Tudor Cambridge, Brexit Woes, ObamacareLite and the CIA's Weeping Angels

Delayed by a migraine, I was able to continue with the Quekett Bulletin. Jane had completed the conversion of my edited 'Photographing your own Artwork' manuscript into a Word web-page version, in preparation for producing a Kindle edition. Jane had also begun to design a striking cover. We then sat together for a while ironing out some of the edits and page breaks in the text as well as finalising the cover.

We tested it on Kindle, re-edited and then uploaded the final version to  Kindle Direct Publishing. It can take up to 72h for new publications to be processed, however, a couple of hours later - it was live. By midnight, a copy had already been sold!

We had an enjoyable evening learning about Tudor Cambridge from speaker Honor Ridout, informative, entertaining and relaxed, she  introduced us to the much sparser, smaller Cambridge of Tudor times, surrounded by sheep, pigs and fields. The colleges were still in a strong growth phase and there was the continued lively friction between town and gown. As an audience, we shared Honor's regret at the loss of some of the more evocative street names, such as Shoemaker's and Shearers. I hadn't realised that the description of a place as 'hill', as in Market Hill, referred to an open area.

The big Brexit event today was the second defeat of the Government in the House of Lords by 98 votes. They insisted that there should be a meaningful parliamentary vote on the final terms of withdrawal. Pro-European Lord Heseltine went with his conscience as as a result was sacked from the five advisory positions he held with the Government. It is quite likely that the changes will be over-ruled in the Commons and presumably the sacking of Heseltine is a clear warning shot across the bows of Tory MPs who might be tempted to vote against the Prime Minister.

The signing of the Obamacare replacement bill was highly praised by none other than President Trump himself. Today, there are signs that not only are the democrats and supporters of Obamacare outraged, so are the many conservatives who feel it does not go far enough and is simply Obamacare lite.

The big story of the day is however, the newest Wikileaks revelations, showing how the CIA uses hacking tools to bug people by turning on phones and also via accessing some Samsung smart TVs via a fake 'Off' setting named 'Weeping Angel'. Apparently Whatsapp encryption can also be circumvented. Most incendiary, and likely to muddy the waters of the Russia investigations, is the allegation that the CIA attempted to ensure that anyone trying to track the CIA hacking would be misdirected to think it would be other sources, for example Russia.