Lottsathoughts

Yesterday's Budget from Philip Hammond is dismaying - £3bn allocated to pay for Brexit. Even as spending on the NHS, schools and other public services is kept tight, he can nevertheless find £3bn to pay for this absurd project. And it's not just £3bn - that's on top of the rumoured £40bn which may, or may not, be the final cost of the divorce settlement. So that's £43bn then. Or maybe more – who knows? And still, we don't know why. Running through the tired pseudo-arguments, one in particular jars today - the idea of “getting our sovereignty back”. Never mind that we never lost it (as confirmed by The Government's own white paper earlier in the year). Some Brexit-champions still like to reiterate how we'll be able to make our own laws again. (The obvious has been pointed out repeatedly – that we will continue to be bound by EU regulation just so long as we want to sell anything to EU members.) But it's another aspect of this that is so striki...

This week I had the agonising experience of pet-owners everywhere. I had to say goodbye to my beloved cat and ask the vet to facilitate euthanasia. The trauma was huge despite her magnificent age (18) and the fact that she had been poorly for a while. What is it about our pets that has the capacity to move us so deeply? As I sat weeping for her passing, I tried to analyse in a rational way what I would miss, or what I felt I had gained from her presence in my life. Of course there's the immediate comfort of the cuddle and companionship but if that were all, then it would imply our's was a transactional and conditional relationship. And presumably easily fixed by acquiring a new pet, much like replacing any broken inanimate object in one's life – an old torch, armchair or washing-machine. And it really doesn't feel like that. Which leads me to conclude that she was an individual with a soul and a personality. Not that I mean to anthropomorphise her existence, b...