Friday, 21st October, 2022 [Day 949]

Today was, as predicted, a really gloomy and rainy day so after we had got ourselves showered and breakfasted, we surveyed the weather and thought that we treat ourselves to a coffee in Waitrose café. This turned out to be an inspired choice of location because just as I was getting my car parking token, our University of Birmingham friend turned up in his car, evidently with the same thought in mind. So we spent a very pleasant hour having a coffee together and, at the same time, we bumped into one of our pre-pandemic aquaintances as well. Whilst in the café, I received a phone call from one of my oldest (in every sense of the word) friends (who is 95 years old). We worked together in the Central Office of Information in central London (now abolished by a previous Tory government) during 1964-65 so our friendship extends back some 58 years! Before the pandemic, we used to meet, together with family members, in central London but evidently got out of the habit in the past few years. However, we now want to see if can get together some time in November so we need to try and arrange a day and a date, probably on a Saturday, when we can meet again with our friend, her son and daughter-in-law and of course my own son and daughter-in-law. To make life a little easier on the organisational front, my friend has now moved from Devon to be within a mile or so of her son in Surrey. As a link with history, my friend who has had the most interesting of careers one worked with (well, in the same room as) Alan Turing, the legendary mathematician and WWWII codebreaker. I must encourage her, when I see her, to make a tape of some of her reminiscencies as her history goes back such a very long way.

When we eventually made it for home, we decided to have a rather experimental fish lunch which turned out fine in the end. I had bought some Basa fish fillets which I cooked in the oven in tinfoil and then finished off adding to a heated lasagne type white sauce in order to give it some flavour. Together with a baked potato and some cavolo nero kale, this provided a very nutritious Friday midday meal. However, I had not heard of Basa fillets but when I did a bit of research, I discovered that it was fish farmed in South East Asia and perhaps liable to industrial contaminants. Therefore, it might be a bit too cheap so I think that in future I may avoid this and revert back to the sea bass we generally eat on Fridays. This afternoon as it was so gloomy, I decided it was probably a good idea to bring our trusty soupmaker into use. Fortunately, I had a supply of frozen root vegetables stored in the freezer so it was quite a simple job to get these parboiled and then added to some fried onions, coconut milk, lasagne type sauce and some curry sauce to finish off in the soupmaker.

This afternoon has been dominated by feverish speculation as to who will run for the now vacant Tory party leadership (and Prime Minister) The bar has been set deliberately high by the 1922 committee as each candidate must have 100 nominations to enter the first round of voting. This limits the number of candidates to 3 as there are 357 Tory members at the moment. The front runners are Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt and, of course, Boris Johnson. As I write, only Penny Mordaunt has formerly declared her intention to stand. It may be that Rishi Sunak has more support at the moment but it is difficult to tell as there is a lot of ‘spin’ and false optimism in evidence. The arguments in favour of Boris Johnson are that he is the only one of the three with a clear mandate having won a huge majority for the Tories in the 2019 election and, of course, he has an almost mythological characterisation as a vote winner. But even his supporters admit to his flaws (partygate, lying to parliament, acting unconstitutionally in attempting to prorogue parliament to mention but three) but are prepared to overlook these. If Boris makes it to the final two, he will probably win with the wider Tory party electorate. But on the other hand, there is a ‘leak’ from the Privileges Committee which is investigating a claim that Johnson deliberately misled Parliament which points towards a conviction. Were this to happen, then he would be suspended from Parliament and his seat would be liable to a potential ‘recall’ vote by his electorate in Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Here he has a majority is 7,200 which, on present voting intentions, he would almost certainly lose. So will the Tories elect a leader who they have previously rejected and may well within a week or so of winning the race to PM have to resign? The support for Boris is so rabid amongst some that many Tories would be prepared to take the risk whilst significant others are absolutely appalled by any chance he may regain office and are wondering about strategies about how he may be upseated.

Continue Reading

Thursday, 20th October, 2022 [Day 948]

Harold Wilson, the Labour Prime Minister in the 1960’s, coined the memorable phrase that ‘a week is a long time in politics’ This in undoubtedly true but probably needs updating to ‘a day is a long time in politics’ After the debacle of the resignation of the Home Secretary yesterday which was followed by disgraceful scenes in the House of Commons where it was reported that Conservative MP’s were manhandled and bullied ino a vote in favour of fracking, today we had the resignation of the Prime Minister, Liz Truss. It looked as though last night’s shenanigans was absolutely the last straw for many Conservative MPs and no doubt several more letters found their way into the postbox of Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 backbenchers committee who had a meeting with Liz Truss half way through the morning. Then came an announcement in the late morning that there would be an announcement at 1.30. The lectern was duly wheeled out and just after 1.30 Liz Truss emerged from within No. 10 to announce that she had not need able to fulfil the mandate upon which she had been elected and hence she had tendered her resignation to the King. This made Liz Truss the shortest serving Prime Minister in UK history. She has clocked up 44 full days in the role – a long way behind the next shortest premiership, that of Tory statesman George Canning, who spent 118 full days as PM in 1827 before dying in office from ill health. Even the 44 days appears flattering as a whole chunk of normal ‘political’ days were removed as political activity was suspended during the duration of the Queen’s funeral. The idea of a ‘mandate’ is interesting in this context because Liz Truss argued that she could not fulfil the mandate given to her in her election as Conservative party leader. On the other hand, several politicians, not least the recently resigned Suella Braverman, the ex Home Secretary, have referred to the mandate given to them by the election victory of 2019. So which should have priority in cases where they conflict?

Liz Truss did indicate in her resignation statement that the intention was to elect a new leader by a week on Friday i.e. withn 8 days. The very short-lived hope is that a ‘unity’ candidate may emerge that can be elected leader by acclamation. But the modern Conservative party is both so fractured and fractious demonstrated by the fact that eight candidates have so far thrown their hats into the ring and it is rumoured that Boris Johnson is flying back from holiday in the Caribbean and will probably seek relection as well. Quite surprisingly, Jeremy Hunt has already indicated that he will not run. To elect a new leader in just over a week, then Sir Graham Brady may well set the nominations ‘bar’ quite high as well as the percentage needed to progress to the next round of voting. All of the opposition parties are clamouring for there to be a General Election but in order to get this, the Tories would have to bring down their own government by not supporting them in a vote of confidence which is rather like turkeys voting for Christmas. The commentators are making the observation repeatedly that the modern Conservative party may well be ungovernable. As well as being divided by age and by geography, the Tory party is riven by factions of which the most influential is the ERG (European Research Group = extreme Brexit loving right wingers), the ‘One Nation’ group (old fashioned, quite liberal and left of centre Tories), the Red Wall (recently elected into ex-Labour seats in the North and the Midlands), the Blue Wall seats (traditional Tories from the South of England), the libertarian right, some Remainers, those loyal to Boris Johnson, those who loathe Rishi Sunak seeing him as the architect of Boris Johnson’s downfall and I could go on. From the outside, the party looks almost ungovernable.

Trying to predict the outcome of the election requires a brave pundit. The bookies are already putting Rishi Sunak as favourite but I suspect that this does not take into account the depth of hostitility to Rishi Sunak. On the other hand, Penny Mordaunt only came eight votes behind Liz Truss in the leadership elections and seems to have performed reasonably well as as Leader of the House of Commons, even deputising for Liz Truss the other day. I suspect that the final two will be Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt and, if I had to stick my neck out, I would back Penny Mordaunt to eventually win through. This is because I suspect that Penny Mordaunt has fewer enemies and may be better placed to bring various factions of the party on board. One of Liz Truss multiple crass errors was to appoint a Cabinet absolutely in her own image giving no seats to supporters of rival candidates, irrespective of their merits (a mistake even Margaret Thatcher did not make). In addition, she only had the support of less than a third of the parliamentary party, making her the ‘mirror image’ of Jeremy Corbin on the Labour left. In order to expedite the election, it appears that candidates to replace Liz Truss as Tory leader will need at least 100 nominations from Conservative MPs, 1922 Committee chair Sir Graham Brady has said.

Continue Reading

Wednesday, 19th October, 2022 [Day 947]

This morning, we hoped that the engineer would call round to check over our BioDisk and I was mightily relieved to see that just after 9.00am he was there and working on the control panel. He seemed a nice young mn and I always offer a cup of coffee to anyone calling round to do a job either indoors or out. As it turned out, it looked as though it was a transient electical fault that had caused the alarm lights first to flash and then to turn themselves off, so it did not look as though there any serious malfunction or signs of damage. Naturally, we were relieved by all of this so then Meg and I made a trip into town to pick up our newspaper. We had a slightly artificial timetable this morning which precluded a trip to the park. Instead, we went to park near Asda so that I could make a hunt within the supermarket for cardboard boxes. I was successful in locating one of the types of fruit storage boxes in which I was interested so I secured this one and one or two more. Then it was a case of getting home and settling ourselves in front of TV to watch Prime Minister’s Questions and, in particular, to rate the performance of Liz Truss after after her recent reversals of policy. Keir Starmer made quite an effective attack with one or two jokes at the PM’s expense whilst Liz Truss herself tried one or two of the old attack lines such as Labour’s support for striking workers which is not at the forefront of voters’ minds at this very moment. However, one surprising concession wrung out of the Prime Minister was a firm commitment that next April all pensions would be uprated in line with inflation (announced this morning as 10.1%). The new Chancellor was floating the kite that if pensions were only to be uprated by the average rise in wages rather than inflation then this would save several billions. The average pensioner might have lost up to £400 if pensions had not been fully uprated so no doubt this would be highly appreciated by pensioners most of whom probably vote Tory in any case. Today is the day when our domestic help calls around so just before she left, we descended together into Mog’s Den and picked a selection of apples. Some of these were a magnificent size so we selected some apples that we believe to be eating apples and some that are almost definitely cookers and our domestic help is going to work her culinary magic on her supply. For myself, I was delighted that one of the largest eating apples was a lovely and crisp, slightly acidic flavour and I ate this in slivers with a little cheese. For lunch, I used up the leg meat from last weekend’s spatchcock chicken which I made into a type of fricassée and it made for a delicious meal.

After lunch, we decided to give ourselves a break from the surfeit of news so I idly surfed through the TV channels and on ‘Film 4’ stumbled across the 1956 film of the career of Douglas Bader named ‘Reach for the Skies‘ Bader was a wartime hero who had lost both legs in a flying accident before the war and proved to be an inspirational Wing Commander during the war itself. Ar first, I thought that the dialogue in the film was a bit of a pastiche (RAF types saying ‘Jolly good show, old chap’ and that sort of thing.) The film was made in 1956 and I probably saw it first in 1958 i.e. some 64 years ago and when I think about it, the dialogue in the film was probably quite accurate and people actually did talk like that. The film has some quite dramatic highlights (Bader was shot down but the Germans allowed another artificial leg to be flown out for him, one having been lost when he was shot down).

The breaking political news this afternoon hs been the resignation of the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman. She had apparently communicated an official document (or a draft of a document) to a ‘trusted parliamentary colleague’ using her own personal email. This is a breach of the Ministerial Code and so Braverman realised that she had no option but to resign. In her resignation letter, she admits to a ‘technical’ breach of the Ministerial Code but this wording seems designed to minimise the nature of the offence and the nature of the security breach. Also, I ask myself how an official document came to be in her own private email account before she could transmit it – this, itself, must also a breach of the Code but nobody has mentiond it yet. But the resignation letter contains stinging criticisms of the PM saying that it appeared that several manifesto commitments were not being honoured. Braverman also says in effect ‘I have made a mistake so I resign’ with an implication that perhaps Liz Truss ought to be doing the same. The word that is being used is ‘destabilising’ and having replaced both the Chancellor of the Exchequeur and the Home Secretary within days, that seems like a massive understatement. Finally, there was a vote in the House of Commons tonight on fracking which was supposed to be ‘whipped’ but a Government minister on instructions from No. 10 contradicted this and the Chief Whip promptly resigned. This is a government disintegrating before our eyes.

Continue Reading

Tuesday, 18th October, 2022 [Day 946]

Today dawned bright and fair but the minute after I got and breakfasted, I needed to phone the firm that services our BioDisk (sewage treatmnt apparatus) to complain that the visit planned for yesterday had failed to materialise and, moreover, they had failed to return my call during the day. I was then informed that the engineer was on his way only to get a telephone call a few minutes later to inform me that their engineer had phoned in sick and then they would try and get somebody with me tomorrow. Later in the morning, I received a telephone call from the engineer himself who told me that he had been injured the day before at work but now promised me that he would be with me at about 9am in the morning. We shall wait and see but I am not holding my breath. Nonetheless, Meg and I collected our newspaper and then made our normal Tuesday morning trip to Waitrose café where we expected to meet up with some of our long standing acquaintances. We were not disappointed and met up with Seasoned World Traveller on the one hand and one of our pre-pandemic Waitrose friends on the other. Seasoned World Traveller left me with an interesting, but cynical, observation that ‘every man has his price’ What I did not appreciate until I did a bit of Googling is that there is a massive argument in moral and social philosophy which particularly well discussed by Kant. The origins of the expression can be traced back to Greek thought but it seems that the modern expression of this sentiment can be traced back to Sir Robert Walpole in 1734 was castigating corrupt members of Parliament, whom he called pretended patriots, and said ‘All those men have their price’. After we had made our way home, we tuned in to ‘The Politics Programme‘ on BBC2 starting at midday which I watched for a few minutes before I walked down into town for my usual Tuesday Pilates class. Then it was home and our usual meal of haddock fish cakes which are easily and quickly prepared for when I get home at just about 3.00.

This afternoon, I had a fairly pleasant surprise. I walked down the steps into the lower bit of garden which I call ‘Mog’s Den’ because I suspected that some of the apple trees I had planted down there might have come to fruition. The apple trees were hardly expensive at about £2.00 each but were planted some years ago now. But one of them was absolutely laden with apples and although I think from the greenness of the fruit they might all be cooking apples rather than eaters, we can always make them into a nice compôte which we can eat either with ice cream and/or some yogurt or custard if the weather turns out colder. I always try to keep the apples on the trees as long as possible but mid-October seems a good time to pick my crop as I am anxious that after a really stormy night it is possible for most of the crop might fall and I lose the major part of it. I quite like to go down to Asda at this time of year and ‘liberate’ one of those large shallow cardbox boxed in which the Asda fruit is often supplied. I find that this type of cardboard box disappears like snowballs in June so I need to make that a priority tomorrow.

Some interesting poll news has just been published by Sky News. A YouGov poll of Tory members found 55% would now vote for Rishi Sunak, who lost out to Lizz Truss, if they were able to vote again, while just 25% would vote for Lizz Truss. The poll found 55% of members think she should resign now, while 38% believe she should remain. So this is a fairly massive case of ‘buyers remorse’ but I am amazed by some of the ‘vox pop’ I have heard with Conservative party members when the news media have descended upon them. More than one has said that they liked and approved of Liz Truss and her policy stances which only goes to show, I suppose, that members like this are as economically naive as their chosen candidate was. I wonder, though, whether there is a growing realisation in both the Conservative and the Labour parties that putting a choice before the constituency parties means that an extreme left candidate like Corbyn or an extreme right candidate like Truss will always be voted in (as the constituency parties tend to be populated by the extreme left in the case of Labour and the libertarian right/Bexit supporting in the case of the Tories). Tomorrow will be fascinating as it is Prime Ministers Questions at midday and if Liz Truss performs poorly, then pressure to replace her will surely only increase, perhaps beyond the tipping point for the majority of Tory MPs.

Continue Reading

Monday, 17th October, 2022 [Day 945]

Today was one of those best described as frustrating because we knew that a visit from an engineer to examine our BioDisk was due today and we were anxious not to be away from the house when the engineer was due to call. But the frustration increased throughout the day when, despite staying in on what was quite a beautiful morning, the planned visit from the engineer did not materialise. I made a lightning visit down into town by car to collect our newspaper and some much needed supplies fom Waitrose but after that we knew that today was going to be a day of political announcements and debate so we were not unhappy to park ourselves in front of the TV to see what transpired. As we were waking up this morning, the newly appointed Chancellor of the Exchequeur was busy hitting the airways to bring to the nation (and to the markets) some advance announcements about the rapid deconstruction of the disastrous ‘mini budget’ for which Liz Truss was responsible. I was slightly reassured to learn that the Chancellor had sought the permission of Mr. Speaker to make some announcements in advance of his statement to the House of Commons scheduled for 2.30 this afternoon. The results of the early morning announcements followed by a more formal 5 minute statement delivered at about 11am were one of the most startling ‘U’ turns in the whole of our economic history. The most incredible announcement today was the planned 1p cut in income tax was not just delayed but parked ‘for ever’ so the abandonment of the 45% tax rate cut, the rescinding of the corporation tax cut and abandoning some of the more egregious income tax avoiding measures for the self employed meant a a truly comprehensive dismantling of the previous mini-budget. Even more surprising was the fact that the ‘bed rock’ of Liz Truss’s policies which was the energy support package designed to last for two years was now going to cease in April. Incidentally, this now aligns with the Labour party policy. What happens after April depends upon a Treasury review but it is probable that universal help will cease and that a more targeted approach will be used after April.

The House of Commons this afternoon provided a most entertaining spectacle. Keir Starmer had put down an ‘Urgent Question’ for the Prime Minister to come to the House of Commons to answer and this was to give an account of the reasons that lay behind the sacking of her previous Chancellor. But Liz Truss found that there other unspecified reasons that detained her in No 10 and prevented her appearance in the House of Commons. So the Urgent Question was answered by Penny Mordaunt who is the new Leader of the House of Commons. Given a terrible brief she battled on gamely to attempt to answer the questions from all parts of the House following the Urgent Question and indicate that there were ‘very important reasons’ why Liz Truss could not attend the House of Commons but was not at liberty to discuss what these were. To all intents and purposes, it looked as though Liz Truss was too afraid to come to the House of Commons and was actually hiding away. As soon as the Urgent Questions session had ended, it was time for the scheduled statement of Jeremy Hunt to make as the new Chancellor of the Exchequeur. At this point, Liz Truss did appear and sat through her new Chancellor’s statement with a sort of fixed grin and she then disappeared again, immediately the statement was over.

In terms of raw politics, it has become increasingly evident that the present Conservative party is beset by many competing factions and although there is a recognition that the days of Liz Truss are numbered, it is by no means clear how she might be dislodged and even more unclear who might succeed her. Having said all that, Jeremy Hunt seems to have played quite a canny political game and his actions seems to have restored a degree of credibility and brought some stability to the febrile markets. But whilst a lot of the unfunded tax cuts have now ‘gone’ there is still quite a chunk – £30 billion? – that still remains and has got to be funded somehow. Public sector ‘cuts’ are not the evident answer as all of the ‘low hanging fruit’ was already addressed in Austerity Mark I when Osborne was Chancellor so how much remains to be cut now? It is increasingly being said that Liz Truss is ‘in office but not in power’ and some Labour MPs were asking in the Commons what was the point of having the present Prime Minister when all of her flagship economic policies had been both discredited and then dismantled. Jeremy Hunt’s stock has risen as that of Liz Truss has fallen but how many Conservative MP’s would see him as a future leader is open to question, given his poor showing in the early rounds of the elections for Tory Leader. `But one has to concede that his touch so far has been deft and one suspects that his political potential may be open to reassessment.

Continue Reading

Sunday, 16th October, 2022 [Day 944]

For the last few days, we have had a good start to the day with clear-ish, blue skies and an absence of wind. I got up early and went off to collect the Sunday newspapers after which we had our normal cereal-based breakfast whilst we watched the Laura Kuennsberg show. This generated no real surprises as the new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, reiterated his by now well rehearsed script that the previous government had done well in helping consumers with their energy bills but had made two enormous mistakes in their dash for growth. Those with long political memories may recall that other Conservative Chancellors have also attempted a ‘dash for growth’ and these attempts have nearly always ended in failure. It may well be that the Brexit-loving and libertarian right who have taken over the modern Conservative party have not read enough of our own recent economic and political history and hence it is not surprising that classic mistakes are being repeated. William Keegan, the economics commentator, has indicated that ‘the ghosts of British economic crises past are raising their spectral heads. Memories are being evoked of the ill-conceived and ill-fated dashes for growth under Conservative chancellor Reginald Maudling in 1962-64, Anthony Barber in 1972-74 and my old friend Nigel Lawson in 1988-89.’ These sentiments were also enunciated by a prominent Tory, Robert Halfon, former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party and an education minister under Theresa May, who said he believes Liz Truss needs to apologise to the public for the economic turmoil caused by the mini-budget three weeks ago. He told Sophy Ridge on Sky News ‘I worry that over the past few weeks the government has looked like libertarian jihadists and treated the whole country as laboratory mice on which to carry out an ultra-free market experiment’.

After breakfast, Meg and I made for the park where we met up again with our two park friends, Seasoned World Traveller and our University of Birmingham friend and we shared a coffee together as we could sit around a table on the terrace outside the park’s cafe. We wondered collectively whether Jeremy Hunt’s announcements would serve to calm the city jitters when the stock exchange opens tomorrow morning. Two of us thought that Hunt’s announced measures and promises to ditch even more of the Truss budget might do the trick but one of us thought that this was unlikely. We will find out tomorrow morning who is correct but certainly the next few days are going to be critical. At the end of the day, though, if we are going to fund some part of our budget by borrowing, then we have to convince those who lend us the money i.e. international investors, that we are a good proposition. Another factor to be borne in mind is the operators on international stock markets have no loyalty to anybody except themselves so if it is worth their while to speculate against the pound, no doubt they will do it. As long as the markets are moving either up or down then somebody can make some money out of it. After we had discussed economics and politics, we turned our attention (goodness knows why) to the modern rifle and when the notion was first developed that the accuracy of both bullets and guns could be radically improved by adding a degree of spin to the bullet which is what, I believe, the modern rifle does. It looks as though it was during the American War of Independence that it was realised that a more accurate weapon could kill British commanders and this was a more efficient use of firepower. Not being particularly interested in militaria, I will leave this debate for those who are interested in such matters.

Meg and I lunched on one of those ‘spatchcocked’ chickens that are split open and laid out on a tray that you just have to put into the oven, which we did whilst we were out. Then we lunched on that before setting down to watch the World Cup rugby match between Italy and Scotland. Italy proved to be the better team and nearly completed the whole of the match without having a try scored against them. In the event, though, this match did not hold our attention as much as the match of yesterday when England overwhelmed Samoa so I may need to be a bit more selective about which of these contests I watch in the days ahead.

A UK spy chief is reported as saying that in the conflict in the Ukraine, Russia is losing ‘staggering’ numbers of both men and materials. This may or not be the case but I well remember the sage words of the Labour minister, Denis Healey that ‘in war, the first casualty is truth’ Of course, this was particuarly true of the Iraq conflict and probably the number of losses on the Ukrainian side are likely to be under-reported. Nonetheless, there are now quite a constant drip of stories indicating how ill-prepared and under-motivated the soldiers are on the Russian side, so it might be that before the winter starts to bite in Northern and Central Europe that the Ukrainians are starting to turn the tide.

Continue Reading

Saturday, 15th October, 2022 [Day 943]

It was a most beautiful autumn day today so Meg and I had no hesitation making for the park as soon as we had collected our newspaper. On our way down, we spotted Seasoned World Traveller also making for the park so we decided to alter our routine a little. We parked our car on the lower car park nearest to the park cafe and when we went in search of our friends, we found the two of them enjoying the beautiful autumn weather outside the park café. Needless to say, we were full of excitement about the political news of the last twenty four hours. For once, we shared the same view that Liz Truss had quite probably ‘blown it’ as conservative Prime Minister and her remaining period of office may well be measured in days. So the bar of chocolate which is our wager for the period of time that Liz Truss can remain in office is increasingly starting to look like a 50:50 bet. After we had had a fairly full discussion, Meg and I then made for for home so that we could start to prepare a lunch of mince and onions.

Saturday afternoons are always a little attenuated because it is part of our routine that we go to church in the late afternoon. But today is the start of the Rugby (League) World Cup being played in England so we thought we would tune in and watch one of the first matches in the competition. Incidentally, the competition is going to be interesting for viewers as the competiton will be a triple hander as there are male, female and wheelchair competitions being held in the same tournament. The game this afternoon is between Samoa (one of the pre-match favourites) and England and I am impressed by how fast and free flowing the game is compared with the Rugby Union counterpart. In the latter, a lot of time is spent scrummaging with scrums often collapsing and having to be reset, not to mention the lineouts when the ball goes out of touch. So not having watched Rugby League very much, I have quite grown into the game that I saw this afternoon.

We are in the most interesting political situation as of this morning. The new Chancellor of the Exchequeur, Jeremy Hunt, was interviewd on Radio 4 and gave a calm and reassuring performance. He indicated that two major errors had been made by the previous Chancellor, namely offering tax handouts to the already extremely wealthy on the one hand and not making the mini-budget available to the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) for scrutiny on the other. Of course, it is now widely appreciated that Jeremy Hunt is in an extremely powerful position as he can go ahead and dismantle some of the more noxious parts of the mini-budget within the next week or so. Liz Truss is not in a position to sack her newly appointed Chancellor in his first two weeks so he can, in effect, do whatever he thinks is sensible and which will reassure the markets. He has made a start by indicating that the public sector will have its budgets restrained (have we heard that before?) and that some of the planned income tax cuts may not go ahead and there may well be tax increases as well. What this means, politically, is the entire strategy upon which Liz Truss campaigned and was elected is now being comprehensively dismantled. For this reason, serious political commentators are now suggesting that Liz Truss is not only a ‘busted flush’ but also the mandate that political parties have with the electorate is well and truly broken and therefore there is a very strong case politically, if not constitutionally, for there to be a General Election. The only way for this to happen is for Liz Truss to resign and be replaced by a successor ‘by acclamation’ or for a vote of confidence to be lost in the House of Commons which is possible but not as likely. There are two particular time events in the next day or so. One of these is to see what the reactions (and opinion polls) reveal when the Sunday newspapers are published tomorrow. This might be enough to persuade several of the famed ‘men in suits’ to advance upon Liz Truss and tell her that the game is up. Probably, more crucial even than this, is the reaction of the markets when they reopen on Monday morning. I suspect that Jeremy Hunt has said enough and given enough signals to calm the markets which will give Liz Truss a few days of respite but it will not save her.

As a footnote to today’s Rugby League World Cup news, as I blog England are leading Samoa by 60 points to 6 and it looks, as though in the second half, the Samoans have just about given up the ghost. Needless to say, the commentators are going ecstatic about the England performance but one can well and truly understand why this is so given the scoreline.

Continue Reading

Friday, 14th October, 2022 [Day 942]

Today, we anticipated a day of political news because late last night it was evident that Downing Street were working on a ‘U’ turn (in other words, reversal) of government policy and the Chancellor of the Exchequeur was flying back fom the United States a day earlier than he had planned – had he been ‘ordered’ home? It was quite a pleasant day today and it was possible that Meg and I could have enjoyed a good walk in the park. But as it rained heavily during the night and the weather indications did not look good, we decided to treat ourselves to a coffee in Waitrose. They had two new girls on duty who were pleasant enough but made a bit of a mess of our drinks but we did not complain as, in general, the level of service we receive is excellent. Today is the day when we treat ourselves to a meal of sea bass served on a bed of lettuce. The news media informed us that there was to be a press conference from Downing Street at 2.30 – upon hearing this, we ensured that we had our lunch and washing up done in plenty of time so that we could look forward to an afternoon of ‘blood sport’ After a lot of speculation, it emerged that the Chancellor of the Exchequeur, Kwami Kwarteng, had been unceremoniously sacked. Reading between the lines, it appeared that he had been summoned home a day early so that he could be sacked. Even this was more interesting than you might expect as it is traditional at times like these for a letter of resignation to be published immediately and for its ‘acceptance’ letter to be published as well. The letter from Kwami Kwarteng made it absolutely clear that he had been sacked (‘You have asked me to stand aside as your chancellor.’) In reply Liz Truss stated that she was sorry that he was leaving the government as though he had decided to resign on his own initiative. But any sacked, or resigning minister, is allowed to make a personal statement in the House of Commons at an early opportunity (say, next Monday) and this speech might be especially interesting. Will Kwarteng in effect feel that ‘if I go, you are going to be pulled down with me’ and make the kind of speech heaping blame upon the Prime Minister who had sacked him. Close observers of the political scene will never forget the resignation speech given by Geoffrey Howe and how he sunk the knife into the shoulder blades of Margaret Thatcher from which she never really recovered. The visible pain on her face as the attack in the House of Commons was taking place has been the object of a myriad of video clips, as you might imagine.

Now we come to the much anticipated press conference itself, starting at 2.30pm and to a room packed with political journalists. The Liz Truss statement to press conference itself lasted less than nine minutes and was a rather typical and robot-like Liz Truss performance. Before the much anticipated press conference, it was beng said that Liz Truss, not a naturally good communicator, would have to give the performance of her life to convince the financial markets, her own Tory MPs and the public at large. Well, the performance of her life it was not. Liz Truss allowed the collected journalists only four questions (each of which was both short, direct and brutal) and after that, she turned on her heel and swept out of the room. This left the whole room astonished as it was fondly imagined that Liz Truss would want to seize the opportunity to ‘reset’ the whole of her government, particularly as Jeremy Hunt was now appointed as her new Chancellor. But her unwillingness to face more detailed scrutiny went down extremely badly with the journalists who are not uninfluential in helping the government to restore its credibility and this unwillingness went down even worse with many of her MPs. This latter group were not slow in making their feelings felt to whichever journalist was available to hear them. I personally feel that Liz Truss sealed her own fate at the second at which she turned and walked out of the rooom (already being widely interpreted as ‘running away’) I remember to the second the point at which Margaret Thatcher’s defenestration started and this was at the point when the ‘Spitting Image‘ portrayed her as absolutely mad with staring eyeballs and shrieking voice. After the programme was aired, many Tory MP’s were convinced that Margaret Thatcher would not lead them into the next election and the plotting and lack of support started. I have a similar feeling tonight. I have a bet with a park friend that Liz Truss will be gone by next Sunday. This bet, a large bar of chocolate, I may lose by a few days but I am going to tease my friend when I see him over the weekend by putting a large bar of chocolate with a piece of string attached to it and slowly pulling it along the park bench and out of his grasp.

Continue Reading

Thursday,13 October, 2022 [Day 941]

Thursday is my shopping day so as is usual I get up early, get some money out of an ATM and then get lined up outside my supermarket of choice at 8.00am promptly. The shopping having been done, I collected our newspaper on the way home and then had a leisurely breakfast. I then made a couple of routine telephone calls booking services of varying types before Meg and I made our way belatedly to the park. In the park, we met one of our Catholic friends from down the road and we exchanged news about our comings and goings – I have some spare damson compôte saved from the last bottling of last year’s damson gin and I am hoping my friend can turn it all to good use. We also bumped into one of our regular dog walkers who we know well by sight – she is the spitting image of one of my Hampshire friends so it is always a bit of a surprise when we see her in the park. When I worked at De Montfort University in Leicester, one of my colleagues swore that I had a doppelganger which was a milkman in Worcester. If you research this term on the web, you will find the observation that statistically there are six other people in the world who look exactly like us. All of this sounds extremely fanciful but Meg and I once had an uncanny experience at work. De Montfort University appointed a new manager of student housing and the first time Meg met him in a meeting, she practically fainted as the new manager appeared to be an exact image of her own (dead) father. I also met him in a meeting and had a similar experience but the minute he spoke, one knew at once that he was indeed a radically different individual so you knew you were not seeing a ghost.

Today is one of those days when you know that a lot is going on politically but the actual chages have not broken surface as yet. The Chancellor is in the USA meeting with members of the IMF and, according to all accounts, they are telling him that the UK economic policy needs ‘recalibrating’ (a polite way of saying a ‘U’ turn). Back in Downing Street, they are apparently working frantically on some kind of policy which is both a ‘U’ turn and not a ‘U’ turn at the same time, but news is yet to emerge. The cruel dilemma for the government is this – if the revisions to the policy are minimal, then the markets will not be satisfied. If, on the other hand, the reversals are quite major, then the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will lose all credibility – and their own survival is threatened. One solution is for the Prime Minister, Liz Truss, to ‘ditch’ her Chancellor and to blame all of the government woes upon his head. But this is very difficult as the two politicians are soul mates and ‘bound at the hip’as they say. This friendship is forged in the fact that they both contributed to an extreme right-wing manifesto a few years ago entitled ‘Britannia Unchained‘. Some of the flavour of this polemic can be gleaned from the opinions broadcast in the book which asserts that the UK has a ‘bloated state, high taxes and excessive regulation’. It then goes on to say that ‘the British are among the worst idlers in the world. We work among the lowest hours, we retire early and our productivity is poor. Whereas Indian children aspire to be doctors or businessmen, the British are more interested in football and pop music’. It also says the UK should stop indulging in irrelevant debates about sharing the pie between manufacturing and services, the north and the south, women and men. I found the following article last night which was entitled ‘It’s now more likely than not that the mini-Budget will be withdrawn and that the Chancellor may have to go’ You would think that this article would be on website of the Labour Party or in ‘The Guardian‘s opinion pages. But it is actually the lead article in the website dedicated to the fortunes of the Conservative party called ‘ConservativeHome‘ We cannot know when any decisions are to be announced but tonight,I shall probably watch Question Time to get some of the views of ‘Middle England’. I stopped watching this program during the pandemic and still believe its radio cousin of ‘Any Questions‘ is a more interesting program to follow. Nonetheless seeing government minister squirm when under pressure from a live audience is always pleasant to behold.

Tonight, our visiting cat Miggles was in attendance outside our door, to which he/she responds when the sound of the back door being opened is heard. The cat tends to pop inside and get over-familiar with my slippers whenever the opportunity presents itself. I gather from a cursory consultation with the web that this behaviour is not uncommon with our feline friends. They are evidently responding to whatever ‘scent’ is left behind in one’s slippers but I must say that when we had family cats in the 1950’s and 1960’s we never witnessed behaviour of this kind.

Continue Reading

Wednesday, 12th October, 2022 [Day 940]

Today has been quite an unusual day. For a start, we got up a little late after we had (for us) a late-ish night for us after we had had a quick goodnight drink with our friends down the road, after my evening meeting at the church. Actually, we were awakened by the door bell ringing as our friendly driver from the Honda garage from whom we purchased our car getting on for some two years ago, was calling to pick up the car for its annual service. Things are made so much easier thse days than they used to be because our garage will come in a car that they leave with you whilst your own car is whisked away to be serviced, only to be returned to you later in the day. Also the benefits of modern technology means that the garage make a little video showing the remaining tread depth chalked onto the tyres together with a quick visual inspection of the suspension and exhaust systems (or the bits that are open for visual inspection) This video is then sent direct to your mobile phone and is incredibly reassuring. Upon the return of the car later in the morning which had been both washed and valeted, I noticed a small area of stain left behind evidently by a bird dropping. As I know this can etch into the car if left untreated, I did a quick search on the web to see if there were any readily available ‘tips’ to remove the potential etching. Amongst several home made solutions to this problem, one suggestion was to squirt a little WD-40 (of which I have a good supply) onto the bird dropping ‘etching’ and I have to say this worked actually like magic. Watching a ‘YouTube‘ video, I now realise that you need to wash off the WD-40 which has a slightly etching effect of its own on the clear layer which lies over your primer and base paint layer. Now for the car care tip Mark II. I have the most minor of bumper scuff marks after, I suspect, an unknown car park collision but I think that after a WD-40 treatment such as I have just detailed, I am prepared to live with the almost indiscernible visible part of the scuff mark that still remains. I seem to remember that when I moved into my present house some fifteen years ago, I had a white Honda Accord which had finished up with minor bumper scuffs on each corner of the car and not one of them caused by myself. But after the period in which one is ‘new car neurotic’ and parks one’s cars way away from any other vehicles in, for example, a supermarket’s carpark, you learn to live with these little irritants, annoying as they are at the time.

There is a great deal of turbulence in the UK’s financial markets at the moment, as well as elsewhere in Europe. In particular, the financial markets are acutely interested in how our Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, intends to fund the £65 billion of tax cuts and energy prices support announced in the mini-budget. Basically, the markets are holding their breath and believe that either the tax cuts have to be abandoned (and therefore do not need funding) or there will have to be swingeing public sector budget cuts. Liz Truss in the Commons today completely reiterated her pledge of ‘no public expenditure cuts’ and so the financial markets, the political parties and the public at large have no idea how the chancellor is going to fund the tax give aways. There are two deadlines upon which everyone is focused. One of these is when the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is going to deliver their own independent assession of the viability of the Chancellor’s stated intentions on 31st October, but that is still nearly three weeks away. A much more immediate deadline is next Friday which is the date upon which the Bank of England say they are going to withdraw support from, in effect, the pensions funds industry which is a major investor in government bonds. If the pensions industry have to, in effect, have a ‘fire sale’ of some of their assets in order to satisfy the banks from whom they have borrowed the money to buy the government bonds, then this might start a massive downward spiral in which the pensions industry causes a contagion in other parts of the financial sector. We have, of course, been here before in the financial crisis of 14-15 years go. Channel 4 news were interviewing a very respected financial journalist and international investor, Gillian Tett, who let it be known that she thought that Rees-Mogg’s defence of the government that it had no culpability but was merely the victim of wider international turbulence was ‘spherical objects’ (although she did use the Anglo Saxon word in her report) This took the Channel 4 reporter by surprise and they immediately issued an apology in case the Anglo-Saxon word actually used caused any offence. However, in the text version of the report given for the hard-of-hearing viewers, the actual word used was transliterated as ‘bullocks’.

Continue Reading