Gary Neville on dictatorship

The World Cup delivers again, this time pundit Gary Neville describing the refusal to release VAR footage as like a dictatorship. I suspect dictators have done worse.

Infantino on democracy

I didn't expect a pre-World Cup press conference to contain reflections on the meaning of democracy, but that's what happened.

The whole press conference can be found in various places on Youtube, such as here, here, and here.

The crucial bit comes at 55:23 here or 55:37 here or 54:36 here.

I'm not sure which countries' medieval practices he refers to. I may have to look that up.

Lordsdale Butterfly

Today, we joined a ranger-guided walk from Shirley Pond along Lordsdale Greenway. I took quite a few wildlife photos, particularly of various insects.

I believe this is a Painted Lady. There were quite a few of them around.

Urban Wild 2026

It's a scorching bank holiday weekend, which also marks the start of half-term I gather. There is a series of 'urban wild' events taking place across Southampton, including a festival today on the Common.

We saw several acts, including...

The Red Star Socialist Choir, who did several numbers, including a song about diversity to the tune of YMCA.

A folk group, Angling for Farthings, who played several songs with a local connection, including one about cabin boy Robert Parker (who was victim of cannibalism).

Shanti Green who did sea shanties. Perhaps they should have done the Robert Parker song, though they did do a version of the Wellerman (not this version though).

And, finally (before we left), The Guillotine Union Boys - another political act, singing about (inter alia) fascism and Elon Musk (two different songs) and a version of Which Side Are You On?

Voted

This morning, I voted in our local elections. That is, I either exercised my democratic right or discharged my democratic duty, depending on your view.

It's the first time I've voted in-person since the introduction of photo ID requirements. (I have postal voted in the meantime.)

I was curious how long the process would take, so I timed myself. I left the house at 8:22 (so this doesn't include getting ready to go out, since I was doing that anyway). I had voted by 8:29. At that point, I was on my way to work, so didn't go straight back home - but I had gone out of my way to get to the polling station.

So, it was about 8:35 by the time I was back on my normal route to work. So, one could say about 15 minutes total or perhaps 10 (because it would have taken me some time to get that far anyway).

I'm always slightly resentful of the fact that our polling station is in the opposite direction from work, so I was interested to learn that experiments are underway that might allow voters more choice over where (and when) they vote. That's something I'd welcome.

Slightly ironically, I then spent much of the day writing against the idea of compulsory voting, in response to this recent proposal. I may have more to say about that later.

Picket

I'm not on strike, but many staff at Southampton Solent are, so today I popped along to spend a couple of hours on their picket line.

We were joined by (UCU General Secretary) Jo Grady - which was expected - but also by one of my undergraduate students, which was more of a surprise.

It's a boy

While the pigeon may be gone, I have another photo update from my garden. The small holly bush has flowers.

I had hoped that flowers might mean berries later but, after some quick online research, these look like male flowers to me. That's a bit of a shame, because it means no berries.