Trip to St Ives and A14 artwork under threat; David Davis admits no economic assessment of hard Brexit made since he became Brexit Secretary; Trump travel ban II blocked.
Business trip in the morning to St Ives. The A14 roadworks now begun in earnest and leading to traffic queues and speed restrictions. Until now, there has been an isolated small farm building just beyond the Swavesey/Service station turnoff travelling West. The building was notable for the graffiti which a couple of years ago proclaimed "You are now leaving the future", then more recently "The Future". Today it looked vulnerable as it stood exposed amidst the earth clearance taking place.
This evening consisted of two meetings, the Milton Patient Participation group at the Surgery and then the monthly meeting of the Milton Photographic Club at the church hall. The latter was a show and tell. These are always interesting, not only because of the different images and perspectives of the group's photographers, but for the unexpected tips you gain.
Today I came away with the insight that if you photograph a red object on a blue background, you reveal more detail in the red object, rather than saturating it out. I'll have to play a bit to see if this really a function of he contrast when capturing the raw image, or whether the combination works best with the automatic adjustments for exposure made by the camera software.
Today there was the astonishing revelation by Brexit Secretary David Davis to the Brexit Select Committee. There had been no costings since the referendum of the consequences of a Hard Brexit with no deal. This was rather surprising since he had been asking his Cabinet colleagues to at least prepare for the possibility of a hard Brexit, however undesirable it might be.
The revelation was buried by the major u-turn by the Chancellor on changes to National Insurance Contributions by sole traders and businesses.
News hot off the press as I write on Trump's second travel ban. It has been blocked by a Hawaiian federal Judge and the ruling applies nationwide. CNN states 'US District Court judge Derrick Watson concluded that the new executive order still failed to pass legal muster'. He was rather scathing:
"The illogic of the Government's contentions is palpable. The notion that one can demonstrate animus toward any group of people only by targeting all of them at once is fundamentally flawed,"
"Equally flawed is the notion that the Executive Order cannot be found to have targeted Islam because it applies to all individuals in the six referenced countries. It is undisputed, using the primary source upon which the Government itself relies, that these six countries have overwhelmingly Muslim populations that range from 90.7% to 99.8%."
"It would therefore be no paradigmatic leap to conclude that targeting these countries likewise targets Islam." "Certainly, it would be inappropriate to conclude, as the Government does, that it does not."
Other good news, the far-right takes a knock in the Netherlands elections.
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