Red Legged Partridge

I had another blip gift today when three red-legged partridges arrived to explore the front garden across the road from me, I took the photo from my front porch. I managed to finish using the remainder of the brush-in grout at the front of the house this morning. This afternoon I watched one of the MyPhotoClub talks, this one from the author of a book recently published of beautiful camera phone photographs from around the World. Camera phones are so good for street photography in particular, and also for those moments that just arise when you don't have your camera on you. Of course, for the majority of people in the World, the camera phone is the only phone available to them, and it's so good that their photos are now being shared.

Covid Update: (for my record only)
The Covid inquiry is continuing and I've watched quite a bit of it this last week. I thought I'd capture my personal overall thoughts, rather than the detail from what is quite a depressing spectacle.
- To me, the issues that arose are just symptoms of what comes across as a hopeless governance and risk management structure at the heart of government, the civil service and the health and social care system;
- The lack of a pandemic plan of any worth is a lot worse than I suspected. There didn't even appear to be plans in place for dealing with the incapacity or death of a Prime Minister during a time of crisis. (It's normal in companies to have front line departmental continuity plans, produced within a framework, coordination and the oversight of a specialist team who are experts on the subject - this latter part appears missing);
- It comes across that Cabinet and the Civil Service are being undermined / bypassed by unaccountable and unelected SpAds (special advisors) like the infamous Dominic Cummings who are using the most appalling language to undermine colleagues and the system;
- The Culture at the heart of Government was shockingly bad and comes across as aggressive, dismissive of key controls, that sees lying as acceptable, misogynistic and not welcoming of people from different 'classes' and backgrounds;
- The mechanisms for making decisions and recording the information provided for the decisions made is shockingly informal at times, with lots of things being discussed via informal and sometimes unrecorded What'sApp messages. (The only learning point from this seems to be that those in Govt are now setting their WhatsApp messages to auto delete - more evidence of the rotten culture);
- The majority of those giving evidence who were at the heart of decision making, have come across as not very impressive individuals, and several were shown to have behaved in a toxic manner (those with a scientific / medical background have come across best);
- The Inquiry itself appears to be focussing more on the recollections and opinions of those giving evidence, rather than 'hard' evidence;
- It is such a big subject, I hope it is possible to reach decisions in the round - for example, it is clear we should have locked down earlier, but would this have been possible given the lack of plans and the work needed to create them and put in place the funding to support those plans?