I’m currently reading Paul Farmer’s Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues, for tomorrow night’s meeting of the Green Book Club that I’m probably now not going to make. (Sorry folks!)

I’ve anyway only read the first chapter, but its intellectual foundations, at the junction of participatory anthropology and medicine (the author being fully qualified in both), are spectacular illuminatory.

I’ve been musing all day on this passage:

This conflation of structural violence and cultural difference has marred much commentary on AIDS, especially when that commentary focuses on the chief victims of the disease: the poor. A related trend is the exaggeration of the agency of those most likely to become infected. Often such exaggeration is tantamount to blaming the victim. Explorations of AIDS have involved intense scrutiny of local factors and local actors, including the natives’ conceptions and stated motives. But it is possible to explain the distribution of HIV by discussing only attitude or cognition? After more than 15 years in Haiti, I would not hazard to comment on the psychological makeup specific to Haitians with AIDS… On the makeup of Haiti’s changing social conditions and their relation to Aids, however, much can be said. (p. 9 California Press 1999 edition)

It seemed particularly apt on a day when the Tories have found a new way to approach “back-to-basics”. They aren’t attacking single mothers this time – just cohabiting ones, and their partners for good measure. So the problems underlying the British underclass, in the Tory view, are economic – it is because they aren’t behaving, are exercising the limited agency available to them bady, by not trotting up to the altar. That nicely lets the economy and government off the hook then…

Interesting piece on the lessons from the Antikythera Mechanism, the ancient Greek computer whose secrets were recently disentangled. It is a variation on the much explored “why didn’t the ancients invent the internet” discussion, but using that to ask “what is holding us back, and what could send us backward”.

The answer, and it seems like a pretty decent answer to me, is reliance on fossil fuels.

The final result (after two recounts requested by Labour) was: Lib Dem 1,098, Green 812, Labour 808, and Tory 198.

In an old Labour stronghold, second is a fine result. We just haven’t yet found a way to get around the sheer weight of a Lib Dem national swarm. They threw MPs around like confetti, hoardes of activists, and a forest of paper.

It was hollow electioneering pure and simple – and if it could be shown up as such, the vote would pop like a yellow balloon. (Very few people – outside the activists – want a Lib Dem poster in their window.)

BTW – I lost the bet on the turnout: it was something like 32% – still pretty high for a byelection.

I am now going to sleep. I may be some time.

Well I spent about five hours canvassing today, and three hours running a stall on Kentish Town High street, battered by a squally wind, and I think I could fairly say I’m shattered.

I’m feeling pretty happy with how the by-election campaign has gone – there are always things you would have done differently in retrospect, and there’s always the feeling that if you knock on one more door it might make all the difference, but overall I think the Camden Green Party did a good team job. And personally I finished the night by converting two Lib Dem voters, which made a nice final flourish.

Now it is up to the voters, whose verdict will be delivered about 24 hours. The fallout from tonight’s final bit of excitement – the arrival of a Tory leaflet that is flat-out wrong – it claims that Sian isn’t a school governor when she is, and that was clearly stated on several of our leaflets – could take longer. They have been contacted – and the media knows about it, so that one could run and run.

And it will be interesting to see how many voters turn out, after a pretty intensive campaign by four parties. (Even the Tories did a lot of phone canvassing and leafletting even though they haven’t got a hope.)

I’ve got a small bet riding on the turnout: I reckon it will be more than 40%, even though that is generally considered impossible in a by-election. (The general election in May in Kt was about 42%.)

One certain outcome is that a lot more “no junk mail” stickers have gone up on Kentish Town letterboxes, so you might call that a bonus.

The Telegraph today has a good round-up of suggestions for ethical Christmas presents. Mostly on the web – UK, but the goats for Africa etc are all there for purchase from anywhere.