainly not obvious that ‘rational’ thought is better than ‘emotional’ thought, or even that there’s a clear binary here to begin with.

Third, even if we do think that voters should be rational, it may be better to test for rationality directly, rather than relying on age as a proxy for the development of rational thought. While this would be an argument for eradicating age thresholds altogether, rather than a defence of the status quo, it does suggest that Ringer’s proposal of raising the threshold is simply the wrong response to the alleged problem of irrational voters.

Finally, if we were to accept Ringer’s claim that ‘children’ of 24 are not sufficiently rational or responsible to be trusted with the vote, this might have wider implications. Perhaps, for instance, they ought not to be held criminally responsible for their actions either? And, given that ‘no taxation without representation’ was a founding principle of American independence, maybe they shouldn’t be expected to pay taxes until they’re old enough to vote. (I suspect that Ringer isn’t particularly keen on government taxation anyway, but I don’t know whether he’d favour an exemption for ‘children’ while having to pay himself…)

As I said, this would have made a good discussion prompt…

Nudging people to use bins

I noticed these new litter bins near me the other week, though I didn't have my camera at the time (and it was dark anyway). I wanted a photo because they're a good example of a non-paternalistic nudge. Presumably, this message has been found to reduce littering by shaming those who would otherwise drop their rubbish on the ground.

I don't actually know how effective these are. I would have hoped that, if people were close enough to a bin, they would use it anyway. That is, I assume most littering happens because there is not a bin handy, so a message on the bin is not a lot of help.

 

Perhaps that's naive of me. There certainly is plenty of litter in this area, suggesting that people won't go far in order to use a bin. Maybe this message will reinforce an anti-littering norm. It still seems odd that the new 'nudge bin' is sited next to an older bin though. Spreading bins around might have done more to reduce littering.

Edit to add: I just noticed that this seems to be post 1,500 on this blog. A fitting subject for this milestone, since most of them have probably been talking rubbish...

In praise of predatory publishing

I mentioned recently that I'd been thinking about publishing advice for postgraduate students. Following on from that, I thought it worth drawing attention to this provocative paper from Keith Burgess-Jackson*, in which he advocates publishing in so-called 'predatory' journals, rather than so-caled 'reputable' ones. This, he suggests, means that he can say what he wants - with less need to pander to editors or reviewers - and reach a larger audience.

I think there's some interesting food for thought here. I like the line about audiences: "Writers want to be read.... A writer without an audience is a diarist" (p. 2). I might use that one, when talking about the motives to publish.

However, I'm rather surprised to read that he has "never received a useful comment from a reviewer--in nearly four decades of publishing" (p. 7). To be sure, there are plenty of unhelpful reviewer comments. I wouldn't necessarily say that they were stupid, but more that reviewers sometimes fail to distinguish between an objection to a view and a reason to reject publication, or want you to write the paper that they would have written, or whatever.

 

Everyone with enough experience also has bad experiences to share. But even the 'bad' reviews can have evidential value, for instance showing ways in which the argument is open to misinterpretation. And I've definitely had helpful, constructive reviews that have improved my work, even where rejecting it. If someone hasn't had that experience, it seems to me that they've either been incredibly unlucky or just they've failed to appreciate comments that are actually (or would have been) useful.

I won't be recommending this paper or its approach to our PGR students. Even if there's something to be said for this advice, it doesn't seem suited to PhD students aspiring to an academic career after graduation. Rightly or wrongly, the 'prestige' of where they publish matters, more so than the number of downloads. And, in any case, I suspect that these reputable journals are more likely to be read by fellow researchers rather than, say, students desperately searching for anything on their assigned essay topic.

*Interestingly, I don't seem able to find a webpage for him, even though he appears to be a tenured associate professor.

Snow!

 We don't get snow too often down here, unlike when I lived in Scotland, so this was a rare photo opportunity.

This picture was taken about 9:45am. Already now (3pm) the snow is almost all gone.

Publishing Advice for PhD Students: A Preliminary Review

 I don’t follow the philosophy blogosphere that closely any more. Many of the blogs that I used to follow are now dead or almost so. Some well-established sites, like Crooked Timber and Leiter Reports, still seem to be going, but I rarely visit.

 

Still, this recent piece of advice for graduate students caught my eye. Apparently it caused a bit of a stir on social media, but I didn’t hear about that until afterwards. I see why some of the advice is controversial, but there’s no denying that the author has published a lot for a PhD student, so the advice clearly works – at least for him.

 

This was interesting to me, not only because I can certainly still learn from advice myself, but also because I’m scheduled to give some advice to our own PhD students later this semester. I don’t know exactly what I’ll cover/say just yet. If I write up something, then I may share it here. In the meantime though, I have been exploring some other advice, to see what’s already out there. This post is essentially my own literature review and notes.

 

Daily Nous have previous history here, having also featured this guest post from Jason Brennan, in which he advises writing for 20 hours a week (four hours per working day). No doubt this is why he is also very prolific, with 20 books published or forthcoming. To be clear though, he isn’t recommending being a workaholic; he suggests that most people spend too long on other tasks, such as email or preparation for teaching, when they could instead by writing.

 

Michael Huemer shares this advice on publishing, which takes a blunt and at times jaded/cynical tone. Maybe the comments on longwindedness and the randomness of peer review are probably slightly exaggerated, but it strikes me as realistic on many points. For instance, once you’ve published a bit, “Many people will vaguely know who you are but not actually have read anything of yours”. That sounds about right. There are plenty of people whose work I know of, but don’t have time to read it unless (i) I need to cite it in my own work, (ii) I need to teach it, or (iii) I’m asked to review it (usually anonymously). And, even though he’s often critical of academic publishing, there’s some good advice here, particularly I think on citations.

 

While Huemer is probably right that referees can be bad in various ways and for various reasons, and sometimes the best response is simply to send the paper off again and hope for a different outcome, it should be noted that even ‘bad’ reports (by which I do not simply mean critical ones, but ones that misread the paper) can be helpful.

 

Lewis Powell has a recent post focused on highlighting the evidential value of bad referee reports. It may well be that a referee is not an ideal reader. They may be careless or inattentive. However, they are actual readers. If a referee managed to misunderstand something, then it shows that another reader might also misunderstand that point. As he puts it, the aim should not simply be to make it so that a careful reader can get your point, but so that even a careless reader cannot miss your point.

 

Finally, for now, John Danaher has a pair of posts on writing and publishing articles, again focused on philosophy but probably somewhat applicable elsewhere. One thing I liked about the former is his observation that people are more likely to share successes than failures (apart perhaps from occasional griping at unreasonable referee reports).

 

Regarding his actual writing process, he suggests detailed planning (4-10 sides of A4) then writing 1,000-2,000 words per day, usually in a couple of hours in the morning. Unlike Hendricks and Brennan, above, he doesn’t say that this has to be two hours every day – only when actually working on a paper.

 

He says he’s more likely to submit to a journal before seeking comments from friends or colleagues. That may work for him, though it’s probably not good advice for inexperienced authors (and, of course, it produces more refereeing work for journals). It seems he, at least, has had some genuinely constructive referee reports – his piece on writing quotes one that says his paper is wrong, but nonetheless a useful contribution – though he also mentions going through the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) after rejections. Preparing for failure comes up in both pieces.

 

Having looked at some of what’s already out there, I don’t know whether I’ll have anything particularly ‘new’ to add. As I said, if I do find time to write up my own thoughts, then I’ll probably share them here (likely in March).

We found a "Paley's watch"

 While on one of our regular lockdown walks in the woods, we stumbled upon this arrangement of leaves, sticks, and stones:

It's a shame that I don't teach philosophy of religion any more, because this would be a useful example to illustrate teleological (or 'design') arguments - the classic example is William Paley's watch. While we don't know who made this, or why, we immediately assume purposive design, rather than natural chance.

New Blog Title

 I officially 'announced' a change of emphasis on the blog last month. Of course, there's never been much of a formal content policy, so I'll continue to post a variety of things that interest me, as I always have done. And this is likely to evolve over time, as it always has done.

Nonetheless, I decided that it was about time that I changed the blog's title. I never really gave much thought to the old one, when I started. I called it 'Praesidium' (Latin for guardian) in reference to an old school newspaper that I was once involved in (the 'Grammar Guardian'). However, this has never really been a 'news' blog.

I only recently discovered that you could change the title of a blog, having never really bothered to look into this. But now I've got round to it, this blog is now simply 'Ben's Bits and Blogs' which seems to better reflect its content (as well as involving some alliteration and a bit of a pun).

The URL, of course, remains unchanged so if anyone has ever linked here the link should not be affected.

Squirrel

 On today's walk, we saw two squirrels chasing each other around a large tree. One disappeared somewhere up the tree as we approached, but the other sat around long enough for me to get some pictures.

No zoom involved, though I did crop the photo on my laptop before posting.

Coin-tosses to decide football matches (redux)

 Long-time readers will recall my interest in lotteries. The use of penalty shootouts to settle football matches is sometimes likened to a lottery. Indeed, it's sometimes described as a lottery, though I think this is metaphorical, not literally true.

Before the introduction of shootouts, matches were sometimes settled by the toss of a coin. That idea seems to have been revived for cancelled matches in the women's FA Cup.

The BBC quotes Everton boss Willie Kirk, saying that he "never, ever thought a game would be decided by that at this level.... It would be a shame for those clubs to lose an FA Cup game on a coin toss." Perhaps he's unaware that Liverpool 'beat' FC Cologne on a coin-toss in the 1964-5 European Cup...

A Frosty Start

Having been up to see the new year in - and old one out - last night, we didn't get up that early this morning. Still, it was a cold night (-2 according to the forecast) and there was still quite a frost in the garden, so we decided to go for a walk in the woods to see what they looked like with frost.

Unfortunately, we'd probably left it a bit late by the time we actually got there and the effect wasn't as dramatic as I'd hoped. In fact, the woodland looked less frosty than the gardens, which surprised me.

 

I know there can be micro-climatic variation, but I'd assumed the built up area would be warmer if anything, due to all the centrally-heated houses. Still, there were some frosty pockets, which I focused on in my photography. My camera's not brilliant at close ups, but here's an attempt at frost on leaves and branches.

Not bad, but perhaps we'll have to try again on a morning where we get up earlier. At least the mud was a bit frozen, so not as wet as it has been of late.

Let's hope 2021 is an improvement on 2020.