The evening before last was an extraordinary one for team GB in the Winter Olympics because the team secured two gold medals in the course of a single day, the first time that this ever been achieved by a GB team. The first gold medal was in the mixed team snowboarding event. Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale were the first pair to medal, delivering a stunning performance to take top spot at the Livigno Snow Park. The pair, world champions in 2023, beat Italy to the gold medal by 0.43 seconds in the final. It was then the turn of Matt Weston and Tabby Stoecker on Sunday evening to win the next gold in mixed team skeleton. Having been the dominant winner of the men’s title on Friday evening, Weston became the first British athlete to win two medals at the same Winter Olympics when he and Tabby Stoecker beat Germany by 0.17 seconds. To put this into context, the winning margin in the mixed team skeleton event is about the length of team for a single human blink to take place and so the differences in competitors can often be measured in hundredths of a second. The UK never does particularly  well in these winter sports events, largely attributable to the fact that as a nation we do not invest much in these facilities. Germany, by contrast, does invest heavily and this pays off in the number of medals that they subsequently achieve. Germany maintains a significant, high-investment winter sports infrastructure, particularly in southern Bavaria and regions like the Black Forest, driven by a strong, multi-billion euro economic impact. While facing climate-related challenges, investment remains high, focusing on artificial snowmaking and year-round facility adaptation. The week ahead is quite a light one for me because I have perused my white board of forthcoming engagements and there is nothing in prospect whereas the following week seems to be full of events. After an incredibly rainy day the day before, yesterday seemed as though it was going to be one of those clear yet cold days so there is no excuse for not undertaing another walk down into town. This week many of the local schools are having their half-term break so I shall expect to see many grandparents entertaining children as their parents are probably at work. This used to be particularly noticeable when Waitrose had their own cafe facility, now abandoned as a cost-cutting measure, but the passing of which is still mourned by many of us. I notice that today is the 15th birthday of Larry, the Downing Street cat. To followers of this blog who were used to my stories about Miggles, the local cat who adopted me before suddenly disappearing just before Meg’s demise last year, the cat was the spitting image of Larry who in terms of markings could well have been the father of Miggles. When the photographers are awaiting an announcement from  Downing Street, then the peregrinations of Larry are a constant source of amusement and many classic moments are recorded on film. One of these was the disdainful way in which Larry refused to be stroked when Liz Truss was entering Downing Street for the first time as Prime Minister. An entertaining journalist has even ‘recorded’ an interview with Larry who was asked his opinion about Liz Truss’s period as the UK’s most short-lived premier, the cat looked away disdainfully and then stalked off, thus accurately reflecting the mood of the nation as a whole. In fact there was said to be along-running feud  between Larry and Palmerston, the feline mouser whose domain was the Foreign and Commonwealth Office across the road from Downing Street but Palmerston died recently having enjoyed a period of semi-retirement in Bermuda.

Two surprising little events happened yesterday. The first of these relates indirectly to this blog as WordPress, the app that drives the blog was reporting that I needed to update a key file but there was no real indication how this should be done. So I got onto the lady running the company from Winnipeg in Canada who has rented me webspace very  reasonably for the past 15-20 years. I emailed her about my little problem which she fixed for me explaining how it was a little quirk n the WordPress app and then she added condolences on the death of Meg. I am not sure how she knew this but I sent her a link to Meg’s eulogy page which also has links to a series of photos and she sent me the most wonderful reply which reduced me to tears. She explained to how especially moving she found the eulogy to be, especially as in her own strict religious upbringing funerals were devote to sermons only and eulogies were not in their tradition. She ended her email with the thought that ‘We have known each other for years and my heart goes out to you’. The second  story is also a Meg-related one but it relates to an acquaintance that I know by sight as a regular dog walker up and down the Kidderminster Road. I explained how Meg had been dead since last May and she told me that she already knew. One of her friends from the street in which she lives had told her about Meg’s passing but I did not know this person at all. Mind you, I suppose that I had sort of become a well known sight in the area because  there were not many people in a hi-vis vest and an Australian bush hat pushing their wives up and down the road in awheelchair on an almost daily basis. So Meg and I must have become quite a familiar sight to all kinds of people over the months, (perhaps even a year and a half) in which we made our progress up and down the hill.

The latest government ‘U’ turn is quite a dramatic one. After the Reform party had brought a legal challenge to the government about cancelling local elections covering 136 local authority areas, the government has decided to proceed with these elections after all. I wonder whether the legal advice was to the effect that the government were likely to lose the court case in the High Court in any case so capitulation now was the most sensible course of action. The government has also agreed to pay the legal costs of Reform bringing the legal action so this is quite a turn-up for the books and brings the total number pf ‘U’ turns to about 15 in all.  Governments should listen to other voices if a policy is evidently heading in the wrong direction but the number of policy changes is making the government look indecisive and rudderless and lacking any real sense of purpose.

The weekends have started to take on a slightly different pattern. On the day before yesterday, my son and daughter-in-law called around to jointly watch the rugby together and to discuss some family affairs. In the first match, Italy were playing Ireland  and by half time Italy were actually ahead before they were eventually overhauled by the Irish in the second half of the game. The second match was pulsating as it was the oldest of rivals, England versus Scotland at Murrayfield Edinburgh) The Scots played out of their skins before their home crowd and deservedly won the match having outplayed England in practically every aspect of the game. They eventually won by 31:20 and the sports pundits have labelled their performance as outstanding – they are for the time being actually on top pf the mini-table of Six Nations results and have ended the England team  who have had a run of 12 games without defeat. In all honesty, like the preceding match, my family and I only paid half attention to the match as we were simultaneously discussing some of our own domestic affairs. As we progressed into the early evening, my son and daughter-in-law ordered a meal of fish and chips which we ate on our knees in front of the TV. The late afternoon was also punctuated by the arrival of my chiropodist who cares for my feet on a monthly basis and who has been coming to our house for at least ten years. As we know each so well, we always have a lot of experiences  and confidences to share with each other and although I was a little surprised to have a late Saturday appointment she had another series of clients who she could only see on a Saturday afternoon so this was a working day for her. Part of my new weekend pattern is to attend my local church for the early  morning service on a Sunday at 8.30 rather than attending the previous Saturday evening. This new pattern is going to suit me a lot better because quite apart from being late which assists parking in a crowded church carpark, there is the additional bonus of tea-and-biscuits in the parish hall immediately after the service. This, I anticipate, will allow me to participate more fully with my fellow parishioners and certainly last week I had some delightful conversations over a cup of tea. This week the most amazing coincidence occurred. I got into conversation eventually with a lady who mentioned that she had passed me yesterday whilst we were both on the Kidderminster Road – I was walking down into town and she was walking her dog. It transpired that she had remembered me walking up and down the hill with Meg in her wheelchair and not only remembered Meg but they had chatted briefly. Now this parishioner now only knew my two sets of friends from down the hill intimately as she used to clean for one set of friends and also knew the French lady who was a neighbour but has moved up to Cheshire to live near her daughter. But the connection did not end there as she also knew one of my ex-Waitrose coffee drinking group who is now living in one of the nearby residential homes in Bromsgrove. Now that this particular parishioner and I have got to know each a bit better and she is a regular dog-walker as well as attending church, we will probably bump into each other quite a lot. So my new policy of attending the service on Sunday morning and then having a cup of tea afterwards in the church hall is already paying dividends. After lunch, my son and daughter-in-law are due to call around  again and we are going to watch the French versus Wales match where we predict that the Welsh team will be slaughtered but surprising things can happen in rugby matches such as, after a transgression of the rules, we can witness  a temporary period of sending off (popularly called being sent to the ‘sin bin’) for 20 minutes. This can alter the whole balance and dynamics of a game and it was a feature of the England v Scotland game the day before and the Wales  team a week before.

After I had got home from church, I looked in vain for my little black purse from which I knew I had withdrawn some coins to pay for my tea and biscuits in the parochial church hall earlier on in the day. So I decided to return to the hall at the conclusion of the 10.30 service to see if it had been handed in. It only contained coins and not the credit cards and the like  which would be found in a wallet so I can just about grin and bear its loss. I decided to stay and and have another coffee and biscuits (and cake this time round as well) My purse had not turned up yet but there is a slight possibility that have been put in safe keeping for me by one of the 8.30 group of parishioners. After a little while I fell into a conversation (liberal politics) with a fellow parishioner and it was evident that our thoughts were very much aligned on a whole series of political issues. My new found friend is part of a discussion group of generally left-leaning individuals who love to talk about politics and my friend’s view is that I would find the group very much to my liking. They meet in a local golf club for breakfast about once a month or so and therefore it is likely that I will get an invitation to shortly to join them.

I cooked myself a slightly out-of-the ordinary lunch as I had bought a couple of frozen duck legs to be served with a tangy orange sauce. This was cooked n the microwave oven for 45 minutes and then served with some potatoes and broccoli and I had just about completed the washing up when my son and daughter-in-law called around as we had agreed to watch the rugby together. This was always going to be a very one sided contest pitting on of the strongest teams (France) against one of the weakest (Wales) We vied with each other to see if we could predict the magnitude of the defeat as it was evident that the French would completely dominate the Welsh which they did. My family had brought around some homemade mushroom soup so we all enjoyed this in the late afternoon tea, made the more enjoyable as we complemented it with a home-made tomato bread

So last night, although we have waited a week for it, GB has its first medal at the Winter Olympic games – and it was a gold. The winner, Matt Weston, had been leading throughout the competition and, in a competition where the difference between competitors is measured in hundredths of a second, he increased the lead over his nearest rival to 0.88 second in a near faultless final run. GB has done quite well in this event in the past but to put Weston’s achievement into perspective, Weston is the first individual male British competitor to win gold at a Winter Olympics since figure skater Robin Cousins in 1980. So it seems hard to believe that we have had to wait for nearly half a century to achieve  another individual men’s gold medal. Britain had high hopes of a medal in both the curling and also the ice dance events but we have nothing but disappointment so far.  In the political world, the Epstein affair is still yielding surprises. We now learn that Epstein had installed some spy cameras in his private office and some grainy film is now emerging of young women and Epstein alone in his private office. The survivors had always claimed that it was one of their fears that the activities in which they were forced to engage would have neen captured on film and their worse fears appear to have been confirmed. Some of the Congressional hearings n which Trump administration members are supposedly being held to account are turning into pure farce. The most notable person to give ‘non-evidence’ was Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, who when faced with survivors ,who were allowed to attend the Congressional hearing, refused to even look at them or to apologise to them, Instead she answered questions with a rant about how well the Dow stock exchange index was doing  under Donald Trump’s presidency or enquired why the questions that she was asked were not also asked of a previous (presumably Democrat) Attorney General. The extent of the cover-up is now becoming clearer day by day as absolutely none of the names of the rich and powerful (apart from perhaps one foreign sheikh) have been released whereas name, addresses and even photos of some victims has somehow escaped the redaction process despite the strictures of the Epstein Transparency Act passed by Congress. It is now being said that the scale of the cover up now exceeds the infamous Watergate. In the UK, ‘The Guardian’ has explained the massive asymmetry in the US political system where Trump and his acolytes lie repeatedly whereas his opponents who tell the truth are vilified. The key asymmetry can be spelled out simply. Trump pays little or no regard to the conventional bounds of truth or honesty. His documented tally of false or misleading statements runs into the tens of thousands: the Washington Post registered 30,573 such statements during Trump’s first term in the White House, an average of 21 a day. In a single interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes earlier this month, Trump spoke falsely 18 times, according to CNN. To hold him to account for this dishonesty is to cast yourself as an arbiter of truth, which creates the instant and obvious expectation that you yourself must be truthful. Here, then, is the asymmetry: he can lie, but his critics cannot. Later on today, there is an expectation that my son and daughter-in-law will call around to watch the England vs. Scotland Six Nations rugby match collectively to which I can look forward with pleasure. Scotland were beaten in their last match by Italy which the simultaneous ascendancy of Italian rugby and the parallel decline in the performance of the Scots. Meanwhile Welsh rugby is in a dire state. Tens of thousands of tickets for Wales’ three home fixtures in this year’s Six Nations have still not been sold. The matches at Cardiff’s 74,000-seat Principality Stadium usually sell out or reach high capacity for a tournament that has traditionally been a highlight of the Welsh sporting calendar. On Friday morning there were 15,300 unsold for Sunday’s clash with France; 6,700 left for Scotland and 27,000 for Italy’s visit in March, according to the WRU’s official ticket site. This is an almost unprecedented situation for Welsh rugby which have traditionally been regarded as one of the stalwarts of the game.

Life has a certain unpredictability and so it turned out this morning. Although cold, we had a clear blue sky and some sun shining for the first time in days so I decided to resume my erstwhile habit of walking down into town (avoided for the last week or so when it has been so wet) because although  my left knee is a little dodgy I feel that walking as a gentle exercise is a good practical therapy. During the course of my walk, my path happened to cross that of a post-lady and I was emboldened to ask her why both she and her maLe colleagues were often to be seen in shorts even in the depths of winter. She did not mind in the least answering my question and she explained to me that both postmen and post women in wet weather might experience wet flapping trouser legs and wearing shorts was the best way of avoiding this. All of this made absolute sense so there is a little mystery of life solved for me. After I got to Waitrose, I hunted out a supply of bran buds (not bran flakes) as I know from the past that the Waitrose product probably comes off the same production line as the market leader but at two thirds of the price. I had recently read an article on the importance of fibre to gut health but I could not find the ideal product but had to settle instead for wheat flakes, enriched with bran ad sultanas with which I will have to make do. As I had my coffee, I got into conversation with a young lady also enjoying her free cup of Waitrose coffee. We opened the conversation by admiring each other’s scarves (hers was that of an Arsenal supporter, mine the ‘de rigeur’ accoutrement for Manchester University undergraduates in 1965.) She was a graduate of Durham University but had studied French and German so we found ourselves swapping stories about our experiences of Vienna (in which she had a student placement) It will be fascinating to see if we will other chance meetings in which we can explore our experiences of other European cities.

Although you might have thought that we had had enough rain to last a lifetime, it is still remaining as I got up yesterday morning and the prospect is actually for more rain and for the weather to become colder. So although we are practically half way through the month of February, we still have some weeks of wintry conditions to endure. That having been said, I am relieved in a strange kind of way that Meg, my wife of nearly sixty years, died when she did last May because trying to push her out in the wheelchair in these wet conditions had she lived would have been miserable for both of us, As it was, I managed to push her out every day in her wheelchair protected by a huge Russian manufactured heavy weight blanket and we managed it several times a week so the weather must have been more clement at this time last year. In fact her last trip out was exactly a week before she died and she was asleep much of the time but when I look back  on events, I am amazed that we (both) managed to achieve these trips out. Although the weather is gloomy, I have a couple of social visits in store for the morning one of which is to reconnect with my University of Birmingham friend and we are scheduled to have a coffee together in my favourite little coffee bar which I frequent at the end of the week before I go to have lunch with my Irish friends. There is some shopping which urgently needs to be done in the morning so I have the prospect of quite a busy day. Yesterday, I pointed out the ‘cri de coeur’ that Sky’s political correspondent had made regarding the non-regulation of the internet to which her teenage daughters were exposed. But after the example of Australia, it does now appear that several European countries are now appreciating the potential harm offered to adolescents. I read this morning that France and Spain are promising laws to ban child access to social media as early as this year whilst Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy, and Slovenia have proposed similar legislation. So it now appears that a head of steam is building up in favour of a ban on the use of social media for the under 16’s (although, once implemented, no doubt a way will be found round it) Nonetheless, the signs of encouraging although I suspect it is a sign of ‘too little, too late’ After all, the combined financial power of big tech is enormous. As of late 2025 and early 2026, the combined financial power of top US tech companies—(Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Tesla)—significantly exceeds the nominal Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of most nations. Together, these seven firms have a combined market capitalisation of roughly $22.4 trillion, which is about four-fifths the size of the entire U.S. economy and larger than China’s GDP. These figures are absolutely staggering once one stops to contemplate them and even if most nations on earth tried to take collective action against ‘big tech’ they would not be able to match them in terms of sheer financial muscle.

In the late morning, although it was pretty cold and miserable, I took to the High Street in order to buy two pairs of trousers, one of my trusty pair having a tear in on of the legs and I thought that the trousers 8-10 years old were not worth repairing. So I went to my usual outfitters on the High Street and was fortunate to buy two pairs of cargo trousers, one colour a kind of dark olive green which is officially described as ‘Moss’ and the other being black. I did have a cursory search for shirts but only found one in my size not worth purchasing Then I  popped off to the ‘Gifts of Love’ cafe where I was greeted as always by the proprietor and we exchanged some stories with each other whilst indulging in coffee and cake until my University of Birmingham friend turned up, all by prior arrangement. After we had engaged in an entertaining morning in which I brought my University of Birmingham friend up to date with all my news of my comings and goings and then went home. I had been invited out for lunch with my Irish friends and so I popped down the hill and spent a very happy time with them, having both a lunch and then an extended chat for most of the afternoon. We have not had the opportunity of an extended chat like  this since the Christmas  break and the bad weather that we are experiencing means that I see them less often by chance than I used to do when I was pushing Meg up and down the hill in her wheelchair.

The campaign group Palestine Action have had a victory of sorts in the High Court. The Court ruled that on two criteria the ban on the groups demonstrations could have been said to have been disproportionate. We did see the bizarre spectacle of the police having to arrest hundreds of supporters who were holding up signs saying indicating their opposition to genocide as such an act was said to be in support of a terrorist organisation. The sight of elderly and sometimes members of religious groups being labelled as terrorists and liable to up to 40 years of imprisonment certainly appeared to be disproportionate to members of the liberal population. However, the government will certainly appeal and the ban on Palestine Action’s activities continues until an appeal is heard by the Court of Appeal and this case will probably end up in the Supreme Court and will perhaps take months to resolve. One powerful argument is that the normal criminal law should be utilised for evident acts of violent protest and that therefore labelling Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation is itself disproportionate. But to many people, including myself, it seems odd that the state feels the need to label the holding of a placard as support for a terrorist group but this is the way that the legislation has been framed.  One is left with the distinct impression that the action taken against protestors seems to be an attack upon political opinions held by group members with which the government disagrees and evidently the Court judgement today indicates  that it had come to the view that the human rights of Freedom of Expression and Freedom of Association was threatened by labelling Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.

After my long and very fruitful video-call with my friend in Hampshire the other night, I had texted a couple of friends down the road  suggesting that we might meet for a coffee in the next few days. The evening before last, my Italian friend replied apologising that she had not been in touch before, but she had experienced quite an arduous three quarters of an hour session with her local (private) dentist and felt rather unwell as a result of it all. I sympathised because this does sound a long time for a dental treatment session and I told her about my own recent experiences where I had been massively overcharged but managed to rectify the situation. My friend is still in the business of selling her house so that she can eventually live nearer to her daughter but she does not have a buyer in prospect at the moment. My Italian friend and I go back a long way and, of course, she knew Meg very well so  was appreciative of the chat and we will probably do it on a weekly basis from now on. Another wonderful surprise was an invitation from my Irish friends down the road for a lunch in a day or so and, as it happens, we have quite. lot to talk about with each other as we have not had a really good long chat since Christmas time which is fast receding into the difference. It is fairly well recognised that much of Donald Trump’s demeanour is due to an excessively narcissistic personality (as well as impending dementia) so I decided to undertake some internet researches to ascertain how common what is termed NPD (Narcissistic Personality disorder) might be in the general population. What I learnt was not only information about the condition itself but how toxic the condition could be for those caught up in relationships (marriage, friendship, work colleagues) for those interacting with persons who exhibit NPD. My internet researches revealed the following. NPD is estimated to affect approximately 0.5% to 5% of the general population, making it a relatively rare clinical diagnosis, although some studies suggest higher lifetime prevalence rates up to 6.2%. It is more commonly diagnosed in men (50-75% of cases) and often appears in early adulthood. While estimates vary, it is generally believed that 1 in 20 people (5%) may exhibit traits. In mental health clinics, the prevalence is higher, with estimates ranging from 2% to 6% of patients seeking help. Many experts believe the condition is under-diagnosed because individuals with NPD rarely seek treatment, often appearing only when co-occurring issues like depression or substance abuse arise. While full NPD is relatively uncommon, narcissistic traits are more frequently observed, especially among younger adults. In the same researches there was often practical help for those caught up in a relationship with those exhibiting NPD. The bulk of the advice was to get away from the person and not try to ‘reform’ them as such efforts nearly always ended in failure. Moreover, a failure to get out of a relationship could have severe adverse consequences for both the mental and physical health of those who were having to cope with relationships in which the other partner was exhibiting NPD. I found this quite fascinating material as I do not think it is widely appreciated (not least by myself) how toxic NPD could be for those who get caught up in its trail.

Later on in the morning, I made sure that I attended my Tai Chi class which I was glad to do as I had missed last week’s session. Afterwards, I was a little disappointed that my bank manager friend with whom I normally chat with over coffee had to dash off to transport his wife somewhere but today was one of the days in the month when a couple of police did their stint in the community centre by sitting down and having a coffee whilst making themselves available to anybody who might need the kind of advice that the police are able to give. I enjoyed chatting with them for the best part of an hour and they were explaining to me how decades or so they go to a shop lifting incident and they could get the whole incident processed within an hour or so whereas today the necessary bureaucracy takes up the rest of the shift. We exchanged quite a lot of stories about modern day police work and others from the ‘chatty table’ joined in. After they had left, I dropped into conversation with a couple who had married to each other for 62 years and who both had a wicked sense of humour which has, no doubt, kept them going over the years. We had some interesting conversations about the wife’s role in acting as a mentor/adviser in the local mental hospital in Bromsgrove. I had often heard people talk about Barnsley Hall and so did a bit of a search on it history. Barnsley Hall in Bromsgrove was a major psychiatric facility and mental hospital that operated from 1907 until 1996. Originally established as a county lunatic asylum to relieve overcrowding at Powick Hospital, it treated patients with various mental illnesses and epilepsy. The site was largely demolished in 2000, and is now a housing development.  After these interesting chats, I collected my newspaper and then came home and cooked myself a meal of salmon, potatoes and sugar snap peas.

I have always had a high regard for Beth Rigby, the chief political correspondent for Sky News. But today she had dropped out of her normal job reporting politics and wrote a personal piece how she was coping with overseeing the work of her two teenage daughters, as they were now part of the internet generation, replete with smart phones and social media in abundance. She writes that she is probably known best as Sky News’s political editor, but also a mother to two teenagers aged 13 and 16. They were babies born into the age of the iPad, the smartphone and social media and have grown up in what I call the digital Wild West. Like the Wild West frontier of the 19th century, this technological frontier of the 21st century is rapidly expanding, lawless, and lacking in institutional regulation. It is populated by some good actors and many bad ones. That’s why she could completely sympathise with the parents now screaming to the politicians that they want to turn it off and stop under-16s using social media. It is a conversation that has been turbocharged by Australia’s decision in December to bring in a social media ban for under-16s and a series of landmark trials brought by parents in the US to hold the world’s biggest social media companies responsible for harms to children. I found this whole story a brave one to write but she must have felt that the whole dilemma is one bursting with significance but one in which the politicians always seem to be several months behind the tech giants.

Everything was delayed yesterday morning as I got up later than normal – at least it was light when I eventually hauled myself out of bed. The evening before, I had engaged in a (very) long video call with a close friend from Hampshire – we often have a long chat about once a month as we always have a lot to say and to share with each other. His wife is very poorly at the moment and although the diagnosis differs, many of the external manifestations of the illness mirror that of Meg who passed away nine months ago now.  So we share practical and emotional support for each other as there are things in ‘normal’ life (apart from caring for our respective spouses) that need to be done. One particularly practical issue to be done involves utilisation of the ‘Power of Attorney’ to the full as my friend had not fully appreciated (nor did I at the time) that the ‘Power of Attorney’ is automatically made null and void at the point after which the loved one has passed away. So this is one of the really practical tips I have managed to pass on as I am some months ahead of my friend on what are essentially similar care trajectories. Incredible to relate, my friend and I were actually chatting non-stop for the best of three hours non stop until tiredness overwhelmed us and we had to make for our beds. This morning, I have been sending some texts which has further delayed me. But later in the day, I should have had a hospital appointment but the day before  I had received two texts, one saying that the appointment had been cancelled and to expect a new appointment date through the post. The second text reminded me of my appointment time but told me to ignore the text of the appointment had been cancelled in the meantime (which it had). So I just get a feeling it is going to be one of those ‘itsy-bitsy’ types of days where nothing quite falls into place into place the way it had been planned but at least the weather is quite mild and, despite rain in the air and it being a bit gloomy, the temperature is about 8° which is not too bad for this time of year. One can also see the first glimmers of spring vegetation start to appear such as the Forsythia bush which often sports an array of small yellow buds/flowers at this time of year.

Later on in the morning, I went down to the Methodist Centre near the centre of town and was delighted to see one of my old Waitrose coffee drinking pals on her own so naturally I joined her. She was one of the group of originally about eight of us who have now shrunk to about 2 (including myself) but we a pleasant chat today. I As she is a key-holder, it looks as though she will has responsibility for opening up the premises first thing on a Wednesday morning so it now looks as though we might coincide at a regular time each week. Tomorrow is my Tai Chi class which I missed last week so this is worth reconnecting with. I have switched my weekly shopping day to a Wednesday rather than a Thursday and without having to make provision in terms of alcohol or food for any special meals was actually quite delighted to have a shopping bill that was about £20 lighter than has been the norm recently. I have just seen a clip of film in which Pam Bondi, Trump’s Attorney general was before the House Judiciary committee and was asked to explain why it was that the names of perpetrators of sex crimes were nearly always redacted whilst names (and contact details  and n some cases photographs) of victims were not redacted. The Committee was shown unequivocal proof of this in a series of placards held aloft by survivors who were allowed to attend the meeting. Bondi was asked to apologise to the victims present in the court but pointedly refused to do instead claiming that she refused to participate in this political theatre and went off another rant about a completely unrelated matter. The chairman of the Committee is a Republican but when witnesses refuse to answer a question, he just moves on to the next part of the business which makes a farce of the whole proceedings. One cannot imagine the Chair of a Select Committee in the House of Commons letting a key witness not answer or evade a question but, of course, American politics is so divided that none of the normal rules seem to apply. So when members of the Trump administration are asked to account for their actions, they blatantly lie or evade the questions asked, even when presented with incontrovertible evidence, and they are then never subject to any sanctions by the Committee chairman which rather negates the whole purpose of having a committee hearing in the first place.

One of the facets of our political life is the fact that there is a general belief in accountability and that our rulers should answer questions honestly, truthfully and without equivocation. But whenever a question is asked of one of our political leaders either in in government or opposition, it is rare that the question ever gets answered. Even the same set of ‘facts’ can be presented in different ways  and I was conscious of this during the time of my academic life when I taught research  methods. Let us imagine that in a survey of public opinion, we had a response in which 50% did not know or had no opinion on a topic, 25% were opposed to it and another 25% were in favour of it. Let us say the topic was a ‘road widening scheme’ and given the response pattern  given above it would be possible to argue that  or that ‘75% were in opposed to the scheme or had no opinion one way of the other’ or that ‘ 75% were in favour of the scheme or had no opinion one way of the other’ Both responses would actually be an accurate reflection of the answers to the question and for this reason I used to counsel that questions avoided a ‘soggy middle’ but forced respondents to chose by using four categories such as, in relation to a hypothetical road  widening scheme, ‘very much opposed’, ‘somewhat opposed’, ‘somewhat in favour’ ‘very much in favour’. Questionnaires are often very badly designed, in any case, and may serve a quasi-political purpose rather than a truth-seeking objective.

Harold Wilson, the famous veteran Leader and Prime Minister in the 1960’s, coined the phrase that has stuck ever since and it is ‘ a week can be a long time in politics’ This is as true today as ever and we might add that a day can seem a long time as well. After the Mandelson revelations and his subsequent disgrace, the future of Keir Starmer has appeared to be on a knife edge as the perpetual question arose as to why Mandelson was ever appointed to be British ambassador to the US in the first place. After his Chief of Staff and then Director of Communications resigned yesterday, the leader of the Labour Party in Scotland called upon Starmer to resign. If this was meant to be a ‘coup’ and the calculation was that other prominent figures  would join the call for a resignation, then the coup failed. But we knew that there was a meeting of the Labour Party in the early evening and the mood threatened  to be ugly. But one by one, members of the Cabinet, including the PM’s principal rivals, tweeted their support for Keir Starmer and in the evening meeting with the Parliamentary labour party, Starmer came out fighting for his political life and gave, by all accounts, a barn-storming performance which had the effect of staving off any potential rebellions at least for now. The trouble is that any possible contender has problems  to face – Andy Burnham is not yet in the Commons, Angela Raynor is still embroiled with the Inland Revenue dealing with unresolved tax affairs,  with the Health Secretary Wes Streeting tainted by his close association with the disgraced Peter Mandelson. There is no appetite for an immediate change of leader so the party will limp on until the local elections in May. At these, the Labour party may well be slaughtered at the hands of Nigel Farage and the Reform party so the possible of a change in the Labour leadership may well be delayed for a month or so. An interesting view of the whole fallout from the release of the Epstein files is that it appears that those who are suffering are the ‘good guys’ and not the perpetrators of the sex crimes themselves. In the 3 million files that have been released in the US there have been a whole slew of redactions (i.e. crucial names blacked out) and it appears that the names of those redacted are nearly always the rich and powerful who have a lot to hide whilst the names and details of the victims themselves has sometimes been left slip in the redaction process. It has been calculated in the New York Times that Trump’s name is mentioned some 38,000 times in 5,300 separate files/documents but anything remotely critical is either redacted or else withheld in the 3 million documents that the FBI is refusing to release. So the Epstein Transparency Act passed by Congress is subject to a highly partisan release process. In one case, it looked as though a list of possible fellow collaborators with Epstein was released in error and then immediately withdrawn but some of he American liberal media may have managed to make some screen grabs of this critical FBI list before the document was withdrawn. The volume of material is so great that it is probable that the names of the vast majority of rich and powerful men drawn into the Epstein empire and engaging in sex with underage girls will never be revealed and, of course, they have been protected by the American state itself (at least in the short term)

The morning turned out to be quite an engaging one. For  a start, our domestic help turned up and also my son and daughter-in-law as well. These three had not managed to meet since before Christmas so we all had a rather jolly time whilst we told ourselves what had been going in our respective lives. I popped down into town to pick up a newspaper and get some cash out of an ATM before it was time for my Pilates class. We have been joined by a new class member who has taken the place pf one of long established class mates who has recently moved down to Hampshire to live near her daughter. My trip down to my Pilates class had a rather unusual twist to it. The nearby car park is run by the local authority and their ticket machines accepted payment by card or, in one location, by cash. I always pay my £2 for two hours parking fee by cash because  the card reading option seems complicated and I am regularly stuck in a queue behind people who are trying to work it out. So having put in my coins, they did not seem to properly engage within the machine and when I pressed the ‘Green button’ to issue a ticket, I was given the ‘free’ ticket which is used for a free 30 mins. So it appeared I had lost my money but I consulted the instructions  and pressed a red button which gave me back my coins. After I got my ticket, though, I repeated the cycle but by pressing the red button I finished up with the machine disgorging me five £1 coins over several iterations until evidently that which had been blocking the machine had cleared itself. As I currently  spend anything between £5-£10 a week on car parking charges, since I no longer have Meg’s Blue Badge upon which to rely, I accepted this little free gift with some joy although no doubt other citizens of the town will have been frustrated to have lost money in a mal functioning machine. After  I returned home, I heated up the last remnants of a ‘boeuf a bourbignone’ cooked last weekend and watched some of the Winter Olympics where we are still awaiting a medal of description and have come fourth in a couple of events. The next day I was due to go to hospital for a routine check on my ears but had received a text cancelling the appointment and asking me to wait for a new appointments letter. The original appointment was for the early  afternoon  when trying to find car parking space is extremely difficult so I am hoping that a re-timed appointment slot will be earlier inn the day. Car parking charges are nearly always a nightmare as the last time I went to hospital, the time had just edged into the second hour and hence I was charged £4.00 which seems a lot for a stay of 61 minutes.

So we awoke yesterday to a temperature of 6° which has been the norm for the few days, but needless to say, it was raining again. In case this seems like the longest period of rain that anyone can remember, they would be right unless they were aged about 130. Researchers at the University of Reading recorded 25 straight days of rainfall at the start of the year – the lengthiest unbroken run since records began nearly 120 years ago. I suspected that a shift in the position of the jet stream may have something to do with this persistent spell of rain and my hunch proved to be correct. A southward shift in the jet stream frequently causes persistent rain, particularly in the UK and Europe, by acting as a ‘conveyor belt’ for low-pressure systems. This shift allows wetter, unstable air to travel directly over regions, often causing them to stall and creating prolonged wet, windy conditions. So there we have it but I suppose I have to thank my lucky stars that this did occur when I was pushing Meg up and down the Kidderminster Road in her wheelchair as last year the weather seemed reasonably dry. Sometimes, the Spanish used to experience ‘febrero loco’ or ‘mad February’ in which  towards the end of the month there would be a spell of fine weather associated with  a period of high pressure. As we might imagine on the political front, we are in an era of the Prime Minister trying to restore relationships with this fractured parliamentary party by making suggestions as to how the vetting procedures might be improved. Some may be tempted by the American experience where important positions have to be approved before a special oversight committee. But practically all of the members of the current Trump regime went through public hearings but although some outrageous things were revealed which indicated unsuitability for the post (e.g. the Defence Secretary was a ‘Fox News’ anchor man and had the most limited of low-ranking experience in the army) but the Republicans voted ‘en masse’ to approve of the posts in any case. So even this method of vetting has proved fallible and we shall have to wait and see what changes Keir Starmer is going to suggest. An interesting trial is due to open in a court in Los Angeles, later on in the day. The social media companies are collectively being accused addictive by design, a bit like tobacco and cigarettes were in the 1980s.They will face around 22 ‘bellwether’ lawsuits, i.e. test cases, with lawyers considering the testimonies of more than 1,500 people when launching the action. Of course, the action will not succeed given the power and influence of the social media companies who will deploy the argument that they are just publishing platforms and have no control over the content of what is actually posted on line (apart from rather ineffectual controls which are meant to protect children) I have no doubt that these concerns  are also felt in the UK which is a why a proposal is under consideration for smart-phones to be banned for under 16’s. I have always found it amazing that what is called the Main Street Media staffed by well-trained journalists who are used to check and verify their stories before publication are at best, ignored or at worst, disbelieved. Meanwhile, at least some of the population are of the view hat anything they read on social media is probably  correct and his allows for conspiracy theories and the likes of the anti-vaccination movements to flourish. Apart from sustained efforts by schools and parents to address this problem (which many do not) the tech companies will be always be one step ahead and this is even before we start to unleash the impact of artificial  intelligence (AI) models. When I used to both research and to lecture on quality management issues, I was often frustrated to find that a group mind-set tended to dominate the algorithms used by the search companies such as Google.  So in response to a search query such as ‘What are the arguments against Total Quality Management’ I would get responses such as ‘The arguments against Total utility  management are misplaced due to …’  but I do concede that a similar  query today gives a somewhat more nuanced response (perhaps under the impact of AI itself).

Yesterday was an unpredictable sort of day. I needed to get some items in the post today which I did as a matter of priority and then I went off to visit my dentist, not to receive a course of treatment but to query the cost of the treatments I received last Thursday. My son and I talked over the cost of the treatment I had received last Thursday which was basically one filling which required sone drilling and then what one might one call a renovation of some older fillings that required some attention but not replacement. My son and I consulted  the internet to discover that there are three payment bands ranging from simple inspections to more complex interventions such as crowns and dentures for NHS dental work Basically, as the charges seemed so high I suspected that I had been charged at the Band 3 rate rather than the Band 2 rate and I telephoned them on Thursday afternoon to initiate a query but with the response that the dentist would be consulted and then they would get to me (which they did not) So today I turned up at the dentist with some NHS documentation explaining that I thought  I may have been inadvertently overcharged and they agreed immediately giving me a refund of 75% of the bill. In other words I had been charged four times as much I should have been and so a refund was charged back onto my card. I am going to wait until later in the evening to check  whether the refund has found its way back into my account where it is sorely needed to pay my central heating servicing bill. Finally, the domestic political news has been pretty remarkable today insofar as Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff resigned yesterday, his principal Communications Director resigned this morning and the Scottish Labour Leader, Anas Sarwar has publicly called for Keir Starmer to step down. Starmer is due to address the Parliamentary Labour party in the evening and the mood within the party may well determine whether the prime minister is forced out or lives to fight another day.

I had asked my son, who has always been a keen photographer, to consult his digital collection of photographs to see if any of the pre-digital era family photographs had been scanned and had found its way into his collection. He did unearth four, two of which were seaside snaps and can be dated and were probably taken on a beach in the Gower peninsular, South Wales when we visited  Meg’s cousin for a family holiday. But I was interested in one of Meg and myself atop a mountain and the question arises whether we could apply our collective memories to ascertain which  mountain it was and a possible date. Putting our heads together, we have concluded that it could be Snowdon, Wales’s highest mountain and was evidently taken in mid-summer. I think we can discern in the background Lyn Glaslyn, the most prominent, high-altitude lake (Blue Lake) situated directly below the summit and apparently, according to the internet, now a favourite for wild water swimming. This particular lake sticks in my memory because my son and  actually swum in it. The full story is that we ran into a couple  of young German girls with whom we ascended Snowdon in one direction and we decided to stick together as walking companions on another route down the mountain. On the day in question, it was an incredibly hot day and when the German girls espied the lake they exclaimed that it would be a good idea if we all went for a swim (which was probably incredibly dangerous given how cold the water was) We explained that we did have our swimming trunks with us but the young German girls exclaimed that we should not bother with that and promptly completely stripped off and ran into the lake. My son and I felt obliged to follow their example but I know that Meg declined the offer and we certainly did not stay too long in the water as it seemed freezing cold. But to return to the family photograph, we think we can date it to the late 1970’s because of our hair styles and I have a bandage on my left knee. I had been involved in a bizarre accident on the Leicester Polytechnic campus in 1973 when a runaway car, whose driver had fainted, ran me over smashing up both of my knees and taking two of my students on its bonnet through some iron railings. Although I made a pretty full recovery, my left knee occasionally caused me some discomfort as it still does to this day so the bandaged left knee helps to date the photograph. But now I am not so sure as I search the internet for images of the cairns which are the trig points for both Hellvelln and Snowdon and our photograph matches neither. Although we have a lot of photographs still to be unearthed in our final assault on a ‘hobbit hole’, the vast majority of these are likely to show Meg and myself plus son in deep snow and dressed in cagoules and anoraks taken at Easter time which is the time of the year when we typically used to take a holiday in the Lakes. Easter was our preferred time because it was always so crowded during the summer months but it will be interesting to see what we manage to discover. Once this is done we will scan them in using our scanner which has always done a good job in the past and I will ensure that I always crop then to the same dimensions so that they can easily be displayed in the software (HTML code) that I was using very recently.

I decided yesterday morning, almost on the spur of the moment, although the thought has been in my head for some time, to attend the service at my local church for 8.30 on Sunday morning service rather than the service at 6.00pm on Saturday evenings. This turned out to be quite an inspired decision because I knew several of the congregation by sight and, as a bonus, at the end of the service they had opened the parish hall where those who wished to could assemble for a chat over a cup of coffee. I got into conversation with a man who was not only a keen walker but also very knowledgeable about American politics so we shared views with each other about the American body politic. I also got into a conversation with a young mother who was occupying the pew in front of me nursing her very well behaved seven month old baby so we thought we would probably carry on chatting next week. So I have decided to undertake a switch from the Saturday evening to the Sunday morning service if only on a Saturday driving to the church in the driving rain and then shooting in and out of the church in the dark means that here is no time to socialise. So given that my reasons for attending church are as much social as they are theological, I think that a switch of times will prove to be very beneficial for me. After I had returned home, my son called around as he indicated that he would and we discussed things like family finances with each other which was very useful. For the rest of the day whilst we have the Winter Olympics to occupy us, I actually prefer something a little more mind engaging. Yesterday evening there was a film about the life of Emily Brontē of which I only have scantiest knowledge so I suspect that this is one of the transmissions where I can be wrapped up in a warm bed and view it on the bedroom TV.

The political news that emerged during the day was the resignation of Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. Tt is true that many of the Labour Party backbenchers had been calling for his head and McSweeney himself takes full responsibility for advising the choice of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador. That having been said, the mood the House of Commons as a whole was that there needed to be scapegoat and it is probable that McSweeny went before he was actually pushed as even Keir Starmer appreciated . And whilst constitutional niceties still remain, it is the Prime Minister’s responsibility  to take what advice is offered but then not only to act decisively but to take responsibility for decisions, even they turn out to be wrong, or at least misplaced. No doubt this resignation will be discussed deep into the night but it may be a case of ‘too little, too late’ to save the fate of Prime Minister.

You might have thought that given the outpourings from the White House, the material could not sink to such low depths but what has happened in the last day takes ones breath away. A video has been posted depicting the ex-President Obama and has wife as apes and the video stayed current for some twelve hours before it was taken down as a ‘mistake’ The explanation given is that the White House was trying to portray politicians as animals from Disney cartoons with Trump naturally being the ‘king of the jungle’ whereas the Obamas were designated as apes at the end of the clip. Initially the clip was defended by the White House and only when there was complete uproar across the political spectrum including one black American senator was the clip taken down. When Trump was questioned about this, he said he had seen the earlier part of the clip and approved it but conveniently not the later sections including the racist taunt but does one believe anything that Trump says? Before the post was removed, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended it and said the depiction formed part of a longer video depicting various politicians as animals saying that this is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King. She pleaded that the fake outrage be stopped  and that the White House should report on something today that actually matters to the American public. Trump himself acknowledges that a mistake has been made but blames it all on an over-enthusiastic White House staffer and had refused to apologise for the content if the clip. Mr Trump has a long history of attacking Mr Obama, his predecessor as president, and was a vocal proponent of the ‘birther’ conspiracy theory. The theory cast doubt on Mr Obama’s birth in Hawaii, asserting that he was actually born in Kenya, and therefore ineligible to hold the office of president. Mr Obama produced his long-form birth certificate in 2011. In 2016, Mr Trump publicly accepted that his predecessor was born in the US. I personally have only once seen something as completely offensive as this. Early in my career as a teacher of sociology, I taught some ‘Race Relations’ and put on a series of voluntary videos on race and world religions which were shown at lunchtimes. These were completely voluntary but the students flocked to them and the students  enthusiastic response to my efforts actually forced a change in college policy and I was happy to explain my actions before a special meeting of the Academic Board of the college of education in which I worked. I do remember, though, that  one white member of the Board thought that my efforts were totally unnecessary because the only ethnic minorities that her students would ever meet in small English rural towns were members pf the gypsy and travelling community ( and ‘they were white in any case’) But as part of my researches, I did discover some examples of racist literature attempting to draw comparisons between black people and apes by drawings of caricatures side by side attempting to discern similarities between the two (I did not show any of this material in my own courses) naturally both I and the world have moved on in the last half century, one would have hoped. Meanwhile, I watched some of the opening of the Winter Olympics last night broadcast from Cortina in Italy but the Winer Olympics does not grab my attention as much as their summer counterparts. But I have to say that, like others, I do enjoy the opportunity to watch sports such as curling and the British team (largely Scots I would think) have got off to a flying start by winning each of their first five matches.

I took the opportunity whilst I was on the road this morning to call again at the house of the disabled person whose wallet I managed to restore to him the other day. In my desire to find the identity of the owner I had taken out a membership card to an organisation that catered for disabled people hoping that by this route I could find an address. So I had inadvertently left the card out by the side of my computer so I wrote a little note explaining why I had taken it out of the wallet in the first place. The wife of the disabled person was delighted to see me again and to receive back the precious card so I now feel my task of returning the wallet and its contents is completed. In the afternoon, we witnessed the Wales vs. England rugby match and it is true to say that this rather mirrored the rugby on France vs. Ireland the previous evening where France predominated. At half time England were leading 22:0 but the Welsh did not help themselves by acquiring two yellow cards (and hence down to 13 men) within a minute o so of each other. Cards are issues following an infringement of the rules and these might be either a cynical disregard for the rules or a burst of over-enthusiasm leading to an infringement.  Welsh rugby has been going through  a lean period for the last few yeas and perhaps a defeat was of no real surprise. The English team were good but against such inferior opposition it was a little hard to judge how effective they eventually turned out to be. The next match is against Scotland for the Calcutta Cup next weekend but Scotland were beaten by Italy so that team might not prove to be any stern opposition to the English  pack. I actually missed going to church in the evening as I was rather taken over watching the rugby match and we also have the Winter Olympics in Italy which takes up most of the scheduled broadcast for most of the evening. So far the British team are doing well at curling and there are always a host of other sports with lots of thrills and spills to absorb the attention. n terms of domestic political news, the Mandelson affair will continue to dominate the Sunday newspapers and no doubt the political programmes in the morning. The latest focus of attention is the amount of an enormous pay-off given to Mandelson at the point where he was sacked as the British ambassador to the US and any amount awarded to him suddenly seems massively inappropriate.