The Sound of a London Summer: As you walk around London in the summertime, especially around the City on a a Friday night, you constantly hear this loud hubbub. Then you turn a corner toward the noise and discover 20-100 people all standing outside a pub or some other bar, drinking and talking (and smoking). When there are a number of pubs and drinking establishments all close to each other, the sound never stops, it just raises and lowers in intensity. The murmur of the street is often quite noticeable from our flat, even though we are six stories up.

Leon Trotsky Lives!: English politics is different. In the latest craziness gradually reducing the Labour Party to comical irrelevance, a major dispute haas a risen about whether Trotskyite elements are infiltrating the Labour Party. (And Americans were worried that Bernie was kind of a Socialist….) A little background: Back in the 80s, the Labour Party under Ed Miliband decided that, in order to be taken seriously, they had to get the radical Socialists and Trotskyites out of the party and they threw them out. The major organization that they banned was called Militant, which was especially powerful in Liverpool, so Labour adopted a rule that you could not be a party member if you are a supporter of another party. (One of the Labour pols protesting all of this was a young lad named Jermey Corbyn.) Flash forward 30 years and, unsurprisingly, it appears that a variety of far left organizers and lunatics have been joining the Labour Party. Tom Watson, the Deputy Leader of the Party, has raised the alarm and sent a letter to Corbyn detailing the number of Trotskyites joining the party and specific instructions from extreme Socialist parties to their members to do just that. The Cobynistas deride this as a conspiracy theory but, of course, it is in their interest to have these far left types in the party, since they will inevitable support Corbyn. Watson sys it is not a theory, it is a fact. Corbyn responds that he doesn’t have any problem with expanding the rolls of the Party.

So, is this important or just comic relief in a boring campaign that Corbyn appears likely to win, with or without the votes of these far left faolks? Actually, I’d say it is kind of important in that it say a lot about where Corbyn is taking the Party. Corbyn has always been a “movement” guy, more concerned with making philosophical points than in the problems of governing, which was fine when he was a back bencher, but not so much now that he is the alleged “leader”. (Indeed, it was his nonchalance to Parliamentary politics and real power that led to the vote of no confidence by his fellow Labour MPs.) The Trotskyites and the far left Socialists have no interest in governing either, as they are more interested in fomenting discord, gridlock and disappointment, with the hope that this will lead to discontent with the current government system and result in a Marist revolution. (I recognize that this seems like something from the middle of the last century that was utterly discredited by the 1960s and it is a real sign of how messed up Labour is that anyone is talking about it.) Momentum, the movement supporting Corbyn and seemingly in control of Labour membership, is, like the Trotskyites, a group with little interest in Parliamentary democracy or in developing political power. They are more interested in ideological purity and in attacking the mainstream labor leaders, stuff right out of Leon’s playbook. As this far left element gains a foothold in Labour, the idea that Labour should be an effective opposition Parliament becomes less central. The party is in shambles and the fact is that they do not seem to have prayer of being elected and could be destroyed if a General Election was called. But that doesn’t seem to really bother them. Since Democracy does not work if there aren’t two viable parties (something Americans have come to realize), it should. This whole Labour dispute about the Trotskyite entrants makes you wonder whether to laugh or cry.

And while this pathetic sideshow is going on, Labour is tearing itself apart about who should be allowed to vote in the upcoming leadership challenge. I won’t bother to detail the dispute (and the resulting legal challenge) and the twists and turns that have just ended. As one of my favorite Guardian writers, Marina Hyde, puts it, “To the wider public, Labour has become something that life is too short for.”

The Olympics on the BBC: I’ve been watching the Olympics on BBC and it is a completely different experience:

• To begin with, there are no ads. This leads to lots of kind of entertaining or at least odd air time, where everyone is waiting to start again when NBC tells them that they can.
• The BBC does not broadcast sports with the polish of American TV. I’ve gotten to see some bad commentators, some broadcasts in which the announcers were utterly absent (which is very strange) and I’ve gotten to stare at green pools while someone is figuring out what to do. It is very odd to be watching the tennis final and to have minutes of silence while the match is stopped for commercials.
• The Fijian rugby sevens team has been on of the highlights of the Games for me. As you might imagine, they have never even sniffed a medal of any kind, but their rugby team was utterly dominant, playing a confident and flamboyant form of rugby that no other team could imitate. When they destroyed Great Britain to win the gold medal, the team joined in a circle and sang some sort of song at the top of their lungs while sobbing. I don’t imagine that Americans saw any of it.
• Badminton is an incredibly fast game and fun to watch. Team handball is an utter mystery.
• The BBC still spent lots of time on gymnastics and swimming, but we also got to see too much of sports that Brits are good at, like rowing and cycling. The Brits are like the USA in concentrating on events where they have shot. There just aren’t as many. The good thing is that the sports are sometimes obscure.
• On thing that the BBC does is have essentially two channels showing more typical Olympic coverage and then side channels that you can get with buttons on your remote that allows you to watch field hockey or weightlifting or volleyball or cycling to your heart’s content.

Not really a New Picture: I actually wrote about this picture months ago and had put it aside to see if it was finished. It has been sitting out on top of a radiator and I’ve gotten used to it and have decided that I don’t want to play with it any more. It is a picture of lily pads (obviously, I hope), that was supposed to have frogs until I discovered that I couldn’t really paint frogs.

Meanwhile, I have resumed my homage to Georgia O’Keeffe. It has turned out to be time-consuming and a bit less satisfying than I thought it might be. I may take a break and work on something new, hoping to be more inspired when I return to it.