Running Down for Easter

I'm finding it extremely difficult to motivate myself to actually post anything today.  For one thing, whilst I'm sure I had some vague idea for today's post this morning, over the course of the day it has completely faded away.  On top of that, I only have one more working day to go before I take my Easter break.  Not surprisingly, my motivation generally has been pretty poor these past few days.  Work-wise, I've just been going through the motions, doing the bare minimum until I can go home.  My mind is entirely focused on my time off.  Not that I'm doing anything exciting, just resuming the work in the garden and the external paintwork that was interrupted by the Winter, but it isn't work.  Right now, I desperately need a break from that increasingly depressing treadmill.  But it isn't just me that seems to be running down in advance of the long Bank Holiday weekend: even the news seems to have run out of steam, now that the 'excitement' of Maria Miller, the Culture Secretary, having finally resigned in the wake of her non-apology for fiddling her expenses.  (Of course, the departure of the chief cheerleader for Dave's war on internet porn does raise the question of whether these attempts to censor the web will end.  After all, her replacement looks like the sort of bloke - bald and middle aged - who might like a quick look at online bare boobs and bums now and again.  Not that I'm saying he does, obviously.  Just that he looks the type who might).

Indeed, last week there seemed to be a rush to 'tie up' loose plot lines in advance of the holiday getaway: Nigel Evans was found not guilty of sexually molesting young men, Miller resigned, Lord Myners resigned from the Co Op, the search for flight MH370 seems to have, for now, hit a brick wall and so on.  About the only on-going story line we have left is the growing tension between Russia and Ukraine.  Even that seems to be playing out in the news bulletins with a strange lack of urgency.  The two sides seem to be stumbling toward an armed conflict and yet nobody outside of the region really seems to care any more.  Certainly, all the bellicosity from the West which followed the Russian annexation of Crimea seems to have faded away as it becomes apparent that President Putin just doesn't care and that US simply isn't prepared to risk World War Three over the issue.  It's one thing using military force against third world states because they've supposedly got Weapons of Mass Destruction, invading their neighbours or are oppressing their own people, but it's a different story when the invading and oppressing is being done by a superpower that indisputably does have WMD.   On that note, I'll just go back to anticipating my time off.