Cautionary tale

I slept amazingly well after last night's banquet and woke up refreshed and rather late, given that I had an extra Morning Prayer upload link to post of WhatsApp, standing in for Pearlin. Ten minutes later she sent a message from South India thanking me. Such a small world the digital world. I was treated by Clare to a sweet and savoury pancake breakfast. She was up a long time before me.

After breakfast, I recorded and edited next week's Morning Prayer and Reflection and then we walked to the Royal Welsh College for lunch, but only sandwiches and cakes were available as the kitchen is shut on a Saturday. I wasn't yet ready to eat and just had a coffee. Clare settled for a sandwich and a de-caf latte, and then we walked home, and had an early meal. 

I was pleased to hear that the 300,000 strong protest march about the Gaza war was re-branded by those involved as an appeal for an Armistice on Armistice Day. The only violence was by far right activists who attempted to breach the security cordon around Whitehall to 'defend the Cenotaph', and cross Westminster Bridge to attack protest marchers, as if the police couldn't. Ridiculous attention seeking behaviour. Over a hundred of this mob of hooligans were arrested. The Met police read the situation correctly and achieved their stated aim, and successfully countered the outrageously distrustful irresponsible remarks during the week of Home Secretary Suella Braverman. She's discredited herself, but will she now resign, or will the Prime Minister sack her first? We'll see. Another Tory comic soap opera.

Ruth agreed to give us a lift to Llantwit Major at a quarter to five, to hear a presentation on painting icons of the Theotokos by Fran with suitable music from Mark on the viola. It took place in the Galilee Chapel of St Illtud's Church, a perfect setting for an audience of about 20. 

Fortunately driving conditions were good for driving both ways in the dark, as we had a rain free day, cold but with mainly blue skies. We were home just before nine, in time to watch a French movie about an air crash investigator whose expertise lay in detailed analysing of sound tracks. A plane, thought to have been hijacked turned out of have been brought down by an security hacker whose secret on-board exploit of the flight safety system to demonstrate a hidden fault goes catastrophically wrong and kills 316 people. Then a conspiracy to cover-up nearly succeed, but the sound track expert dies, having found the evidence and sending it to his wife before his car system is remotely hacked causing it go out of control and crash. 

It's a nightmare story of what could be possible in our over dependent digital world. We've had automatic flight safety and auto control systems causing crashes in real life already. I don't want any car which relies on internet connected electronics. Our present 15 year old car has central locking and electric windows and these give us problems as the wiring has an untraceable fault, which alters the locking priority and stops windows operating. This seems dependent on temperature and humidity variation. So why should I ever trust any all-electronic system. If it can be hacked, someone will.