The heatwave continues today and there are warnings across the country that people should take the necessary steps to protect themselves. I think it is fair to say that Meg and I have not been unduly stressed by the heat so far but we are aware that as one ages, the body’s ability to cope with extreme heat diminishes. So we are taking the necessary steps to protect ourselves by not exposing ourelves to too much sun and keeping ourselves hydrated during the day. So we decided to take the car to collect our daily newspaper and then went off to the park by car. Having parked the car, we made for our usual set of benches but deliberately chose a seat that was in the shade rather than being in the full blast of the midday sun. We drank our coffee and ate our pieces of fruit and then made for home relatively early. We cooked ourselves our midday meal a little early because we knew that our chiropodist was due to pay us a visit in the early afternoon. Just after she had left and we had organised her fee payment over the internet we experienced a power cut. This only lasted for five minutes or so but there are always some appliances that need resetting after a power cut such as our bedside radio so this is one job for later.

Today is going to be quite an important day politically as the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs will choose a new executive committee today and will then determine the timetable for the election of a new party leader. The number of declared candidates stands at 11 at the moment and if Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, decides to stand then this will make 12. However, it seems to be a racing certainty that the 1922 committee will increase the number of MPs who have to sign the nomination papers for a candidate. At the moment, I believe this is 8 but it will probably be increased substantially to at least 20 and perhaps as many as 30. This will have the effect of cutting the number of candidates at a stroke as many will fail to attract enough signatures to stand. We expect the conditions for the election of a new leader to be announced some this evening but in any case, the Tory High Command, if I can put it that way, are determined to reduce the number of candidates to just two before parliament adjourns in about 10 days time. If one candidate does not withdraw (as happened when Andrea Leadsom withdrew from challenging Theresa May as she was so far behind) then the two candidates will be put forward to the Tory Party in the country and their votes will determine the outcome. There is a slight possibility that this last step might be truncated in view of the very special circumstances this time around and the fact that Boris Johnson is still the Prime Minister despite the wishes of most of the parliamentary Conservative party) but we shall have to wait and see. In any case, I am not sure that issues like this should be determined by members of the political parties in the wider country as this gave us Corbyn (on the left) and Johnson (on the right) and has the effect of pulling the parliamentary parties towards the extremes of left or right.

As we have mentioned in previous blogs, the issue of tax is tearing the Tory party apart at the moment. Most of the candidates (practically all of whom are from the right of the party) are in favour of tax reductions or reversing the rise in tax and NI contributions that the Johnson government had put in place to fund, inter alia, the costs of social care which is not a trivial problem. One the one hand, many older (and Conservative) voters are having to fund the entire cost of social care themselves by selling their houses and the arguments as to who will fund the social care costs of individuals who are ‘bed blocking’ within the NHS still needs to be resolved. If we have another wave of the COVID virus and already it is the case that hospital admissions are increasing, then in the autumn all of these pressure will become acute again. At the height of the pandemic, the care home owners were asked by the government to increase the supply of places available in the system to ensure that the acute wards could be cleared to make space for the wave of COVID cases. The government agreed some special payments to the bosses of the care home systems (dominated by a few large off-shore firms) who promptly took the money, paid themselves a massive bonus and most of the money disappeared into off shore tax havens and was not spent, as it should have been, on making that the care homes could hire enough staff and equip them with PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) upon which the lives of the caring staff may well depend.

As is customary on a Sunday, I got up early and treated myself to a little bowl of cereal before I collected our ration of Sunday newspapers. On my way down into town, I was greeted by a couple of our Catholic friends with whom I had not coincided for some time and I said that I would catch up with them both later, which we did. On my way down into town, I treated myself to a ration of Mozart on my trusty old iPhone and then got home to watch the Sunday morning politics programme with Sophie Raworth. Much of the programme was devoted to some of the election campaigns of the ‘runners and riders’ in the Tory race to replace Boris Johnson as leader of the party. We are currently at about 10 declared MPs and there may be one or two more than declare tomorrow. The issue that is emerging so far is absolutely nothing to do with Brexit, incomplete as it is at the moment. The big campaign theme which many of the would be hopefuls have seized upon is their desire to ‘cut taxes’. There are two problems with this particular approach. From a purely economist’s viewpoint, cutting taxes and thereby giving people more money to spend when inflation is running at 10%-11% is likely to add another twist to the inflationary spiral. But of much more significance is the fact that none of the contenders are saying what they would cut from public spending in order to fund the tax cuts. If one were completely cynical, it could be argued that cutting taxes is just a way of funnelling money towards the already rich and particularly Tory party donors. There is a particular irony in that two of the candidates were ex-Health ministers – in that role, they wanted as much public money as they could get for the Healh Service whilst simultaneously arguing for a lower tax burden overall. But what goes down well with Tory MPs and even Conservative party members in the wider society may well be at a sharp variance with the public as a whole. Some of the MSM (Main Street Media) have seized on this idea but there is quite a sharp divide between those who run their own businesses (and who would welcome a tax cut) and those employed in the public sector (for whom a tax cut may well be a reduction in services and in public sector jobs). When Meg and I walked down to the park this morning, we bumped into our Catholic friends again as they were out gardening and sympathised with our female friend who had broken her arm (or rather cracked a bone at the end of the radius/ulna) and was going to have to keep her arm in a sling for the next three weeks. Nowadays, they do not seem to plaster or even bandage a crack in an arkward place like this but A&E have given our friend a sling which is going to be her constant compannion for the next three weeks.

This afternoon was the Wimbledon Mens final and although I was reading the Sunday newspapers, I started to watch the final stages as it became exciting. In a tense match, Djokovic finally overcame Kyrgios although there were a few outbursts on the way. When the match was over, the two finalists appeared to be on quite good terms with each and, of course, they are likely to meet up in championships all over the globe. When the match was well and truly over, I decided to go and give some plants in Mog’s Den (a strip of land to which one to descend where I indulge myself with growing this and that) a good soaking in water.This is because some of the plants are in tubs which therefore need a watering and the rest are on a slope where it is slightly more difficult for some of the trees I have planted to establish really deep roots.But I was encouraged to see that some that some of the tree roots are in quite a deep shade which will help to preserve moisture in these very hot conditions. I have not done any maintenance gardening in Mog’s Den for a few weeks now but I was quite pleased to see that after a period of benign neglect, some of the plants I planted last year are really coming on. For example, I purchased a ‘tri-coloured’ buddleja which does not seem to have flowered yet but has shot up to about 8′ in height. There are some large brambles that will have to be removed but some other plants seem to be establishing themselves, not least a little oak tree which is itself grown from an acorn from a little oak tree that I brought up to Bromsgrove from our house in Hampshire.

Today dawned as another beautiful fine day so we are, no doubt, going to enjoy a heatwave over the next few days. We did not hurry ourselves this morning but instead breakfasted on an egg and some beet juice which is our new formula for a healthy and sustaining breakfast. When we had got ourselves turned around, we went by car to collect the Saturday newspaper and then on to the park to have our elevenses. We were soon joined by Seasoned World Traveller and we continued our discussions as to the next way ahead in the Conservative party elections for leader. What is interesting about these occasions is the way in which former allies turn on each other with a vengeance. A case in point is Rishi Sunak who was quickly out of the blocks wih an extremely slick, some would say too slick, campaign video which showed evidence of some serious professional attention, not to say money behind it all. No. 10 have started attacking the candidature of Rishi Sunak – surely, it ought to be the role of No. 10 to keep their heads down and not interfere with the normal processes of the election of a successor.

As we had had a fairly early lunch, this gave me some time to get the lawns cut this afternoon. By the time I had nearly finished the big grassed area, my next door neighbour came out to have a chat. Like us, he had been having some problems getting his broadband supply sorted out. In his case, he had been struggling for hours with his supplier who was now trying to charge him an outragous price now that his initial ‘sweetener’ deal had expired. Apparently, he had been on the phone for hours trying to secure a deal which meant he did not have to change supplier and gave him more or less the servive he was getting at the moment and at a similar price. We commiserated with each other as we still have to wait a week until our own comms problems start to be sorted out and who knows what a week on Monday might bring. After that, we discussed with a certain amount of glee what had been happening with Boris Johnson having to relinquish leadership of the Tory party. Occasionally, Meg and I listen to the programme on Radio 4 called ‘Any Questions’ where members of the audience ask questions of a panel broadly representing the range of political opinion. But in today’s broadcast, the Conservative member of the panel was Rees-Mogg who was defending Boris Johnson to the hilt although the other three members were critical of him (incidentally, this probably reflects the state of opinion in the country as a whole) But the audience from Dorset completely howled down Rees-Mogg which I am sure he was not expecting from that part of the world. The BBC normally tries to get ‘balanced’ audiences and it is possible that the Liberal Democrats had managed to smuggle of lot of their own supporters into the programme. But I suspect that echelons of the Tory Party have no idea how much they are loathed in much of the country as, until recently, members of the cabinet had supported a regime of lies, lies, and lies again. Eventually, as we now know, members of the cabinet who had been briefed to go onto the airways and lie on Johnson’s behalf revolted and the rest, as they say, is history.

Next week, a concert of popular classics is going to be put on in our regular church. So instead of attending for a service ay 6.00pm we shall turn up for a concert at 3.00pm after which there will be a bunfight in the church hall and then the normal Saturday service will start at 6.00pm. Meg and I will be well prepared, having gone to a concert recently in the Bromsgrove’s largest Anglican church, so we know to take along cushions to provide a softer surface than the normal church bench on which we will be sitting for hours. I am looking forward to the coming week because having had Wimbledon dominating BBc1 and BBC2 for hours and hours most nights, I will be glad to see the back of it. In its place, we should get the Proms (Promenade Concerts) broadcast on BBC4 and BBC2 from about Friday night onwards. The Proms always puts on some newish or experimental work and I haven’t seen any advance information on this year’s offerings but we shall soon see. We haven’t coincided with our Irish friends for quite some time what with one thing or another so we may drop by and wave from outside the house to let them know that we are still alive! As always, we are looking forward to the kinds of analysis of political events provided by the Sunday Times as we are likely to get a blow-by-blow account of what eventually persuaded Boris Johnson after all of his bluster that the game was up.

The day dawned bright and beautiful with a weather forecast that seemed to presage temperatures in the 80’s (I always remember that 28 degrees C is equal to 82 degrees F) I went down early to collect the newspapers today before Meg and I walked down to the park to enjoy the summer sunshine. Having drunk our coffee, we were joined by our University of Birmingham friend and then shortly afterwards by Seasoned World Traveller. Needless to say, the demise of Boris Johnson and all of the unfolding political events was a massive topic of interest to us. A point emerged in our discussions which is also reinforced by the editorial in todays Times. The point is that both political parties have in the past few years refined their leader selection procedures such that whichever candidates emerge, the final decision is left to the members of the respective political parties. Now it is a truism of the political scene in the UK that the constituency parties are well to the left of the Labour Party (in the case of Labour) and well to the right of the parliamentary party in the case of the Conservatives. So this has given rise to Corbyn and Corbynism in the case of Labour and, of course, Boris Johnson in the case of the Tories. In other words, the leadership and tenour of our political parties are being dragged towards the extremes and one has to wonder whether this is a good thing or not. One solution might be to confine the leadership canidates and campaigns solely to the partrliamentary parties but with the proviso that legitimacy should be subsequently sought by a general election to be held within a year (in the case of a governing party, which is nearly always the Conservatives) When trying to think this through, I suspect that a government which is moderate right or moderate left is likely to be more effective in effecting change for the nation and ‘good governance’ than an incredibly mish-mash of pure centrism. To reinforce this view, I read fairly recently that it is quite possible that in the American context, a Republican voter might not know a single Democrat voter in the whole of their social contacts and vice versa. Hence the situation in which 70% of Republicans do tend to believe that Trump actually won the last election (only getting their news from social media). One would hope that the British political system would try to avoid rather than imitate these American trends and we could therefore take some steps to avoid our political parties being taken over by the rabidly committed (Brexiteers, populists, hard left). All of this, of course, in the context of the current leadership context in the Tory party and is it a good thing that the normal procedures for electing a new leader may mean that the discredited Johnson stays in power until September, two months after a sound rejection by his own cabinet and his own party?

Meg and I came home and had a good meal of fried salmon on a bed of lettuce which is our ‘norm’ for a Friday. We really enjoyed though reading the acres of newsprint that were devoted to a blow-by-account of how Boris Johnson’s grip on power was gradually loosened and, of course, a lot of deep analysis about the personal flaws (i.e. extreme Narcisism) that has characterised the Johnson regime since its inception. After all, Boris Johnson’s housemaster wrote to his father words to the effect that ‘Boris does not seem to believe that he should be be bound by the rules and social obligations that apply to the rest of us‘ and nothing seems to have changed over the subsequent years.

Over the next few weeks, we are planning one day out a week to a neighbouring town and next week we thought we make for Stratford. As we are going to run into a heatwave, though, we are going to avoid the town centre altogether and then just make for a good stroll down by the river. We have been directed to a particularly good car park with the river on one side and some good restaurants on the other so we are going to make for that. The last time we went to Stratford with some friends, I remember that we were incredibly impressed by a group of strolling players who, when given a suitable quotation from Shakespeare, could immediately launch into a soliloqy from whatever play it happened to be. I suppose they had all played many parts over and over again but I found their powers of recall to be absolutely amazing. Stratford at this time of year, just before the school holidays start and before masses of foreign tourists descend upon it is probably delightful but I have bad memories of visiting the town in August with our Spanish friends when the town was teeming and all of the retaurants and bars appeared to be full. But I am sure things will be better than that when we go next week, all being well.

It seemed inevitable like a Greek drama that today was going to be a day of great political drama and so it proved. As the number of junior ministerial resignations started to mount and reach a figure of about 35, it was evident that on the mathematics alone, there was no way that Boris Johnson could survive another leadership contest. At about 10.00pm last night, the news came through that Michael Gove, the ‘Levelling Up’ minister and a cabinet big-hitter had been sacked over the phone. The animosity between Johnson and Gove goes back over the years but this was perceived to be an act of sheer vindictiveness and did not go down at all well with Conservative MPs. As soon as my radio switched on at 6.30am, the junior ministerial resignations continued to rise and some more cabinet ministers had also withdrawn their support. It must have been evident to practically everybody, apart from the PM himself that he was doomed. I wonder, though, what was the influence of Carrie Johnson, Boris Johnson’s wife? Those who follow politics closely will know that it was Denis Thatcher, Margaret Thatcher’s husband who sat down on a sofa and gave a glass of whisky to his wife and said ‘Come on, Maggie – you must know the game is up’ Why the story is interesting is because Denis Thatcher liked to cultivate the image of a rather bumbling, gin-soaked, golf-club bore – hence the columns in ‘Private Eye’ under the title of ‘Dear Bill’. But actually, Denis Thatcher was no fool and had quite a sharp political brain. So I am speculating whether it is political spouses who give the final push at the tipping point. I think the news came through just after 9.00am that Boris Johnson had decided to bow to the inevitable and to resign as leader of the Conservative party whilst remaining as Prime Minister until a new leader is in place. However, this itself is massively problematic. One the one hand, we have to have some sort of more or less stable government in place so that crucial decisions can take place – not least because of the cost of living crisis and soaring inflation levels. On the other hand, the opposition parties and many in the Tory party feel that a discredited Prime Minister who has lost the confidence of his cabinet and parliamentary party does not deserve to be in office for a moment longer than is necessary. The solution may lie in the hands of the 1922 Committee of back bench Tory MPs who may decide early next week to rapidly accelerate the procedures for selecting a new leader so that the ‘runners and riders’ (of which there are many) can be reduced to the two front runners as soon as possible. When the field has been whittled down to two, the decision is then put to Conservative party members in the country and this is how the final decision is made. At this stage, though, there is likely to be one candidate who is a clear front runner as was the case in the run off between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt at the time of the last contest.

My son and I had an appointment with a financial advisor this morning, which was necessary to tidy up some details on a mortgage on my son’s property. The meeting proved to be very satisfactory and has the advantage that the location of the firm of financial advisors is easily accessible for us as well as having a very good reputation. Whilst we were there, the news of Boris Johnson’s resignation came through on our mobiles so when I returned home, I followed the breaking news on the news media and, in particular, the resignation speech which came a tad after 12.30. To my mind, this was quite an extraordinary speech with Johnson seeming to blame everyone but himself and with not a hint of contrition about it. In one memorable phrase, he indicated that ‘when the herd instinct takes over, the herd moves off’ which if you were to decode it is very insulting to the rest of the parliamentary party. The social historian Anthony Selsdon was interviewed and opined that Johnson would come to rue the day when, as the history books are written, it has become evident that Johnson has no capacity for self-reflection or indication that he may have made mistakes or even crass errors of judgement. Meg and I decided to treat ourselves to a Waitrose coffee but once we were safely parked in the carpark, we were approached for a soundbite by a reporter from BBC Hereford and Worcester for a soundbite about the Johnson resignation. On the spur of the moment, I mentioned my delight at Johnson’s resignation, and when pressed for reasons mentioned his constant lies, his desregard for any of the constitutional proprietaries and the total disregard for any norms of ethical conduct. The reporter mentioned to us that our little soundbite might be broadcast between 4.10-4.20 and although we are not regular listeners to Radio Hereford and Worcester, our soundbite was included as part of a collage of responses from members of the public in Bromsgrove. After lunch, Meg and I were glued to the TV to watch the sequelae of the Johnson resignation as the various manifesttions and reactions were gathered from interviews in Downing Street and in the lobby of the House of Commons.

We always knew that today was to be quite an extraordinary day in the political life of the nation, but more of that later. Today is the day when our domestic help calls around to do her bit and, as always, we always have a chat about holidays and the like. Our domestic help is going on holiday next week so we were coordinating plans for when we see her in a couple of week’s time. In the meanwhile, Meg and I made sure that we could walk down to the park and get back in plenty of time for Prime Minister’s Questions. It was a fine day but a little cloudy overall which made the atmosphere feel somewhat muggy but we wandered down, bumped into some acquaintances in the park and then walked back in plenty of time for parliamentary proceedings at 12.00pm. PMQ as it is is popularly known was quite an event to behold. To be sure, there were rows and rows of Tory MPs sitting in their place but they were generally stony faced. Boris Johnson as you might expect was full of his usual bluster which often ‘cuts it’ with his parliamentary party but not today. In fact, one could say that each evasion or inability to answer pointed questions got more and more damning. Keir Starmer put on a pretty devasting performance and although they were well rehearsed, there were one or two noteworthy attack lines. One of these was ‘the first recorded case of the sinking ship fleeing the the rats’ Another attack line that must have struck home was addressed to members of the cabinet who had not resigned with the line ‘what a z-list of nodding dogs’. At the end of PMQ Sajiv Javid who resigned yesterday as Health Secretary is allowed a personal statement – by convention, this is is listened to in silence i.e. without any interventions from other MPs. The attack was quite devastating although with the emotion of the moment, one or two lines were fluffed. But the adjective used most often was ‘excoriating’ and the thing that seemed to have driven Sajiv Javid to resign was the way in which ministerial colleagues had been sent out to lie, lie, and lie again about what the Prime Minister knew. The initial statements from No. 10 was that Boris Johnson had no knowledge of the Chris Pincher sexual antics but this story kept and changing and changing again until eventually Boris Johnson said that he could not remember that he had been informed of these! MP’s streamed out of the House of Commons and, in the meanwhile, the media such as Sky News were keeping a running tally of the number of ministers from the junior ranks had resigned.

At this point, we had a lightning lunch and then I shot into my local supermarket to do my weekly shopping. This is because my son and I have a joint appointment with our financial advisor tomorrow which rather gets in the way of our normal Thursday morning shop. So I raced around the supermarket and was fortunate enough to get all of the shopping done and unpacked before Meg and I sat down to watch the Liasion committee of the House of Commons. This is a very powerful committee in the House of Commons and is formed of the chairpersons of all of the select committees. The House of Commons invites the Prime Minister to attend this committee once or twice a year and it must tax even the most agile of Prime Ministers who have a superb grasp of detail. Now it is well known that Boris Johnson has never had a good grasp of detail and it was very evident this afternoon as he flailed around like a drowning man clutching at straws. All the while, Sky News was running a total of the number of resignations which had reached 38 by the end of the two hour session. Towards the end of the session, he was informed by one of the members of the committe that a delegation of MPs including the chief whip,the new Chancellor of the Exchequeur (only appointed last night) and the Transport secretary had formed a delegation of cabinet members to be joined by several others who were going to tell Boris Johnson that the game was up.

Channel 4 News has extended its coverage by an extra half hour tonight and the media are camping outside Downing Street and inside the Parliamentary lobby of the House of Commons itself scenting that a Prime Minsiterial resignation might be near, even this evning. If Boris Johnson does not go, then the 1922 committee have agreed to accelerate the elections to its executive committee next Monday. They will then change the rules to allow another vote on the PMs future and this might take place as early as next Tuesday or Wednesday. Given the number of ministerial resignations, it is mathematically almost impossible for Boris Johnson to survive that vote but it is possible that the cabinet have persuaded Boris Johnson to quit before then.

Today being a Tuesday is the day when we both meet with our ‘pre-pandemic’ crowd in the Waitrose cafe and also the day, later on, when I have my weekly Pilates session. Knowing that however fine the weather, we were still going to go down by car we did not rush unduly to get going this morning but we did take the opportunity to write an email to our friends in Scarborough to enquire whether we could put some arrangements in place to meet later on in August. Then we went down into town to collect our newspaper and arrive in the cafe at at about 10.30. There, almost on cue, we met with three of our regular Waitrose friends and also Seasoned World Traveller who we now often meet in the cafe on Tuesday. We had a particularly jolly morning this morning with another round of story telling and general good humour before we all went our separate ways. On Tuesdays, I take the opportunity to buy one or two things of which we are running short before we returned home and I got ready to go down for my Pilates class. I returned a telephone call to one of my Oxfordshire friends to arrange a luncheon date some time in early August. We have both been busy in the last week, he with his daughter getting married in a marquee in the garden last Saturday and myself with our well documented comms difficulties.

After lunch which is always a bit delayed on Tuesdays, we had a restful afternoon whilst observing, open-mouthed, the wriggling and squirming that is going in No. 10 at the heart of our government today. Things did not start well for the government this morning as Lord MacDonald, the previous senior mandarin at the Foreign Office revealed that the Prime Minister had been briefed in person of the fact that Chris Pincher had been warned about his activities (probably his groping tendencies) and he had not been exonerated. This put 10 Downing Street into a quandary as ministers had hit the airwaves in the last day or so having been informed (wrongly) that no specific allegations against Chris Pincher had been made. A Cabinet Office minister was then despatched to the House of Common to admit that Boris Johnson had been informed but that he could not ‘immediately recall this’. The Tory benches in the House of Commons were practically empty to receive this news but on the Labour benches, the news that the Prime Minister had had a convenient lapse of memory met with laughter from some, gasps of disbelief from others. In all of the years that I have been following politics, I cannot remember an excuse as lame as the equivalent of ‘the dog ate my homework’ Because of all of this, I wonder what other developments may occur this evening as several Cabinet Ministers are unhappy in the extreme that some of them have been sent onto the airwaves to in effect lie for the government. The backbenchers are similarly unhappy and one suggestion that has emerged is that Tory MPs may well go ‘on strike’ i.e. refuse to turn up to vote through legislation, effectively making the business of government grind to a halt. So I am looking forward in particular to ‘Newsnight’ this evening as well as Channel 4 news that are both likely to be quite forensic in their examination of how the No. 10 machine is operating (or rather not operating) Tomorrow is going to be Prime Ministers Question time at 12.00, followed I believe, quite by coincidence, to a session where the Prime Minister submits itself to an examination of the government’s progress by senior MPs (a liaison committee which I think is composed of the chairpersons of Parliament’s Select Committees) So I think that Boris Johnson’s lapse of memory is going to come under the most intense examination, if not direct scorn, with members of the House of Commons.

Sporting events, and Wimbledon in particular, are dominating the airwaves for the next few days but tonight Meg and I are going to enjoy ‘Today at the Test‘ in which we can see the summary of one of the greatest run chases in Test Match history, in which England chased down an incredibly large total (of about 380 odd runs) to win the test match, and the series, against India who are one of the finest teams in the world. We have had a dramatic end to the day today. Boris Johnson gave an interview apologising for the fact that Chris Pincher had ever been appointed and almost implying he should have been sacked on the spot. At the conclusion of the interview, Sajiv Javid (Health Secretary) and Rishi Sunak (Chancellr) have both resigned and at least two junior ministers have resigned as well. The big question is how many more ministers will follow the two resignations from the Cabinet tonight although a few Cabinet members have sworn undying loyalty (although their days as Cabinet Ministers must be numbered) By the time we go to bed tonight at 10.00pm there may be even more resignations.

Today dawned as quite a bright and sunny day so Meg and I were looking forward to a walk down into the park today because in the last few days we have tended to make the journey to the park by car which shortens our walk somewhat. We enjoyed our walk today and bumped into a couple that we have seen on quite a few occasions in the past but not recently. It transpired that the husband has had a spell in hospital but was now recovering and had been out of hospital for three weeks now so Meg and I thought that he was making pretty good progress. Anyway, we enjoyed a chat with each other and our ‘Lickey’ friends told us about a utility program that rolls all your utilities (gas,electricity,phone, broadband and so on) into a single bill that seemd to get extraordinarily good value once you work out what you are getting for your monthly payment. I may investigate this in the future but at the moment am more concerned to get my BT full fibre broadband working for which I am going to need a new router and new phones (which BT will hopefully send me before my fortnight’s wait is up). Once I had dropped Meg at home, I immediately set off to collect my newspaper but, of more urgency, to pay a visit to the EE shop to see what had happened to my Voicemail. My son had tried to make contact with me a couple of days ago but the phone kept defaulting to saying’ Mobile not available’ or some such. Once I got down to EE, the member of staff tried two or three things and got my phone working correctly – there had been a ‘divert’ in place but neither of us could say how it got there in the first place. Even parking proved to be a little problematic as in the Waitrose carpark, run by Bromsgrove District Council, one of the ticket machines was ‘out of order’ whilst the other had been upgraded to accept only cards and not cash. As it happened, there was a operative collecting cash from the machines and he was soon surrounded by an angry two or three complaining customers that it was totally unacceptable to have a ‘cards only’ machine next to the disabled spot where it was quite possible that an elderly or disabled member of the population might be highly displeased by having to use a card (which they might not possess) all the time.

The Chris Pincher (former Tory Deputy Chief Whip) story continues to unravel. This is what happens in politics if you do not tell the whole truth immediately and attempt to dissemble. Two things have emerged today. The first is that Carrie Symonds (now married to Boris Johnson) expressed doubts about the appointment of Chris Pincher when she herself was Director of Communications at Tory Central Office. So the doubts about this individual were widespread. Now just today, No. 10 has been forced to amend its own story line. It now admits that Boris Johnson was aware of some of the allegations against Pincher, but felt he could not act in the face of unsubstantiated allegations. But even this narrative does not carry out a great deal of conviction. Whilst it is true to say that a person should not lose his post as a result of unsubstantiated rumours, it is a comletely different case if you are thinking of appointing individuals to a post where surely a certain amount of due diligence into a persons suitability should be undertaken. The fact that Pincher is a supreme Johnson loyalist who helped to orchestrate the ‘Save Big Dog’ campain which Johnson named the campaign to shore up his position and prevent him being challenged or unseated is pure sleaze. It is probably the case that the support for Johnson is slowly draining away, one might say day by day, and of course the longer the Pincher routine rumbles on, the worse it becomes for Boris Johnson as the story refuses to die and the notion of sleaze carries on and on. There are some political commentators who believe that the whole of this affair may prove to more damaging to Boris Johnson than the whole of the ‘partygate’ affair. First of all, of course, is the fact that Johnson’s judgement is shown to be poor. Secondly, the denial of any knowledge of Pincher’s background and proclivities now shows a Prime Minister who is more concerned about loyalty to him than normal standards of the probity needed. And, of course, it leads to the notion that Boris Johnson’s first instincts are always to lie, lie and lie again until the narrative has to be altered as more and more revelations come to light. There are going to be elections to the Executive Committee of the 1922 Tory backbenchers committee. A new committee may well change the rules and allow a challenge to Johnson within a year and that looks more likely than not, as things stand this evening.

So a Sunday morning has dawned again which means that I get up fairly early and then make my own way into town to pick up an early copy of our Sunday newspaper. Then the Sunday morning routine takes over which is  breakfast of cereal munched during the Sunday morning (politics) show, hosted by Sophie Raworth. The questioning of a government minister about whether Boris Johnson knew of the proclivities of Chris Pincher led to the following statement : ‘To the best of knowledge, the Prime Minister was not aware of any specific allegations’. Of course, the interviewer should have then followed with the question ‘Were you aware then of any general, if not specific allegations?’ but failed to do so. As Chris Pincher had a reputation as a sex pest and even Boris Johnson had said of him ‘Pincher ny name, pincher by nature’ (not denied by No. 10) then it beggars belief that Boris Johnson did not know or did not care about the reputation of the man who he appointed as the Deputy Chief Whip.  When the government minister called upon to defend Boris Johnson was asked how she knew that the Prime Minister had no knowledge of Chris Pincher’s reputation, she indicated that the source of her information was the No. 10 Press Office which is hardly the most reliable or objective of sources. One does get the feeling that eventually this MP will be thrown to the dogs and another by election will be forced upon the government, even though they are fighting tooth and nail to prevent it.

After we had some breakfast, Meg and I consulted the ‘Weather’ app on our phone to try to work out whether to take a walk or go by car if rain was threatened. In the event, we went by car which proved to be a judicious decision. After we had had our coffee, we were joined by Seasoned World Traveller but we did not have too long to chat because the sky darkened and we started to get rained upon. Accordingly, we walked briskly to our car and then got home to have an early lunch. We had a ‘spatchcocked’ chicken cooking away in the oven and it was just nicely done by the time we got home. We prepared the vegetables of a baked potato and some Savoy cabbage and then we found that one breast was easily enough for one meal. So we have at least two more meals of this chicken ( a breast and two legs), with the remains bagged up and ready for consumption later in the week.

After lunch, we studied the sky and then our weather app to see if we get the weekly lawn mowing fitted in this afternoon. Fortunately, the weather brightened a little and so I got the lawns cut only a day behind the normal schedule. It must be the time of the year and the combination of both rain and sun but the clover, both white and purple, seems to have gone mad on our communal grassed area but the mowing regime seemed to at least keep this under control. It seems that we may be having a few days of hot weather in the week ahead so this is a cue for me to get some much needed gully and border clearing done whilst I can.

I have started to think ahead a little of the trips and ‘staycations’ that we might have during the summer. The more I think I think about the hotel room we have booked at a four star in central Harrogate later in the month, the more convinced I am that with breakfast included we have got an incredibly good deal. It is my sister’s birthday in late August and as it is her 80th, we may well plan a further trip to the same hotel in August so I can treat my sister to some birthday celebrations. A very good friend of ours now lives near Scarborough and we may well make some plan to meet halfway, perhaps in York, where we can travel easily by train from Harrogate. We will probably be able to find a restaurant appropriate to our needs in the vicinity of the station so I think we shall try and get some arrangements made.

Now for a final political story. The Tories have promised that we shall have 40 ‘new’ hospitals by 2030 but the National Audit Office are going to investigate this claim as part of a ‘value for money’ initiative. It transpires that a ‘new’ hospital is so called whenever a hospital upgrades some of its facilities such as they do regularly in any case. Ministers and the health department have been instructed to refer to refurbishments or the construction of new facilities at existing hospitals as ‘new hospitals’. So the claim of 40 new hospitals is misleading in the extreme as we might expect from this government by now and won’t be delivered in any case.

After the wonderful day out we had yesterday, today was the day when we had to try to reestablish our comms networks. I started by getting through to the technical support of BT which happened to be an engineer working from his own home in Sheffield. He was extremely painstaking and was seeking to establish a full ‘log’ of the sequence of calls and actions promised two days earlier. He was very painstaking and methodical and promised that if he had to put me on hold, then he would monitor this so that if the line dropped, he could call me back on my mobile. I must have been on the phone to him for a good half hour after which I got transferred to a team which concentrates on re-connections. I had to go through the full procedures of setting up a brand new package with BT and a new telephone number will be allocated to me. When this happens, they may be able to port my old number back to me again but it was explained to me that this might not be possible and it was difficult to do. Nonetheless, I took the view that if broadband and telephone line were all with BT then this might be possible than if I had gone off with another provider. We are going to have four new handsets and a new router – the big downside to all of this is that nothing is going to happen until Monday, July 18th i.e. a wait of 16 days without the internet ‘proper’, email or a phone. But in the meantime, I am relying upon my iPhone and ‘hotspotting’ to the internet using this phone and so far this seems to work OK. If it transpires that my old phone number is dead and gone and cannot be retrieved, then despite the fact that I had recently renewed all of my business cards and address labels, then I might have to do the same all over again and friends/relatives some of whom are not IT savvy will only have an out-of-date telephone number (communicated on our Christmas cards amongst other things).

Meg and I were delayed in our walk to the park this morning so we picked up our newspaper and headed for the park. As it was spotting with rain, none of our friends were there so we did a tour of the pond and then came back home so we could drink our coffee in the comfort of our own home instead of sitting on a rainy park bench. Then we lunched on some salmon pan-grilled and served on a bed of lettuce and had a restful afternoon, reading the Saturday newspapers. In the late afternoon, it was time to go along to our normal church service. Today happened to be the feast day of St. Peter and as the church we attend is ‘St. Peters’ it was a type of saints day for the church as well. Accordingly we had a few extra ceremonies around the statue of St. Peter which adorns the back of church but we generally shuffle past on our way into and out of the church. In a couple of weeks time, the church is going to be the home of a ‘Bite-Size Classics’ concert  which is a part of the Bromsgrove yearly carnival type activities. The concert is free but donations are to be solicited to be donated to Ukraine refugees and I have no doubt that this will be generously supported. I suspect that some of the curious elderly population of Bromsgrove who have never seen the inside of a Catholic Church will no doubt come along if only out of a sense of curiosity. Apart from Edward Elgar probably having played the organ in the church (when it was still playable), the church is also noted as housing the grave of Tolkien’s mother. We happen to know where this is located because when our Christmas wreath is taken down (on 12th night) we have in the past put on this grave rather than throwing away the wreath entirely.

Little fragments of news have emerged from the Ukrainian conflict. The first is that that the Russians have lost one of their own landing craft when it was blown up by a (Russian laid) sea mine.The other fragment of news is that Ukraine has found a hard drive containing some 100 GB of Russian military data, according to the State Border Service. This mainly contains staff lists and some biographical data as well as some details of military hardware.‘Ukrainian law enforcement officers now have photos, characteristics, copies of passports, and other documents of the invaders’  the Ukrainian State Border Service has indicated. The local political news is that Chris Pincher, the Tory Deputy Chief Whip now notorious for a drunken groping of two males in the Carlton Club is now seeking ‘professional medical support’ presumably for alcoholism rather than his sex-pest activities.