Mancunian resistance to lockdown

Her Majesty's Government wish to place Greater Manchester under the strictest lockdown restrictions and the city's mayor is refusing to cooperate without greater financial support. The city is run by the Labour Party: perhaps they are finally remembering their roots in seeking to preserve people's jobs.

However, their hospital beds are already filling up. What I don't see is what leverage the mayor thinks they have. If you don't give us more money then we will behave unsafely, sicken and die at you? To me it seems optimistic to bet that the blame will not fall on those refusing to implement the public health advice, holding elderly parents' lives hostage to reduce retail and entertainment redundancies.

A last look at the mountains

Yesterday we took the A9 up to Aviemore for a pleasant lunch in an inn. The main point was so that I could take another look at the region's scenery. The mountainsides can be quite bare, just some scrub, dotted with rocks and streams and roaming sheep. It would be nice to return someday to drive the length of the A93. I expect to find the Smokies to be rather more forested, quite a different feel.

I was reminded to be glad that I got to use the Cairngorm funicular while it was still running. Sadly, climate change will probably end skiing in Scotland.

Diet and exercise adjustments

This week I am in an unusual transitional period as I relocate to the US. Yesterday I stopped counting calories; I shall restart once I have settled better after moving, still limiting to eating 8MJ per day. Last spring I had mentioned weighing around eleven stone and aiming for ten. (An English stone is fourteen pounds.) I am halfway there and I now figure that, anytime I drop below 140lb, perhaps I can regard that as an excuse to have a day off counting that week.

My resting pulse is now higher, more like 80bpm than 60bpm, which may indicate that my short bodyweight workouts help it less than my cross-trainer time did, so, after moving, I may have to take up jogging or suchlike, sooner rather than later. I won't buy another cross-trainer while I am in a rented apartment and I won't use a shared gym before receiving a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.

Migrating geese

When we lived nearer Dundee I often saw large formations of geese overhead. Nearer Perth I still see some but not as many. However, over the past few days I have seen many, sometimes enough that their honking is audible even from the ground. Perhaps it is their time to be on their way somewhere.

Still hesitant to invest

While I remain ready to buy if stock prices much fall, I have been surprised by their robustness in the face of the increasingly obviously out-of-control pandemic causing such illness, lockdowns and general economic distress. If a market correction is warranted, it looks to be neither as soon nor as sharp as I had expected. It may be that the S&P 500 will benefit from a combination of the Federal Reserve continuing to buy bonds, economic stimulus from a new Congressional session, and persistently low interest rates.

Therefore I suspect that there will not soon be a large dip for me to buy into and, otherwise, I am leery enough of what this quarter may bring to prefer to stay wholly cashed out of US stocks. Historically I have favored large cap but, in considering what might work out best given what I expect may come to pass, in the next quarter I am most inclined to shift strategy toward buying some smaller cap value stocks in sectors like construction, technology and healthcare.