You might very well think that fleeing the garish lights of the larger platforms for this dimmer, more private alcove represents some sort of defeat. I couldn’t possibly comment.
Nevertheless, here we find ourselves. You, no doubt, indulging in a discreet scroll during some unguarded moment, and I, taking up residence here. The previous establishments, Medium foremost among them, had begun to pall. So much strident noise, so many performers jostling for the spotlight, all overseen by algorithms with the aesthetic judgment of a particularly obtuse committee. One grows weary of the circus. Thus, a strategic withdrawal to this self-contained domain, where words may appear without the tiresome obligation to court favour or chase applause.
My dear Yanks, just in case you persist in imagining British politics as a rather grander affair, all echoing domes and presidential podiums, permit me, however, a brief explanatory aside, offered purely in the spirit of international amity.
The chamber that truly commands my attention is the House of Commons: a long, uncomfortably intimate rectangle lined with opposing rows of green leather benches. No sweeping amphitheatre. No heroic distances. Just two factions glaring across an aisle scarcely wider than the reach of a ceremonial sword (a reminder of happier, more direct times). The government on one side, the opposition on the other, close enough for every barb to land and every feigned yawn to be noted. The Speaker presides with a blend of medieval pageantry and occasional outright fury. Debates erupt in constant interruption, laced with elaborate courtesy that barely conceals the knife.
That particular shade of green — deep, slightly worn bottle-green — has long been my preferred hue. Not the drowsy crimson of the Lords, that genteel retirement home for the worthy, but the sharper, more vital green of the lower House. The colour of calculated ambition, of power wielded through insinuation rather than proclamation.
I must confess, though the word “confess” rather implies wrongdoing, which I naturally disclaim, that I follow events there with an interest some might deem excessive. Semi-feverish, perhaps. The midnight votes, the engineered rebellions, the exquisitely timed resignations… quite impossible to ignore. There is, after all, a certain perverse elegance in a system that contrives to be simultaneously operatic and brutally efficient.
Yet Westminster is merely one of my quieter vices. I derive comparable, if not superior, amusement from the shadowed disciplines of security and technology. Those refined games of exploitation and countermeasure, where ingenuity triumphs in silence. And then there is the peculiar delight of contemplating red tape, bureaucracy proliferated for its own exquisite sake, where nary an uttered word can be taken at face value, and a subtle shift in phrasing may invert entire meanings with sudden, furious consequence.
From time to time, these matters — political, digital, administrative — will surface here in long-form dispatches, addressed, as always, directly to you. No importuning for attention, no vulgar subscription demands. Simply observations.
The page lies blank for the moment. The benches stand empty.
Shall we proceed?