IPH (23rd March 2008)

Sunday 6th April 2008

A new UK tax year begins, with media talk about the fact that a Labour government concerned about the poorest people has increased the starting tax rate for the poorest people, if they are single — poor families aren't so affected. Well, living on a very small income plus (mainly) savings I am using up monthly, I make so little annually that I am unaffected; having those savings to draw down each month means I am not entitled to any state benefits and I pay my own National Insurance as a self employed person (I am still officially a freelance artist, and of course I live surrounded by my easels, paintings, and working materials: blank painting boards, paints, and brushes).

View from my picture window 6th April 2008

After Andre Marr (whom I usually tend to look in on if I am up at 9:00, and not going out anywhere yet, on a Sunday morning now) there was a studio discussion programme featuring Prof. Richard Dawkins and finishing with a debate on the question "does the devil exist?".

As usual it shed only a very little light on the topic, because there was scarcely time to go into the underlying points. Also as usual, the religious people either have no grasp whatever of the vast difference between empirical evidence and what their scriptures tell them, or else are determined studiously to avoid facing up to that difference; and as always the programme ended with the presenter giving a hurried thanks to everyone more or less in the middle of a sentence from one contributor, as the titles rolled and the music played. One wonders whether there is any other value in these exercises than to provoke a few rows in the pubs over lunch and the drinks today.

Most extraordinary in some ways is the fact that, exactly as predicted by meteorologists during the last week, there was snow today. It lay between 5 and 10 cm deep on everything at 9:00 when I awoke and looked out of the window; and snowflakes continued to fall until maybe 11:00 here in Headley Down, east Hampshire.